LS3 transplant / conversion

[The Alchemist]

Hey people, an interesting job has fallen into my lap today.....A LS3 engine turned up on a pallet today at work....as they do..... and its going into a VT II GTS Holden. No lollipops to guess what happened to the old engine :bad:

Any way, has anyone here been involved in such a swap? We're sticking with the LS1 ECU of course and the customer has supplied all the other parts for the swap such as the crank decoder box, knk sensor extension leads , manual throttle body etc etc . So we're just fitting and tuning.
Resitting the injector calibration files for the different LS3 injectors, cylinder head volume in VE tables, is there anything else I need to do other than start with a good base tune that I need to know or change in the LS1 5.7L ECU calibration??
Has anyone got a LS3 tune they can post up, I spose they would be very simlar to an E38 VE 6L tune?
Cheers,
Mike

[gmperformancecentre]

the only one i have got is a stock LS3 corvette tune if this helps

[Biggsy]

Here is a manual 6.2 HSV maloo

[The Alchemist]

thanks guys....

[The Alchemist]

any other pointers people?????

[The Alchemist]

interestingly enough I've opened both those maps expecting the spark maps to be very similar. Not the case....

The corvette tune has a nearly "perfect " map shape that would only need adjusting to suit octane and any bolt on air flow mods. I'm impressed. Why on earth didn't they run that in the HSV tune???????

[ringram]

I thought they detuned the HSV because of the trans!?

[GMPX]

Why on earth didn't they run that in the HSV tune???????
Modified for Australian conditions :angel_innocent:

[The Alchemist]

Modified for Australian conditions :angel_innocent:

mmm I wonder how it would go in our tropical kiwi conditions :grin:
If I had enough money to by one I would find out !!! :shock:

[The Alchemist]

Not sure what category this should be in, ls1? General? Ls3? Anyways heres the update.....
The physical conversion on the engine went smoothly with only the bearing in the back of the crank having to be changed to fit the gear box input shaft. The crank and cam triggers were taken care of by a decoder box supplied by the customer. A simple plug in intercept box. Knock sensors relocated and map sensor relocated with extension looms.
The engine externals all swapped over ok with no problems.
The engine was fitted with 3inch outlet 4 into 1 pacemakers and a twin 3 inch X-force stainless exhuast system with stainless "cat removal" pipes.
Intake was mafless OTR .
The engine was a standard LS3 with standard camshaft.
Mapping was fairly straight foward . I started with a standard LS1 map for a GTS. Swapped over the MAP scalar from an LS3 map, injector Flow rate table recalculated for the LS3 42 lb injectors and cylinder head volume settings from a LS3.
I did a full VE tune from 25 kpa to 100kpa up to 5000 rpm then the full load runs. Having done many SSV's with the L92 heads I used similar timing to a L92 as a base then did a full tractive effort timing on the dyno.
Rafig, T/Cracker/follower, base timing map, parked airflow all needed minor tweaks nothing major really for a perfect result.
The end result blew me away.....If any of you have any doubt as to the tractibility of the LS3 and its power potential now is the time to dispell them.
A good tuned manual LS1 with all bolt on externals like exhuast & cold air intake etc makes about 220kw at the wheels on my Dyno Dynamics dyno.
A Good tuned 6L LS2 with bolt ons is good for 230 to 235kw at the wheels.
A good tuned 6L SSV VE (L98 engine) with bolt ons makes about 230kw at the wheels.
This LS3 made 280 kw at the wheels!!!!! with huge torque to boot. On the road throttle response was instant, torque was there in any gear and when the thing got on song over 4000rpm all hell broke loose :rockon:
Once the warranty is out in 6 months time we'll be doing the camshaft and valve train , probably a nice comp 228/228, 580thou lift jobbie should do the trick. God knows what it will do then .....:muahaha:

4899

[johnv]

great review, thanks for posting.

willing to bet 330 plus rwkw with a decent cam.

[gmh308]

Not sure what category this should be in, ls1? General? Ls3? Anyways heres the update.....
The physical conversion on the engine went smoothly with only the bearing in the back of the crank having to be changed to fit the gear box input shaft. The crank and cam triggers were taken care of by a decoder box supplied by the customer. A simple plug in intercept box. Knock sensors relocated and map sensor relocated with extension looms.
The engine externals all swapped over ok with no problems.
The engine was fitted with 3inch outlet 4 into 1 pacemakers and a twin 3 inch X-force stainless exhuast system with stainless "cat removal" pipes.
Intake was mafless OTR .
The engine was a standard LS3 with standard camshaft.
Mapping was fairly straight foward . I started with a standard LS1 map for a GTS. Swapped over the MAP scalar from an LS3 map, injector Flow rate table recalculated for the LS3 42 lb injectors and cylinder head volume settings from a LS3.
I did a full VE tune from 25 kpa to 100kpa up to 5000 rpm then the full load runs. Having done many SSV's with the L92 heads I used similar timing to a L92 as a base then did a full tractive effort timing on the dyno.
Rafig, T/Cracker/follower, base timing map, parked airflow all needed minor tweaks nothing major really for a perfect result.
The end result blew me away.....If any of you have any doubt as to the tractibility of the LS3 and its power potential now is the time to dispell them.
A good tuned manual LS1 with all bolt on externals like exhuast & cold air intake etc makes about 220kw at the wheels on my Dyno Dynamics dyno.
A Good tuned 6L LS2 with bolt ons is good for 230 to 235kw at the wheels.
A good tuned 6L SSV VE (L98 engine) with bolt ons makes about 230kw at the wheels.
This LS3 made 280 kw at the wheels!!!!! with huge torque to boot. On the road throttle response was instant, torque was there in any gear and when the thing got on song over 4000rpm all hell broke loose :rockon:
Once the warranty is out in 6 months time we'll be doing the camshaft and valve train , probably a nice comp 228/228, 580thou lift jobbie should do the trick. God knows what it will do then .....:muahaha:

Very impressive. 50kw from 1.6mm more bore, 150cc extra capacity and a different stock cam :grin:. Gotta be happy with that!

[mr.prick]

Dd you use the LS3 fuel injectors with the LS1 PCM?
If so how did you convert delta MAP to MANVAC?

[joecar]

The category is the same as the PCM... isn't it...?

Do you want it moved...?

Good job...:cheers:

[Bruce Melton]

The LS3 is impressive and nice job!
1.34= hp

[SOMhaveit]

Sounds like the customer should have just bought it with the hot cam in the crate engine.

[The Alchemist]

"Flow rate table recalculated for the LS3 42 lb injectors and cylinder head volume settings from a LS3." quoted from post.
Used the spreadsheet program on one of the links from a IFR thread on this site :) Easy.
http://forum.efilive.com/showthread.php?t=9814&highlight=injector+flow+rate

http://www.marcintology.com/tuning/injectors.xls

Mike




Dd you use the LS3 fuel injectors with the LS1 PCM?
If so how did you convert delta MAP to MANVAC?

[The Alchemist]

The category is the same as the PCM... isn't it...?

Do you want it moved...?

Good job...:cheers:
yes thanks, a few more people may see it then with LS1's.

MIke

[mr.prick]

"Flow rate table recalculated for the LS3 42 lb injectors and cylinder head volume settings from a LS3." quoted from post.
Used the spreadsheet program on one of the links from a IFR thread on this site :) Easy.
http://forum.efilive.com/showthread.php?t=9814&highlight=injector+flow+rate

http://www.marcintology.com/tuning/injectors.xls

Mike

What about the offsets?
I thought maybe you had a formula to convert
the LS7 injectors to the LS1 OS.

[joecar]

Ok, moved...:)

[The Alchemist]

What about the offsets?
I thought maybe you had a formula to convert
the LS7 injectors to the LS1 OS.


Oh I see,
I didn't have any problems achieving target AFR's although the VE table at light load <35kpa and up to 1600rpm wasn't very linear. Over run throttle was fine so i didn't change anything with the offsets etc .
Mike

[mr.prick]

Interesting.
:secret:
How's about posting the .bin

[The Alchemist]

Interesting.
:secret:
How's about posting the .bin
More than :gossip:Happy to help with tuning advice for a similar conversion but we're talking 2 days paid work here and several promises to the missus who never saw me :hihi:.......
The vehicle which had the LS3 transplant did have different diff ratio of 3.9:1 peculiar to the GTS in the Holden range. This bumps up the torque reading a lot compared to the other dyno graph titled "Mixed Holdens" where I think they all run 3.43 diffs. Please correct me if I'm wrong people. It doesn't have much effect though on the end power reading.

4896

4897

An SSV M6 is a 6L L98 (Manual gearbox) engined Holden for those of you in the states

[The Alchemist]

Mixed Holdens dyno graphs shows a series of EFILIVE tuned LSX engines with bolt ons, some without, to compare vs the LS3 done on the same dyno under similar conditions.

[427]

any more news on this combo?

[The Alchemist]

Not at the moment, the customer absolutely loves the car and drives it all the time which upsets his missus who never gets to drive it , lol.
No complaints such as stalling or poor fuel economy so thats good.

He will definately get us to put a cam in it after 6 months so will update on this thread then :)

cheers,
Mike

[427]

Thanks mike-let me know how you go as i am doing one at the moment

Thanks

[EBBETT307]

Kool, just been reading this thread is there any more developments on this setup? has a cam gone in yet?

[joecar]

EBBETT307, welcome to the forum...:cheers:

[EBBETT307]

cheers mate i do alot of research on ls engine stuff and like to tune my own car

[The Alchemist]

no not yet mate....still going well though :)


Mike


Kool, just been reading this thread is there any more developments on this setup? has a cam gone in yet?

[EBBETT307]

Im about to order a 219/235 602 621 LSL lobe gound on a 112 lsa dsigned for LS3 single bolt for a friends VE 317 its a wild card choice but comp say will be a torque monster :cucumber:

[The Alchemist]

It sure will be mate. We use Texas Speed cams and have had great success with them. They have been busy developing their own custom grinds on a test engine LS3 on their engine dyno so real world results assured !!!!
Interestingly enough they run higher intake durations than most companies do but found this gave better results over the whole RPm range. I suggest you have a look before you buy anything.
You say "a friend" , are you a workshop owner in Auckland... I'm down in New Plymouth...
Cheers,
Mike


Im about to order a 219/235 602 621 LSL lobe gound on a 112 lsa dsigned for LS3 single bolt for a friends VE 317 its a wild card choice but comp say will be a torque monster :cucumber: