1982 Chevette Swap
1982 Chevette Swap I am in the process of slapping this car together with miscellaneous parts I had kicking around the shop. Thought I would share the story and what I have done so far...
A friends brother was getting ready to throw this abandoned gem away. 1982 Chevette 4-door. At some point in its life, someone started to swap a 5.0 ford motor (with what I can only assume was going to be a stick by the chopped up transmission tunnel). I snagged the car for a song and a dance even though I had no desire for it or intentions of building one. It was just a chassis of opportunity lol. My thought process was; light, dented up, no rust...perfect sleeper!
I started by stripping down the engine bay, cutting out what was left of the front rails and tin work, boxed everything back in and started prepping the front and mid plate.
Once everything in the bay was mocked up and I was happy with the motor placement, I started to finish weld everything, plate the front frame rails, then stripped it all back down for a healthy coat of paint.
I cleaned up a bone stock 4.8 truck motor I had kicking around with unknown mileage. The only internal modification is an EPS cam 224/230 604/604 on a 111+3. I chopped up a set of old rusty Gibson truck headers to fit, slapped an LS4 car intake on (which all fits under the flat hood by the way), installed some fancy "Chevrolet" valve covers, and relocated the coils. A little more paint and everything looked brand new.
For the exhaust, I ran down to the Pepboys ricer isle and picked up a pair of DC Sports stainless mufflers. There was no reasonable way to get the exhaust out back, so I just fabricated some header pipes and dumped it out the front.
I wired up the whole combination with an E40 PCM from a 2005 Grand Prix GXP, no TCU since I am running a manual Powerglide with a transbrake. Stock injectors, returnless rails, Corvette regulator, rail mounted pump, stock throttle body and pedal assembly all wired up for simplicity.
It currently starts. Need to finish the cooling system, swap in the new rear end, plumb the tranny cooler and brake lines, and get a driveshaft. Its really close. Here is a video of the first test fire after getting HP Tuners to play nice with the PCM.
Edit: I linked the video to the facebook page where it is currently 1-2 posts down. For some reason the photobucket video has no audio.
https://www.facebook.com/FurchesPerformance
A friends brother was getting ready to throw this abandoned gem away. 1982 Chevette 4-door. At some point in its life, someone started to swap a 5.0 ford motor (with what I can only assume was going to be a stick by the chopped up transmission tunnel). I snagged the car for a song and a dance even though I had no desire for it or intentions of building one. It was just a chassis of opportunity lol. My thought process was; light, dented up, no rust...perfect sleeper!
I started by stripping down the engine bay, cutting out what was left of the front rails and tin work, boxed everything back in and started prepping the front and mid plate.
Once everything in the bay was mocked up and I was happy with the motor placement, I started to finish weld everything, plate the front frame rails, then stripped it all back down for a healthy coat of paint.
I cleaned up a bone stock 4.8 truck motor I had kicking around with unknown mileage. The only internal modification is an EPS cam 224/230 604/604 on a 111+3. I chopped up a set of old rusty Gibson truck headers to fit, slapped an LS4 car intake on (which all fits under the flat hood by the way), installed some fancy "Chevrolet" valve covers, and relocated the coils. A little more paint and everything looked brand new.
For the exhaust, I ran down to the Pepboys ricer isle and picked up a pair of DC Sports stainless mufflers. There was no reasonable way to get the exhaust out back, so I just fabricated some header pipes and dumped it out the front.
I wired up the whole combination with an E40 PCM from a 2005 Grand Prix GXP, no TCU since I am running a manual Powerglide with a transbrake. Stock injectors, returnless rails, Corvette regulator, rail mounted pump, stock throttle body and pedal assembly all wired up for simplicity.
It currently starts. Need to finish the cooling system, swap in the new rear end, plumb the tranny cooler and brake lines, and get a driveshaft. Its really close. Here is a video of the first test fire after getting HP Tuners to play nice with the PCM.
Edit: I linked the video to the facebook page where it is currently 1-2 posts down. For some reason the photobucket video has no audio.
https://www.facebook.com/FurchesPerformance
Last edited by bfurches; Jul 15, 2015 at 09:06 PM.
