LS6 Swap 2nd Gen Build + New Tundra

I’m tryna get my tuner on board with letting me run ethanol. -MPG’s

 

just comparing setups here bud. When you finish you truck in a few years time then you can join the chat.

 

fighting words

 

Don't hear me complaining about my Tacoma's fuel economy

 

So I’m curious, all the V8 swap folks watching this thread and @dpanibratets thread…

what is a budget dollar amount to do a V8 upgrade?

$10K? $20K? $30K?

I like my 2nd Gen, exterior looks better than the newer generations, I have a leaking head gasket that I need to deal with but I would love to have the V8 power….

not gonna cage the interior or add second shocks all around or race through the desert

what is an V8 upgrade budget gonna be?

 

Depends, how many motors and transmissions are you gonna go thru before you buy the right one? Also depends on whether or not you have the skills to do it. I had some of them, but not the expensive ones, which I had to pay people for theirs.


My LS swap is my biggest regret. Wish I never did it.

 

Right now, you have a very expensive paperweight and a distinct lack of engine noise coming out the shop. We did have chats about swapping your fuel cell to a bigger one...

Your world is your oyster here. I think @tacotunner06 said a while back he was around the $15k mark ( could have changed since then). I'm around $15k CAD ( and climbing) and @WormSquirts here is still in progress.

It very much depends on what components you use. Are you going all new parts? A hybrid of used engine/transmission? Paying for the work or doing it yourself? All this massively factors in to the cost of doing it. If you want a V8 and don't plan on going balls deep with suspension/ cage it I would punt the Tacoma with the headgasket issue and get a 2nd Gen Tundra. It will be cheaper and better overall.

 

I think I have everything I need other than the radiator to start it. Just need to wire and plumb it all up. Will need to make custom headers though. Man starting it would be so cool. Slowly getting closer to starting to actually build the upper half of the bulkhead. Just finished designing the jig. As soon as the front suspension is done I'll move to getting it running.



Can't afford the Howe stuff or the spidertrax stuff yet, so I will hit a point where I can't move forward on the front suspension soon, basically as soon as the bulkhead is done.

As for an LS swap, I'd say $10k usd is the bare minimum for a junkyard build if you do it all yourself, and it will only go up from there.

 

What do you guys do with your spiral cables to keep them from getting tangled in the steering column and clock spring?

Also my Holley dash mount is shit. I’m trying to get the guy that made it to redo it, Basically it’s a piece of wood screwed to the dash plastic with Velcro on it, and the screen velcros to the wood. Except the adhesive on the Velcro is sliding off with the heat. This mount used to look awesome, before I took it apart and saw how it was done. Hated it ever since but here we are. I re Velcro’d it for the time being.

also my truck started honking when I would turn and hit a bump. The horn ground wire was rubbing on the PRP adapter and chewed thru the insulation. Not enough clearance on the PRP adapter. Oh well. Horn delete time.

and to add to the LS swap discussion, my new motor was 10k, new trans was 7k, old motor and trans were 5k, doing my cooling system twice was about 5k labor included, all kinds of bullshit. I don’t wanna keep going on this list…

 

Got a disconnect with horn contacts so the horn wires dont actually move inside the disconnect and hub adaptor.

 

Mine had horn contacts too, but they have to connect to the stock clock spring horn wires which is where it was having an issue.


Should add that my spiral cable is for my radio PTT

 

IDK to tell the truth but I know for a fact that if I was to do it a second time I spend less than half on the second swap. Why because you buy a part and end up not using the part or realize you purchased something that won’t work. Like I purchased a “complete pull out” wiring harness and all but ended up tossing everything but the short block. In my case I paid someone who BS me into thinking he was more than capable but he was way in over his head and it showed when I picked up the truck. He did the absolute worst work but in his mind out of sight out of mind. I.e. Running a red power wire for a electrical rad. fan that uses a lot of power and the red wire not long enough and don’t have anymore red wire you just splice a blue wire, then cover it with cheap ass junk Chinese electrical tape. And more shit like this and worse!
My install as for dropping the engine in place was a peace of cake. Motor mounts (photo below) are now bolt in but honestly the frame side should be bolted then completely welded in place. My transmission mount was a 4” x 2” and a 4” x 4” flat plate welded in with a cheap trans. mount, but I’m running a 5 speed manual Tremec. (photo below)
Using factory OEM upgraded radiator in the factory location. But with two electric fans and two of the same $15 OEM Vette radiator hoses but the bottom hose was cut in half and a piece of aluminum tube clamped into place. (photos below)
P.S. The stock GM PS pump works perfect! Just connect the Toyota rack to the PS pump.
By far the hardest part is the wiring and making the GM power talk to you Toyota vehicle!
The torque and HP are FANTASTIC and more than ENOUGH!!!

 

Seems I’m the only one out here thoroughly enjoying my swap

I’m roughly $13k into just the LS swap portion of my build. That’s including everything from the radiator to the exhaust tip, complete fuel tank, driveshafts, dyno/tune time, etc

edit: only labor costs paid were $300 to the transmission rebuilder and $1k for the dyno/tune. So it’s almost all parts, labor done myself

 

ah, gotcha. didn't realize you needed more than two contacts. if you don't used a disconnect, its easy to repurpose the stock clock spring since it has like 6 or 8 different wires. and if you don't need the radio volume/next controls, all of those wires free up. it's the disconnect that complicates things. when i was searching, i found a different disconnect that had a bunch more contacts (forget the brand), but it was definitely for high level road racing and prohibitively expensive.

 

I've not had the time to finish the last couple of bits on the truck. Between buying a house and having renovations to now having a newborn all free time has been sucked out of my life. For now it's my daily and moving materials from the lumber yard / landscape place. It'll get done eventually.

That's not too bad a cost there for what you did. It seems like you have a pretty solid base of skills for fab work, I've just been learning as needed on the truck which has been super fun. Definitely meant things have been slow moving haha. What was the cost on your SAS?

 

Let me know when you get to firing it up for the first time, I wanna come down for that.

Yeah your build is a tad more involved then all of ours haha. It'll be sick once it's done.

 

Thanks for rubbing it in to us who didn’t learn to weld before we learned how to walk!

One thing about LS swaps the aftermarket support is incredible. Hell there’s books (LS Swaps for Dummies), videos and websites. In hindsight I should have done mine myself even though I don’t have the proper tools. I need to learn to weld other than High School welding class (I actually signed up for welding twice but my school didn’t allow me to take it a 2nd. time as my high school was in double session. One high school in the morning and the other in the afternoon on the same campus) Then pay someone to wire it up.
As for the dashboard someone with a 3D printer needs to print up a insert for a Digital dashboard for any of the aftermarket gages. I think the 2nd & 3rd Gens will get popular as time goes on.
The Toyota V-8’s would be sweet even though they don’t make the same HP as a LS and they have double over head cams so they have huge heads. I had a friend that has a 3D scanner as his company builds equal length headers for vehicles mostly Lexus models. He took one look and said forget about having AC or a heater. The heads would cover the AC and heater inlets / outlets on the firewall. Anyway I recommend doing it.
I *Think* some of the OP’s issues is his LS is a radical build with more HP than remotely needed. I’m not trying to rip on him or his build but when you make as HP as his engine it creates more heat and can lead to breaking parts. But I would love to have his fire breathing engine.