I agree. I've seen custom harnesses anywhere from $500 and up.
And although I just rewired my entire engine compt. last year and am fair at electrical, I'm not sure I want to modify a stock harness at this point.

The plan is to find a 4l80e however this could change.
I see Microsquirt spoken of quite a bit so I'll have to do my research on that as well. $799 complete with tuner software also sounds like a good deal.

Thanks

 

If you have a factory harness you can robb the plugs off of, you can buy a Micro squirt with a universal harness for $370 last I looked.

4l80E is a nice trans, but they are heavy and not needed with most turbo builds IMO. Put your money into a good strong rear end and run a tall enough gear you don’t need the overdrive. The torque you’ll make can easily pull a tall highway gear. My 9” with a 3.10 gear and 28” tire combo was a nice compromise between decent highway cruise speed and track performance. On E85 I managed high 8 second quarter miles and averaged about 21mpg at 65mph. (better MPG than my daily driver )

 

that is how i built my harness. its a good learning experience building the harness. then you can download one of denmah 's tunes and get it running and start tuning.

if you have time do some research on stock ecm and microsquirt and you can makeup your own mind. if you are ever going to run a 4l80e trans you will want a stock ecm.

 

You know I hadn't really thought about it, but I am going to end up going with higher gears so the 4l80 wouldn't really be needed.
I just thought it would be slick to have one; and you're right that thing is heavy.
Thanks for the tip on the microsquirt too.

I will certainly put the time into it to do the research. We'll see how much patience I have left when I get to the wiring part. I think that will determine which route I take.
Thanks again. Excellent tips.

 

your engine looks like a gen 3 engine but it might be a little earlier. it has the rear cam sensor and 13 mm valley bolts. so it should be a 24 pulse crank sensor

 

Mike,

I agree. From what I looked up last night the casting number on the block comes up as an LM7 Gen III.
I would like to confirm the year but I've yet to be able to get up with the guy about getting the vin off the truck.
Either way I'll open in up this weekend and see what else I can find out.

 

Has been a busy weekend, but this evening I finally got around to tearing this engine down and so I've attached a few photos for anyone interested.

First I pulled the oil pan plug and found some tasty little treats in the form of three needle bearings and a few shaving of metal. Exciting stuff...


Next I noticed after taking off the intake the the valley pan was missing two bolts which leads me to conclude someone had been into it at least this far



Pulled the heads


This is not the best picture but the cylinder walls looked good overall as I could still see the cross hatches in all of them


The #5 cylinder ended up holding the failed lifter. I could see the lobe on the cam was in bad shape as well


That is as far as I got tonight. Hopefully in the next day or two I can get the oil pan off and see how the rod bearings and crank look.

 

Back for some more boring play by play for anyone interested.
Had to get a workout in tonight so I was taking junk off in between sets...lol

Found some more funky fresh excitement with the #8 cylinder lifter


Crusty carbon everywhere but the cylinder walls all looked good


Oil pan looked yummy too


A bottom end shot. Tomorrow I may start taking rod journals off to get a look at the crank journals

 

Man you got a doozy!

 

No doubt about it.
I just hope all is ok with the crank. And although things aren't as I would have hoped, this build is going to happen.

 

Pulled the cam tonight. As you can see from the photos the #5 & #8 cylinder lobes were wiped pretty nicely.

Also the best pictures I could get without pulling the crank was from the front and rear cam bearings. From what I could see with a flashlight the rest of them looked about the same although I can't be certain.

Anyway, I'm trying to decide if I should tear it the rest of the way down or replace the cam and put it back together...any thoughts?

 

With a failed lifter and tha associated metal bits, I'd want to take it all apart. Clean everything and put it back together.
That's what I did, same bearings and rings etc.

 

Sounds good to me Ron.
I'll plan to finish taking it apart Thursday and if everything still looks decent it will be time to start buying the needed parts for the rebuild.
Once again, thanks for your input.

 

Had just enough time tonight to pull all the pistons and rods and look at the rod bearings, and crank journals.
Short story, everything looked really good.




At this point since the cam is trashed I need to make a few decisions on rear gears, turbo size, and max rpm's so I can call someone like Tick performance to help me with a cam.

More decisions...