whats truly needed to swap an ls engine
 

okay so im torn between a 383 stroker running possibly afr 195 heads, or swaping an ls motor into my 21 scarab excel. If i swap the ls what do i fully need to get it into the boat? I would plan on the carb kit with the msd set up to run the ignition. I have found headers for it, i know the bellhousing bolts up to it. but what about motor mounts and cooling? I only run in fresh water. I'm looking at $4k+ easy for my 383 stroker. Then i still would want headers for that anyways. so is an ls with a cam, intake, and headers my better option, both money and power wise? I can pick up running 5.3's for $350 to $750. intake set up for it is $700 carb is $500, headers $2100. I just need info on cooling and getting it bolted into the boat. also i know i need a fuel pump to run it.

I'd do a 6.0 out of a truck Not much more money and lots more potential power. Sounds like you have it. You're have to adjust or fabricate motor mounts though I'm not sure.

rear mount, bell housing bolts up, though one bolt is a tiny bit off. Front mounts I believe use 4 bolts, while older motors used 3. you need all the computer stuff or if going carb a stand alone ignition. thats what Im sure of, you probably nned a cam but I believe a lot of the ls family, you can swap the cam without ripping the intake off

so can i just run raw water cooling for that engine or do i need to run a closed cooling system? i'd love a 6.0 with a stout cam.

Hardin has a seapump that works with the factory serpentine belt I believe. If it was me, and I may do some LS motors when mine are due, would go raw water in a freshwater application.

I've got an alpha drive still for now so would i still need the sea water pump? that unit is stunning piece of hardware but at 800.00 if its not needed yet... would the LQ4 cam in there now survive with a wet exhaust or should i swap one of the comp xtreme marine cams in? those range in form 300 to 500 for full kit with new springs. personally for now i wouldnt care if it was the 5.3 or the 6.0 once i have all the odds and ends i can always swap up to the bigger engine. yes i'd love the 6.0.

huh local salvage yard has 6.0 w 154k miles for 1000.00 and 99k for 1600.00 found a long block with 200k for 400. interesting... i found a raw water pump from sierra that looks exactly the same as the oem water pump?? I've heard of exhaust for 850 but cant seem to find them, the lightning headers are 2100.00 i guess the stock truck cam shouldnt have an issue with water reversion. so very interesting, that leaves the motor mounts and deciding on efi, tho that might be hard mounting 02 sensors in a wet exhaust. Odds are I'd run the edelbrock and msd system for pure simplicity. swap in a marine cam and i'd have a monster, granted i'd have to be gentile up until im on plane with the apha. hmm... now if someone only made motor mounts. I'm sure I can fab up a set.

No need for a seawater pump on the motor if you are running an Alpha drive.

I though I read that Hardin Marine was going to release a few accessories for the sbc/bbc to ls conversion crowd. IIRC that one of the accessories was a motor mount conversion.

LC

You can get adapter plates that adapt from the LS 4 bolt to the old style 3 bolt mounts.
You shouldn't need it with your Alpha drive, but Placecraft marine makes sea water pumps that bolt directly to the block and use the serpentine belt.
I'm running my raw water and have reworked the factory water pumps a little to work that way. I'm also using Placecraft manifolds. The lower manifolds were $250 each. I think the uppers were $150, but I built my own risers.
The bell housing works just fine, it's just short 1 bolt.

I'm running bone stock all aluminum 5.3s stock cams and intakes and all.

Do the LS...you won't regret it.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.n...99280240_n.jpg

Y don't u just put a big block in it and be done with it. Parts much more available and make slot more power. I know guys that put them in 21' scarabs with no issues. It's gonna cost u a small fortune to do a ls motor once u get into all the knock knack stuff and it will still run better with a big block... Just my .02

hey wasted what did u do to that motor? you running the factory ecm? I'm guessing thats the 5.3? I can pick up a complete 5.3 with ecu and harness for 350 to 400. or the 6.0 for 1000. I know i could put in a big block or i could buy new rods for my 350 mag and be running for a few hundred bucks. I have a 5.3 in my avalanche and I'm impressed with what that can do in such a heavy truck. the ls is the future of small blocks. i just dont want to add all the extra weight of a big block. besides those tend to love fuel...lol

Alpha Drive boat, big block not good. SBC would be the most bang for buck.

I can't speak for anyone else, but my boat picked up 2-3 mph and had a lot better cold start and docking manners than the POS 454 i pulled out. I'm sure fuel economy was better too being sequential fuel injection, but i never checked.

No, 6.0L LQ4. Yes, I tuned the factory pcm with EFI live and converted it to open loop, speed density. Motor was stock with the exception of a small cam, springs, pushrods, LS1 intake, and tune.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mo0K0PWzj-o

well if I can tune the stock ecu to run in the same configuration as you have I probably could save 1300 not having to buy the edelbrock and msd set up plus a new carb. I'd rather have the efi personally. What cam did you decide to run in that? I think i may a bunch of sbc stuff to sell off...lol

I am slowly doing a conversion myself. PCM makes a 6 liter LS motor and I got the raw pump from them.
There are cast iron manifolds and aluminum available. Indmar has a few engine packages also..

I am doing the Carb with MSD igntion controller route, possibly blow thru Procharger, havent gotten
that far yet... i am looking for 400 to 600 hp , will need the procharger to get the 600...

My goal is to run in the 80's at no more than 5000 rpms...

One thing though if you run any salt water do closed cooling , they will rot out in a short time if you
have any salt going thru it with the aluminum heads.

I'm about 1000 miles from the nearest salt water so i dont think that will be an issue for me...lol yeah i understand what you're saying tho. we need a sticky with all the break down of how to do the swap and a listing off the needed parts and sites that offer parts. Lets face it the LS is the new era of engines. the old chevys have had their day and its time to accept it. these new LS motors are built above and beyond what any other stock block. they have cross bolted mains... think about that. a few years back only high end aftermarket blocks had that. these new heads flow unheard of numbers in stock form. and chevy was smart enough to make it so they kept nearly identical bellhousing bolt patters. They knew people would want these new motors in older cars as well. if ford had done the same with the new mod motors I would have dropped the new 5.0 into my old mustang instead of selling it.

that being said here is what i have found. One, if you are doing a carb conversion use the plain edelbrock intake and get the msd 6010 or 6012 box as the msd boxes are computer programable for custom tuning. Best of all its cheaper than the complete edelbrock setup, like $575 for the need parts vs $780 for the kit. two, they make inexpensive adaptor plates for motor mounts so we can use the existing mounts we have. three, lightning makes headers for these at $2100, you can get aluminum manifolds for $1450, or cast iron set up for $850. Four, you need an electric pump for fuel. not really an issue. Five Harden marine makes a sea water pump that bolts right up where the AC compressor mounted for 800.00 and you can keep your serpentine belt. not to mention that is one damn nice looking piece of hardware. Also from what I have seen, the stock truck engine cams seem to have the right LSA to not have to worry about water reversion. But for around $500 you can get a full cam kit from Comp cams. So for beween $2500 to $5500 you can have a full out LQ4 or similar 6.0 ls engine in your boat. you can go cheap and run cast iron manifolds and stock everything else. Or you can splurge on headers, even with headers your still only $3300!!! and sometimes you can find killer deals on engines for well under $1K.

okay one thing i forgot about is how do you attach your factory gauges to the ls block? Also since im running an Alpha one, how do I hook up the shift interupt swithc? guess thats one thing that might be important...lol I know normally it grounds out the distributor but on a DIS system... what the hell do I ground out??

Bravo is ultimately the way to go...especially with LS. I just converted twin Pre Alpha/MR-1's to Bravo and ran the learning curve. You save big $$$ if you use a crank driven pump and pull suction through the Bravo. With more and more Bravo boats out there the prices are coming within reach of the average guy.Sandy left quite a few Bravo's available on the East Coast.You can beat on a regular Bravo I all day with a stout SBC or LS...you won't do much beating on an Alpha with a strong Vortec or LS.

Think it through and do a bit of comparison shopping...you'll be surprised.

I know I eventually plan on bravo but for now since my engine I had bent a connecting rod and ended my season, I only have the funds to do engine or outdrive. so this year sadly will be engine...lol Got a link to the crank driven pump? I'm planning on posting all the information i can find on this swap. i got tired of searching every thread to find bits and pieces so I came up with this thread. So anyone who is thinking of this will know what is really needed to do this. and its a lot less than people realize.

Here is where I got mine...
pump and pulley for $630... was cheaper when I bought mine, by about half.

http://www.marinepartssource.com/new...mfgno=RA057032

http://www.marinepartssource.com/new...&mfgno=R065050

Here is a link to the whole parts breakdown... This is a 6.0 engine and everything off it works on the LSs

http://www.marinepartssource.com/crusaderpb/60.asp

Keep in mind this pump goes where the stock power steering pump goes. The Hardin pump goes where the A/C compressor goes and might be easier to deal with.

See this is the kind of information we need. This should answer a lot of peoples questions on this swap

i wrote this in another post and i think it is appropriate here.

p.s you get one freebe. if you use the stock p/s pump it has the same pressure line threads

I used the hi tek stainless headers, and made the pipes out the back. bit the bullet and got the hardin marine pump. mines a bravo so I didn't have another choice that i found. i think i got the first hardin pump for the ls sold! not sure if it will work correctly with the ls1, but on my 5.3 it was way too short and when bolted on it hit the water pump. I made a bracket to bring it out to line up to the serp belt and it works fine. sucks to pay $900 and then have to modify. you cant use a crank mount pump on these engines with the stock harmonic balancer because its like a thin 3 spoke design. unless you modify the ? i used a stand alone setup from shwanke engines for the electronics and fuel system. great product. and they have everything for 850. ecm, harness, fuel pump, fuel lines, fittings, fuse block, relay. the bravo coupler bolts up to a stock manual trans flywheel without the locating dowels. i used adjustable conversion motor mounts. closed cooling from seakamp. lots of fun matching up the boat harness to the new one.

its hitting a power loss and detonation at 58mph no matter which prop i use. tried 19p and 23p and some random 4 blade i don't know the pitch of. i need to check fuel pressure because its detonating real bad at that speed. i think the fuel pump is not keeping up. not real worried about it as it runs great otherwise, and im probably procharging it this winter so fuel and tuning setup will change anyway.
great power to get on plane and midrange is awesome. it cruises nice at about 42mph at 3200 rpm. got probably 300 miles on it so far. bunch of trips from quantico to Fairview and once into dc. sounds like a open headers vette! so much different than old school sound.

duramax is the next project

Thanks for the info very much appreciated. Like I said I'm hoping to make a thread where anyone thinking about this swap can see what and where to get everything to make it run. I got tired of searching all over the place between different forums and tons of threads. I'm still waiting to hear back from MSD to see if the alpha interrupter switch will work or not. I love the sound of a nice running V8, I had an old ford FE 390 with a big cam, full MSD ignition, headers through straight pipes. drove that for about 5 years. On the tunning side of things have you tried using EFI live or getting ahold of Blackbear tunes?

I'm using HP Tuners on mine.
Probably have about 1500 miles on it. We put 65ish miles on it Saturday.
Here is a pic while I was building it.
http://www.csystemssoftware.com/admin/skaterback2.jpg

You can get adapter plates that adapt from the LS 4 bolt to the old style 3 bolt mounts.

This guys setup is legit, and he did an awesome job on the install...nice and clean, looks like it came in the boat from the factory.

Whats up Ben, its Allyn....we talked at the boat ramp at Hope Springs last weekend.

Wasted Income - If you get bored and want an extra 20HP, find a used LS6 intake for that thing.

If you've got a 1500 truck block, I drilled and tapped the oil cooler block off above the filter for 1/8 pipe and used the stock oil press sender. Same can be done with the water pump housing for temp. I did efi for $850 total. Shwanke engines. Fuel pump lines ECM and harness. I did a bravo so I'm not sure about shift interrupt.

Thanks for the compliment Allen. Hope all works out for your mega squirt. See ya on the water.

MSD responded, the interrupter switch can not be interfaced with their unit. However, as far as I can tell. If you wired up the interrupter switch to the main power line, it would cut the power and cause the engine to studder. as far as I can tell it should work just like the OEM when it grounds out the dizzy. it happens so fast that you have restored power before the crank can come to a full stop. So, assuming I'm right it would resume operating. only one way to find out however...

where are you finding the LS block adapters for the motor mounts?

I found a bunch on ebay. I simply googled ls motor mount adapter. Summit and jegs have them for $80.00

ive got a 6.0l core was running needs oil pump, h2 had 160k truck was fluctuating oil pressure I will take 700.00 and give you the main engine harness with a computer for a 6.0l if interested give me a call 405-601-1934

Lol I should have checked this message first before I responded to the PM. I'm very interested I just need to see what's going to happen at work. We have some layoffs coming up fast. But I'm drooling over that engine. Lol

Thanks for the heads up. I sold the boat a couple years ago, and honestly, I'm no stranger to LS stuff. The LS1 intake was free, and I was on a budget. I've built a "few" of them, this one being the latest.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.n...83594117_o.jpg

I am not sure if I'm trying to talk myself INTO or OUT OF putting a turbo LS in the Sunny....lol.

My vote is "INTO"!

Wow that's an animal. .. what the hell is that a 76 or 80 mm turbo?

Any more thoughts or input on this anyone?

Funny ! this is to late's dad....and this is our other toy...which he drives X275 drag radial 6.0
http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/d...ps6696fc11.jpg

There is more turbo than engine under those hoods lol I love it