Any idea how much more weight will be added?

 

I would guess about 400 lbs. But that is just a guess.

 

I love your ambition, this has got to be the coolest thing I have ever seen. You are going to have fun with the wiring, I just finished up an LS1 swap in my 04' Colorado. The BCM was a major pain, that is what your problem will be with as well. Can't wait to see future progress!!

 

If you have any input on the best way to wire this car, I am all ears. Mechanically I am very comfortable taking a sawzall & plasma cutter to a car and fabing whatever is needed to make it work, however.....the computers I'm going to need a bunch of help on. This is an open invitation
to all the members here that have have experience mating 2 different cars together electrically to speak up. I really think that this can be done and almost all of the safety & creature comfort features can be retained. I just hope it won't need a team of GM engineers to do it.

 

Use the computer/wire harness out of the donor Camero,They run these LS1's in older Nova&Chevelle all the time.
Good Thread,Enjoying the build

 

Yes, or there are aftermarket companies producing stand-alone computers & harnesses for the ever-popular LS swaps

 

Well they beat me to it lol!!

I wired the LS1 in my Colorado stand alone, like you would in your case. You will never get your BCM to play nice with the LS1 PCM. The downfall to this way is your gauges will no longer work, so you will have to go aftermarket. I chose to run an IPAD with the PLX wifi OBD2 adapter, and I am running the dashcommand app for my gauge cluster. There are 3 simple steps to wiring this setup, this worked for me and this came from a retro rod specialist.

LS1 wiring Harness
C100, C101, C102, C103 (4 main connectors, white, blue, grey, black)
Take all the black wires in these connectors, and miscellaneous grounds throughout the harness and make a good ground off the body for them. GM grounds some of them off the driver's side head, but this is not a very good ground as I found out. I grounded all mine in one place, which made troubleshooting easy.

All the orange wires in these connectors go to 12V constant. (Battery, FUSE BOX)

All the pink wires from these connectors go to 12V on ignition (FUSE BOX)

The factory fuse box comes out in sections from the bottom, when you flip it upside down you will see what I am talking about. Usually you will have 3-5 sections, you will have one whole section to reuse for your swap. The engine has about 30 different connections under that, I wired all my LS1 pink wires into the fuse box and It all works just fine. I have hundreds of pictures of all of this stuff, I will see If I can figure out how to download pictures on here.

Basically If you just take care of the grounds, pink and orange wires It will run standalone. DO NOT try and splice the BCM wires for this swap, all your lights and everything will work fine just no gauges.

 

Used the plasma cutter to start removing a bunch of metal around the rear axle today. Cut out quite a bit of metal to make room for the axle to move up and down. I decided on 1 1/2" x 3" rectangular tubing for the rwd conversion. I'm mocking it up from wood of that size. Once I get both sides done I can start on coil over shock mounts and trailing arm/panhard bar mounts. When it all fits I will duplicate the wood with metal. Still don't know about rear tires and wheels. I need to have more info on the wheel wells and weather or not I'm going to tub them and how much. I'd like to go with 255/55/17 on a 9 1/2" rim but I might need to go narrower. The problem with going with a really wide tire/wheel combination is the huge amount of metal that has to be removed from the car to fit them. Of course everything needs to be rebuilt and re-enforced when the cutting is done. I just keep thinking how cool it would be to light up a serious pair of meats in a HHR......

 

Again, What a GREAT job, and GREAT step by step. This is one thread I follow everyday! Best of luck