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I'll have to wait until the weather warms up a bit, but I'll try to get some good pictures. It's one of those things I've been wanting to do, but in order to do it the way I want I really need to sit down and learn more about photography, so of course it's something that's on my list, but unfortunately at this point a ways down it.
Yeah, the plan is to clean the trunk floor and re-coat it with splatter paint. I also plan to weld mounts for the 2-ton floor jack, jack stand, and portable compressor that hooks to the battery to pump up car tires (or beach *****, apparently, if I ever happen to find myself at a bikini party at the beach).
If this may be helpful to anyone please feel free to distribute as you see fit.
Because my car is a daily driver and I've owned it for 23 years and plan to continue driving it for many more years I wanted to prepare for regular maintenance and future repairs. I made notes of all the changes I made during my swap. I had unfortunately procrastinated undertaking the huge task of compiling all of my notes, charts and diagrams into a wiring diagram for my car. It took several months but I finally completed the diagram. I have attached it to this post.
Unless I have unintentionally left something out, this includes every wire I modified, changed, spliced or added on the car. I did not notate anything that was original to the car and was not modified. This build is a 2004 LM7 into a 1978 Caprice. It is essentially a stock swap and was built to be a reliable daily driver and was not focused on performance. Maintaining functionality of all of the key features like cruise control and computer controlled A/C was a main focus as well as practical serviceability. As a result, over-the-counter parts-house parts with an indexed part# were used as much as possible. I did not figure any of this out on my own and owe everything in my swap to the people on this site that helped me with advice and figured things out ahead of me.
Last edited by Vetteman61; 02-07-2021 at 09:38 PM.
Vette man how many hours do you think it took you too do the swap? I’m about toodo same swap into 78 impala aero coupe. Lm7 and 4l60 also. Great build thread.
It would honestly be hard for me to say with any accuracy. One, if I knew then what I've learned now, I'd be able to save a lot of time. I probably spent as much or more time on the computer trying to understand everything and research the right parts as I did actually physically working on the project. I also did a lot of things that weren't only pertaining to the engine swap, so that added time as well. Also, my goal was to make a daily driver with a focus toward usability and ease of repair, so I spent some extra time trying to use as many stock parts that can be ordered from the local parts house as possible.
I'm glad that I made my own harness as it helped me learn the electrical system a lot better, and I also have a better understanding of where all the wires are and where they go. With that being said, if I had it to do over, I would order a terminator X Max from Holley (it didn't exist when I started this project). The time and labor savings of having the harness are well worth the price in my opinion and being able to tune it yourself instead of having to rely on other people for tuning is a huge plus, and savings.
I think my answer depends on how well you want the final product to turn out. For example, the rear gas tank filler neck could have been mounted quickly, however I wanted it to be a particular way and I'd say that entire processes added about a month onto my project because I only had Saturday's mostly to work. Also, I didn't want to combine all of the original fused systems into only 6 or 7 fuses as many do, so figuring out out to wire up a complete new under-hood fusebox was costly and very time consuming for me because I didn't know anything at all when I started.
I would say if I knew exactly what all parts I would need and ordered them ahead of time and had them all ready, and had a premade harness, I could see maybe having a running car in 3 months of Saturdays, but again, knowing all the parts ahead of time is the huge, critical time saver here. For example, I wasted a TON of time with that garbage company BRP that made the original engine and trans mounts that I tried to use and also Griffin radiator with their really bad products that they knew had issues but continued to sell anyway. If you want to send me a PM I have a spreadsheet that I created that has many of the part numbers I used. I can't say it's completely comprehensive or all exactly correct as I haven't completely finished it, but it would likely be decent start.
12-08-2020, 08:17 PM
