Megan the Tahoe

[Tonyrodz]

Last night I checked out and picked up my new LQ9 6.0L for the Tahoe and then took it to the car wash for a good degreasing and scrubbing







It's now drying in the garage until next week when I can borrow a cherry picker and do the swap. It's from an '06 Escalade with 143k on the clock and appears to be in great shape.

What's your plans? Cam, headers?

 

[gtrslngrchris]

What's your plans? Cam, headers?

Already have headers on the 5.3 and they'll swap over. Cam is likely but not until later on. I need to decide after I have the motor installed whether or not I can live with it N/A or if I need boost. A boost-ready cam won't be near as fun if I end up staying N/A.

 

[gtrslngrchris]

On Monday my roommate decided to take my intake manifold off and clean the crap out of it because it was pretty crusty and nasty and this is what he found underneath. Oddly enough the runners didn't look too bad.


Not too bad when I found leaves and pine needles and more under the intake of my C5 when I swapped to a ported LS6 manifold but still needs cleaned up a bit. Of course we went overboard a bit and polished the fronts of the heads


After we finished prepping the LQ9 to go in it was time to start taking things out. It all went pretty easily and my 5.3 valley was MUCH dirtier and the runners were pretty much completely crusted.


We got a late start due to having to drive to go get the engine stand and hoist we're going to use but a little before midnight we finished up with only needing to unbolt the trans and drain the coolant to pull the engine so we decided to waste a couple minutes seeing how underwhelming an LQ9 can look on a pallet.


P.S. Because I didn't post any of my suspension job here's a random shot of my new PRETTY lower control arms

 

[Tonyrodz]

On Monday my roommate decided to take my intake manifold off and clean the crap out of it because it was pretty crusty and nasty and this is what he found underneath. Oddly enough the runners didn't look too bad.


Not too bad when I found leaves and pine needles and more under the intake of my C5 when I swapped to a ported LS6 manifold but still needs cleaned up a bit. Of course we went overboard a bit and polished the fronts of the heads


After we finished prepping the LQ9 to go in it was time to start taking things out. It all went pretty easily and my 5.3 valley was MUCH dirtier and the runners were pretty much completely crusted.


We got a late start due to having to drive to go get the engine stand and hoist we're going to use but a little before midnight we finished up with only needing to unbolt the trans and drain the coolant to pull the engine so we decided to waste a couple minutes seeing how underwhelming an LQ9 can look on a pallet.


P.S. Because I didn't post any of my suspension job here's a random shot of my new PRETTY lower control arms

Coming along nicely! Keep the pics coming.

 

[gtrslngrchris]

I would like to say that this image is where we started but the reality is that we went from making huge progress on day 1 to hitting snags on day 2. I've NEVER seen so much red loctite on bolts before like was on the driver side motor mount. Snapped two of the bolts clean off after struggling with the impact and 1/2" ratchet so if the torch doesn't get those out today I'm probably just getting a new bracket and using old bolts from my Duramax that has upgraded mounts/bolts. After dealing with that I discovered my 3 ton jack was seized and while the warranty was up Autozone guy decided to be cool and swap it for me anyway so I lost some time running back and forth. The transmission also decided to be stuck on the engine like it was holding on for dear life so that was another chunk of time separating them.


They finally came apart and as we lifted the engine out we then realized the fans were definitely going to be a problem and so we then wrangled the efans out while the hoist was directly above preventing them from coming out. HOWEVER, finally we got this!


Tada!


Next it was time to lower the front of the trans a bit and swap a C5 Corvette servo in to help with stronger shifts.


Here's a pic of the two servos pulled apart. On the top you can see how much smaller the servo is on the factory one.


The idea is this gives more "holding power" and shifts quicker and more firmly. Did one of these on an '04 Silverado a few weeks ago to test and was very pleased with the results so in it goes!


Finally we looped a tow strap around the frame to make a sling for the trans so we could push the truck out and wash off the garage floor and that's how it sits waiting for tonight to hopefully finish it all up.



Things remaining to do:

• Fix/replace drivers side motor mount bracket
• Put the damn 6.0 in the truck
• Bolt all the things on
• Plug all the things in
• Hope HPtuners has fixed my tune file so that I can properly tune the thing because right now any changes I make to the trans or engine causes the truck to choke and die under throttle so if I'm copying calibrations from an Escalade to make it run properly it's just going to die. My roommate is a GM tech and we've replaced/reprogrammed my ECM a couple times now and pulled the factory tune with HPtuners with multiple laptops and still have tables that refuse to be set properly so hopefully support can help me out sooner rather than later.

 

[gtrslngrchris]

We went and bought my friend a Miata last night before we started working and we were a bit lazy so we didn't totally finish. However, all we have left to do is put the headers on followed by plug wires and then an oil change and turning the key!

 

[about20ninj45]

We're you and to get your tune straightened out?

 

[tgui]

Great work!

Like you my trans was stuck hard to the engine. I fought that POS with a big prybar and won after a ton of cussing.

 

[gtrslngrchris]

Finished up last night by doing all the things that I forgot were left and including the ones I remembered. I had to bolt up the crossmember in front of the engine, put the heat shield back on the transmission and then put the headers on at the same time as the y-pipe. Finally it was dip stick and my new fancy plug wires time and then intake and hooking up the battery to finish it all off!


Finished!


Action shot, this is actually the second start up but the engine was still cold and on the 5.3 factory tune.

Today I took it up to my roommates' dealership and we programmed the ecm to a Silverado SS that just happened to be there. It idled much better and did not feel like you were hurting it BUT it also caused the traction control light to come on AND it drove like a dog. I feel like these are related BUT just in case we then replace/reprogrammed the ecm to the Escalade VIN that this LQ9 came from and it seemed to respond better from the pedal in idle BUT no change on power while driving and traction control still doesn't like my ecm. My assumption is that this wouldn't work normally but since I have a remote start defeating VATS it runs BUT ABS module still cares and is throwing a fit. We tried to program the ABS module with the Escalade VIN but it wasn't taking it. My hope is if I can get HPtuners to recognize my ecm and stay licensed that I can do a VIN change and then the rest of the modules will accept it and everything will be working and if all that works then maybe I can finally tune it for real with HPT!

We're you and to get your tune straightened out?

Not yet, still waiting on HPtuners support to get back to us about it. From reading it looks like they'll just edit the stock tune file I sent them so that I can set the parameters correctly but we'll see. My hope is that what I've done today will allow me to get going faster than that but we'll see.

Like you my trans was stuck hard to the engine. I fought that POS with a big prybar and won after a ton of cussing.

It was a huge pain in the ass. Of course we planned to grease the dowels before we put the 6.0 in and forgot so I'm sure it'll be fun again the next time it has to come out.

 

[gtrslngrchris]

I took some of my holiday free time to pull the fender flares off the Tahoe. I was expecting paint damage and I definitely got it.


I had to give it a wash before I removed all the adhesive.


I broke out the DA polisher and went to work. It's not perfect but it's a good 10-15 footer now at least. I love the way the truck is turning out and hopefully soon I'll take it to have body and paint work done for real.


Still haven't got it running at full power yet but I did confirm that the throttle body is barely opening at WOT. Hopefully I can get my ecm flashed back to factory soon and then have HPtuners get my tune file usable so I can actually make use of my new engine!