1971 Chevy Suburban - Project SuperBurb, Part IV

Tales from the Driveway

By Craig Perronne

Performing a swap requires plenty of patience, and the more difficult the swap, the more patience you'll need. We decided to try a rare form of transcendental meditation to keep us calm and patient. Well, not really--but you should not expect to swap a Mazda rotary engine, for instance, into your Suzuki Samurai the night before you plan to hit the trail. Patience, planning and time are required to perform a swap the right way.

You might recall that in the last installment of the ongoing saga of the creation of SuperBurb, we swapped in a new drivetrain. More specifically, a brand-new NV4500 five-speed manual transmission from Advance Adapters was mated to the stock NP205 transfer case. To replace the tired 350 V-8, an HT 383 V-8 crate engine from GM Performance Parts was tucked into place between the framerails. While this swap might seem fairly straightforward, it wasn't as foolproof as we anticipated, and we learned plenty along the way.

We thought it might be profitable to pass along some of the wisdom we gained while rolling around in the driveway under the Suburban. If you are getting ready to perform a swap, whether large or small, you might want to consider the following tips. Doing so might save you some exasperation and busted knuckles the next time you are underneath your rig.

Don't forget your phone. And don't be afraid to use it. If you are using somebody's kit or parts to perform a swap, give them a call. Ask them how easy or difficult the swap is. Pick their brains. Ask them what additional parts you will need. The manufacturers know you are spending your hard-earned cash, and they're more than happy to help.	Another lesson that we also learned the hard way was to bag and tag all the parts that come off your rig during the swap. We can't tell you how many bolts and fasteners we lost. It would have been much easier to have grouped the parts, put them in plastic bags and listed their identities and purposes on the bag.	Pre-visualize. Go through the swap in your head and write down all the parts you will need. This helps to eliminate surprises, and will help to cut down on trips to the parts store. Here's a for-instance: When slapping a set of headers onto our HT 383 V-8, we forgot that we needed a set of header bolts. While this might not sound like a big deal, this lapse resulted in another trip to the auto-parts store--a trip we could have avoided if we'd done appropriate planning and thinking.
Here's another lesson: The little details often eat up the most time. Dropping in the engine and the tranny seemed like the major part of the swap, but it wasn't. Figuring out small jobs, such as the throttle linkage, and finding the appropriate linkage parts, took lots of time. Expect the details of your swap to burn your time.	Expect to have to do some head scratching to figure stuff out along the way. We spent plenty of time on the phone with the folks at Advance Adapters, so we knew that some crossmember mods might be necessary. After some grinding and a few trial fits, we finally got the combo right.	When you perform a swap, that's the perfect and obvious time to replace items that tend to wear out. And when it's possible to upgrade, do it. Our motor mounts still looked decent, but after 32 years of service, they had to be considered suspect. We decided to retire them and replace them with these big-block motor mounts from Brothers. We also replaced all of the bolts that we could.
Don't forget about the radiator when you are performing an engine swap. If you are going with a bigger engine, more than likely you will have to upgrade to a radiator with more cooling capacity, and if you stay with the engine-driven fan, you'll need to figure out appropriate shrouding. Even if you are keeping your stocker, don't forget to get your old radiator flushed to make sure it is clean for the new engine.	Here's one of the most important things we learned: Take breaks when things get frustrating. When you become so angry that you want to cut your rig in half with a plasma cutter--and trust us, you will get to that point--that's a good time to sit down, relax and take some time. Then go back to the business at hand.	This seems obvious, but we can't overstate how important this is: Make sure you have the right tools to perform the swap. Go out and buy what you will need beforehand. Doing so might seem to run up your budget a little, but having the tools you need will make things a lot easier. For us, this long-frame jack from Harbor Freight Tools (top), with its ability to lift much higher than a normal jack, really came in handy.