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

Great writeup and pictures on a very slick installation. I'm envious of the work and the LS installation

Years ago a friend had a Chevy small block (rear sump pan I thought) in his 54 Ford. It went in without much work and a Y block went into another friends 54 with a special rear sump T bird pan. So I always thought that 54's were set up for rear sump engines like Chevs. However, your engine compartment pictures look just like my 56. I had built a front sump pan using an early Nova oil pump for a GEN I sbc to put a '79 350 in it back in the '90's. When I recently upgraded to a 1995 LT1 with the one piece rear seal I had to make another diferent front sump pan to put it in my 56. Did some Fords with flatheads have a diferent ch***is or did I just have it wrong all of these years?
Pete
http://rides.webshots.com/album/579756590lqqlGv?start=36

 

Well, '54 was the first year of the OHV V-8 so I'm not sure what flathead motors looked like. I don't really remember what the oil pan on the 239 was like but I imagine it was a front-sump deal.

I didn't have too much trouble putting the rear-sump Chevy in the car except the steering didn't work. The oil pan just barely cleared the stock crossmember though. My dad lengthened the pitman and idler arms a few inches so the drag link sat underneath the oil pan. I think it made tire alignment a little more challenging but it worked okay for over a decade. Right before I decided to do the LS swap I found an oil pan on ebay that was really shallow and narrow and looked like it fit the old SBC in such a way that it would clear the top of the crossmember. I almost bought it and returned the steering to stock. I looked at Nova setups a lot but I still wasn't sure they'd work. I also looked at those aftermarket pans for Novas that have the big notch cut out of the sump for the drag link to p*** through, but the orientation just would't work with the Ford steering.

I put my steering parts all back to factory after I dropped the front-sumped LS1 in there and it was a really good feeling. It was a little tough to find a stock pitman arm but I lucked out and got a cheap NOS one on ebay. As I said, the modified steering worked fine but it still always bothered me, plus it hung down below the crossmember so you could see it under the car. It was sort of ugly.

 

Alright, now that most of the other stuff is out of the way I can start talking about the engine. This is obviously my favorite part and the whole reason for months of work, but I know some of you out there don't really care about the Chevy in my Ford. Still, I'll go through the steps required to get one of these conversions running because 1) I did it and want to show it off, 2) some of you are interested, and 3) I feel compelled to save future "convertors" time and headaches by providing a lot of information on these swaps in one place, rather than teasing you with pictures and forcing you to spend hundreds of hours doing online research you don't really have to do.

Ok, so here's my engine after I finished cleaning it up (which involved many, many hours of scrubbing away with a stainless steel toothbrush and a spray bottle of Simple Green).


I decided not to paint it because it's aluminum (won't rust) and looks pretty good when it's clean. Yes, I could have painted it Ford colors, and yes, I could have just painted it to camoflauge the aluminum and make it more of a sleeper. But this car is about as "sleepy" as it gets on the outside, and I wanted the aluminum engine to stand out when I pop the hood. I like the contrast.

So, one of the only modifications I made to the engine was to use a Z06 PCV setup in place of the stock one, which apparently ****s an excessive amount of oil into the intake manifold. The new setup uses a self-contained PCV system located on the underside of the lifter valley cover. Here's the old and new style side-by-side:


It's easy to use the new system on an old LS motor after making one small modification to the lifter valley. This mod involves cutting away most of an aluminum boss that otherwise interferes with the PCV housing. I don't have any before pictures but here are a few after - it's clear what I'm talking about.




A few minutes with the air-powered dremel tool and a cutoff wheel and I was good to go.

 

Here's a picture of one of my greatest aggravations of the project: the coolant crossover tube.


This thing connects the water p***ages in the block together in the same way that old intake manifolds used to. It's supposed to be necessary to use because it eliminates hot spots caused by air pockets by moving the air bubbles back out to the highest point of the cooling system. Ideally, this tube is connected to a line that runs to an inlet at the top of the radiator. For cars that don't have this provision (like mine), common practice is to drill and tap a hole in the top of the water pump, screw in a small br*** fitting, and run a rubber hose between it and the coolant crossover. It's not a perfect solution but as I understand it, at least the air isn't trapped at the top of the block. It can potentially move back into the cooling system and find its way out to the radiator.

Anyway, the stock LS1 coolant tube doesn't work with the Z06 valley cover because it hits the PCV vacuum port in the front. I read conflicting reports about bending the tube vs. buying a whole Z06 crossover setup (basically two separate tubes that eliminate the long piece running down the length of the block). I didn't want to spend money on the new setup so I spent a while bending the stock tube until it worked.

It took about 100 times as long as I thought it would when I started. When I finally got it to clear the PCV I put the intake manifold on and realized that it wouldn't bolt down because the crossover was too tall. I have no clue how this could happen because it's no taller than it was in stock form - I only bent it in a sideways fashion to clear the coolant tube, not vertically - but whatever. I gave up and started shaving down the underside of the manifold. It has a bunch of ribbed crosshatching that isn't really necessary and it came off pretty easily with an angle grinder.





Skipping ahead on the installation process again, but here's what the coolant tube ended up looking like:

 

I'm looking at the picture above and trying to remember what else is important. You can see the hole for the br*** fitting I was talking about on top of the water pump. Also, the oil pressure sender in the back is for my new electric gauge. The stock sender can apparently be used for some GM swaps, but in my case I had to buy a br*** adapter from Autometer to thread into the block and then install the new sending unit. I had mechanical gauges for the old Chevy motor but those would have required even more work to use on this motor, plus I didn't want oil and water lines running through the firewall and under the dash anymore. I figured two wires were pretty easy to run in their place.

The two big black plugs in the center of the motor are covering the knock sensors, which screw down into the block with the valley cover sandwiched in between. The little black plug on the back by the oil pressure sender is the Cam Position Sensor.

 

Here are a bunch of parts I cleaned and painted. I might not have emphasized this earlier (and it might be hard to believe) but this was a BUDGET conversion. I would have loved to throw away all of the stock parts and buy new stuff, but I was trying to complete this project spending only the money I earned selling the old drivetrain and ***ociated parts. I haven't tallied up the receipts yet but I'm pretty sure I came in under budget. In order to do so, I had to re-use and clean the **** out of pretty much all of the stock parts. I painted everything except the intake manifold with good gloss black engine paint (rattle-can). I washed the composite intake with soap and water and sprayed it with a few coats of Rustoleum plastic paint, which I am very happy with.

 

Then I cleaned up the transmission, which was another thing I had been putting off for a while. I was so sick of cleaning up the engine and parts that the last thing I wanted to do was de-grease a whole ******. But, it ended up going pretty fast and it was worth it. I kept telling myself, "just do it because then when you work underneath it later it won't be greasy."

Dirty:




Clean(er):

 

You are probably right about some being upset over the GM in a FOMOCO, but the time and work I think we can all appreciate. Really enjoy this thread a lot. Thanks for the effort into keeping us informed, I for one appreciate it. THANKS. Gerry

 

The day I installed the harmonic balancer was one of the worst days of this project. It was hotter than hell, I had to make multiple trips to various auto parts stores and dealerships, I ended up having to MAKE two tools, and it basically took up my entire Saturday. Maybe seeing what I did will save others some time in this area.

First, I had to bolt on the flexplate. That was straightforward enough.




I made a brace/bracket thing to keep the flexplate and crank from turning while I torqued down the harmonic balancer, since I was alone that day and couldn't rely on a friend to put a screwdriver through the flexplate or anything like that (although, that wouldn't have been nearly enough force - read on). I just made the brace out of some steel I had laying around.

Then I took a look at the balancer. And that's when my good mood ended.

I knew from my research that it was recommended to use a NEW balancer bolt - the one that goes into the crank snout. This is because LS1 engines don't have "keyed" crank or balancers that only go on one way. The balancer is pressed on and kept from spinning independtly of the crankshaft by huge amounts of torque and pressure. I was inclined to ignore the advice I had read and just re-use the old bolt (I'm on a budget, remember?), but then I actually stopped and read a step-by-step installation procedure that made me think twice.

Basically, to install the balancer you have to use the installation tool to get it started on the snout, then put the OLD bolt back in there and torque it to 240 lb/ft. eek I don't own a torque wrench that goes any higher than 150 lb/ft, and I learned that day that neither does my neighbor the ex-mechanic, my dad, or any of my friends. Then, you remove the old bolt and put the new bolt in there to finish the torquing process. You torque it to something ridiculously low, like 25 lb/ft, then tighten the bolt 120 degrees past that point. Maybe it was 140 degrees, I don't really remember. It was a ****load.

So, I made the wise decision to call up the local Chevy dealer and see if they had a new bolt, which they did. I went and bought that, then went to Autozone and rented the crank installation tool. I didn't know I wouldn't be able to borrow a torque wrench at that point. I sat down to start putting the balancer on when it quickly became apparent that the rental tool wasn't made for LS motors. The splined center part wasn't nearly long enough to grab the threads in the crank snout, which are a good couple of inches in there rather than right near the front like an old V-8. I stared at it for a long time and then decided the only thing to do at that point was modify the tool myself, because I wasn't about to go buy an LS-specific tool that I would likely only use once or twice in the next decade.

I went to Lowe's and bought a length of 3/8" steel rod (that was my second trip of the day). I came home, measured it against the crank to see how much I needed, cut it, and started threading it with a die. I am pretty sure the crank end and the tool end were different threads, too. Fortunately I had borrowed a big tap and die set from my wife's grandfather a few days before this so I was covered. You can see the end of the tool I made in this picture.


At that point I was pretty proud of myself and simultaneously pissed that it was already the afternoon and I hadn't done much of anything so far that day. I had the bolt, I had the tool, and now I was ready to torque it down. This was the point at which I realized I had no torque wrench for the job, so once again I set out. I went to a few stores with the intent to buy a wrench, but none of them were big enough. Finally, in desperation I called Autozone again and asked if they happened to rent a torque wrench (expecting them to say no). Amazingly, they did. I went and picked it up, then came home again to finish the project.

Let me say this: putting 240 lb/ft of torque on a wrench when you only weigh 155 lbs yourself is a nearly impossible task.

I got it done, though, and then proceeded to install the new balancer bolt to GM specs. My bracket on the flexplate held up fine. That's basically all I got done that whole day. I was tired and hot, so I hoisted the motor back up and dropped it in the Ford one last time (I was getting really good at it - I had done this part dozens of times already by now). I put a few bellhousing bolts in and called it a day.

 

BAD ***!!!! some really nice work you did there man. lots of luck with the car

 

Excellent. Really nice and detailed, and all the pics just helps that much more.

 

Thanks, everyone. Glad you're enjoying the thread.

I'm sorta running out of pictures at this point. I guess I got excited about finishing up the swap and forgot to take the camera outside. I really wanted to show you the fuel system but for now I'll have to just try and describe it. I'll get some pictures later and post them up.

Obviously, a high-pressure fuel pump is required for this motor. I think it runs at 58 psi. There are lots of options when converting our Fords to HP fuel systems, but what I discovered is that most of them are really expensive. As much as I'd love to do the whole thing in braided stainless lines and -AN fittings, I just couldn't afford it. So I looked for cheap, reliable alternatives and came up with a system that appears to work just fine.

First, the pump. I settled on an external pump because I didn't want to mess with the fuel tank. I have a '70 Mustang tank in my car (22 gallons) and at first I thought it would be easy to find a bolt-in EFI pump, but I didn't have much luck. I can remember looking at one specific drop-in pump that would have worked, but to install it I would have needed to cut a hole in the top of the tank and weld in a proprietary flange for the pump to attach to. I wasn't about to risk that work myself and I didn't want to pay someone else to do it. If I had a brand-new tank it would have been a different story, but mine already had gas in it so I decided to leave it alone.

As far as external pumps go, the most popular one by far is the Walbro 255 lph. They're small, quiet, and pretty cheap. I think I got mine for about $120 with brackets and fittings included. Wiring it up was easy - one wire to ground, one back to the glove box where the 12V+ lead from the relay is located.



The other important part is the fuel pressure regulator. Again, lots of options here. And again, for LSx swaps, there is an overwhelmingly popular option. Late-model Corvettes ('97-'04) have a combination regulator-filter that is cheap and a great way to save space and simplify the fuel system. Basically gas from the tank goes in one end, runs through the filter, and exits at 58 psi. Excess fuel is diverted out a second port and runs back to the tank. Some GM EFI systems have separate return lines coming out of the fuel rails on the motor, but mine has a "returnless" rail so the Corvette filter provides the perfect solution. I only had to run a single 3/8" line from the regulator to the engine.



I replaced the old 5/16" Ford fuel line a few years ago. The SBC fed from the p***enger side of the car and I hated having the Ford line cross over from the driver side. I got some 3/8" stainless tubing from Summit and bent myself a new line from the tank to the fuel pump on the Chevy motor. Of course, the Camaro line was back on the driver side... Luckily, it's possible to rotate the fuel rail 180 degrees with no issues. I turned it around and re-plumbed my stainless line so that it ran up the firewall behind the motor.

The toughest part of the project was finding high-pressure rubber fuel hose. Again, I couldn't afford braided stuff. I knew most auto parts stores carried "EFI" fuel hose, but EFI is in quotes because that stuff isn't true high-pressure hose. Most of it is only rated to 40-45 psi. Oh, here's a good story:

I had been looking for this hose for a while and called up a local store. It was Kragen - can I say that? I used to work there so maybe I get a p***.

Me: "Hi, I'm looking for high-pressure rubber fuel hose."
Kragen Guy: "Oh yeah, we have that."
Me: "How high is it rated?"
KG: "Hold on, I'll go check." (comes back a minute later) "Well it doesn't say on the hose what the pressure rating is."
Me: "I promise you that it does. Look harder."
KG: "No, it doesn't have a number. But it DOES say 'not for EFI applications.'"
Me: ".........." *CLICK*

It's funny now, but at the time I was just frustrated. And then I pictured some of the jack***es I used to work with at that store and realized that I should have expected the conversation that just occurred.

And then I called Napa.

They had EFI rubber hose rated to something like 250 psi! Of course, it was almost as expensive as the stainless stuff by Earl's or Aeroquip. But I didn't need to buy special fittings. I did pick up two boxes of OEM "fuel injection" hose clamps - the kind that have rounded edges and the screw up on top so the hose doesn't get pinched or cut as it gets clamped down. Cheap insurance, I figured.



The last piece of the puzzle was finding a few "quick-disconnect" fuel fittings. I needed one for the fuel rail and three for the filter-regulator. I was a little hesitant to use them but decided that if they work safely and reliably on OEM equipment they are good enough for my purposes. I found some fittings made by Dorman that were cheap and exactly what I needed.



Oh yeah, I also needed a way to run the return line to my fuel tank. I almost bought this EFI sending unit that adds a return to a stock Mustang sender:



But I did some more research and found that a $4 br*** fitting with a 5/16" ****** could replace my existing fuel tank drain plug and do the same job as the $100 sending unit. My friend has a '68 Mustang with an EFI 408 motor and he's running the same return fitting with no issues.

So, gas goes out of the tank, over to the pump which is mounted horizontally on the rear of the support for the shocks, out of the pump and into the regulator mounted about 6" away, then regulated fuel heads over to the 3/8" line running up to the motor and return fuel goes through a 5/16" rubber hose back to the tank. Pretty simple, eh? I think the whole system cost under 300 bucks and so far it's working like a charm.

 

From this point I just concentrated on re***embling the engine in the car. Pretty straightforward - exhaust, front dress, intake, coil packs, etc. Nothing really out of the ordinary.



Hard to see here but the alternator cleared the frame without any modification. I don't have power steering so I didn't need to run a pump, but that presented an issue as far as routing the serpentine belt. Dropping the pump (mounted up above the alternator in stock form) meant I had to figure out a way to keep the belt in enough contact with the water pump that it didn't slip at high RPM. What I ended up doing was replacing the stock idler pulley (smooth) with a tensioner pulley (grooved). I had to mess with the spacing of the tensioner by adding washers behind it, but what that did was wrap the belt around almost half of the water pump before it ran down to the alternator. I've seen guys run the belt directly from the water pump to the alternator but I like my way better. Maybe I can do a before picture here in case my description isn't making sense.

OK so here is the stock configuration:


You can see the belt go crank -> tensioner -> WP -> PS -> idler -> alt -> crank. Now take out the PS and change the idler to a tensioner, then get a shorter belt.

It goes crank -> tensioner -> WP -> idler (w/grooved pulley) -> alt -> crank. Voila!



At this point I saw that the lower radiator hose was going to be a problem. The angle of the thermostat housing is great for a long, GM-style radiator but lousy for my skinny Ford one. After a little research I found this housing by CSR:



It uses an early-style GM thermostat, which is a little strange but seems to work. This housing made the radiator hose-finding process slightly less infuriating. The only issue with this CSR deal is that early thermostats open at familiar temperatures (e.g., 160, 180, 195), while the stock thermostat on the Camaro opens at something weird like 188. I went with a 180 at first, but swapped it for a 195 in the end. I figure if the engine needs to reach a certain operating temperature for the computer to think everything is "normal," then getting a thermostat that's cooler than stock isn't a good idea. I can (and may) get the PCM re-tuned for a cooler thermostat down the road, depending on whether my cooling system can handle the motor in the summer.




The br*** fitting behind the header in the picture above is the new coolant temperature sender. It wasn't a bolt-in deal - I had to drill and tap the existing hole to fit the Autometer adapter. A little scary but seems to be holding up. I drilled it when the motor was still on the stand, rotated over so that metal shavings would fall out of the hole as I drilled. I also coated the drill bit in bearing grease to hold the shavings in. Finally, I blew compressed air into the water port at the front of the head to try and get all the metal out when I was done. I think it's pretty clean. Other than that, the picture shows my freshly-scrubbed valve covers and the repainted coil packs. Those things were a pain to mask off (I painted the metal brackets built in to the packs, not the plastic housings) but they turned out really nice.



In the last picture you can see the only thing that I really splurged on: a ported and polished throttle body. Some guy who does these professionally was having a sale on the LS1 forum I read and it sounded like a good idea. Mine was filthy at the time and I wasn't looking forward to cleaning it. I sent it in and the guy did the P/P, epoxied the vacuum hole closed and then re-drilled it (hard to describe but basically smoother airflow), cleaned the spring and the IAC, modified the throttle stop so the ****erfly actually opens 180 degrees instead of slightly less than that, and then powdercoated the TB black for me. It was a great deal and he did terrific work, so I had him clean up and powdercoat my MAF as well.

 

Thanks for the time you took to get all of this down! It is going to be very valuable in the near future as my son is preparing to do the exact swap in his 54. He has an engine & trans located, needs to get it bought & home. He will start on this swap as soon as he is done with the lowering. He's working on that when he can, it's going to be crazy low!!!, thanks to screenz info.

 

Wow.... what can I say...... One of the best build threads I've ever read (Ok.... next to Eric's build)..... impressive work all the way. Wish you were my neighbor!

 

Hello eric,
found your build thread , looks as good in real life as in the picture's ,im going to go back and read your build,but just wanted to say thanks again for the gas tank,and it was nice meeting you. tim.

 

Thanks, guys. I've never done a build thread before and sometimes I feel like I get a little excited and write too much with this one, but it seems like readers are enjoying it.

Tim: it was also nice to meet you today. I worked on the Ford all day and finally got it running again around 8:00 tonight. Turns out there was something wrong with the fuel filter/regulator. It still seems like there's a little miss but at least it's running. See you around. -Eric

 

Will there be some video too? I sure hope so.

 

I'll try to put a video on here. I have a camera but I'm not sure how to use it, haha. My wife is the one who does all that stuff.

What do you want to see? Just a running engine?

 

Sweet Job!!!

 

Loving the smooth firewall. As far as the chebby motor: meh, to each their own. Nice work!

 

Yeah! Motor running and take us on board for a ride from the cab!

 

Alright, I'll see what I can do.

 

The Ford hasn't been doing anything but getting covered in sawdust lately - I've been remodeling the garage to better accommodate all of my junk and still fit two cars. Once I sell my motorcycle I'll have even more space (it's a beautiful black 2008 Harley V-Rod - anyone interested? PM me...).

I did put the rest of my pictures online, though, so I can at least continue with the story now. Here are a few lousy pictures of the fuel system. I can't really get under there with the camera so these are the best ones I have at this point. Nothing special but you can at least sort of make out what I described in writing earlier. **EDIT: These pictures ****. I didn't realize until I saw them all blown up on the screen... I'll get some better ones up here for sure.**







Here's my gas tank situation. I bought this 1970 Mustang tank years ago after measuring the width and length and deciding it would fit if I removed the spare tire well. The problem is that I didn't account for the sizeable height of the tank as compared to earlier Mustang units. I probably would have needed to hack up the floor either way, but there was no other option with this particular tank. I tried to mount it under the old floor but it was so deep that you could see almost all of it hanging below the bumper - it looked ridiculous. At least now it's not noticeable from outside the car. I'm not thrilled about the filler tube in the trunk but it works and its 22-gallon capacity is nice. I plan to someday create some kind of raised floor to cover the tank and make a flat, uniform surface.

 

Here's how I got the gas pedal to work. I had the stock pedal from the '77 Caprice in there, but I couldn't use it because the mounting point for the throttle cable was different for the LS1. I never liked the alignment of the old cable anyway, so I removed the pedal and found a cheap, installed-but-never-used Lokar pedal on ebay. I just needed a way to mount it.

The new pedal is cool because the throttle and pedal arms are reversible, but even with that capability I could only find one good place to mount it. Naturally, it was right on one of those "grooves" in the firewall - the ones that are stamped into the sheet metal to strengthen it. I spent a while trying to figure out how to create a flat mouting surface on top of the groove (which I guess was really more of a "hump" since the groove is on the engine side of the firewall). Here's what it looked like when I started.



You can see the outline of the old pedal mount there, complete with smoke trails from where the dynamat burned when I welded the holes closed. The white stuff all over the firewall is spray-on sound deadener/heat shield by SecondSkin. Seems to work well but I wish it wasn't white. I bought some flat black paint to roll on but haven't gotten around to it yet. I had it all covered up with the black foam you see in the picture but the adhesive I used was garbage and let go of the foam once the engine warmed up the firewall.

I looked around the garage for some material and settled on the same trailer hitch receiver stock I used for the motor mounts. I cut a section out of it,



drilled a big hole in the center to mount it to the wall, and two smaller offset holes to mount the pedal bracket,



and test-fitted it like this.



It spanned the firewall hump perfectly and provided the flat mounting surface I needed. Next, I attached the pedal bracket using a piece of aluminum on the back side instead of a stack of washers. I thought this would keep the bracket from wobbling a little better.





Then I painted it and mounted the whole ***embly to the firewall for the last time.



Here it is with the pedal arms attached. I just needed to drill a new hole in the firewall for the throttle cable, install it, and adjust the throw.

 

Back to the motor again... Here's the first shot at an intake system. I got the silicone elbow from www.siliconeintakes.com for a great price. I also got the clamps, silicone sleeves, and even the cheap K&N-style cone filter from them. I wasn't sure about where the filter was going to go, so I got this one because it was small and only about 15 bucks. The black tube in the middle of everything is 3.5" I.D. PVC (or ABS? I don't remember) pipe from Lowe's. I read somewhere that the O.D. of that pipe was pretty close to 4", which is the same as the rest of the system.









It's been long enough since I took these pictures that I'm having trouble figuring out what else to say about them...

You can see that I got the fuel system all wrapped up. The stainless line comes up the firewall and is clamped and bolted to the cylinder head. From there a short piece of high-pressure hose runs to the quick-disconnect fitting on the rail. The rail itself is held down by four small bolts, and each injector is basically floating in-between the rail and intake manifold. They have o-rings on both ends. I guess they also have a small retainer clip that attaches them to the rail as well.

Also visible are the transmission cooler lines. I bent hard lines that come off the radiator and transmission, but used a few feet of rubber line to connect them. It was just easier to route that stuff around the motor mounts. I don't think the absence of hard lines will cause any problems.

You can also see the small hose that connects the coolant crossover tube to the fitting on the top of the water pump. Pretty straightforward. The PCV system was also simple to hook up. The ports at the rear of both valve covers are plugged, since they're no longer necessary when the later-model Corvette PCV setup is used. Fresh air is drawn from the front side throttle body into the front of the p***enger side valve cover, and the PCV valve under the intake is connected to a port just above it on the back side of the throttle body. There is another port on the driver side of the intake just behind the throttle body that is plugged - that is part of the EVAP system that is no longer required. I also never mentioned the big freeze plug on the top of the intake manifold. That was where the EGR tube used to hook up.

Oh yeah, the other thing I did was re-route the dipstick to the front side of the first primary tube instead of running between the first and second. I can't remember now why I did that but it must have interfered with something. It might have been the spark plug wire.

 

Now here are a few pictures of the engine getting wired up. The harness was pretty much plug-and-play, although the guy I bought it from was really liberal with the electric tape. It made the wires tough to bend and route around stuff. I did shorten a few leads and lengthen others, but overall it was an easy job. Much easier than wiring under the dash.





I didn't choose red spark plug wires on purpose - they're GMPP and that's just the color they are. I bought them used so I didn't have much choice.

I only ran into a couple of issues with the wiring. First, the fuel pump wouldn't kick on with the key or by sending 12V to the test port under the dash. Turns out I had a bad ground somewhere. I say somewhere because I just redid the major grounds on the car and tried the fuel pump when I was done instead of going through them one at a time.

The second issue was with the radiator fan, and this was a little scary because the first time the motor ran I watched the temperature gauge creep up past 230 degrees and the fan never kicked on. I resisted the temptation to shut down the motor because I wasn't sure when the fan was even supposed to turn on. I just knew it was up there.

Well, I blew a fuse. I think it was a 25A, which was what came with the fuse panel along with the whole harness. I replaced it and the fan turned on, but I could literally watch the fuse melting away. I shut it down, replaced the fuse again, and started the car. That time the motor warmed up and the fan didn't turn on again. Checked the fuse and it was blown. Realized (finally) that the fan was drawing more than 25A, so I put a 30A fuse in there and haven't had a problem with fuses since. The other thing I did was wire the fan backwards so it was pushing air instead of pulling it through the radiator and over the motor. I figured that might happen since I was just guessing on the polarity when I wired it up the first time. I swapped the wires and now everything is fine.

 

Now, this is getting closer to what the car looks like today.










I got the heater and radiator hoses hooked up. The radiator hoses were a colossal pain in the ***. I literally spent hours at Autozone, Napa, and O'Reilly stores looking through their hoses for something that would fit. The bends are just too tight, and none of the ends are the same diameter. I think the lower radiator tube is 1 3/4", the upper is 1 1/2", the thermostat connection is 1 1/2", and the upper water pump is 1 1/4". What I ended up doing was buying four hoses. Each of them had one end with one of the above diameters and then turned 90 degrees and reduced or expanded to 1 1/2". I then bought a length of 1 1/2" O.D. stainless steel tube and used it to connect all of the hoses as shown in the pictures. It works fine and looks good, but was an expensive way to solve this problem.

You may also notice that the intake tubing has changed from black ABS pipe to aluminum. This was another unforeseen expense. Some guys don't like the ABS because it looks cheap, but I didn't use very much and turned it around so the lettering wasn't visible. Also, I think it insulates the incoming air from the heat of the engine better than metal tubing. The problem was I needed somewhere to plug in the IAT (intake air temp) sensor and I couldn't find a grommet that was thick enough to work on the ABS, since it has such a big cross-section. The aluminum works because it's thin and a regular old grommet worked fine. It matches the color scheme but I didn't shell out big bucks for polished aircraft aluminum so I needed to do a lot of sanding and scotch-brite-ing to get it looking decent. I'm still not thrilled with it and will either try to polish it up further or just buy a section of polished tubing down the road.

The engine wiring is just about done in these pictures, but I've since gone back through and redone the wires that go the starter. They got twisted around the fuel line at some point and I wasn't able to loom them together, which pissed me off enough to take the whole thing apart and fix it. I also taped up the wires going through the firewall, both to protect them and to keep all of the different colors from showing.

 

Nice work, very clean installation. Keep it up.

 

I apologize if the pictures are showing up at huge resolutions. Photobucket isn't doing me any favors today. I'll try to fix everything later tonight.