Thread: Engine swap for dummies?

Damnit Bill! You're not gonna leave anything for me to contribute!

Thanks to everyone for all the advice. I did end up making it to a local yard during a sale, and while I'd rather not admit how long it took me, I walked out with an engine, spare alt, and spare starter, for $175.

When I have time to start doing the actual swap, I'll take pretty pictures of everything to go along with the steps Bill already laid out. I know you've already got them, Bill, but I want to do *something*...

I ended up getting the engine out of an '01 LeSabre - while I'm expecting to just put the two engines next to each other and swap what looks different, anyone care to let me know what to expect to have to change to get this into my '01 GT?

I just finally completed my swap, and have the new engine running - thanks again, Bill!

The only thing I noticed that doesn't seem to be in your instructions is that in the "under rear of engine" section, if you're sticking with a stock-ish setup you also need to disconnect the rear O2 sensor (the connector you want is at the rear of the heat shield over the catalytic converter), and work that sensor and wire out through/around the heat shield.

Valhad

Originally Posted by BillBoost37

Val..I leave the wiring harness in the car. That way you don't have to pull anything wiring related. Just unhook it from the motor. It may seem daunting to a newer car guy, but all the connectors really only go one place and having been loomed and laying in that one place for a long time, they appear to go right back in place to their correct item

Clearly I'm still missing something about how this is done. I left my wiring harness in the car, but I couldn't find any way to flop the harness adequately out of the way with that O2 sensor still connected. Once I'd disconnected it, I had lots of play and could flop it forward over the front bumper. Pretty sure I got it all re-routed right - or close. The rear knock sensor extension harness seemed way longer than it needed to be, but I just zip-tied it out of the way.

GaBear - I know the feeling. I don't have a garage of my own right now either, and all my friends live 2+ hours away. The only way I could make this work was to beg one of them to let me use his place, and drive up there in our other car to work on the GP on the weekends. It figures that the friend who was willing to let me use his garage has a tiny space, too, so I couldn't even get the whole car into his garage. So... now the engine is in, but I've got collateral damage I've got to deal with that resulted from having to roll the car in and out of the garage with no way to support the trans while the engine was out.
Thankfully, Bill's already got a write-up on how to pull an axle, so I'll be on to that next.