Thanks Ryan. Larry is getting into the zone now. Wiring used to be something he dreaded but now after doing 4 trucks with complete powertrain change overs he's really good at it now. Using GM schematics will help troubleshooting if something does go wrong later. He's had no trouble on any of his other builds so I'm pretty confident this will be no different.
I did drop off some more goodies on Saturday after work. One of which was a coolant temp sensor needed for the gauge to work. There was some back and forth discussion on this subject Friday. The stock gauge uses a single wire sender that is just providing a resistance to ground for the gauge to work. The stock 5.3 sensors (which we have 2, one for the gauge and one for the ECM) use a 2 wire hookup. Reviewing the factory schematics for the 5.3 the ground is just returned back to the ECM. Now we could have used this with the right connector and ground the 2nd wire. The question was if the resistance values were the same from the old to the new for gauge accuracy. Next option was surfing the web and finding a conversion sensor on ebay or elsewhere. No time for that option as Larry needs it to be able to fill the cooling system soon. Web surfing found two more options, drill the head to a larger hole for the 3/8 npt pipe fitting needed for the 91 gauge sender or machine down the 91 sensor to the 12m x 1.5 metric hole that the head has.
Talking with my ace tech at work about it, knowing he's got a metalworking lathe we hatched a plan. Now he as well as Larry was skeptical about machining the sensor down, but after what I had found online this had been done many times with good success. I ordered a new sensor from Napa and handed off to my tech to take home Friday night. Later on he sent me a text with the finished product. Seen Here:
Larry threaded it in Sat and found the correct single wire connector to hook it up with. So to all LS swapper's out there, you can use your factory gauges with your swap. We are using a stock 5.3 oil pressure sensor, just like Larry did with the 8.1's in his and with one minor adjustment, the stock coolant temp sensor too. The ECM doesn't need to see an oil psi signal and since each head has a hole for a coolant sensor, the drivers side will get the ecm sensor and the pass side gets the gauge sensor.
Looking at Larry's work on the wiring is just beyond words. As his pics show everything is neat and tidy and using GM logic every step of the way. We are a couple of wire hookups and topping off fluids away from hitting the ignition.