Productive weekend and more parts have arrived and ordered.
6AN Fuel line and fittings return-style kit from
Hot Rod Fuel Hose.
Starter bolts
Bellhousing bolts
Converter bolts
Just about finished cleaning out my wiring harness. Still probably more that I could strip out, but not sure yet how to incorporate the Factory AC controls and the PCM-controlled ones from the donor. So leaving some of those plugs in for now.
I think I'm going to leave the harness temporarily masking taped together until the motor is in the truck and I can freely route/plan/test some of this stuff. Then do the final wrap and loom.
The engine showed some signs of a slight pan leak, so replaced the oil pan gasket, pickup tube o-ring, and cooler block-off plate gasket. All Felpro stuff. Pulled the valve covers to just do a quick inspection, going to pick up new gaskets for those as well even though LS gaskets are supposedly reusable.
I spent hours yesterday trying to weld a nut onto the broken exhaust manifold bolt. Unfortunately no luck, the weld would just break every time I tried to turn the nut. It is broken down below the surface of the head by 1/16", so it's making it tougher. At this point I'm ready to give up and order one of these brackets for holding the manifold on -
Dorman 917-107 anyone have experience with this fix? Seems to get good reviews from multiple sources.
I've also been re-thinking the programming. I'm blowing through my budget rather quickly and I have two more big ticket items - driveshaft and exhaust that will need to be figured out. Think I might just have the basic unlock/emissions disabled for around $100, and figure out what to do for future changes when I those actually happen. Right now I'm $400 in for Hptuners and still need a laptop to actually use it in the garage.
So making progress, although slowly. Looking at next weekend to start pulling the old motor and trans out.