LLY into 03 5500

[WoreoutLB7]

Real long story. Here's the condensed. Customer brought in an '03 5500 LB7 6 speed with a no start. Said he ran out of fuel and put some out of a dirty can to get home. Ended up finding a sheared cam pin along with trashed injectors and a melted piston.

Ordered a used engine and it shows up as a LLY. Salvage yard doesn't have an LB7 and I need to get this truck running ASAP or my ass is grass.

What would be fastest, cheapest, easiest?

1-Put entire LLY engine with turbo and electronics. I think I can get the ECM. I have everything but the LLY ECM and cab harness. What do I have to do to the original cab harness? The salvage yard hacked it all to hell. Engine harness is OK

2-Use LLY engine with LB7 turbo and electronics. Heard of this but they say it takes a bunch of tuning to make it run right. I have a V2 but don't know squat about tuning and don't want to learn on a customers truck. I would pay someone for a tune that works.

3-Use LLY short block and LB7 top end. This is a last resort because the LB7 heads need some valves and at least 4 injectors.

I already paid the core charge. I own a LB7 and a LLY, so I can use what's left over on my stuff or other customers trucks.

 

[TheBac]

Contact Russ at RPM Motorsports. (209) 509-9704
He's done many, many swaps and hopefully will have the answers you need. There may be some oddball things with the truck being a 5500 that he may know about.

 

[WoreoutLB7]

Thank you a million! I read a thread by him on this board earlier. That's what led me to sign up. I going to call him tomorrow.

 

[hondarider552]

Shoulda done more research before buying the replacement engine

 

[WoreoutLB7]

Shoulda done more research before buying the replacement engine

Wasn't my fault. Guy even asked me if it was a vin 1 or vin 2. Told him three times it was a LB7.

 

[Big Block 88]

Atleast your customer won't need to worry about injectors (as much)

 

[WoreoutLB7]

Yeah, wish I could keep all the LLY stuff for my 3500. Guy don't even know what kind of deal he's gettin.

 

[Big Block 88]

Hmmmm... I have an old tired lb7 I'll take your lly. Just hit 407k miles just broke in

 

[07keo02]

Best options are option 1 or 3.

Option 1 - Fairly easy option if you use complete LLY engine (injection system/turbo and all), also need the FICM from the LLY as well as the ECM. I don't think you will need the body harness. Might have a little trouble with the passenger side boost tube. Hook it all up, do an emergency relearn and you should be good. Only issue is he will no longer have a neutral safety for his clutch, not really a big deal.

Option 2- Pretty difficult. On an 03 truck it wouldn't really be worth the tuning nightmare. If it was an 01-02 you wouldn't have a choice anyways but Option 1 works for an 03.

Option 3- It would end up an Lb7 for all intensive purpose. Wouldn't be worth the extra money to work on the heads, get injectors etc, especially over option 1.

Just seen this was a 5500 so I apologize if some of this is incorrect. Russ is definitely your subject matter expert on this subject though.

 

[WoreoutLB7]

Here we go. Too late to back out now.

 

[RPM Motorsports]

Let the fun begin:thumb:... Ring/tx me again if you have anymore questions, or need anything. Think I'm going to trade my cherry pickers in for a 332, that looks like more fun.

 

[WoreoutLB7]

Yeah. That thing works pretty good. I work alone so, I wish I could make it remote control. Thanks for helping me.

 

[WoreoutLB7]

Finally got it running last night. Took forever to track down a harness. Haven't set the radiator back on, so I didn't run it much. Seemed to have a loud fuel knock. Hope it clears up. Robbed the ECM off my rollback. Didn't have to do a security relearn. So far it seems this is gonna be plug and play. My only concern is the speedo. This truck has a 6 speed manual. The harness is from an auto. I have a couple old tcms layin around that I could use if need be. Haven't looked to see if the speedo runs thru the ECM or tcm yet. May be a non issue. Just something I thought about after I got home.

 

[07keo02]

I don't think the speedo will be an issue. Speed is read from the transfer and through I assume the ECM. I believe fuel reading will be backwards and the truck will lose the neutral safety though.

 

[RPM Motorsports]

Must have sucked trying to locate that harness.

 

[WoreoutLB7]

Think I finally got this project away from here. The actual swap wasn't too bad. Here's your parts list:
Cab to engine harness
Both inter cooler pipes, unless you can fabricate. If so, you only need the hot side.
Duct from air cleaner to engine
Lly alternator. Don't know why, but the LB7 alternator would throw a code and not charge
A/c hoses

Pretty much plug and play. My harness was from an automatic (truck has a manual). Speed sensor used the same plug. I could have wired the neutral switch wires to the clutch switch but this truck doesn't have a pto and they don't use cruise anyway.


Here's the weird part, I robbed the ECM from my auto C5500 just to get everything working. I reflashed it thru TDS with a VIN for a manual trans LLY C5500 I got off an old eBay ad to get the speedo working. It worked, but it read really slow. Like 20 mph at actual 50 mph. Later, I got an ECM from a pickup and put it on my C5500. Reflashed with my VIN from TDS. Speedo ran really fast. So I swapped the ECMs and reflashed with their respective VINs and all was well. WTF? I also had to modify the fuel level calibration on the manual truck with the pickup ECM with EFI live. Copied and pasted from my truck, but still wasn't right. It ran out of fuel at over 1/4 tank. Had to customize it. Still not sure if the rear tank transfer is working. It worked great with the 5500 ECM. I read my original file with EFI and full flashed it to the pickup ECM and still didn't work right. Hope you can understand what I wrote there.

 

[WoreoutLB7]

Oh, forgot to add, the thing ate two sets of injectors before I found that the fuel cooler had a bad case of aids or something and kept contaminating the fuel.