1993 Caprice Wagon LT1 Swap?

Hey guys,

I *should* be bringing home a pretty decent '93 Caprice Wagon this week. has a 5.7L TBI. My boss is looking at getting a new hearse (yes, I work at a funeral home ) If he does. I want to see if he will sell it to me as the LT1 in it only has 55k and it runs and drives perfectly. How hard is it to swap this out? Another forum mentioned i'd need the ecu and trans (no surprise) and that id have to dent the frame to make room for the a/c compressor. Otherwise, anything crazy hard id need to do?

The gen 1 and gen 2's are pretty much the same externally. You'd be able to use the same mounts, the same exhaust, some of the same accesories.

I don't see why you'd need to clearance the frame for a/c since the b-body frames are pretty much the same between those years anyway. The a/c sits close to the frame on a gen2 but not close enough to need to worry about clearancing things.

If you wanted to keep costs down you could keep running a 700r4 or 4l60 trans as long as there's a way to lock up the torque converter. Then you would only need the pcm to control the engine which makes things a bit easier.

Being tbi means your fuel system is already configured for fuel injection so other than a new pressure regulator, which usually comes with the motor anyway, you should be good to go. You may need a stronger fuel pump later though.

It's not as difficult a swap as say a gen3 would be, but not quite as easy as a 350 into a 305 car. Overall I'd expect it to take a week to get it all done and then get all the wiring straight. These engines have alot of complicated wiring

Might be worth while to get an engine wiring harness and remove the unused bits and label the rest to make things easier later.

Well its a "stock" LT1, 4L60E just on a stretched Fleetwood body. Will the driveshaft off my 93 work with the 4L60E? As the driveshaft is longer than stock on the donor car.

What kind of wiring am I looking at? I've never swapped an engine before. PCM and?

Your car already has a 4l60 in it. The "e" version in the fleetwood is computor controlled by the same pcm as the engine. It'll be located under the air cleaner assembly in the front corner of the engine compartment. The driveshaft, crossmember, linkages, and everything else hardware wise will be the same between trans. You just need to run the wiring when you drop the new trans into the wagon.

The drivetrain swap would be easiest if you leave the wiring attatched to the engine/trans and just set the pcm on top of the intake during the removal procedure. Then once everything is out of the fleetwood you can see where everything goes and can do a proper install. You will have to remove some wiring to remove the drivetrain, such as fuel pump wiring, o2 sensors, and others. I just wouldn't remove any more than necesary.

By the way, you could always save yourself alot of wiring and just run a carb setup on the lt1

I'd drive the hearse!

Matt Trakker wrote:

I'd drive the hearse!

LOL. I spend enough time in it. Plus it has a lot of electrical gremlins, PRNDL display is broken, radio doesn't work, stupid stuff like that.

One more thing I just thought of. the '93 is OBD 1 right? The '96 is OBD 2 iirc. Will that make a difference?

I'm not absolutely certain but supposedly in some states switching OBD-I to OBD-II will fail you for inspection. I know it is possible to wire up the LT1 as OBD-I, but I'm not sure what the difference is as far as electronics go for the 96s

Well, here in MA. cars 95 and older don't get an emissions inspection as there is no OBD II, just a safety one so lights, horn, etc that kinda stuff. But will there be any issues with CEL's or stuff like that if I put the LT1 in an OBD I car?

Just use an obd-1 ecm and there are some changes to the transmission wiring and don't use the crank sensor in the timing housing.

Dont mind me. I forgot the details.

If you use the engine and trans from the fleetwood then the pcm and wiring carry over with it. The drivetrain is obd-2 not the actual car. So just swap everything over, then wire the dash port for obd-2 so that you can still use a plug-in tool on it.

The only issue from there will be the abs which is completely different between the years your working with. Someone else just went through the issue of mixing abs parts and found the issues.

bammax wrote:

Dont mind me. I forgot the details.

If you use the engine and trans from the fleetwood then the pcm and wiring carry over with it. The drivetrain is obd-2 not the actual car. So just swap everything over, then wire the dash port for obd-2 so that you can still use a plug-in tool on it.

The only issue from there will be the abs which is completely different between the years your working with. Someone else just went through the issue of mixing abs parts and found the issues.

So how should I tackle the abs? leave all the caprice parts or use the fleetwood parts?

The fleetwood pcm will be looking to control the abs. I'd swap the abs box over to the wagon and then just replumb the lines to work with the fleetwood box. There may be an easier way but I wouldn't know of any off the top of my head. Seems like the easiest path is to take anything that the fleetwood pcm controls and swap it into the wagon to make the electrical part of the swap as easy as possible. No need trying to track down an electrical gremlin after all the hard work of swapping everything.

I think it was nomoa that was playing with the different year abs boxes. He could probably give you a better heads up on the issue.

hmm this is starting to get out of my league. I may just stick with the TBI and be happy with what I got

I'd recomend you host a mod day. Find a suitable place, put the cars side by side, then see how many people are willing to come by and get dirty. If you find the right place, provide the right food, and pick the right day, you'll get enough people to show up and make a huge mess of your driveway

Course it probably wont all get done in one day, but it'll get you far enough along to where you can finish it yourself in your spare time without being overwhelmed.

Some people may only show up if you provide spare parts or gas money so be carefull

Well, if someone brings a big enough trailer. They can have the skeleton of a 96 Fleetwood hearse

Cadet57 wrote:

Well, if someone brings a big enough trailer. They can have the skeleton of a 96 Fleetwood hearse

Dibs on skeleton.

So SS parts into hearse

I'm hoping you say yes

I'd love to see Billy in a Hearse SS

IMPALADAKID wrote:

Cadet57 wrote:

Well, if someone brings a big enough trailer. They can have the skeleton of a 96 Fleetwood hearse

Dibs on skeleton.

Well, if my boss is feeling generous when we finally get a new hearse....

@ bammax. An SS hearse would be INSANE

Cadet57 wrote:

IMPALADAKID wrote:

Cadet57 wrote:

Well, if someone brings a big enough trailer. They can have the skeleton of a 96 Fleetwood hearse

Dibs on skeleton.

Well, if my boss is feeling generous when we finally get a new hearse....

@ bammax. An SS hearse would be INSANE

This is as close as I have ever come.





Me getting spanked by a furd diesel truck.

So i've been thinking more about this. I'd love to do it. I'm still just leery on the ABS thing. Everything else seems pretty straightforward, albeit time consuming.