99 k2500 suburban ls swapped build

[99burbK2500]

So I have posted on here a few times, ive owned my 99 k2500 suburban for a little over a year now. the vortec 350 gave me nothing but trouble, come to find out it was a l31r crate engine, when I bought it the guy told me he had just installed a new water pump and a 160* thermostat. should have been my clue... nothing but over heating issues and the heater cores kept clogging. system was packed full of rust and stop leak. lots and lots of stop leak. after installing new head gaskets and still having issues, I also replaced a load of other parts in this process, the engine locked up on me. I wanted to ls swap the truck and figured no better time than now. wanted a 6.0 but couldn't find one in my budget or with everything I needed for the swap. time kept going by and I ended up with a 01 lr4 with 194k on it. got to hear it run before he pulled it and despite being covered in oil and looking neglected it ran amazing. oil was clean coolant was nice etc. got the engine for $525 with EVERYTHING. manifolds. 1.5ft of exhaust off each manifold, I was going to graft it into my stock exhaust, the fuse box, pcm all the wiring everything, it was as if the truck was cut away from the engine and its related components. the plan was to clean it up, reseal it and install it as cheap as possible to get the truck back up and going...... one thing lead to another and the mentality of, well while I'm in there I might as well.... got me and got me good. while the engine looked amazing inside and I should have left it alone I didn't. I tore the engine down to a bare block, honed it and finished the cylinder walls, hot tanked it and all its parts, painted it, custom file fit mahle moly rings with the top gap opened to .020 from the factory .015, boost in the future plans. put all new clevite h series bearings in the engine including cam bearings, the rods had a extra .001 clearance and were narrowed. rod bearing clearance came in at .0025. I installed arp rod bolts and speed master head studs, had a set of 862s I ported laying around so I put them on as well. installed a summit racing billet steel double roller adjustable timing set and a ported ls6 corvette oil pump. manifolds were warped and I installed a set of 1 7/8ths pace setter long tubes. all new true dual exhaust 2.5in out the back at a 45*. bench tuned by dyno tune motorsports here in ohio. had the passkey disabled as well. heres where it gets different. to ME it was easier to stand the engine and trans alone from the truck. leave all the trucks electronics intact so the truck ran the truck and the 411 ran the 4.8 and my 4l80e, also had the segment swap done and a hot tune put in for the 80e as well. so under the dood I have to pcms, two fuse blocks and two wiring harnesses. I did trim the trucks harness down, got rid of engine control related wiring for the 5.7 that was no longer needed. for things like oil pressure, engine temp etc I piggy backed the wiring so that the 411 would get a reading and the truck would get a reading and the gauges would work. I still need to do a lot of clean up but everything works! the only thing I havnt hooked up is the tach and a obd port/mil light for the 411. now some pictures!!

 

[99burbK2500]

Here's the cool stuff and some more info, it gets better....

cant figure out how to get pictures on here, tells me they are too big or shows up with "img" and a box with a x in it, so here is the link to the folder for the truck on my google. I call the truck *********.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/YSnZRwbuECYAYzjE7

So the story continues, got the truck running, was super excited, put a little over a 100 miles on it open header and just carried the collector caps with me to put on when I got where I was going. didn't want cold air coming up the headers and warping the exhaust valves. never seen it but ive herd of it happening so better safe than sorry. dropped truck off and got the exhaust done. drove it home and it ran soo good and sounded great! pulled onto my road, about 200 miles on engine at this point and had oil changed once after ring seating, did a wot pull from about 15mph till the 3rd gear change. truck ran better with the tuned up 4.8 than the 350 ever did. got to my place and put it in park, knock knock said the 4.8..... had a know when unloaded in park and only when warm... great. took truck to work the next day and yanked the pan, #1 rod bearing had spun and #2 was worn a little aggressively. brake away torque was in the 20s for #1 & #2. I put all those bolts in by hand and torqued them all. not sure what happened but it is what it is, I used engine oil on the bolts instead of the arp lube. put engine back together and drove it home. I now have the engine back out, crank was junk so I dropped off a ls1 crank and rods I had laying around to get cleaned up and have the 4.8 flat tops put on and then balanced. guess 4 of my rods are out of round.... ls1 looked fine on tear down but he swears they are junk. so now I'm going to drop off some lq4 rods I have that also cam out of a running engine tomorrow and hope I can finally get this **** back and together. its now going to be a 5.3 with 4.8 flat tops, getting a btr stage 3 truck cam, ls6 springs and .040 cometic head gaskets to tighten the quench down and bump the compression to around 10.94:1. I will be using the arp lube on the rod bolts this go around and triple checking the damn things. hoping she will run real good this time! the bench tune from before was super fat as you can see from the plugs I pulled out of the engine when I tore it back down. engine had 400 miles or less on it. I had a intermittent hard start were the truck would crank and crank and you could hear flames running down the exhaust burning raw fuel. I know think the excessive fuel in the tune was causing my intermittent long crank. I will be taking it back this time and getting it dyno tuned. I also do have the air conditioning relocation kit to put my stock a/c compressor in the stock location. I need to build a custom cold air kit due to not being able to relocate my battery to the driver side. I have the stock air box and was going to use it but the pcm and fuse box is in that location. I am going to the junk yard to get a factory fuse box holder to put the engine fuse box in and mount the pcm under. ill get more pics up soon of the cleaned up wiring and hopefully the 5.3 put together. if you have any questions about how I made some things work. mounts, wiring, heater hoses etc just ask. I already made this post long enough. I did this away that I havnt seen done in a gmt400 truck, to me it made it easier and less variables. I knew I could make the engine run with just a couple connections and could figure the rest out. lt1swap.com and the facebook page were a huge help in getting this done. now I just gotta get it back together!!

 

[R422b]

Just curious what brand and weight oil were you using?
Just for curiosity sake?

 

[99burbK2500]

I was using 10w30 in the 4.8, new build up and running, build threat in off road section.