k2500 burb camping rig ls swapped

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99burbK2500

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A little over a year ago I traded my 2004 s10 blazer for my now 1999 k2500 suburban. truck is a LT model with all gray interior and cloth. 5.7 vortec with 4:10 gears and a working g80 locker. odometer said 164k miles when we got it. got the truck and everything was cool. every now and then if I ran it hard it would start bogging down, always seemed like I was at my destination so I would shut it down and the next day or hours later it would be fine. that ghost shows its self later. did a vin search on it and saw the original owner had it till 47k miles, I'm also a gm tech so I have access to dealer service history. owner had it serviced every 3k at the dealer. after that the next owner sold it at 190k miles..... then the next at 196k and the next at 150k miles... great a cluster swap happened. guy I bought it from got it at 154k and the title did say odometer discrepancy, thought nothing of it because the body and frame were so damn clean. only rust is bottom of passenger door. doing the math at 15k a year the truck actually has around 274k miles current day. besides a set of wheel spacers in the back and a small trim on the front bumper the truck was other wise stock as stock. heres what she looked like when I got her.
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99burbK2500

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when I looked at the truck it had some new parts on it including a water pump and radiator. owner said the thermostat stuck it got a little hot so he put a 160 degree thermostat and new water pump on it, should have known something was up with the 160 tstat. my wife was driving it and the idler froze up and smoked the belt. she over heated it and the radiator exploded. I had it towed home and fixed it up. we now had over heating issues all the time. cooling system was loaded down with some kind of stop leak or head gasket repair. was driving it to work one day and it started getting hot again. at this point I had flushed the cooling system and heater cores about 8 times trying to get the crud out, thinking (hoping) that crap was my problem. got mad and just kept driving it, temp gauge pegged for about 25 miles. got to the dealership I was working at and due to my dumped true duals I put on it the passenger rear wheel well has dex cool dripping from it. told my self mentally, needs head gaskets now so tear it down. heres what I found... burning coolant eh?
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99burbK2500

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so at this point I was on a time crunch and went to work, we had a trip to bowling green coming up, 6 hour drive one way. got it back together with some nice gm cast polished aluminum Chevrolet logo valve covers and fel pro 1103 (if I recall) head gaskets to bump the compression. damn thing still ran hot with a normal t-stat at this point. yanked stat and took our trip. 1100+ miles later we are back home trip went great. put a 180 back in it and it was running around 225 all the time. ugh wtf is going on? was driving it to work the day after we got back and passed a semi, here comes the bogging down crap again.... 3 miles later with 30psi of oil pressure the damn engine locks up. at this point I wanted to ls swap it with a 6.0 but was not planning on it this soon. I'm not a junk yard engine kinda guy. been burnt too many times. so I found a guy online and local to me that sold ls engines as swaps. no 6.0s but said he had a 5.3 and 2 4.8s. took off one day at lunch and heard the "5.3" engine run from a cold start and still in the donor truck. truck was a vin v truck so I knew it had a 4.8, guy swore he had a 5.3. 194k miles and ran great, $525 and I was satisfied with settling for a 4.8. get the swap down and truck back on road, put a 6.0 in later. I got EVERYTHING for $525. heres what she looked like after a partial tear down to clean it up.

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99burbK2500

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Plan at this point was to degrease it, reseal it and stuff it in. might not make the torque the 5.7 did but 275hp lr4 I was sure it would get the job done. as I cant leave well enough alone the, well while I'm in there mentality got to me bad.

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BNielsen

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Damn, that sucks you had to deal with all that garbage, it looks like a damn clean truck.
Not a bad score for $525, personally I would've just done a mild Vortec 383 if I killed it, but I always love seeing other folks do LS swaps.
Got any other big plans for it?
 

99burbK2500

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engine came completely apart. I was just going to head stud it, add arp rod bolts and do a health check. I had degreased the engine and despite my efforts water got in the cylinders and caused a little rust. so a hone was in order. I ordered clevite H series bearings for the mains, rods and cam. speed master head studs. I had the arp rod bolts and a ported ls6 corvette oil pump laying around. a summit racing billet double timing set with a roller bearing on the thrust face was also added. I wanted to add a cam but funds did not allow at the time and I needed the truck back. I had a set of self ported 862 heads laying around that went on as well. I hadn file fit a set of Mahle Moly rings and opened the top gap up to .020 over the stock .015. second gap was left at the stock gap. all rings were fit to their home cylinder. I used some random ball hone we had at the dealer ship with pb blaster as my honing lube, finished the bores with a red scotch bright pad and cleaned with brake clean. used napa assembly grease in the bottom end and gm EOS on the bores and rings/pistons.

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99burbK2500

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had the engine together at this point and waiting to go into the truck.

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99burbK2500

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I had upgraded to the later model valve stem seals and mls head gaskets. I used a cheap engine tech gasket set. bites me in the ass later. had to stretch the valve cover gaskets out so they would even fit. with some fragola performance fittings and ict billet adaptor plates I was able to get the engine in the truck and most the main connections done. note that in this application the mounts need to be on the second hole back from the front.

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99burbK2500

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now I started to tidy up some wiring. I took most of the engine stuff from the 5.7 out of the truck harness to clean it up. kept what I needed. oil pressure, ect and air conditioning wiring etc. I made the engine and trans a stand alone unit from the truck using the ls harness, fuse block and 411 pcm. I also installed a set of pace setter long tubes for the 2000+ body style due to the manifolds being warped that came with the engine.

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99burbK2500

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I used the donor trucks upper rad hose and modified the obs lower hose. the heater hoses from the obs fit on the water pump perfect, I had to cut the aluminum fitting off the one that used to go into the intake manifold. I used a 98 ls1 three wire ect sensor and pigtail for the coolant temp so my gauge would work and piggy backed the engine harness wires in so the 411 saw coolant temp too. did the same with the oil pressure sender and my oil pressure gauge works too. piggy backed the speedo wiring into the vss so each pcm sees vss signal and my speedo works. I ran a B+ to the engines fuse box, a key on 12 volt to the a9 terminal on the c1 block, I used the trucks stock starter signal wire, and had to run a jumper from the trucks fuse box for the fuel pump relay to the engine fuse box. since the block box (aka 5.7 pcm) isn't seeing a crank and run signal the fuel pump wouldn't do any more than prime at key on. I don't want the black box to see rpm or it will request the MIL for inputs that are missing and circuits I deleted. the truck starts with the key and everything works except the tach, just need to run the wire. no lights on the dash are on and no other modules are any wiser due to thinking the truck is just KOEO all the time. I had my tuner delete the passkey, do a segment swap for the 4l80e and do a hot tune up on the trans and engine, just a bench tune.

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