Chuck's Garage is back for part 2 of our LS engine swap!
Today we'll take the factory intake off and replace it with a high performance intake
and throttle body.
Hi I'm Chuck Hanson!
Welcome to another episode Chuck's Garage and our LS engine swap into this classic Chevelle
chassis.
Now if you caught the last episode you might remember that we snagged an 03' Tahoe 5.3
engine out of a wrecked Tahoe and we mated it with a 3L60E transmission that a buddy
of mine rebuilt and we've installed it all in place using a stock cross member.
But we used motor mount adapter plates from Hooker and we used an oil pan that came from
the folks at Holley.
Now we had plenty of oil pan clearance here, at least that's what I thought, until I started
getting emails from some of you guys.
Now some of the emails concern themselves with the clearance issues from the steering
linkage up to the oil pan here, let me show you what we're talking about.
Now as you can see when this thing goes lock to lock, it makes contact here with the steering
linkage and the oil pan with that grease circ there.
Now even with the grease circ out you still make contact and believe it or not, it's even
worse on the other side.
Yeah well this interference problem only seems to make itself known on GMA body cars, the
ones with the front steering linkage, and 64 to 72 A bodies is what I'm talking about.
That'd be the Chevelle's, Tempest, Skylark's, you know that kind of a car, and believe it
or not Holley has already been made aware of that problem and their working on a modified
oil pan already.
In fact perhaps by the time you see this video, the parts will already be in the pipeline.
So, well today, what we got planed is we're gonna go ahead and swap out this intake her,
told you about that last time and we're gonna plump our fuel system, get all that stuff
ready to go, and I don't know what else we can say, it's time to get our hands dirty.
Now that stock intake really isn't too bad a piece, it's a composite so it's light weight
and it works pretty well through a fairly broad RPM range, but it's black and it's ugly.
So what we're gonna do is replace it with some cool pieces from Holley here.
What we've got here is a mid-ram intake, and this thing is configured for a single throttle
body, we're gonna hang a 90 millimeter throttle body on there.
But since we also have planned some upgrades for the engine later on, perhaps a cam shaft
swap, a head swap and that sort of thing, that's going to boost our horsepower ratings
so we wanted an intake that would lend itself to those modifications as well.
Now this is a really cool intake, let me show you some of it's really cool features.
Alright now this is the top that we're going to be using.
You can see where it's got the single throttle body mounting here, but this intake is also
for LS1's LS2's and LS6's with the cathedral port heads on it.
Now any thing else than that your probably going to have to go hunt another intake, but
anyway, that's what the top looks like.
Now this plate here comes right off.
Check that out.
Now what you've got here is an intake that is machined and set up for a pair of 4150
throttle bodies.
You can tell this is for injection because it's got these two stands here for the fuel
rails and the machined ports for the injectors themselves.
Now believe it or not, if your not into fuel injection, this intake is also offered in
a carbureted version and it doesn't have the bungs for the injectors or the stands for
the fuel rails here and you can just mount carburetors up on top of there, you'll be
good to go.
But no matter what your application, this is a great all-around intake here.
Now to finish out the top side of the engine here what we've got is a pair of fuel rails
here, for the injectors, they just mount up on the intake there.
Here's that 90 millimeter throttle body I was telling you about.
Now this thing is massive and I'll show you it later on after I get that old throttle
body off, just how it compares.
This thing will feed a substantial amount of horsepower.
And then we've got the Holley fuel pump here.
Now this is an inline, it's nice and quiet, it doesn't make that pulsing, pumping noise
that a lot of them do.
It's a gear rotor design and it's designed to work in conjunction with our whole fuel
system here and of course we've got the regulator here that's going to allow us to fine tune
our pressure requirements tot he fuel injectors.
That's it, I guess our next step is to get that old intake off of there.
Well now, before we can bolt that Holley intake up, we've got to do a little bit of prep work.
Now if you'll notice, right on the bottom side of the mating flange here, there are
some receiver groves, and in those groves, we have to put these little O-rings that come
in the kit with the intake manifold.
Yeah now in order to hold these little O-rings in place what we're gonna do is just put a
little dab of grease on them.
About like that there, just regular, all purpose grease will be just fine, just put enough
on there to give it a light coating, that ought to be enough, and then we'll just press
it into place right here and that grease ought to hold the O-ring where it needs to be.
Now we just re-do that same process for all 8 cylinders and we're ready to go.
Well alright, that takes care of all the O-rings and they went on there pretty nicely, a little
dab of grease holds them in place, and well I guess we're ready to throw this intake on
the motor.
Now this Holley intake is held in place with 10 M6 bolts as you can see it's a fairly small
bolt, which means they won't take a lot of abuse, you just don't want to over torque
these things.
So what we're going to do right now is just hand start them, and then we'll snug them
down, and when we snug them down there's even a specific pattern that you wan to use.
Start from the middle, go across, over here, back across again, and basically you work
your way from the inside out in a circling pattern there, and we'll just snug them down
like that, and then we'll get the torque wrench out.
Well now with this intake torqued down properly we're ready for the gaskets that go between
the intake manifold and the base.
Now just like before we're just going to use a little bit of grease, kind of hold these
things in place, until we can get things cinched down.
There we go, a little bit more here.
Well the base is next, got the gaskets in place there, so we'll just set this down.
Now here's something I want to bring to your attention, you'll notice right here on the
back of the base.
There's some ports here, these are vacuum ports that we'll use later on, but one thing
you want to make sure is that they're at the back of the engine.
Again, we'll just start these bolts, and we'll just snug them down.
Now when you torque these down it's basically a specific pattern that Holley recommends.
You start from the inside, then you go to the outer corners.
You get them torqued down, then that will be good to go.
Alright, well that base is ready to go, and we're almost ready for the lid but before
we can do that there's just a little more prep work that we've got to do.
Now Holley includes this length of O-ring material here and as you can see, it's kind
of an open ended deal.
The reason for that is there's a receiver group down here in the base and we just lay
it down in there, and then we cut it to length, and glue it, and then it's ready to go.
Now what we've done here is we're using a little bit of grease here just to hold this
thing in place so we can get it to where the 2 ends mate up, and once we get it to that
point, we're going to go ahead and trim it to the proper length and glue the 2 halves
of the O-ring rope together.
We're sneaking up on it here.
And we'll just put a little glue in that joint and we'll be good to go.
Now the Holley instructions say to glue the ends of that O-ring gasket with some super
glue, which we've already done, and we've got it already back tot he receiver group.
Now it tells you to finish up with a little dab of some ATV just to make sure that you
get a real good seal there.
That's what we'll do, right on that spot right there, that looks pretty good.
And now, now we're ready for that lid.
Well, you know not everything goes the way you plan it to sometimes and here's something
I want tot show you here.
Now we put all of the lid bolts in except this last one here, and as you can see, there's
some interference here between the boss that mounts the fuel rail later on and the head
of the bolt here.
So what we're gonna have to do is, we're just going to have to get the old trusty file out,
dress that down a little bit there and give us the clearance that we need.
Well the injectors is the next thing that we're going to install and we have to rob
them off the factory intake here, so in order to do that we have to remove the fuel rails
here, a couple of bolts hold them on, and then we can pop the injectors out of there
and then we'll take that throttle body off there as well.
You know they say when all else fails you ought to read the instructions and it's amazing
what you can learn when you actually do that.
Now I went ahead and found a section here that says the 300-121 intake fuel rail kit
is designed to accept Bosch style EV1 or Peko fuel injectors, we tried to use the OE ones
that came off of that original Tahoe intake.
It says here that the OE LS fuel injectors may not fit properly in the EFI manifold and
fuel rail assembly, so I guess I got to go and pick up a set of new injectors.
Well quick trip to the speed shop, I've got what we need.
These are some 30 pound high impedance injectors form Holley, I'll tell you what, I'm going
to slip them in place, we ought to be good to go.
Well now let me show you what the difference is in these 2 injectors here, just so you
can get an idea of what the hight difference is and what was causing us the problems.
Obviously the Holley is going to be considerably taller.
Now there is a kit they say that allows you to use the stock LS type injectors if that's
what your working with but it also requires some drilling and some other modifications.
For us, way easier to go ahead and secure a set of the Holley injectors and use them
instead.
Much better.
You know I was reading a little bit on those 30 pound injectors that I got from Holley
there and well, it said that they'll feed up to 480 horsepower which ought to be more
than enough for what we've got in mind, even with a camshaft and a head change.
I think we'll be lucky to be pushing 500 horsepower at that point, but here's something that I
wanted to show you.
Now I took the old throttle body off of the old LS engine there, this is it, this what
comes on that intake manifold from GM and here is the throttle body that we're gonna
replace it with.
Now this is the one that'll go on that mid-ram intake there, and this is a 90 millimeter.
Let me show you what the difference is going to be.
Now Stevie Wonder could tell the difference between these 2 here, but this is pretty impressive
right here, 90 millimeters and this will definitely feed up to that 480 horsepower and if we need
do, I think it will go beyond that, if we need to we can go ahead and throw some bigger
injectors in there to take care of the horsepower requirement.
We're ready to slip this thing on but I did want to remind you that this throttle body
has to be ordered separately from the intake.
Now this one is a 90 millimeter as I said but I hear rumors that they've got a 105 in
the works which ought to be available here shortly.
Now we'll just stack the gasket on here, they have the hardware in place, and we'll just
tighten it up.
That ought to be tight enough.
Well now we're ready for our throttle position sensor, and our IAC valve.
Now you might recall that we got our 5.3 out of an 03' Tahoe which is a drive by wire set
up.
The throttle body that we got from Holley however uses an actual throttle cable, so
what we're gonna have to do is find the IEC valve and the throttle position sensor off
of like a 2000-2001 Camaro or a Firebird with an LS1 engine in it.
Those parts should be readily available and well since I'm going to have to make another
run to the parts store, looks like right here would be a good place to stop for today.
You'll want to check back with me soon though because next time I'm going to show you how
I'm going to rig up the rest of that fuel system there, I'll see yo soon.
Tune in next time for part 3 as we continue with our LS engine swap project car.