Sub'd.
I wanna do this swap to my 85 Monte someday. Hope the truck acc. work well! Ill be watching

 

Nice car, where the air and heat????

 

Killed the HVAC. May do something custom later. Stock junk took up too much space.

 

well you do live up north, and the stock stuff is bulky, I live in FL, and I forget not everyone needs A/C,

 

Another update from December through January. Got some frame painting done using Eastwood's rust converter and Rust Encapsulator. I will also be trying out the internal frame coating. The brake lines were disintegrating while being handled so I ordered up the stainless kit from Inlinetube.com









The floors are prepped. Driver side is mostly in and passenger is in for final fitting. We will be checking the trans tunnel against the 6L90 as we go.











We did run into some extra rust-thru near the passenger rear seats and wheel well



Getting the motor and trans mated.





Trandapt 4595 swap plates were not exactly the best fit and needed some trimming. They are advertised to work with the OEM clamshell and frame pad but the fit was way off. Instead of rigging it up I Ordered up the Moroso #62630 Solid Motor Mount Pad. Also, the coating they come with is a joke.







Round 1 Engine/trans fitting. 6L90 is a monster! fits pretty well until the tail.

 

SSlick406 I bet it feels good just seeing the thing in there.

How did the Eastwood stuff go on? Why did you switch from the POR15 you had used before? Coating the frame will be one of my next major jobs. KBS Coatings is another I'm looking at.

 

The best payoff so far was definitely watching the motor sit in its new home.

The Eastwood rust encapsulator went on very well. I bought the brushed it on quart of the stuff and it went a long way. It's very thin which is great because it just spreads and gets into those tough spots. The quart went a long way. I wont be doing a true frame-off but I'll be painting as much of the frame with the stuff as possible. Although it held up pretty well I switched from the POR-15 because Eastwood had so many more products to choose from at a better cost.

 

Made some more progress 6/22/13. Had alot of issues with the TransDapt kit. After giving up trying to find the perfect engine mount setup and failing to find it we decided to do some fabrication of the Moroso solid mounts we had on hand. Courtesy of my friends welding skills they came out pretty good. Little bonus, after everything was set in its new place and clearance looked good we checked the 6L90 trans mount to the factory 200r4 crossmember it's just about dead on. Driveshaft is definitely too long and will need to be addressed.











Also did a test fit of the headers I picked up from another member. The passenger side will need some new primary sections welded in. Otherwise, they fit very well for F-body headers.

 

Congrats on getting her situated!

 

So the 6l90 will clear stock trans tunnel? Just snagged a ly6 and 90e setup for my 80 Malibu, possibly.

 

"Motor: 2007 LY6 w/ factory harness
Trans: 2008 6L90e (after several other considerations)"

It looks like the motor and transmission came from two different sources and are of different years. Double check that the E38 ECM that you are using will communicate with the TCM in the 6L90. You may be okay and then maybe not. Now is the time to get it all squared away if they are not. You might have to get a 2008 program flashed onto your E38 ECM to match the transmission. That is the easiest and cheapest way.

 

More info on the trans tunnel fitment i have a 6l80e which is slightly smaller than the 90 but cant check for fitment due to the frame being in my shop and the body in a buddies shop 45 minutes away.

 

Thanks for the heads up. I will most likely contact Speartech to find out what should be done?


We are still in the process of welding the floor and fitting the trans. After getting the motor and trans situated we found it sits fairly well with the original crossmember and will only require minimal fabrication. Though it's close, it's clear the 6L90e does not fit the stock tunnel. We had to cut out some tunnel to allow more space for the chunky rear of the 6L90. I also need to pickup a yoke to check clearance there too. Our goal is to retain the stock console if possible so we are keeping clearances tight when we put new metal in. Some pics of where I'm at....

 

Sweeeet. I've been wanting to do this for a while. SO glad to see someone finally jumped in and did it. Do you think the 6L80 being about 2" shorter, would have cleared the floor pan? Or maybe even different motor mounts?

 

Sweet deal.. my engine / trans are mounted quite a bit lower than yours in the chassis (no worries about clearance though) so I am fairly certain that if I were to go the Auto route mine would fit with no mods..

That is good knowledge to have in my back pocket..

Looking forward to seeing it shift all 6 gears on it's own..

 

Pretty sure you'll need to cut a small relief section no matter what. We didn't have too much of an issue until the rear-end of the 6L90. She's fat. In my case the floor needed surgery either way so we just chopped it up to be safe.

 

September 2013 update... Floor and trans tunnel are just about set. Seat brackets and center console brackets still need to be welded in, then on to seam sealing and paint for the floors, firewall, frame, etc. Still trying to decide on using bed-liner or something more like lizard skin for the floors?











Trans tunnel fabrication...

 

Halloween 2013 update...

Got some Eastwood underhood matte black on the firewall to cover up some old POR15 that I put down a few years ago. the POR15 Held up well but didn't look the best.









Cleaned up the valve covers a bit with some engine paint





sprayed and brushed some Eastwood rust converter in preparation for seam sealer and rust encapsulator

 

looks good...

I am in need of a console for my El Camino.. They are getting hard to find on ebay.. I need to hide a bunch of gauges in mine..

Question:

Why choose to loose the factory HVAC... The system works fine.. and if you had mounted the engine an inch or so further forward you could have cleared it...

My Turbo El Camino swap maintained it's factory AC and will use the factory truck AC compressor and compressor location..

 

I had pulled it during my first swap. It was ugly, bulky, and the a/c didn't work. It was expensive to fix and I was too young to care about comfort over function.

Now that I'm a little older and wiser I appreciate things like climate control and I may consider something custom down the line. Until then she's all business

P.S. Cool swap in the El camino and nice daily driver. I have a Turbo Legacy GT. Love it!