corey331
Well-known member
OK, so I was busy and slacking again last night. Now I don't have pics of everything, I haven't been up to my engine shop in quite some time, but I'll get more pics of stuff that I am doing this evening.
One of the places I have made a lot of progress in is designing my cooling system. Now, I will say this, if you are planning on doing this swap and just want to make it easy, spend the $2200 or so and buy the Hardin Marine accessory set up. Its pretty, and bolts on in less than an hour and you are ready to go. Or you could go the route that that Coop showed with the closed cooling set up from CP Performance. But, me being me (kind of a tightwad, lol) I had no desire to spend that kind of money on the stuff. So here is what I have come up with and it should work great. My plan all along was to ditch the circulating pump off the front of the motor and do a crossover style cooling system. The stock pump is big, bulky and just plain ugly. The down side to doing that was the stock pump also housed the thermostat and has the tensioner for the serpentine belt set up mounted to it. I quickly came up with a solution to use some adapter and just run no thermostat at all. Well, the more research I did on these LS motors, I decided that might not be a good idea. Come to find out, these motors respond really well to having some heat in them, and pumping cool lake water through it 100% of the time, the heat wasn't going to be there. Plus, keeping the motor that cool all the time was going to effect my oil temps and I was afraid that I wouldn't get it to proper operating temps either. So it was back to the drawing board and doing a lot of searching on the web, I came across what I have now.
I am going to be running a Jabsco brass raw water pump. Jason Kunkel had this one laying around his shop and made me a helluva deal on it. I got it all cleaned up and started figuring out how I was going to make it work. It is the type of pump that bolts directly to the crank shaft (they are used on most inboard wakeboard/ski boats), and a stock LS crank pulley (which is also the balancer) has no bolt holes. Well, after looking for a awhile and talking with customer support at Summit (they have awesome customer service) I came up with part number SUM-2500. Its a SFI spec balancer/pulley that has three threaded holes in the exact locations I need to bolt this pump to. (I'll post a pic when I get home). So now all I have to do is build a bracket that will bolt to the motor to keep the housing stationary. Here is the pump.
So the water will run from the lower unit, through the pump, through my oil/power steering cooler (I'll post pics of that bad mama jama later), then up into the crossover I came up with. With a lot of digging, I came up with this for my crossover system. I found that Moroso makes adapters now that will allow you bolt a BBC circulating pump to a LS motor. The reason they came up with it is apparently an electric pump for a BBC is around $250 cheaper than on for a LS motor. Well this worked out perfect for me cause now I can bolt those on and then run any aftermarket crossover for a BBC, like the one I got from CP Performance. Moroso also then designed a remote mount thermostat housing that also uses a standard BBC thermostat, just like the marine on I got from CP Performance. They even make a bracket that will allow me to mount the remote housing to the front of the passenger side LS cylinder head. Here are all of those parts...
The best part of all this is now I get to ditch the big bulky stock pump and still run a thermostat so I can keep my engine running temps up where they should be. As you can see from the fittings I bought, I am going to be running rubber hose. That will only be temporary. I just want to make sure everything works before I go spending all the money on -AN fittings and lines.
Now for some of the pretty/motor porn stuff. I have never been too much into having a ton of polished or chrome stuff on my engines. So since all my cooling adapters are billet, I decided to continue that trend throughout the motor. I picked up a set of Billet valve covers from Texas Speed (the company that did the CNC port work on my heads), a billet valley cover, and a 15" billet flame arrestor that was ball milled to match my valve covers. This is a little "mock up' shot I did on my work bench with my carb and the Edelbrock Victor Jr. intake I am going to be running. I think it looks pretty cool....
Here is the bad mama jama oil cooler I came across. I got a killer deal on it, that's why I went with one so big. Its a CP Performance combo oil/powersteering cooler. it has a built in 190-220 degree thermostat (no worries about oil temps now). It measures 3" around by 29" long and is rated for 1000hp, so its just going to laugh at my little motor. I know its overkill, but I couldn't pass up the deal. Heck, it even came with the billet mounting brackets, keeping up with my under hatch theme.
One other thing I have decided to change is my ignition control. Reading on the LS forums, there are a bunch of people that have been having trouble with the MSD 6012 box I was originally planning on running. Apparently a lot of the time when you get over 500hp, the box can't keep up. So my engine builder turned me onto this.
http://www.daytona-sensors.com/SmartSpark.html
Its a little bit more money than the MSD but it works a lot better. I really like the fact that I can change my tunes if I need to with the twist of a knob instead of having to lug my laptop with me on the boat all the time.
That's about all I have for now. Hopefully there will be more in the upcoming weeks and I'll be better about updating my progress.
One of the places I have made a lot of progress in is designing my cooling system. Now, I will say this, if you are planning on doing this swap and just want to make it easy, spend the $2200 or so and buy the Hardin Marine accessory set up. Its pretty, and bolts on in less than an hour and you are ready to go. Or you could go the route that that Coop showed with the closed cooling set up from CP Performance. But, me being me (kind of a tightwad, lol) I had no desire to spend that kind of money on the stuff. So here is what I have come up with and it should work great. My plan all along was to ditch the circulating pump off the front of the motor and do a crossover style cooling system. The stock pump is big, bulky and just plain ugly. The down side to doing that was the stock pump also housed the thermostat and has the tensioner for the serpentine belt set up mounted to it. I quickly came up with a solution to use some adapter and just run no thermostat at all. Well, the more research I did on these LS motors, I decided that might not be a good idea. Come to find out, these motors respond really well to having some heat in them, and pumping cool lake water through it 100% of the time, the heat wasn't going to be there. Plus, keeping the motor that cool all the time was going to effect my oil temps and I was afraid that I wouldn't get it to proper operating temps either. So it was back to the drawing board and doing a lot of searching on the web, I came across what I have now.
I am going to be running a Jabsco brass raw water pump. Jason Kunkel had this one laying around his shop and made me a helluva deal on it. I got it all cleaned up and started figuring out how I was going to make it work. It is the type of pump that bolts directly to the crank shaft (they are used on most inboard wakeboard/ski boats), and a stock LS crank pulley (which is also the balancer) has no bolt holes. Well, after looking for a awhile and talking with customer support at Summit (they have awesome customer service) I came up with part number SUM-2500. Its a SFI spec balancer/pulley that has three threaded holes in the exact locations I need to bolt this pump to. (I'll post a pic when I get home). So now all I have to do is build a bracket that will bolt to the motor to keep the housing stationary. Here is the pump.
So the water will run from the lower unit, through the pump, through my oil/power steering cooler (I'll post pics of that bad mama jama later), then up into the crossover I came up with. With a lot of digging, I came up with this for my crossover system. I found that Moroso makes adapters now that will allow you bolt a BBC circulating pump to a LS motor. The reason they came up with it is apparently an electric pump for a BBC is around $250 cheaper than on for a LS motor. Well this worked out perfect for me cause now I can bolt those on and then run any aftermarket crossover for a BBC, like the one I got from CP Performance. Moroso also then designed a remote mount thermostat housing that also uses a standard BBC thermostat, just like the marine on I got from CP Performance. They even make a bracket that will allow me to mount the remote housing to the front of the passenger side LS cylinder head. Here are all of those parts...
The best part of all this is now I get to ditch the big bulky stock pump and still run a thermostat so I can keep my engine running temps up where they should be. As you can see from the fittings I bought, I am going to be running rubber hose. That will only be temporary. I just want to make sure everything works before I go spending all the money on -AN fittings and lines.
Now for some of the pretty/motor porn stuff. I have never been too much into having a ton of polished or chrome stuff on my engines. So since all my cooling adapters are billet, I decided to continue that trend throughout the motor. I picked up a set of Billet valve covers from Texas Speed (the company that did the CNC port work on my heads), a billet valley cover, and a 15" billet flame arrestor that was ball milled to match my valve covers. This is a little "mock up' shot I did on my work bench with my carb and the Edelbrock Victor Jr. intake I am going to be running. I think it looks pretty cool....
Here is the bad mama jama oil cooler I came across. I got a killer deal on it, that's why I went with one so big. Its a CP Performance combo oil/powersteering cooler. it has a built in 190-220 degree thermostat (no worries about oil temps now). It measures 3" around by 29" long and is rated for 1000hp, so its just going to laugh at my little motor. I know its overkill, but I couldn't pass up the deal. Heck, it even came with the billet mounting brackets, keeping up with my under hatch theme.
One other thing I have decided to change is my ignition control. Reading on the LS forums, there are a bunch of people that have been having trouble with the MSD 6012 box I was originally planning on running. Apparently a lot of the time when you get over 500hp, the box can't keep up. So my engine builder turned me onto this.
http://www.daytona-sensors.com/SmartSpark.html
Its a little bit more money than the MSD but it works a lot better. I really like the fact that I can change my tunes if I need to with the twist of a knob instead of having to lug my laptop with me on the boat all the time.
That's about all I have for now. Hopefully there will be more in the upcoming weeks and I'll be better about updating my progress.
