'96 Century general project thread

[Purple pit]

If it comes down to it I have a 3400 pipe, but I'm thinking that would be the wrong length. Could always measure it if needed. Got no use for it anyway.

LOL at least mine was a bit more safe. The small shop was the best suggestion. The chain store auto shops would not touch them.

Ah the fun of having an unpopular car. Well, most people know what you cars are. Still love/hate parts stores replies "A Beretta? Who makes that?".

[robertisaar]

most shops will either do it for nothing or for a pretty reasonable cost, but the giant spring compressors they tend to have make it a couple second job.

[LeftVentricle]

I sent my junkyard LG8 upper to a machine shop to have it inspected for cracks, and if it checked out, cleaned. The EGR passage is a big concern, since it was pretty severely clogged on this manifold. That can cause an EGR-related check engine code to pop, which most people would probably throw a new EGR at, then be out that money when it doesn't cure the problem. I picked it up today, and was told it was fine, and it's quite clean now, including the EGR passage.

Also, I will be picking up my assistant for this swap from the airport tonight. I've hired my dad to help. Some of you may recall that I had him help me swap the transmission in this car about two years ago. This will be more or less the same procedure. While the drivetrain is out, I will be again replacing all the mounts, since at minimum, the rear trans mount is trashed again.

I ordered some 24 pound injectors from ACCEL, but will not be receiving them, due to back order. I will have to use my stock fuel rail, since the LX9 rail is returnless and not compatible with my car's stock fuel system. So I have to use stock-style injectors, which the ACCEL ones are. But after getting my order canceled twice, at ebay and Amazon, I will not be buying those. Instead, Mike at Milzy Motorsports will be sending me some 36 pound L67 injectors and some spacing brackets, since the L67s are a bit longer than the stock ones. This will also provide a bit of future-proofing, since I still want to beef this engine up a bit.

(I know this will probably be a point of contention, but I do not intend any offence to anyone here at 60v6 or WOT-Tech with my decision to make purchases from a competitor. I just feel that, for the sake of consistency, I should get everything related to this swap from the same source, since Mike is already well involved in my affairs in this job.)

[LeftVentricle]

Work has officially commenced on the swap!

I got the replacement engine on the stand so it would be mobile, instead of just sitting on that pallet.





Here it is sneaking up on its unsuspecting victim.


Here is my dad pointing at the tensioner for some reason.




Progress for the day: alternator and power steering pump removed, upper intake yanked, replacement engine dressed. Most of the stuff I've bolted on will have to come back off, naturally.



I may have to go to the hardware store to try to find a 7/8" NPT tap. The LX9 has a heater pipe that is pressed in to the lower intake, but it's bolted in to my stock one.

[LeftVentricle]

Some folks at both a-body.net and Something Awful helpfully pointed out that there is no such thing as 7/8 NPT. So I will be cutting the LX9 heater pipe off at about 1.5 inches and joining it with my stock pipe with a bit of rubber hose.

[Purple pit]

Did that myself. The key to stopping my leak was to make sure that the rear hose clamp was tight and that the stock tube was under tension toward the 3400's tube. Then the clamp was tightened on the 3400's tube while pulling back on the stock tube. The "leak" really was do to the nut on the stock tubes mount being loose(didn't catch the universals false feedback). That tension was an overkill safe guard.
The problem was that under WOT the tube would just pop out and spew coolant. Even with the very short rubber hose there was flex and the very slightly loose mount bolt added to that(if the tube had been welded it would have not come all the way out). That O-ring on the 3400's tube just doesn't hold very well(lol duh).
You may not even have a problem so all that is just FYI.

[davida1_hiwaay_net]

Interesting swap. It is ironic that a newer, better engine now costs less than locating a good/used one exactly like what came in the car!

[LeftVentricle]

Interesting swap. It is ironic that a newer, better engine now costs less than locating a good/used one exactly like what came in the car!

The cost of the engines were approximately the same, within about $50 of each other. The ancillaries tipped me in favor of the LX9. If I went with a stock replacement, I would have had to rebuild the top end, just for peace of mind, but I would still just have an L82. The cost of that compared to the computer/custom parts to swap in the 3.5 ended up also being ballpark, so why not? Why not get an extra ~35 hp and ~30 ft-lbs for the same price? Not only that, and I've probably said this before, but I believe that I will be the first person to swap an LX9 into an A-body. I would love for this to be an example to others that the A-body is a viable platform, and it's not that difficult of a swap.

[carbon]

Good god if you cammed that LX9 it would be an epic sleeper... I had an '84 Olds Cutlass Cruiser wagon with the 92HP Duke and a 3-speed. Even if left stock, I can't imagine how much fun it would have been to be around 200HP in an A-body wagon.

[LeftVentricle]

Good god if you cammed that LX9 it would be an epic sleeper... I had an '84 Olds Cutlass Cruiser wagon with the 92HP Duke and a 3-speed. Even if left stock, I can't imagine how much fun it would have been to be around 200HP in an A-body wagon.

It definitely should be interesting! It probably won't make 200 hp to start with, since I'm still using my stock exhaust and an LG8 upper intake. At a later date, I would love to do exactly that: ported heads, intake, and exhaust, and a torque cam. 16s or bust!

[carbon]

Please do it. It would make some poor corporate brow beaten GM automotive design engineer from the 1980s sooo happy.

[LeftVentricle]

[davida1_hiwaay_net]

LOL it looks like you guys have it under control!

Can't wait to see the new powerplant go in there. Going to be interesting and rewarding to get it running and see how much peppier it is.

[LeftVentricle]

Today I made some progress, but only took two pictures.

I bought a new transmission pan, one with a drain plug, since unscrewing twenty damn bolts to drain the trans sucks majorly. This is what the fluid and pan looked like. Click for bigger.




As some of you may recall, a blown oil cooler line led to some burnt clutches in the 1-2 shift. That looks like a lot of clutch material to me. I'm a little worried that it won't work when I put it back in. I will be putting a couple bottles of Lucas additive in.

I also removed the oil filter adapter from the new engine and installed the threaded thing the filter spins onto from the old engine. The LX9 filter adapter puts the filter in interference with the subframe of my car. Just for notation purposes, the three bolts holding the adapter onto the LX9 have a 10 mm head, there is a gasket that has to be removed, and the threaded dealy needs a 10 mm hex socket.

I had to stop for the day after that, because I broke a 15 mm socket trying to break loose the crank pulley bolt on the old engine. I don't think it's ever been done.

[LeftVentricle]

Stuff occurred! Things happened! POST ON THE INTERNET ABOUT IT!

The drivetrain is back together. Things were touch-and-go for a while, with a torque converter seal that didn't want to come out, then didn't want to go back in, and me boneheading the fact that the LX9 flywheel has multiple TC bolt patterns to accommodate both the 4T45 and 4T65 transmissions and having a minor freakout about needing to buy new flywheel bolts so I can swap the L82 flywheel over. Note for posterity: One of the bellhousing bolts has fled. I need to go to the yard and scare one up.




The passenger side engine mount bracket, despite not being used in the car this engine came from (Malibu), had the bolt holes both existing and tapped to mount it. Hurray for unintentional backwards compatibility! I will be using a stock-style solid rubber mount, since this is a "budget" build. I'm sure a polyurethane version exists somewhere, but this will do for now.

One of the parts included in the 3500 swap kit is this differential bracket, which is modified to fit the 4T60E transmission, rather than the 4T45E the Malibu the engine came from uses. I tried my stock bracket. The bolt holes in the 3.5 block do not line up.


Another one is this cam position sensor, which is able to read the LX9 cam and clip into my stock harness. Good thing too, since the one on my old engine is more or less welded in there. I figure, if I actually wanted to remove the old cam sensor, I'd have to pull the timing cover.


Dad.



dadgif





Wife and dad mugging for the camera.









Things went mostly smoothly. I had to remove the transmission mounts to facilitate easier entry, even though it's a right kick in the dick to install the rear mount in situ. I also gaffled a downpipe bolt from the gold wagon since it appears that I either lost or forgot to install one of the two when I was in here last (2014 for a transmission swap). The power plant is currently sitting on a jack because I couldn't close the garage door with the crane holding it up.

Pictured above in a few shots is an adjustable vacuum modulator for the transmission. This was installed on the junkyard transmission when I bought it, but I swapped it for the stock modulator because of the different positioning of the vacuum nipple (front vs. side). Running some new rubber on the hard line will cure any positioning ails. I'm glad I kept it, since I will need it now to keep the damn gearbox from flying apart at the seams behind this more powerful engine. After dumping half of its fluid on the road late last year, the transmission doesn't shift correctly from first to second. One of my posts on the last page shows a disconcerting amount of clutch material in the pan. I will probably have to adjust this modulator pretty stiffly to counteract the damaged clutches, which will probably end up being annoying to drive, but I will just have to deal with it. The plan is to have another one built some time next year, then do this whole thing all over again. I'm still debating whether I should stay with stock 2.97 gearing or have it re-chained to 3.33. The computer will have to be retuned to compensate, but with a newer style PCM, that isn't an issue.

List of things still to do before first start:

• Reinstall transmission mounts.
• Axles back in to the transmission.
• Reconnect transmission cooler lines.
• Bolt downpipe to rear manifold.
• Wait for the rest of my custom parts to show up, namely:
  —Modified dogbone bracket and requisite head bolt. (This car uses a stud on the end of the forward passenger side head bolt to stabilize the dogbone bracket. Failure to use that stud will result in the bracket breaking. Ask me how I know.) (Torque is 44 ft-lbs + 95 degrees.)
  —L67 fuel injectors and modified fuel rail brackets. (The stock injectors are rated at 19 lbs, which would be insufficient flow for the new engine. L67s are 36 lbs.)
  —Crank trigger to bypass the in-block crank position sensor. (I think the only alternative is to swap the internal trigger wheel from my stock crank to the LX9 crank, which of course requires a teardown of the bottom end, and fuck everything about that if I don't have to.)
  —Throttle body. (Hopefully this will be modded correctly to use my stock throttle linkage, otherwise I have to try to track down a '96 van cable set (good fucking luck).)
  —1997 PCM. (with modified pinout to clip back in to my stock harness and tuned to run this engine and transmission.)
• Install dogbone bracket and AC compressor.
• Fuel rail back in with new injectors.
• Bolt upper intake back on.
• Attach TB to upper intake and work out an intake hose situation. (I may end up having to use a ricer cone filter if I can't figure out a way to hook up my stock air cleaner with something other than dryer hose. I'm probably going to bypass the TB heater lines, since there really isn't a reason I should need that in Las Vegas.)
• Drop radiator back in.
• Alternator.
• Power steering pump. Gotta get to the yard and get some more bolts for that.
• Hook up all wiring and hoses.
• Fill with fluids. Oil, transmission fluid, coolant. Two bottles of Lucas for the transmission, since it will need all the help it can get. I need to remember to pull the thermostat housing off and fill the block first. This should facilitate easier bleeding of the system.
• Belt.
• Crossover pipe.
• Couple more gallons of fuel.
• Battery.
• Start!
• Struts either bolted back on to the knuckles or replaced with the van struts kicking around the garage. (Still need to buy dust boots before they can be assembled.)
• Front wheels on.
• On the ground.
• Drive!
• Enjoy TWO HUNNERT HOARSPOWAH!

Easy peasy, right?