1952-59 Ford Doing it the hard way: My LS-powered 1954 Customline build thread

***Disclaimer*** Figured I'd say this up front - I tend to write A LOT so this thread will be rather text-heavy. Some readers hate that, so I want to ***ure you that there will be lots of pictures to look at as well. Just keep scrolling down...



Hey, everyone. I recently finished swapping an LS1 into my '54 Fordor. I meant to start a build thread when I started the project and share pictures of my progress along the way, but I ended up spending more time in the garage than on the computer. I have done other swaps in the past and never took any pictures until the work was all done, so this time I forced myself to take pictures of every step. Now that it's over, I thought I'd go ahead and put a bunch of pictures on the forum so that others who may be considering such a project can see what they're in for. Also, I need somewhere to put all of these pictures so I can look back on them fondly one day, and this forum seems like as good a place as any to do that.

Those of you who read my introductory post a few months ago might remember that this car already had a small-block Chevy in it, so unfortunately I can't show what it takes to go from a Y-block to an LSx. But I'll try to explain what I did in the past if anyone is interested.

Let me show you some before and after pics before I get carried away with all the typing...

Circa April 2011


About 2 weeks ago



A little background information on how I got from a 239 to an LS1: this car was my daily driver from high school until I was about 22. The stock motor was pulled when I was 17 because the radiator blew up - I guess that was the excuse my dad needed to put a Chevy in the car (if I had to label him, I'd call him a Chevy guy). My grandpa sold us his '77 Caprice Cl***ic and we put the 350 from that car into the Ford. It was converted to 12V at that time, too. We kept the manual Ford ******, but it didn't last long behind the new motor. I put a Chevy 3-speed in there and moved the shifter to the floor. Eventually it got a 4-speed...then a 5-speed...then I got tired of shifting and put in a TH350. I drove it that way for a while, then the motor started acting really worn out so I replaced it with a 283 that my dad had just taken out of his '57 Chevy pickup because he was starting a frame-off rebuild. After that I got a new car and the Ford got relegated to the field behind my parents' barn for a couple of years (I only had a 1-car garage so I couldn't keep the Ford sheltered).

I found the money and time to work on the car again back in about 2005 or so. I pulled the whole drivetrain, had the Caprice motor rebuilt, and bought a nice 700R-4 transmission and a 9" rearend. I got the car going and it ran pretty strong - actually a little too strong. I didn't like the cam I put in the 350 because this car looks like a grandmother drives it but it sounded like a race car. I swapped cams and then the motor started acting weird and leaking - long story short I eventually got it running okay but it just never seemed right again and the oil leaks drove me insane. I left the car parked in the garage for years and tried to forget it was there.

In April, my best friend and I decided summer of 2011 was going to be summer of "getting **** done" on our project vehicles. He has an old mail jeep with a 351W that was overheating, and a little crotch rocket that he wanted to put a bigger motor in as well. I figured I could try something different with the Ford in the spirit of GSD. I put the drivetrain on Craigslist just as a feeler and ended up selling the motor almost right away. My dad bought my 700R-4 to put in his '56 Chevy 210. I sold off all of the small-block stuff I had been hoarding in the garage and ended up with a few grand in my pocket, so I started looking for a motor/****** combo for the car. I didn't care what it was except I didn't want anything older than what I had just sold (sorry, Y-block guys). I also wanted it to be EFI if possible. The most important thing to me this time around was that it had to run smooth and not leak. I'm old and wise enough now to know that this car was meant to be cruised, not raced.

I looked at everything - 4.6s, 5.4s, Hemis, 302/351s, Cadillacs... Nothing was really catching my eye. I found an awesome deal on a 4.6L DOHC from a Lincoln and I almost bought it, but decided it was just too wide to fit (and the parts were too expensive to buy if something broke). Finally I realized that what I really wanted this car to be like was my '03 Silverado. It has a small-ish V-8, runs smooth, is reliable, and has enough power to get on the freeway and have a little fun if I want. After this realization I started shopping for 5.3L engines. I almost bought a nice 6.0L from a wrecked 2500 pickup but when I looked at it in person it was clear that the front-end damage to the truck affected at least the engine accessories, if not the engine itself. I was disappointed but checked Craigslist that night and saw an ad for a 1998 LS1/4L60-E combo from a wrecked Camaro. I spent a couple of days on the phone with the owner, then went out to see the drivetrain in person and ended up buying it from him. I got the engine, ******, accessories, EFI harness, and computer for $1400, which I thought was a bargain.

 

Here's what the "new" motor looked like when I bought it.



It supposedly had about 75k miles on it. The Camaro got rear-ended and totalled, so the owner bought the drivetrain back from the wrecking yard and had it sitting in his garage for a couple of months. I think he said he was about to move to Las Vegas (from Sacramento) so he didn't want to take it with him. It was pretty scary looking but I pulled the plugs, checked the intake for water, checked the oil, etc. and it seemed okay to me.

I started taking it apart, carefully labeling every part, taking pictures of every step, and writing lots of notes. I hadn't worked on an LS motor before so I didn't want to forget where stuff went. The weirdest part by far was using only metric tools.





Then I tried a test-fit. I knew the LS was slightly taller and wider than the SBC, and not as long measuring front-to-back. I hoped it would magically fit but wasn't surprised when it didn't even come close.










It doesn't look too bad from the pictures, but the headers dump directly into the crossmember underneath and the oil pan is resting comfortably on the crossmember and drag link. It became clear to me that some serious fabrication was in my future.

 

A FORD 302 / 5.0 will sit in there just fine WITHOUT all that damn fab work !
Just remember a Ford came with a Ford engine for a reason . Putting a Chev into a Ford is too much work to make them fit !
Gotta have some fun , right ?

Jim

 

Yeah, I know 5.0s fit fine, Jim. But that's boring because lots of guys have them. And I wanted an overdrive automatic transmission but don't like the AOD.

Part of the reason I chose this engine is because I couldn't find anyone else on Google that had done it before (except Jesse James on Monster Garage - that's literally the only other LS-powered '54 Ford I ever came across, and I didn't see the episode but I'm willing to bet they messed with the front end way more than I did).

 

I got to work taking the old Ford motor mounts out. They were still in there because my dad and I integrated them into our small-block Chevy mounts years ago. It took a lot of cutting and grinding but I ended up with this:



Then I was doing some research on LS motors and came across the best news I'd seen in a long time: New LS-powered GTOs came with front-sump oil pans! I found some dimensions and went to measure the Ford. It looked like the pan would work perfectly, so I found a used pan, pickup, and windage tray for sale and bought it. Here it is on the motor:



The day I dropped the motor in the car with the new pan was a great day. It was at that point that I knew everything would eventually fit without my having to buy an aftermarket IFS (which I can't afford, so that would have killed the project anyway).



Not bad, eh?

Well, except for the headers...

 

looking good, i have a buddy that is a ls nut!! he just dropped a ls1 into a 63 nova wagon that had a really healthy 350. but he hated the carb and vapor locking! he wanted me to put one in my 54 but i said, no way!! i believe what ever the car is, it should match the power train. (ford in a ford, chevy in a chevy)etc. looking good thought, anxious to see more updates!! keep it up!!

 

Baggs: I usually agree with you - I think motors should match the car but always be bigger. However, I've been known as "the guy with the old Ford with a Chevy motor" for so long that I felt compelled to keep my car as an oddball.

You can see from that last picture that the headers are basically resting on the crossmember. I looked far and wide for headers that would fit better than those ******s, but other block-huggers either stuck out farther or had 1.5" primaries, or both. I didn't want to run smaller than 1 5/8" headers so I was really limited in my options. I didn't even bother looking at mid- or full-length headers because there's no way they'd clear the stock steering box or get anywhere near the openings in our stupid angled frame braces.

Anyway, once I decided that these ****** headers were the winners, I had to figure out what to do about making them work. Below are pictures of the clearances before I started doing anything.









The A-arm mounting brackets were already ground off from before (the SBC headers didn't fit at first, either). The good news was that these ******s cleared the steering box. I had a tough time with steering clearance on the old motor, which seems to be a common thread a**** owners of these cars.

 

I decided that the exhaust on the driver side would clear the crossmember as long as I was careful, so I half-measured/half-guessed on the depth of the notch required on the p***enger side and got to cutting. I bought some 1/4" steel plate to use in filling the notch and for future fabrication (I had to buy a 4' length of 3" x 1/4" because it didn't come any shorter, but I'm glad I did because eventually I used it all...). I also researched motor mount options pretty heavily. I didn't want to mess with stock-style mounts - the kind that are angled parallel to the engine - because I figured creating engine mounts from scratch would be a lot easier if I could work with 90s and 180s instead of 45 or 60 or whatever the stock ones are.

I went with these mounts, which are pretty common a**** street rodders, apparently.



My dad gave me some trailer hitch stock he had in the garage because I figured I'd have to make not only new engine mounts but a transmission crossmember as well. I cut the stock at an angle so I could get to the motor mount bolts, then spent a really long time measuring, grinding, checking, and re-checking before finally tack-welding the mounts to the frame.



You can see the notch in my crossmember for the exhaust in that picture. I originally wanted to do a scalloped notch but I couldn't find any pipe that was 1/4" thick and about 4-5" in diameter to use in place of the flat steel shown. I'm sure it exists but I couldn't find any. Shaping the crossmember to make that work would have been a huge pain in the *** anyway.

Here's a very blurry picture of the final product. At that point I wasn't worried about making everything look pretty - I just wanted something in there so I could see if the motor was really going to fit. I could always clean up the welds later.



Next, I had to perform some surgery on the transmission. The 4L60-E had huge bosses on the tailshaft, which apparently are there for the torque arm to bolt onto in the Camaro. They were causing major clearance issues on the Ford frame (the last frame section before the open space where the driveshaft and mufflers go), so I figured since I didn't have a torque arm I could remove them.





Here it is in the car (on my motorcycle jack which did double duty as a ****** jack). This is also a better shot of the notched crossmember and new engine mounts.



After that I bolted the motor in the car for the first time.



You can see the rest of the motor mount ***embly here. The primered piece is a conversion mount for a SBC that I found on ebay. The black plate behind it is what lets you bolt an old 3-hole SBC mount onto a new 4-hole LS motor. They also move the mount forward an inch, I think. Most guys want that so they can put an LS farther back into an old F- or A-body and use their stock motor mounts on the frame side, but in my case I wanted the motor to shift forward so that I could weld the mounts onto the frame at the narrowest point as well as place the motor where the oil pan would best clear the steering. A nice bonus was more access to the bellhousing bolts. I'm sure weight distribution was negatively affected but if I gave a **** about that I wouldn't be doing all this work on a '54 Ford.

 

Just given you a hard time and having some fun with you !
I have always said , It's your car and you do want you want to it but just be happy with your choices !
As for the headers , that's a problem . Long tubes might work with some cutting and welding .
Now will the trans clear the tunnel or are you going to take the BFH to it and make it a little bigger ?
I DON'T care for the AOD ether since they are a PITA to set up . The EAOD is a much better trans for an overdrive for a Ford engine . I know that GM does make a really good and simple overdrive trans . They are used a lot !
Looks good so far with just some minor clearance problems but that is normal with hotrods !

Jim

 

F*CK! I just wrote a huge post about the exhaust and my browser freaked out and closed itself down.

Piece of ****. Well whatever, I don't feel like writing it all over again so here are some pics.



I discovered that flexible heater ducting is great for mocking up exhaust pipes and radiator hoses.

 

Driver side wasn't as complicated.



This is the H-pipe that was on the car before. I made it tuck into the floor and frame so well that I got a bunch of clunking and vibration for my trouble. This time I narrowed it down to bring it away from the framerails and floor pans.







Then I added some flanges to the ends where the tailpipes attach. Before, I had welded them directly to each other, thinking that it would be better for leaks and I wouldn't really have a reason to mess with exhaust ever again anyway. Obviously, I was having a naive moment. This time I made sure they will remain easy to dis***emble and thought it would be better to use flanges and gaskets than slip joints and clamps.

 

You'll notice that I got rid of the ceramic coated headers in favor of painted ones. Long story short - I only used the ceramics for mock-up because Summit shipped them to me in terrible condition (scratched, dinged, coating was poorly applied) so I figured a few more scratches wouldn't hurt. After I was all done with them I returned them and got a painted set. ******'s quality ****s and as it turns out, Jet-Hot will coat my painted ones for me for a very reasonable price. So reasonable, in fact, that painted headers + Jet Hot costs only a couple of dollars more than coated headers from ******.

I want to mention one other issue with ****** block huggers at this point. Looking at the pictures above, you may be thinking, "wow, that's not much room for a starter." You would be correct. I picked up a mini starter from Summit that was on clearance when I visited their storefront in NV. I was just going to use the stock LS1 starter but wasn't sure if it was any good and figured a mini starter would be a nice upgrade. I'm glad I bought it because there is no way in hell a stock starter will fit with these headers. The collector dumps straight down where the stock one would be sitting. ****** does caution that different motor mounts must be used (like mine), but they say nothing about different starters. Just FYI...

 

Oh, I forgot one picture back before the exhaust ones. I discovered almost right away that my frame notching wasn't enough, and that the driver side needed a notch as well. I cut out my old work (shouldn't have finish welded that one before I was sure) and did it all over again.

 

I didn't actually finish my exhaust until later, but since I'm already talking about it I'll just put the rest of the pictures up now.



The O2 sensor bungs look like they're asymmetrical, but that's just because the p***enger side downpipe is such a corkscrew. The bungs are actually exactly the same distance from their respective collectors.







It's not the prettiest thing ever, but I made it all myself with only a MIG welder and an abrasive saw. It's 2.5" throughout and I didn't ever cut the pipe so that the cross-section was an elongated circle or oval for a shortcut. With the exception of all the welds, I figure it's as good as mandrel-bent. I wish I could have done an X-pipe instead of the H, but with our goofy frames I just couldn't see a way to do it. And yeah, the Flowmasters are on the noisy side but these are at least the 3-chamber style so they're not as obnoxious as others, plus I already had them so I didn't have to spend any money on new mufflers.

 

Isn't kustom exhaust so much fun to build ? All that damn welding is what gets to you !
Nice work !

Jim

 

Niceeeee work!!! man the exhaust straight out of the header is impressive!!!!

 

Damn that's going to look great

 

GEEEZ! thats outstanding workmanship!

 

looks good. would love to hear it when done.

 

Great job of fabbing, don't know if the "traditional police" on the main board would like it though.

 

Nice job!! The LS motors aren't my cup-o-tea but I certainly admire and respect all the fab work you're putting into it. Looking good

 

Not crazy about a Chev in a Ford, BUT, read an artical in Hot Rod mag where they turbo-charged a 5.3 and got over 1200hp out of it. Had over 27lb of boost on a stock bottom end engine. Then they find out that its really a 4.8. Man, that really impressed me.

 

OMG you're my hero!!! This thread is soooooo helpful to me Thanks Paddy!
I figure I'll be hated by all the purists but i figure i'll weld the hood shut once done lol

 

Parklane - I read that story as well. These LSx motors can really handle the power, especially the truck motors with iron blocks. As a matter of fact, one of the main reasons I went this direction with the car was because of an earlier Hot Rod article, maybe March or April, where they picked up a junkyard 5.3L with over 100k miles and tried out a Chinese eBay turbo on it. I don't have any intention of boosting my engine but the article spoke volumes about the reliability and strength of the LS.

 

Thanks for all the encouraging words, everyone. Now on with the story...

At this point I went back and forth between working on the engine and working on the car itself. Some things made sense to do first, and some things I just didn't work on because of laziness, insecurity, or plain old fear (e.g., cutting a big chunk of aluminum off the motor). I think I'll start by showing you how the car turned out.

Aside from cleaning up the frame after all the welding, I also wanted to patch up the firewall before I put the motor back in. I did this once before and it turned out pretty nice, but once again I did too good of a job and I couldn't get the distributor in the 350 once the motor was in the car. It hit that lip/seam on the firewall that runs all the way across above the master cylinder and heater core. To get that to fit, I had to take a BFH to my pristine bodywork (actually, it was only a LFH but it was still less than ideal). I got the distributor in there but I ended up with broken welds and sheetmetal that pulled apart from the firewall. This time I didn't worry about messing with the dented part and just welded up the split part again. That was really tough because I'm a p***able welder but not an expert or a seasoned body man, plus the backside of my firewall has dynamat-type sound deadener on it that is apparently quite flammable. But I got it fixed and threw a bunch of filler on there and tried to make it pretty.





I think this is how it looked right before I decided to stop messing around with sandpaper and just paint the damned thing.





I also started cutting up the splash pan because I knew I was going to move the radiator forward to make room for a puller-style electric fan.



I found some satin black Rustoleum paint that I used for the hood compartment. I've painted it a few times over the last 15 years, so I didn't need to remove a bunch of rust or anything. I did that the first time. I think I had it glossy for a while, then flat black, then last time it was semi-gloss black engine paint which looked pretty good. This time I was using gloss black for the engine itself so I wanted the hood compartment to be a little muted. I couldn't find a good semi-gloss but this satin stuff looked really good to me. The only problem so far is that it doesn't hold up worth a **** to fingerprints or scuffs. I've already had to touch up the firewall twice after working on wiring and other things. I'm hoping to get to a point where I can just not have to put my greasy fingers on anything other than the dipstick and oil cap, but I'm not there yet...

 

Looking at that last picture, I thought maybe I'd explain some of the changes I've made over the years to make the hood compartment so devoid of the stuff you'd expect to find there.

I moved the battery to the trunk a long time ago. Actually, when my dad and I first got the car running when I was 15, it was still 6V. Naturally, being a teenage boy I wanted a loud stereo, so my dad rigged up another battery tray under the hood and we put a regular 12V battery in there to power the stereo (a sweet Pioneer tape deck, as I recall ). All I had to do was remember to put the car on the trickle charger every night and I would have tunes while I drove around.

Obviously, the car got converted to 12V down the road. I put the battery in the trunk after that because I saw a lot of cars in magazines that did that and I was working at Napa Auto Parts where I could get 2-0 cable in bulk using my employee discount. Plus I think I was just bored with the car and looking for stuff to do.

The heater ***embly was a similar story. My dad removed the 6V squirrel cage, dremeled out the hole, and somehow put the 12V cage from the '77 Caprice donor car in there. I think he may have used a piece of 3/4" wood in between the cage and the housing as an adapter, but I can't quite remember. It worked just fine. Then one day we were at a car show and I walked by the Vintage Air booth and saw their brand new compact heater unit on display. It's a tiny heater core with the blower mounted on top, and the whole thing fits under the dash. I guess it's made for street rods or Jeeps, primarily. I saw an opportunity to get rid of all the stock heater parts so we picked one up and made it work in the Ford. The defrost function runs off a vacuum signal from the engine, and the fan has 3 blower speeds. It really works well, although I was never able to adapt the fan switch to the original Ford one in the dash. I mounted the two switches in a bracket that sits where the ashtray used to go. We cut the face of the ashtray off (the part that you see while driving) and mounted some hinges and a magnetic latch to it. Now you just press on the panel and it drops open to let you get at the heater controls. I think it's pretty cool.

The only other thing really is the brakes. That master/booster combo is from Master Power Brakes and I bought it a few years ago. I bet it doesn't even have 300 miles on it yet. It was a bolt-on deal and has an 8" dual-diaphragm booster which is pretty much the best one they sell. I ran it with 4-wheel drum brakes and it worked fine, but then I converted the fronts over to disc and it hasn't been the same since. I bought MP Brakes' combination/proportion valve and have verified that it's plumbed correctly, but I'm still having serious braking issues. That's a story for another thread, though.

I also re-routed some of the wires you can see in the last picture above. I hate wires in the hood compartment. I think they're ugly, and I go to great lengths to minimize them and hide the ones I can't eliminate. I was able to do a little more of that at this phase of the project and ended up removing the 12V horns from the car entirely (mostly to cut down on wiring, but also because they haven't worked for years). Now the only wires you see that don't have to do with the engine are the ones running to the headlights and turn signals.

Of course, the EFI motor came with more wires than I knew what to do with, and there's no good way to hide those...

 

Moving the radiator forward seemed pretty simple but ended up being a lot of work. It wasn't hard, but I had to do a lot of measuring, grinding, welding, repeat again and again. I'm happy with the result, though.

Basically, I removed the core support and ground down the inner edges of it (the front "edge" is where the stock radiator bolts on) far enough down so that the radiator core would fit between them. I then got my trusty 3" steel plate and cut it into brackets about 20" long, I think. I drilled six holes in each of these - three for the radiator to bolt to, and three to bolt the bracket to the core support. The way they attach is by running bolts through the U-shaped core support (pictured), then the support walls in the car (I don't know what else to call these... "wings"? They're the parts that the U-shaped piece bolts to), then the brackets. I didn't really have to change anything else about the car at all, and I got about 6" of extra fan clearance over the old setup, which bolted the radiator to the front side of the core support using angle iron brackets.



Oh, I guess I did have to cut the splash pan as mentioned earlier. I really didn't want to do that but there was no other way. If I tried to mount the radiator on top of it, the fan would have been up so high that it wouldn't have blown any air over the bottom of the motor. And also the hood wouldn't close.



I used some more of the 3" steel to close off the bottom of the core support. What you see here is the steel plate in the shape of the lower radiator tank. I only did this because I didn't want bugs and road grime to come in under the radiator and get all over my clean engine. After I finished it up I looked at it and though, "Why did I do that? That could have been extra air flow for cooling off the motor, dumb***." But I left it anyway because I didn't want to grind off the welds. The other thing I considered was maybe removing the plate one day and mounting a narrow ****** fluid cooler there instead.

This picture below jumps ahead on the motor install, but shows the way the radiator ended up. I split some extra rubber fuel line I had laying around and used it to line the edge of the core support on which the radiator tank sits, and did the same thing with vacuum hose along the edge of the splash pan that I trimmed. I don't know if it does anything but it made me feel better about metal-on-metal vibration and sharp edges.

 

Here's something I'm really proud of:





What the hell is that, you ask? Why, that's my new glovebox tray.

I mentioned earlier that I hate wires. I didn't want to mount any relays, fuse panels, or computers under the hood in plain sight, even though it's the easiest way to do it. Lots of guys with GM cars use secret spots under the fenders to mount that stuff, but there aren't any good hiding spots on my car. I also can't just bolt the PCM bracket to the middle of the firewall under the dash because I'm afraid to drill through it with all of the bondo and delicate welds on there. So I was left with no choice but to come up with a way to shove everything in the glovebox.

How much stuff are we talking about here? LOTS. Check it out:

First, the PCM bracket (off a Chevy truck, I think).


Then the PCM itself.


Then 4 huge relays and an 8-fuse panel that came with the EFI harness.






Oh, and don't forget something like 100 feet of wire, all of which has to be coiled up under the dash and not interfere with the heater, wipers, fresh air vents, defroster ducting, or anything else that might be up there (in my case, speaker crossovers).

 

So now you're wondering if the glovebox idea worked... Yes, it did.

But not right away. The biggest hurdle was getting all of that wire through a hole in the firewall that was as small as possible. I ended up enlarging a previous hole to about 1.25", I think. Maybe 1 3/8". Whatever the biggest bit I had was. Then, I had to de-pin the entire PCM harness because the huge plugs wouldn't fit through the hole. I thought about starting inside the car and running all of the wires out, thus keeping the giant PCM connectors whole, but the problem there was the stupid plug for the 4L60-E which was about 1.75" in diameter. I opted for the first choice.

This is my starting point. You can see the Vintage Air heater in there.


This is the whole dash taken apart so that I can get to the ignition and other stuff. I also took this opportunity to remove old wiring that no longer did anything and was only there to confuse me. You can also see where all of the wires come in, just to the left of the heater core.


This is the PCM harness in its natural state.


And this is after being tamed. It really wasn't too bad. I just took my time.


Glovebox tray installed. Four bolts hold it in securely - one on the left side where that short bar on the tray touches the dash, two in the front, and one you can't see on the right. The last is actually one of the bolts that attach the dashboard to the car itself - I just drilled a hole in my tray for it and put another nut on the existing bolt to hold the tray down. Worked perfectly. I can still open the fresh air vent about halfway, nothing hits the heater or defroster ducts, and I haven't tried the wipers yet but the wiring harness isn't too close to the arm on that side. I don't drive this car in the rain anyway (leaky windshield seal) so the wipers are my last worry.



PCM installed and wired.


Relays and fuses hooked up.


Pretty much done now.

 

Awesome, I love LS engines.