Hi All,
I've been lurking for quite a while as I gathered info to begin a 5.3 swap on my 75 Nova. I found this site to be the most helpful and most organized (I frequently referred to the X-Body swap list thread) so I decided to add my story here in the hopes it can also help some others!




Nova back story: I bought the Nova as a true basketcase, interior was 99% in boxes, the parts were strewn between 2 barns at the sellers site, inline 6 engine and a th350 were on a pallet, doors were sitting in random places, etc. This has led to one big part of the project being cataloging what parts I have, and what I don't have..... Still have some parts to track down, but it's getting better!

Anyway, on to the fun part, I picked up a 5.3/4l60 from a 2000 Silverado 2WD locally for a decent price. Has more miles than I'd like but the guy already had it pulled (did a great job, didn't cut anything) and it was only 6 minutes away, so I went with it.

I'm trying to use stock biscuit style front engine mounts with 1in offset LS adapter plates. The biscuit mounts will get polyurethane inserts soon (on order now) and I'm using the transmission crossmember that came with the nova, it has a single center bolt for mounting.



Engine drops in fine, without the truck oil pan on of course.... I was looking at other swaps and quite a few others are using the CTSv pan, but measuring on mine it looks like that pan would hang about 1in below the crossmember. So I went ahead with a 7qt pan kit from Speedway. That's on order now.

One thing to note, it appears the A/C air box will clear the valve covers and coil brackets, so that is great.




Minor issue, the power steering pump pulley has about 1/8" clearance to the power steering box. I'll have to see where that ends up with new mounts, may be massaging the steering box a little bit.



Trans mount looks nice, one hole on each side actually lines up too in the frame. So I'll just have to drill one new mount hole on either side and it should be golden.


Something to note for a budget build, the truck manifold does fit on the drivers side, but not on the passenger. At least not the EGR one that I have, the bump-out for the EGR tube contacts the frame, maybe a larger truck non-EGR manifold would work. I'll be getting some F-Body headers most likely.



Sorry if pics are a little large, I'll see about re-sizing and edit the post to downsize.......

 

Hey. Nice to see another 4th Gen on here. Looks like great progress so far. If you’re on FB, there’s a 4th Gen Nova LS Swap page. Keep up the good work!

 

The power steering pulley can be swapped out for a slightly smaller diameter pulley and clear fine. As for the headers get the Speed Engineering LS swap headers for the fourth gen Nova, hey fit perfect. It does clear the factory AC box. I used ICT Billet brackets and a Sanden AC compressor on the passenger side. The tranny cross member worked fine with my 4L65. I used a F body oil pan but I think others like the Holley pan leave more wiggle room. I've had my 78 swap up and running two years if I can help any.

 

Thanks for the heads up! I found a few topics on here that were saying the Doorman 300-130 pump pulley would work. I'll try to find the diameter of that one and compare to the truck pulley, only need maybe 1/2in diameter smaller pulley. Did you have to run a power steering cooler with the pump driven faster?

Good note on the speed engineering headers, I had them favorited but was wondering about the A/C box. Did you get their special 90deg plug wires or try something else? I also have the ICT billet Sanden kit on my 83 C10 ls swap, I'm definitely using that kit again, it fits great and had no belt alignment issues (it replaced a different mount kit on that truck that would destroy idlers every 1k miles). I was really hoping to use the factory truck a/c mount on this swap, but man that would require a giant chunk out of the crossmember. The factory a/c pump I have is junk anyway, so doesn't really matter if I have to get a mount kit since I'll be buying a new pump either way.

For an oil pan i'm trying out a kit from Speedway motors, a 7qt pan kit. After dropping the engine in the car w/o the pan and measuring around, that speedway pan should be just above the crossmember. I have 2in front drop spindles on the car so i've been trying to pay close attention to how far things hang down. I didn't really want 2in drop spindles, but my factory ones were junk, so I thought I'd try a set.

Unrelated to the engine swap, what size wheels/tires you have on yours? I haven't gotten that far on this project but trying to think through that before I get to the rear axle. I need to check 4th gear ratio and tire size to see what rear gear I want to run, probably be 3.73 but we shall see.