Anthony the Tinkering Explorer

1979 Chevy C10 LS Swap Guide

Summer of 2023, I decided to take the plunge and commit to a LS swap and I was going to do it myself at home in the garage. I have some car mechanic background but my day to day job is software engineering, so this was quite a leap in my skills. I watched enough videos and found some great resources on doing swaps (which I will link below) that I helped me gain confidences that I could do this at home.

I decided to write up this post as I spent about 14 months from the time I bought a engine to first start. Since I was taking my time and buying parts as I went, helps explain why it took a year. Obviously if you are not doing major modifications or have more experience or just buy all the parts at once it might go quicker. I totally understand some people tackle LS swaps in a weekend or realistically a couple of weekends.

This guide should cover most use cases for Chevy C10s from 73-87, but each year has its own uniqueness.

To help navigate check out the table of contents to jump to a specific section.

Why do an LS Swap?

For many years my truck was parked due a hole in the gas tank after loading on a trailer. Life got away from me, but after some time I put some focus on the truck and got a new gas tank installed but it never ran great after sitting for all of those years.

Fast forward a few more years and got it running a little better, but noticed it was leaking oil, so I took it to highly rated local shop and they replaced the oil pan and seal. They called me and said the oil looked great and would call me when it was done. About 15 minutes later, they called me and said they found some chunks of metal in the bottom of the pan from the piston skirt. I stopped over after work and they showed me which piston it was from. I was really bummed after hearing that but he truck did still run, just leaked oil past the rings and then would burn off in the header and smell like burned oil. I did drive it a little, but knowing that the engine was a ticking time bomb I took some time to think about it.

Previous Engine – SBC 350

Specs of the small block 350

  • 350 bored .030 over, so around 355 cid
  • Vortec heads (milled, larger valves, and ported and polished heads)
  • Cam, don’t remember specs, but high lift and rpm range was 3000 to 7000 rpm
  • Edelbrock Victor Jr Intake
  • MSD 6AL Ignition, Coil, and Distributor
  • Holley 750 Double Pumper
  • Long tube headers
  • Dyno at around 330 HP at the rear wheels

First I had to decide what engine to buy. It was a toss up between 5.3 and 6.0, but there is the old saying there is no replacement for displacement, I set my eyes on a 6.0. I talked to a few friends and surfing Facebook marketplace and found someone selling a 6.0 and 4L80e.

LQ4 Engine with Accessories

Another picture from the front.

I started with the tear down of the engine and did the best to label everything the best I could knowing it’s hard to remember where everything went exactly. Started with the wiring as it makes it easier to see whats going on. Then transitioned to smaller items and eventually the exhaust manifolds and accessories. As you can see in the photo below, much easier to see, but still a grease bomb that needs cleaned up.

Tear Down and Clean up

After taking off the intake, I worked on cleaning it up even more. I didn’t want anything falling into the cylinders as I wasn’t planning on doing a full rebuild.

I took the heads off and keep cleaning everything up. I got some different heads for this build as I was looking to make some additional power which I will cover more below as I reassemble it.

Now that we are down the bare block, want to make sure you clean everything the best you can, inspect the engine, make sure there isn’t excessive wear, etc.

This engine supposedly had 150k miles on it, which it looked pretty clean on the inside. There was some small pitting two of the cylinders, which I did the best I could to clean it up with affecting the cylinder walls. This photo really makes it look much worse then it was. I know there are some mechanics that would rather do a full rebuild. While it would have been nice, by opening up the bottom end, it would have cost me another $2k to $3k and I would have probably went with additional upgrades that would have cost me.

These engines are known to run to 250k or 300k miles before needing rebuilds. Knowing I was going to be putting less then 5k miles on a year, I figured this would last me 10 years before needing any major maintenance.

The other cylinders looked great, so after I cleaned it up, decided to move forward with it.

Being from the midwest, these things get so rusty! I did my best to clean it up the block with a pick and wire brush to scrape off the rust and get a clean surface. If you went with a full rebuild, engine shop would clean it up better, but as I mentioned above, I didn’t change the bottom end at all. I did some more cleaning after this photo and before primer.

Painting

Very important to de-grease the engine before you are you ready to primer and paint. I went through many cans of brake cleaner to remove the dirt and grim.

Here you can see it after using primer. For the blocks you will want to use high temp enamel that is made for engines.

After following the directions for the primer, I applied the paint. I wanted black as my color of the sbc was orange and wasn’t a fan of the orange anymore. This black was a little glossy for me, but to late now!

Camshaft, Oil Pump, and Oil Pan Installation

Now its time to start re-assembly. I installed the cam first and decided to go Brian Tooley Racing (BTR) Truck Norris Cam. This is a great torque cam that still makes a ton of power over stock. I watch hours of videos from Richard Holdener and sure, I could squeak out maybe 25 or 50 more horsepower, but you can only use it at 7k rpms. Torque gets you off the line and moving and I am mostly doing in town driving.

Here is a photo of the cam installed form the back side of the engine.

Here is the front of the engine with the camshaft reinstalled and lined up dot to dot when at top dead center (TDC). I went with a new timing chain but didn’t want to change out the gears which you suppose too, but once again many people run these engines for 250k miles with no changes to the timing chains, they are actually pretty durable on these engines.

I don’t have any photos, but installed a new melling oil pump along the way, figured since I had it tore apart it was worth upgrading the oil pump.

After you get the oil pump installed, you can install the oil pan. I went with the stock oil pan as there was no fitment issues.

Lifter Installation

After getting the camshaft installed, I installed the lifters. I went with some Summit Racing Performance LS7 lifters. These are the same as the Morel #7717. Highly recommend these, never have had any lifter noise with them. I did soak the lifters before I installed them for 24 hours.

Head Installation

The LS platform is in many vehicles and had many configurations. I did tons of research before I bought any parts. There are different routes you could go, but since I had an LQ4 base I decided to go for 243/799 heads. They are basically the same heads, but I manged to find a set of 799’s on Facebook marketplace for a decent price. At first glance they looked decent, minus some dog or cat hair, but after doing some better inspection found a gouge the surface.

While it was kind of ugly, I was able to take it to machine shop to get cleaned up. I had them milled .025 which helps increase the compression ratio. Todo do math on how many cc’s etc

Here you can see I got them back, they cleaned and milled them all up. I took out all of the valves myself because I needed to replace springs anyway, so saved a step for the machine shop.

Here I am installing new BTR .560 left LS6 springs. I did lap the valves, once again this is something that you could have a shop to get the best results, but these looked like low mile heads, so was just looking to freshen up the top end.

Push Rods and Measuring

After getting the block surface all cleaned I spent lots and lots of time measuring for the correct push rods length. Not being an engine builder and obviously just doing this in my garage, I wanted to make sure when I started it up, I didn’t have any issues with piston to valve clearance. I am not even going to attempt to explain how to do it as their are great resources out on Youtube.

I do recommend buying an adjustable push rod and making some solid lifters though out of some old lifters. Here is the video I found on how to make a solid lifter that was straight forward:

Torquing the heads

After measuring about 20 times, I was convinced that I wasn’t going to have any issues, so now it was time to torque down the heads. I went with the one time torque to yield bolts vs ARP bolts. If I need to take it apart next time I might buy ARP bolts.

Summit racing has a good guide here on torque specs and pattern: https://help.summitracing.com/knowledgebase/article/SR-05187/en-us

Now its finally starting to look like an engine. I ended up deleting the knock sensors because I went with a Holley Terminator ECU and it doesn’t play well with knock sensors.

Engine and Transmission Mounts

There are various engines mounts out there; Dirty Dingo and Tejas Steelworks seem to be the two most popular ones. I went with Tejas for both the engine and transmission mounts based on research I did. The Tejas mounts allowed me to use my stock oil pan as I mentioned above with no issues. Overall the Tejas Steelwork mounts definitely were quality made products. Links to both mounts are at the end.

Engine and Transmission Install

It feels like it has taken forever to get to this step, and it has been. I am at about 11 months in and taking my time with the engine and assembly. I was parked the truck perpendicular in the garage and which allowed me to use all three stalls and have more working room. I am very lucky that my wife was chill with it.

Note: I am not covering any details here on how to remove your old engine, but my wife captured this photo of me working in the engine bay one evening.

I didn’t want to mess with trying to get the torque convertor aligned with the flywheel while in the vehicle. I also had no good way to get the transmission by itself in the garage, so I attached them before installing in the vehicle.

Here we used the engine hoist and luckily I had a good friend take photos of the process, otherwise I wouldn’t of gotten any of the process.

Here you can see threading the transmission and engine in like a needle, really big needle. Luckily the load leveler from harbor freight helped do the heave lifting. Highly recommend even though I felt like I spent a ton of time cranking the leveler, it was pretty easy compared to the alternative.

After 30 minutes or so of threading in the engine/transmission, we got the engine mounts positioned on the frame mounts and the bolts in. At this point in time I didn’t have the transmission mount in yet, so I was holding the transmission up with a floor jack. I then was able to slip in the transmission mount and drill out the holes and mount it using the supplied hardware.

Intake and Coil Pack Installation

The intake is one of the easiest steps here, its like 8 bolts and just drops onto the heads. I did buy a fuel injector tester to make sure the fuel injectors I bought with the TBSS/NBSS intake were good since it was off of Facebook Marketplace as well.

Here is a tip if you are looking to save some money on a swap. I ended up with 2 sets of coils, so I decided to just reuse them and keep a set for spares. Like the engine, the coils were rusty so, I opted to sand and paint them. They are not show quality, but lots of elbow grease and some paint cleaned them up nicely.

After the coil packs are installed, you can install the spark plugs and coil wires as well. I have links to what I used below.

Fuel System

Since I was moving from a carburetor to fuel injected, I ended up buying a new fuel tank, fuel pump, sending unit, fuel lines, and connectors.

Here is a good video on how to do the fuel pump that I found, but there are others out on youtube as well.

Here you can see the fuel line connected to the fuel rail on the TBSS/NBSS intake.

Electrical and Engine Control Unit (ECU)

The engine control unit (ECU) and which route you go plays a big decision into your final installation. You can go with a factor ECU that you use stock or have it flashed for engine upgrades or you can go for an aftermarket ECU, like the Holley Terminator X, Holley Terminator X Max or Aces Jackpot LS kits.

I went with the Holley Terminator X Max system which is both an ECU and Transmission Control unit for the 4L80e.

The directions that are included in the Holley installation are pretty straight forward, however I recommend reading the direction about 3 times before you attempt to start. The wiring harness just plugs into the sensors on the engine.

Transmission Cooling

Depending on your setup, this step may be optional. With me moving to a 4L80e, I wanted to make sure I had a transmission cooler installed to help keep the temps low. I had to buy some connection adapters that went into the transmission and then ran lines up to the radiator and then mounted the transmission cooler to the front of the radiator

Engine Cooling System

I keep my stock radiator for my setup, however I have seen other use a 454 radiator that provides better cooling. I am using a electric fan for a Ford Taurus that I installed over 20 years ago, they move a ton of air and keep it cool. I do have an electric relay to control the fans and then used the outputs from the Holley Terminator X to control when they turn on and off.

In the future I would like to upgrade to something else, but I was in a rush to get it running so went with what I had.

Exhaust

For the exhaust I went with speed engineering 1 3/4″ Longtube headers made for the C10s and doing LS Swaps. I did need to cut the ear off my 4L80e to get the headers to clear, but it was pretty straightforward.

First Start

Here is the final product! I have some wiring I could clean up, but overall it looks good!

Parts List

Note: Please note that these are the parts I bought for my project, ever project is different and you may need to buy different parts.

Engine parts

Sensors

Transmission

Fuel System

Engine Control Unit

Misc. Parts

Tools List

Note: Many of the links are to Amazon and as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. No additional cost to you.

Resources

Here are some links to other popular resources, as I don’t think there is a single guide that covers everything:

There are some good Facebook groups out there as well, but be prepared to put up with the bs sometimes.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this guide, there is a ton of detail here due to the nature of this project. This is a first draft and plan on updating if there is any feedback. If you have questions feel free to drop me a comment.

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