My current project

THEFERMANATOR · #1 04-13-2009, 01:17 AM

Well I guess I'm far enough into my current project that I will let you guys in on it. This is why no boats for me for the time being, this thing is taking up ALOT of my time.

Copied and pasted from another site I frequent.
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Progress has been slow as I have too many irons in the fire, but this is where I'm at now. I have my SUBURBAN with the engine, trans, and transfer case pulled out. I also got my 01 donor's powertrain pulled out.

Here's my donor after I drove her into the shop. The radiator and intercooler were trashed from it's wreck, but you'd be surprised at how well a heater core can cool an engine.

This was after the first afternoon of about 2 1/2 hours with my nephew helping me. He's trying to learn more about cars than what his playstation has taught him.

Took all of the harness's out without cutting.

On the second afternoon it was just me, so I was able to work without teaching. Took about 3 hours to have her out and the donor rolled out.

It wasn't actually as bad as I thought it would be to pull the engine and tranny out together. It's one HEAVY SOB, but came out fairly easily. The worst part was realizing while the engine was hanging on the hoist that the front diff had to drop down an inch to slide the engine out in order to clear the oil pan.

I'm still up in the air as to wether or not to transfer the cluster and BCM over. The only things I see that I will lose that really matter is the tranny temp guage and the tow/haul switch. I already have an older QUADZILLA digital guage for the tranny, and BRAYDEN at FLEECE can write me a custom TCM OS that will allow me to use tow/haul without the BCM. The WIF light can simply be tapped into the sensors output as it is just a magnetic on off switch that grounds a circuit. The wait to start light and check engine light already have there own drivers coming out of the ECM, so they can be wired directly to my existing cluster. The 01 ECM appears to have the correct ABS seperate output and a speedo output, so I should be able to elimnate my VSSB.

I'm sure I'll run into many obstacles along the way, but so far it hasn't been that bad. The ALLISON measures just 1" longer than my 4L80E, and the LB7 block has dual bolt patterns that will accept my old engine mounts. I'm going to do a test fit in the next few days to see if the mounts line up or not in the SUBURBAN, but if my measurements are correct the DMAX is actually not as long as the 6.5 I pulled out. And the fact that they moved #1 over to the passenger side on the DMAX should allow ample room for the downpipe to fit in.

It also turns out that there is a converted 99 C2500 SUBURBAN in VALRICO that has a 01 DURAMAX ALLISON in it. His is a 2 wheel drive, but he said it was a pretty easy swap. His was a 6.5 to start with as well, VS the one the dieselpage did where they started with a 88 1500 gasser. I'm probably being overly optimistic, but I don't want to burn myself out early on in this big of a project.

And here is the recipient just before the 6.5 was pulled.

THEFERMANATOR · #2 04-13-2009, 01:20 AM

This is the thread that got me started on this project.

http://www.thedieselpageforums.com/t...ad.php?t=27851

And this is my second update on it.
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Well I worked on it again today and made a little progress. Here is the SUBURBAN stripped down and ready for some test fits.

Here's trial fit #1.

Here's trial fit #5 after several attempts of finding what had to be dropped and cut. Ended up having to remove the front differential, cutting the corner off of the passenger side engine mount pad on the frame, remove the bumper, and drop the steering linkage down.

Here's #7 where I actually got it somewhat close to where it should sit.

And on the 9th try I got it somewhat mocked in and was able to do some test fitting and clearance checking.

Should be plenty of room to move the radiator back and put the intercooler up there as I have over 4 inches of clearance between the fan and radiator.

Unfortunately it looks like I will either have to lift the body 2 inches, OR hammer out the tranny tunnel a bit, possibly switch over to the electric shift transfer case as the shift linkage is RIGHT against the tranny, cut part of the oil pan out and make a notch in it in the front to clear the steering linkage, hammer part of the oil pan in by the differential mounts, and do some more clearancing on the mount pads as to gain some clearance between the block and mount pads. This is a TIGHT fit, but looks doable. The hood will also be tight down to the engine at the compressor it looks like. I was able to get the transmission crossmember and mount in, but the tranny is touching the trans tunnel as it sits now. I'll try and get some more pics of how it fits tommorrow, after 7 hours of putting the engine in and out I was WHIPPED!

reelapeelin · #3 04-13-2009, 06:43 AM

I cam imagine you were WHIPPED!!...that "trial and error" thing make s for some tuff goin'..specially swingin' a motor around each time

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willy · #4 04-13-2009, 06:59 AM

That is going to be a monster sub, big project, good luck with it.

lumberslinger178 · #5 04-13-2009, 07:16 AM

great job ferm ....love them war wagons ,,, had myself an 89 with a 350 ran like and animal

THEFERMANATOR · #6 04-13-2009, 09:06 AM

The old 6.5 ran pretty good, but it always something everytime I turned around that needed work. After the last failure though, it was gonna cost me about $2K in parts alone to nurse her back to health. S o I decided to upgrade a bit to 300HP Vs my old 190HP

, and why not back it up with an ALLISON. This sucker is HEAVY though, my old combo weighed about 1000-1100 pounds and this new combo weighs in around 1500. It's a big old load to swing around by myself.