L29 454 swap

[marauderprime]

I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the harness. I don’t know if anyone else has any recent experience, but this is my third Howell efi harness. I had a tpi harness, an lsx harness, and now this one.

I have always had a great experience with them, butthis time around, their customer service has been questionable, the harness has several errors in it, and I think their wire lengths are out of whack, because the only way I could route the main harness so that it actually fit the engine, forces me to run it over the back of the intake, and it looks awful, it’s right in plain view, tight in places, loose in others, and there’s no way to give and take.

the alternator plug was wrong, so I had to buy my own plug and splice it on. They put a cs130 plug on it instead of the cs144 plug.

then yesterday when I was buttoning everything up, I discovered this.
Somebody put the male end that comes attached to the 02 sensors on the harness for the connector to plug it into.
So I have 2 male connectors on each side.

I guess I can go find a female connector and splice those on too, but this harness was the most expensive single purchase of the swap. I e-mailed them and asked them if they could send me a female to female adapter harness, which may be helpful depending on the exhaust routing in the future, but jeez.

they also didn’t tell me that they weren’t including a new injector harness, since it’s a plug-in deal, so I plugged this new harness into the crusty brittle thousands of heat cycled stock injector harness. I had a whole conversation with my rep about this, since I was planning on switching to a single plane 4bbl style efi intake I asked him if he could add a little extra length to my injectors. “Shouldn’t be a problem as long as you can tuck it under the intake.”

seems like it would have been an excellent time to mention that the injector harness isn’t included in that impressive price tag.

 

[motorheadmike]

Holley's Terminator X has universal options now. Too little, too late... but, food for thought.

 

[454GrandPrix]

the engine is strong!!!! I was fully expecting it to be a little boggy and chuggy, when I blipped the throttle since it is basically almost completely stock with 80 lb. injectors and a mail order tune, but holy cow, that was probably the crispest throttle response I’ve felt or seen in a really long time.

Dude, this is fantastic! I'm so glad to see this beast finally fire up. I can't wait for your first drive report.

 

[marauderprime]

Dude, this is fantastic! I'm so glad to see this beast finally fire up. I can't wait for your first drive report.

Hey Dempsey, I got inspiration, and alot of help from you on this swap pal, I appreciate the kind words!!!!

 

[scoti]

Checking in to see if you've made any further progress?

 

[Supercharged111]

I would have just built my own harness. They're easy enough to modify and as you pointed out buying premade ain't cheap.

 

[marauderprime]

I would have just built my own harness. They're easy enough to modify and as you pointed out buying premade ain't cheap.

I agree, but eventually you run into a cost benefit analysis. I have never done a harness before, I am not particularly proficient at wiring, and I am on a deadline. I have got to beat this baby my wife is gestating, because if I don't I am 100% positive work on the car will stop indefinately, so in this particular instance, the 600 bucks was worth it.

In an update on the harness situation, Howell returned my call late last week, and identified that a mistake was made. They are sending me out a female to female adapter so that I can plug my 02 sensors right in. I am also still chasing down odds and ends fittings. I deleted my heater hoses for now (its Florida, they typically are more trouble than they are worth), and I am tracking down the correct plugs.

I have a very very uneasy feeling that I forgot to hook up a vacuum line on the stock L29 FPR. I hope that is not the case. I am pretty resourceful in getting things into tight spaces, but I suspect I might have to pull the upper intake to plug this in. It isnt the end of the world, but its still a step back.

I am also having issues with the throttle cable and the transmission shift cable still. I purchased the B&M Cable that was "Guaranteed to solve the problem," to the point where the member who recommended it and said he had used it was borer-line sarcastic with me about why I hadn't done it already, to find out that it wont work without serious modification.

I am finalizing harness, hose and line routing, and my driveshaft is done and ready for pickup.

Sadly, I believe Dempsey owes me an I told you so on this, but it appears that the stock hood wont fit after all, but not for the reason one might think. The stock L29 manifold clears. The Stock L29 A/C compressor does not. I will solve this problem by running a black goodmark cowl hood.

The solution would be running a vortec 350, s-10, f-body, or b-body (or if youre feeling froggy Y-body) Serpentine belt assembly with the Kwik performance bracket adapters, but I am already in for a penny, and like the beefier heavy duty truck accessories, so Cowl hood it is!

I won't be able to work on it again till march, but I hope to have this thing done in March.

 

[Supercharged111]

FWIW the upper is easy peasy to take off. It's not significant enough to consider it a setback.

 

[marauderprime]

Bolted the front clip on. Even though we documented all of the shins and put everything back on in the reverse of how it went on, the door to fender gaps weren’t identical. I need to do some work at the top of the fenders to tighten it up, but everything works Theres no interference.

I suspect that with all of the weight off of the front bumper shocks, they extended a little bit which caused some of the issue. Fortunately I had 3 sets of hands so I was able to wrestle it to useable shape.

put the radiator back in, probably have a champion 3 row in it sooner rather than later. I’m also eventually going to relocate the battery to the trunk, so don’t laugh at the current air intake setup. I couldn’t get the factory trans cooler to work. I was able to get the stock 4l80e lines to work with the stock radiator. These shots should give you an idea of how much higher the a/c compressor sits.

driveshaft is in.

I monkeyed with the fuel pump, and fuel line routing today. Now I can’t get fuel to the rail so I’m sure I’ll have to spend another hour on that. We started hooking up the intel lite pic dash. Dash is bolted in, speedo, tach, water temp, and oil pressure are hooked up.

The l29 lower radiator hose didn’t work, the upper fit perfectly. Does anyone know if the water pump inlet on a bbc pump is the same size as the sbc inlet? I’m assuming a stock 84 Monte as lower hose will work (but I don’t know if it’ll fit over the bbc inlet).

power steering fittings disappeared, so I had to order a new pressure and return setup for my car.

the stock truck throttle cable is really not working, so I have to figure out a solution for that.

I didn’t even work on the shifter issue today, that’s still a thing.

one of the stock brake lines routes 3” away from the dead center of the drivers side exhaust manifold exit. That’s fun.

I want to add some heat wrap and some wire loom, but that’s everything. I’m very encouraged.

 

[Supercharged111]

Not sure about hose diameters, but I may or may not know a guy who ran a hose that was flared out with an exhaust pipe expander and he didn't have any issues.