i had to buy used. since im young and yeah i can only afford so much a month .

 

thats not cool at all

you shot my dreams down hillsdale.

lol jk


but that does make since about the bumper being so fat in the front

 

As stated you would be cheaper to just buy a SS and be done with it. You also would have a warranty.

Also as stated you can not change the front as the SS nosw is what it is to cover the intercooler.

To change all this and buy the tanny and engine not counting your time and what ever time you have with someone else doing things like computer flashes etc this would be closing in on just under $10K to do.

 

sorry I was saying if you are going to buy a new hhr but like the non-ss body then you could sell yours and buy a differetn ls/lt manual tranny and then do the engine swap or just upgrade the engine in the manny ls/lt

 

if you got the money to do a swap, why not just add a turbo to your 2.2? can a blow through system work on DI engines? (to eliminate the need for an intercooler) Ive heard of this being done, but am not sure of all the ramifications.

 

you can always run boost on the 2.2

I know they have kits for the cavalier and sunfire. in theory you can just put a turbo on and run up to 9lbs of boost

the hahn kit for the cavalier adds 80 to 90 WHP at 8 PSI

 

Adding a clutch really isnt as hard as it sounds. Dont really know about the HHR but Ive changed a auto to manual in a Ford ranger, was an easy swap all the mounts were there just bolted it all up works perfect, and been running for years. Just find a wrecked one and get everything including wiring and ecm. Wouldnt need a flash at all, would just be plug and play and well under 10 grand as stated above. If you got the time and some money would be a fun swap Im wanting to do it a few years.

 

i would say turbo the 2.2 you have. a cobalt kit should theorhetically fit. you would just need to figure out the intercooler. and have tuning done to get everything to work. you could have a more powerful 2.2 than a 2.0 for cheaper than doing an engine swap. engine swaps nowdays are very hard and costly.

 

i think the one thing everyone seems to be overlooking is the wiring nightmare involved in this swap. over on the LNF forums, there was a guy that came in that was wanting to swap an LNF into his race car (like 1,600# race car, similar looking to a Ford GT40), and we were discussing the insane wiring headache that would be involved. nearly the entire vehicle's wiring harness would have to be swapped with an SS, along with having the ECM and BCM from the same car, if you want OnStar, you'd probably have to get that module out of the exact same car...basically EVERYTHING would have to be made for the LNF's tricky Bosch ECM

 

When doing an engine swap on these newer cars that need signals from multipal computers you would be better off going with a stand alone engine managment system. I run a Haltech on my DSM and it's great. You don't need as many sensors and can tun off of MAP or MAS. I just recomend getting help with the tuning from someone that knows how to tune that engine managment system.

Yonash did no one sugest to the guy your talking about above to go with a stand alone unit?