redrock101

Quick touch on budget..... so I am doing really well with this project and my line item budget. honestly we have not deviated from the build sheet and my part selection has been pretty spot on . thought we were screwed for a few on the ICT PS mount and would have to go with the Turbo PS mount set up but we lucked out and have 3/4" clearance from the PS pump . remember our donor engine didnt come with any accessories that you would usually get in a lift out deal. We chose to go with the ICT stuff over getting replacement stock stuff....

we did have to buy a second adapter for the temperature sender as the inteltronics version snapped off as I was installing it. So this time I went with the Autometer version to replace it. advice- stick with autometer on that part for sure. there was a pin hole leak in the welded bung for the temp sensor and rob re welded it, however he didnt take out the sensor so he melted that one and we had to order another... is what it is...

The universal exhaust kit had more than enough pieces to build the system on the Jeep and we have a bit of it left over.

We had to make a few runs to the parts store of course but id say 60-70% of the parts were already accounted for in the budget.

Lets continue on shall we....

redrock101

Alright... well apparently I didnt take any pics of Rob drilling and tapping the stock Delphi steering box... yep thats right- we decided we were goingto do a hydro assist set up on the Jeep while doing this swap... obviously it wont be included in the "2500 LS swap budget" but if I come in under my mark, I'll toss it on the list just cause...

I had called up PSC and talked to the sales guy- asked if they had any scratch and dents floating around on a JK assist cylinder, he said 'man.. we havent had anything in the S/D bin in a while but let me take a look...' put me on hold and a few minutes later he came back on and said they actually had a returned cylinder back there that they put new seals in it and offered it at a fair price so I jumped on it. I had him send out a mounting kit for it as well and called it done.

Theres a Parker store a few miles from the shop so to keep the costs down on the hydro assist part, we went with crimp on fittings vs the field serviceable ones PSC offers. The crimp on ones came in at about 1/2 the cost per piece.

friday during the day, Rob ran over to Parker and got some fittings and hose. Got the cylinder mocked in over the weekend and then mocked up the hoses. On Monday morning Rob swung back into Parker and had the ends crimped on the hoses at my orientation marks.

redrock101

lets touch on transmission and ps cooling now that those components are in the Jeep. for the trans lines and low pressure power steering lines, we use push lock hose and fittings.- same as the fuel system.

A set of ICT 4l60e adapters on the case converts it to accept 6an fittings.... from the trans up to the front of the Jeep... heat sleeved where it passes the exhaust. made a mounting bracket off the starter for the hose clamp to keep it tucked and secured


this is one of the dual cooler brackets we use in our hemi swaps. it ustilizes tube and fin style coolers instead of the plate style. the plate style just doesnt allow enough air flow through it at low speeds.


in this pic you can see the tapped Delphi box and the hydraulic assist hoses...


Rob cutting the 10-24 mounting bolts down... and getting the coolers mounted up. The upper 6 pass cooler is the trans cooler and the lower 2 pass is for the power steering system.

redrock101

whats next.... electronics.. the big kicker.... what will work and what wont...? what do we have to do to make it work? stay tuned....

under the hood.... we have to fit the ECU, TAC Module and my relay box... trying to fit the brick of a ECU under the hood took a minute but i came up with a solution... i had ordered some LS ECU mounts from amazon and fitted those to the ECU and played with positioning.... a small piece of angle aluminum and some flat stock from home depot and we're moving forward....












same with fitting the TAC module, a little time and more of that flat stock and we have a solution for that....


lastly for the relay box, yep you guessed it, more of that flat stock and got that fitted in as well....


we laid in the LS harness and went to get it all clipped in only to find that 50% of the injector connectors were actually split on the locking tab and wouldnt stay connected... next day amazon'd some replacement connectors for $20 and I replaced all 8 connectors...

when goign to drop on the stock spark plug wires, 3 of the stock style wires contacted the headers so those were a no go.. in that same next day order came some 9mm wires with 45* boots. slipped on some heat sleeve as added protection and popped them on the engine...



big thing most overlook or under size is the engine to frame/chassis grounds. this is very important on a lot of different levels. we always run a 4g ground from the engine- usually from a mount plate bolt to the frame and then a 4g from the frame up to the battery. no different on this build.. drilled a hole in the motor mount gusset plate and through bolted the grounds after slipping on some heat sleeve..... ran the main for the starter in the heat sleeve as well and up to the battery the cables went.



rewired the factory E locker relays to operate independently of the Jeep system. we had done the locker mod/override already but this time I made them so that they were 12v triggered instead of ground triggered like factory so we can use a standard rocker switch or switch box set up. These are going to [2] standard rockers on a lower daystar dash panel...


brought a few of the circuits from the rocker switches and from the added triple gauge pod down under the column for easy access and service if needed... i tucked some of the primary fuse circuits behind the bolster panel...





everything looks messy when wiring until the last zip tie is clipped laid in the stock battery tray, battery and TIPM... I pulled the stock feed line to the factory fuel pump and connected to my LS relay box. did the same with the fuel level sender circuit and ran that into the Jeep. Found the reverse light circuit and ran that inside as well. tapped off an run/crank circuit for the alternator sense line to while 'under the TIPM.'


You can see here in this pic that im a fan of the military style battery terminals.. love these things. also you can see i dropped a secondary battery post off the wall of the battery tray. the big yellow wires are the feeds to the LS relay box and theyre temporarily just hooked to the battery because i forgot to order some 10g fuse links..



THE CLUSTER....
as mentioned before the cluster is the BCM in the Jeep Wrangler chassis. without the cluster in place- nothing works- no turn signals, no lights, no radio, no windows etc... you get it. SO we HAVE to keep the cluster or go in and rewire every system we want to keep= not happening. behind the cluster is a big dash brace so 'leaving the cluster behind the new cluster I made isnt happening. So i needed to find a place for the 'guts' of the stock cluster to go..... you can see the bones of the cluster in this pic. inside that shell is the BCM circuit board. all the wires wrapped around the stalk are signal wires for the new cluster. again the stock systems are all modules and CAN BUS... so theres no left turn or right turn or high beam etc circuits behind the cluster or going into the cluster for that matter outside the can bus comms circuits. All those circuits/signals needed to be brought in from outside the jeep.. after the TIPM module.


i grabbed right turn, left turn, high beam, parking lights and fog lights signals off the front body harness at the grille. the parking light circuit is for some accessory lighting and the fog light signal is for a 'fog light' ON indicator light I put on the new cluster. this harness stays with the grille support when you remove it so I put weatherpack connections on the circuits.




I still have to finish the wiring on the back of the new cluster. didnt get time to knock it out while i was up there....

redrock101

When I dropped in the Battery tray, I had a slight bit of real estate issue with the Oil Dipstick Tube. carved out the corner of the tray and gave the dipstick tube some room.

dipstick 1 battery tray 0

redrock101

Moving on to the pedal.... this was a fun one.... this is the stock gm truck pedal that came in the box of 'parts' with our LS.

short version is I built the pedal out and nailed it the first time or so I thought. I matched the stock pedal position and angles, and even was able to hit the stock pedal mounting studs on the under dash structure..... until I went to pop it in the Jeep and the pedal hit the tunnel... then I was like you dumbaZZZ as i didnt account for the offset.. something about it being 230am maybe so grabbed the cutoff wheel and made the necessary adjustment

stock JK pedal and stock GM truck pedal


cut the stock gm pedal arm off, but made sure to leave myself enough to build off of. we had a stick of 1/4 flat bar in the pile so i grabbed that and began the process...



had to notch out the back of my new 'pedal arm' so it would properly 'stop' at its max position. i added the bar across the front as after i did the notch, i wasnt happy with the amount of material left. slightly overbuilt-- probably lol




you can see in this pic the pedal is pretty much in the stock 'pedal' position. the pedal has full travel and hits the 'stop' nice and flat.


For the pedal wiring, 2 things, the stock connector was too big to pass through the hole in the firewall left by the clutch MC and 2nd, the harness was too short to make the run from the TAC to the pedal. I ended up clipping the harness and extending it, passing the wires through the grommet and then soldering on the inside half of the harness at the appropriate length to reach the pedal.

Yes we could have punched a big hole in the firewall left of the booster and ran it through there like GM does it but just couldnt see the reason to put another big azz hole in the firewall.... as it only took a few minutes to extend the harness.

redrock101

Alight... moving on in the interior.. The Shifter....... so we didnt have a GM shifter at all but from past swaps i knew what would for the most part. we did order a s-10 shifter cable but it hadnt shown up as of sunday. Rob had sourced a complete console and shifter from an 11+ wrangler. he wanted the updated console not to mention we needed the automatic tub plate to seal off that big hole from the manual set up. unfortunately with the tap shift set up, there was no way to utilize the shifter with this particular set up.

our buddy had a winters 4 speed shifter that he said we could borrow and if we ended up using it, we would just need to replace it before he needed it lol... we made the hour run out to his place and picked it up... an hour back and then around 1230 started messing with the winters shifter in the jeep.... hmmm ultra 4 set up OK, buggy set up OK stock style daily driver jeep set up..ehhh not so much. after messing with it for an hour or better I told Rob to just call the junk yards in the morning and see if he could source a floor shifter from a 2000 era camaro monte carlo etc...

being on my arizona schedule i strolled into the shop around 11am and Rob showed me a 4 speed auto camaro i believe, shifter he found for $35... perfect... game on.

i grabbed the shifter, found a cardboard box that looked to be the right height i needed to have it sit up in the console correctly and got into mocking it up. the box put it about .250" higher than i wanted it to be so i gave it a little squawsh and it settled down into position. I had rob jump in the back seat and eyeball linear orientation. he said it was good so we continued on.... yep out with the 1" flat bar stock and 1/4-20 bolts.....



mocked up the rear bracket at the height we were looking at, utilizing stock studs where possible... and then moved to the front bracketry...



the front took a bit more work. with the s-10 cable we needed to move the shifter cable mount off the GM shifter a bit. we cut the 'mount section' off the stock GM bracket, locked it on the new shift cable and created a mount where we needed it to be...




the GM shifter pulls from the front backwards, the 4l60e shifts from the front back as well. so the cable has to go out the front of the shifter and come in the back side of the transmission... the long S-10 cable is designed for this application. we looped the cable under the dash, popped a hole in the pass side of the tunnel and passed it though down to the transmission....



in this pic you can see where the shifter cable passed through the trans tunnel with a snap in grommet. we put a bead of RTV on the grommet just to be safe and popped it in the newly created hole. we also got the connector for the shifter and I used it for the Park/Neutral Circuit for the starter relay and Reverse light circuit.

Sixty4x4

Nice work. May I suggest you weld a horizontal flat bar plate over the top of the front mounts and straddle the chassis to stop flexing and eventual cracking under 4WD chassis flex.

redrock101

sixy4x4x.. first off thanks..

you're 100% on point with the top plate... i just skipped it for now as im not 100% on how i am going to tie in/mount the engine and trans skid plate i plan on adding the next trip back up to MI. thats why i did the gusset on the rear mount for now. didnt want to box myself out of the pocket in case i needed to weld from the top down etc... all in all, by the time its all done, yes sir- it will be gusseted or boxed for rigidity.

robs been busy with clients and projects and hasnt been able to get into too much the jeep in the last week or so. hes sending me back the cluster and ill prep out the wiring on the back of it. said he got the stock radiator back in and is waiting on hoses.

i found the yoke for the front of the transfer case to go to a 1310 cv so we can use the existing front drive shaft, so that should be on order shortly.

i have to break up the spreadsheet into individual files.. ill be working on that this evening and start getting some numbers posted for the project.

redrock101

OK... so i have been busy with rentals for the last 2 weeks or so, finishing up a gen 4 hemi swap into an LJ for a client, plus doing a old 5.0 into a ranger swap for my cousins kid. On top of that, working with the new plasma guy out here trying to get parts and orders out... wheew...

We all have those moments when we make an impulse decision due to outside influences and then it consumes ya for awhile, problem is I am my own influences LOL..

SOOOOO... I have a 2010 JKU sahara that i bought off my brother yeeeeears ago. i wheeled it with a 1.25" body and some 33's.. then a teraflex 2.5 kit and 35s and then decided i was going to do a full build on it when i blew up the stock auto trans... long arm SD axles etc... well the shop got busy and that jeep kinda just got left to the side.... 2 years ago during covid i pulled the customized stock frame/axles out from under it and put a stock frame back under it ... and then it went back out to the yard.....

needless to say... running these numbers and planning on going back to MI to help 'finish' Project Tantrum' as it has been now named.... the 'Goose' my old 2010... popped into my head... I told rob, hey look around and while im up there, maybe we'll drop an LS into the Goose and see how fast we can move through it... 5 minutes later in the same conversation... Rob goes ' hey heres a 2005 6.0 with trans and t case from an escalade=lq9... $1600 with harness and ecu... well SH!T..

guess who now has an LS lift out waiting for him back in MI... im going to run 90% of the same set up on that build but i dont have the sale of the stock engine or trans to offset out of pocket costs.. Ill do full build thread on that project as well....as i already pulled the trigger on 80% of the parts for the project

OK back on topic.. not that the upcoming GOOSE Project isnt completely related... but here we go.

The nickel and dime part of the process has started... we shall see how fast that adds up and affects my budget list... silicone couplers for the intake, air intake, ac compressor adapter fittings, AC line fittings.... remember full running and driving everything working... so that includes AC.

heres some pics of the radiator clearance.. stock 3.8 rad and fan... yes we trimmed a little bit off the water pump snout.









as i mentioned before, Robs 'free' domor engine didnt come with all the accessories like a full lift out would have... so he had to case an AC compressor as well. found one at the local yard... im happy with the clearances... think we'll be good with either a top exit adapter or 90* without a question...





after mock up we'll have to pull the compressor out, drain what ever old oil may be in there if any at all, refill it blah blah blah before we 'use' it... i tossed a bunch of ac fittings, line and the crimp tool in the truck so we should be able to make/mock lines next week.