well, me and my dad are undertaking this this winter. bought an impala ss from alabama and brought it home from niagara falls, ny. within a week stripped it down and now we are ready to start the tear down on the cav. will be documenting everything and of course lots of pics

I'll be watching this with interest. What transmission are you going to use and are you going stand alone?

Sub'd

we had actually wanted to do the 6 speed manual, but honestly its just too much $$/time to hook it up so we are going with the automatic that comes with it and we are going to be using the impala harness as much as we can

Sub'd. 6 Speed would be sweet but I think you're smart to keep as much from the donor car as you can. What is your plan for the cluster and other bcm related hardware?



"In Oldskool we trust"

essentially i'm going to make the cavalier think its an impala wiring wise, so using the impala bcm and i'm going to try and work the impala cluster, but we'll see when i tear the interior out lol dam work today or it'd be out already

If I had the time and money that's how I would do it too. Just completely rewire the car with the donor equipment. Cut and split the jbody plugs onto it for things like the tail lights, window motors, etc.

It will be tough to get the impala cluster in the J dash. I've seen people get pretty creative for other swaps like this. My favorite was someone who mounted the factory donor car cluster in the glove box real clean so it was there when he opened it and it satisfied the passlock issues. Then he ran an ipad with the toque app for this regular dash. It sounds ghetto but he really did a clean install and it was a great idea. You could also just do a custom cluster like pj did instead of a tablet.



"In Oldskool we trust"

sounds awesome there be LOTS of pics dw

Definitely watching this. The 6-speed would have been sweet, but you have to modify the bellhousing for the starter, as well as have a custom flywheel made. I've seen a couple of Fiero guys do the LS4/F40 swap, and it's a bear.

For the cluster, if your car is 00+, you may actually be able to get it to work, but if not, I might try something like a Cobalt cluster or something of similar size. The clusters for the larger cars tend to be pretty wide, but the newer CAN bus system seems to be pretty standard as far as the data stream for the clusters, unlike previous communication systems.

Good luck with this, an definitely post plenty of pics.

Was waiting for this post to be posted on here.

In for much more pics!





PRND321 Till I DIE
Old Motor: 160whp & 152ft/lbs, 1/4 Mile 15.4 @88.2
M45 + LD9 + 4T40-E, GO GO GO

Wow - cool!

productive day got the bay pretty much cleared also stripped the rest of the interior truckin along

Oooh, Love it, I'll be following the progress!

test fit #1, no modifications to the engine bay, starting to see where we need to cut the frame rails

Wow. That's gonna need some major clearancing to get the pulleys back on there!

Run a flywheel generator and an electric water pump then you don't need any pulleys.




On the inside my car looks like a fighter jet.

Bump

Status check?

dennis

status is i work til sunday so we will resume sunday or monday

cut some rail today

well she is in her seat boys and girls, hood fits now i will say i plan on writing a tutorial for this, just want to get it posted up now. we are now done with the engine and move onto smoothing the bay

video

http://vid624.photobucket.com/albums/tt326/z24modifier/IMG_4111_zps84xehkty.mp4

Nice progress! Keep the updates coming.

very nice

more progress today. coming along nicely to clean up the bay just to be clear, we're not cutting out the inner fender because theres no reason to, it's not in the way so it's just being covered to look clean.

I am definitely in for updates




Jason
99 Z24

LG0/LD9 for Life
10 Year Bash Veteren

Looks like there is zero wiggle room in the bay with the engine in there.