LS1 Swap

[LSxDreamer]

Lookin good!

[Gottork]

WOOOHOO one more step closer

[Emulsifide]

Bay harness is complete:



Sorry for the poopy picture. It took me a couple hours to get it done, but it was well worth it. It looks like a brand new harness now.

The next step is to mount the harness and pop a battery into the car to test all of the new power accessories. I will be tearing apart the engine harness as well (AIR delete, A/C delete, EVAP delete, etc).

[Emulsifide]

Loom up the wazoo:



Now I can finish the engine bay and engine harnesses. Wewt.

[esoteric18]

You can absolutely keep your body harness. I could of kept mine and made it work with the 01 engine harness. However, I wanted more than to just make the engine work (power windows, locks, mirrors, alarm, etc.) Because of this, I decided to swap the harness.

www.lt1swap.com has the wiring schematics for your car as well as ls1 pinouts.

Thanks a bunch for the info

[MunsterZ28]

ya you are very lucky to have manual windows, ive wanted to swap but cant find the parts.

[Emulsifide]

You can absolutely keep your body harness. I could of kept mine and made it work with the 01 engine harness. However, I wanted more than to just make the engine work (power windows, locks, mirrors, alarm, etc.) Because of this, I decided to swap the harness.

www.lt1swap.com has the wiring schematics for your car as well as ls1 pinouts.

[esoteric18]

Very nice great motivation for my 408 build, I was wondering if you think I may be able to keep my interior harness instead of going this route?

[Kwazrollinz28]

very nice!!!!

[Emulsifide]

I had a summer day today, so I worked on the car for a while.

Wiring is about 95% done at this point. I believe I've found a solution to the airbag problem. I'm going to re-pin the airbags with the old connectors (since I have both the male and female ends) and I just picked up a 99+ airbag controller that came out of a completely undamaged car.

Remember the rust on the floor in the last set of pictures I posted? It was rusted damn near all the way through, so I cut it out today and welded a patch in place. I used automotive seam sealer on it to make it totally waterproof. The Both the floor and the underbody in that area need to be painted again with rust encapsulator. No big deal. It's fixed and done with.

After patching the hole, I decided to start working on the manual to auto tranny tunnel adapter plate. When converting to an automatic transmission, there's a giant hole in the tranny tunnel that needs to be covered up. That area where the hole resides also provides the shifter with two mounting points to keep it steady and sturdy. I started out with a 12"x12"x16ga mild steel plate. I then installed the shifter and checked for clearance with the center console:





So far so good. I then took a couple of stand offs I had laying around, chopped them down to the proper size, and tapped them for M8x1.25 bolts. The final product is the following:






Yeah, I know the weld penetration sucks, but I was running out of gas and getting impatient. It doesn't need to be super strong or pretty. The next step is to chop out a hole for the shifter cable grommet, lay down a bead of seam sealer, and then pop rivet the thing into place. It will then get coated with rust encapsulator on both sides. Problem solved.

Lastly, I took a trip on Sunday to Battle Creek to meet LSxDreamer and bought a bunch of parts off of his parts car. I got the following:

Leather seats:


SS Hood!!!




The hood is definitely aftermarket (not SLP), but it appears to have very good fitment. There's a hole in one of the ram air tunnels because the own prior to the parts car owner had an alternator relocation kit (used for big beefy turbo systems) and needed to clearance the hood for it to fit. I plan on fixing the hole and I'm also considering painting the hood myself. It would be a good test to see if I can paint the exterior of a car. Block sanding is going to suck, but whatever. I'm up to the challenge.

I'm waiting for my power locks and window regulators to arrive before I button up the doors. I'm also waiting for some automotive (high temp resistant and fire retardant) wiring loom to arrive so I can get the engine bay wiring harness squared away and installed. Once the tranny tunnel adapter plate is finished and the floor patch is painted, I will put the interior back together. Concentration will then be shifted to the rear of the car (rear end, gas tank, fuel/brake lines, etc.)

That's it for now. Stay tuned!

[Gottork]

looking great, wish I had your enthusiasm to get mine done..

[ktl711]

I may just buy a good 01 air bag controller and re-pin the body harness to use the old connectors off of the 98 body harness. Any suggestions/ideas?

You might want to get yourself a 2001-2002 column while you're at it, as your new harness will probably support the redundant audio controls that were optional in the Camaros. Those would be a nice addition to your car.

[ktl711]

All of the power features I get are well worth the work.

Be careful what you wish for! Think twice before you accept the gift/curse of those power windows! Lots of people would kill for your manual regulators!

With that, I have some great pictures of a box I received in the mail today:
Yikes!
The box is of course a full set of Koni struts/shocks. Here's the puzzling part:
Who the eff ships car parts padded with a purple baby blanket??

Hmmm... purple baby blanket? Better check that box twice for stowaways!

[Emulsifide]

One more thing I forgot to mention, I stumbled across a problem. ALL of the connectors for the air bags and the air bag controller are different between the 98 and 01 harnesses! The air bag controller connector is completely different with a total of 9 pins coming out of the 98 harness and a total of 8 pins coming out of the 01 harness. Not good. The connectors are the only difference between the air bags and the two harnesses. I can essentially take the old connectors off of the 98 body harness and re-pin the 01 harness with them to make them work, but that's only half of the puzzle.

I'm not sure what to do about this one yet. I've been punched in the face twice by airbags in the past and it sucks, but I can honestly say they do what they're supposed to do.

I may just buy a good 01 air bag controller and re-pin the body harness to use the old connectors off of the 98 body harness. Any suggestions/ideas?

[Emulsifide]

Thanks for the comments guys!

Alrighty. I had to be at work this morning at 4:45am. Because of this, I got out of there at noon and was able to work on the car for about 6 hours straight. After finishing up becoming acclimated with the original body harness, I took a deep breath and pulled all of the carpet out. Here's what I found underneath:



Holy crap! My 103,000 mile 12 year old car has solid floors!! However, if you look in the picture where my right foot is, there is a golf ball size patch of rust popping through. I chipped away at it and didn't find much bad metal, so I'm going to just hit it with some rust converter and then rust encapsulator just like I did to the rest of the car.

I was very pleased to find a full set of pioneer 3-way speakers in all 6 speaker positions in the car:



Once I got done investigating, I got to work on swapping the harness. I read somewhere on LS1tech.com that the Firebird body harness is exactly the same as the Camaro body harness, except that the fog lamp switch cable is a little short. My replacement body harness is from a Firebird. I also took a crapshoot when purchasing the body harness and managed to get it from a convertible Firebird for dirt cheap. I said to myself there's no way in hell GM made sixteen different versions of the body harness (camaro/firebird, auto/manual, convertible/hardtop, ls1/l36) of which are two choices per four required options (2^4 = 16).

Turns out, I was right! My 2001 Firebird WS6 convertible body harness (with every power option GM gave the f-bodies) has LOTS of extra cables, but nothing is really missing from it....except for one thing. I did find one thing different which I figured out after a little bit of research tonight. My 98 base model Camaro has door switches (to turn on and off the cabin lights when you get into the car). I did not see these wires on the Firebird body harness. Turns out, the anti-theft alarm equipped cars have the sensors built into the door lock mechanism. I just hopped onto eBay, found out that TA Creations has plenty of them on there, and purchased a set of lock mechanisms that work with my body harness. Problem solved.

The only real pisser of the night is that the tard who I bought the Firebird body harness from promised me he wouldn't screw up anything on it. Well, he damn near broke every clip that connects the harness to the body. Because of this, I had to bust out the electrical tape and painstakingly cut off all of the body mount clips that were taped to the original body harness and then re-tape them to the Firebird body harness. Annoying and very time consuming.

At this point, the original body harness has been completely removed from the car and the Firebird harness is about 75% installed. I have to remove some rivets on the fuel pump connector assembly and then rivet the new one in place of it. I also have to wire the doors still (which is going to take me some extra time since I don't have a reference to go off of thanks to have no power options at all on the car originally). Lastly, I have to modify the speaker connectors on the harness to interface properly with the Pioneer speakers. No big deal.

One more picture of my epic mess:


I'm thrilled that I went this route instead of re-pinning the engine harness. All of the power features I get are well worth the work.

With that, I have some great pictures of a box I received in the mail today:


Yikes!



The box is of course a full set of Koni struts/shocks. Here's the puzzling part:


Who the eff ships car parts padded with a purple baby blanket??


Oh and that paper bag around the shock is going to do SOOO much to help cushion a hit. Un-friggin real. Thankfully, none of the shafts are bent and all of the shocks/struts function properly. I lucked out big time.

That's it for now. I'm very satisfied with today's work considering I was expecting to take a week to get even close to where I am today. Next up will be engine bay wiring, some touching up of the paint job where I missed a few spots, some stainless steel line bending for the rear brake line and fuel line.

Stay tuned....