Ok, I've been doing some research, and originally I wanted to go with an Eco, but I have a 2200 and 5spd, 2002 Cav, and I'm going with a 3400 instead, and I have a MUCH better feeling about it and I'm really excitied! However, I've been reading and it says its much easier for the 2000+ guys if we go with a motor from a 00+ car, and use the serial data.
My questions are A. Is this wiring a total and complete PITA, i.e. how long will it take if I'm not working on the days I'm doing it and dedicate my time to it.
My next question is related to the fuel gauge, I've been reading if I use an 03 malibu ecu my fuel gauge works, is this true? so could I pull a motor out of a grand am, and just run it with a malibu ecu to have everything be more or less kosher? I know a lot of stuff is in stickies, but this stuff is killing me in my brain as I plot it out.
Thanks guys!
There will always be someone faster than you, but thousands slower and dumber than you.
The question about the gas guage is correct, It will work with a 03 malibu flash on an 01 grand am gt ecm. as stated the auto shift points are off and will slip in every gear. when I had this flashed to the malibu , the cluster worked perfectly. so it is possible if you can get a programmer to delete the auto commands that will be the ticket for a stick swap. And the cluster will work correctly, even the tach!
if I were you Id go with the 00-01 engine and harness, use the 03 flash, delete the auto stuff. and be on the road. As far as the injectors go, I dont know a whole lot about them, I would just stay with the harness for the engine year to avoid confusion.
Mine took about 3 weeks , but I did alot of b.s. ing while i was working on it.
01 cav w/01 3400 gam gt 4t45e
Thanks a lot guys! I'll email HPT to make sure my purchase will be justified!
There will always be someone faster than you, but thousands slower and dumber than you.
joe malechowski wrote:The question about the gas guage is correct, It will work with a 03 malibu flash on an 01 grand am gt ecm. as stated the auto shift points are off and will slip in every gear. when I had this flashed to the malibu , the cluster worked perfectly. so it is possible if you can get a programmer to delete the auto commands that will be the ticket for a stick swap. And the cluster will work correctly, even the tach!
if I were you Id go with the 00-01 engine and harness, use the 03 flash, delete the auto stuff. and be on the road. As far as the injectors go, I dont know a whole lot about them, I would just stay with the harness for the engine year to avoid confusion.
Mine took about 3 weeks , but I did alot of b.s. ing while i was working on it.
Joe - curious. There has to be some sort of pressure control solenoid on the transmission. I'm wondering if it's different between the Malibu and the Grand Am, hence the shifting problems. Just a thought I ran across. I'm just guessing that there's something to control line pressure other than the 2 shift solenoids.
F-Body Guy - To be honest with you. If you have the right tools and are half ways decent at soldering and looking at wiring diagrams. And you're able to weld up a couple of mounts. I'd say you could easily have this swap done in a weekend.
Yea... I'm not too worried about the mounts, my uncle is a mill wright at an industrial plant, and I used to run a CNC Brake press there, so cutting/bending up some brackets is pretty easy--wiring isn't SO bad I hope, lol. I've wired in many stereos, door locks, and I'm going to do my 1st alarm shortly, doesn't seem too bad.
I figure if I get the motor mounted in at the shop I'll do the wiring at home, I have to wait until I get my second vehicle before I start though, Cavalier is going to be promoted from Daily Driver, to Summer daily driver
Oh, another random question out of curiosity, what kind of times are people running with a N/A 3400 in a J? I plan on going boosted next year after I get the motor in. God it feels good to finally be done my education in April so I can make some money and play with toys!
Thanks so much for your help guys!
There will always be someone faster than you, but thousands slower and dumber than you.
Best i've personally pulled was 15.100 @ 92.79mph. And that's with poor traction. I really had to baby it off the line to keep from having wheelspin. Better tires, or even a better day would certainly help that matter i'm sure.
yes there is a pressure control solonoid, How It works I dont actually know. I would have assumed that the difference was in the gearing. Now the 03 malibu doesnt run the 4t45e, Its something all together different looking. the round electrical plug is on the top center of the trans, where as the cav and grand am is on the front top. I believe they are similar but I dont know if the cavalier axles will just pop right in like the 4t45e does.
I would think that you could look up the pressure control sol for the 03 malibu and the 01 grand am and see if they are different. My guess is that they are the same, its just the pcm changing the shift points according to the pressure, in order to compensate for different internal gearing.
01 cav w/01 3400 gam gt 4t45e
If the gearing is different, I suppose that can throw the shift points off. But I would guess it would throw a code for incorrect gear ratio..... assuming it works like its supposed to. Not sure if that code will turn on the CEL though.
Hey guys, another quick post... I'm at school and class is about to start so I have to make it quick
Do any of you run headers on the 3400, or are turbo? I'm trying to find a good website for 3.4L stuff, and was wondering what headers might fit on a cav!
Thanks in advance!
There will always be someone faster than you, but thousands slower and dumber than you.
Ok guys. New here, under my fiancee's name. I've just got a few more questions. What you are talking about excites me. She has an 01 Cav and we can get a '00 Grand Am. You saying that We can basically swap in the harness from the Grand Am to the Cavalier, reflash the PCM with 03 Malibu (minus the auto trans stuff) and have the cluster work properly? What about the body control module from the Cavalier? Do you use the one from the J body, or do you swap the one in from the N body, harness and all? This is the only thing I'm worried about. I can install the engine, 2.2 5 speed trans and make it all fit no problem. I have all the wiring diagrams at my disposal as I work at a GM shop. I just fix the cars in their original form and as such, am not used to souping up J cars haha
I've done tons of swaps on old carbureted cars where electronics are not an issue, but this one intimidates me a bit. I've been poking around this forum for a day or two, and I hear of people piggy backing the J's PCM with the N's to make it all work, however, if there was a "cleaner" way of doing it, it'd make me more happy!
First of all if it's the same car that's in your profile, you need to use a 2.2 transmission, clutch (stage II or higher), and flywheel. The V6 does not bolt up to the 2.4 trans.
2) The dealership can ONLY flash a factory program onto the car. This means that you cannot have them flash it and go MINUS the auto trans. You'll have to get HPTuners to do remove the auto tranny stuff. (I just checked, they do support a Malibu from 97-03) If i'm not mistaken, the dealership downloads a program from GM for a specific VIN number then flashes that to the car. Joe might know more about that than I do though.
3) I believe the BCM will have to come from the GA as well.
I don't think people are piggybacking the 2 PCM's. I think they're going fully run by the N-body PCM. AFAIK myself and one other gentleman are the only ones with a piggyback setup. Run the stock PCM for gauges and such, but run Megasquirt-II for the engine.
Cleanliness is only up to you. My wiring looks kinda nasty still, but I'm going to be swapping the harness out again and it should look EXCELLENT and hopefully almost stock when I am done.
Just a random thought... if you can delete the auto tranny codes... is there any way to input the grand am auto tranny codes on the malibu ecm? or vice-verse? flash parts of each program onto the ecm in order to have the trans and gauges working properly in an auto?
I'll eventually take the time to put something here. I swear.
Well, from what Joe says the shiftpoints are way off. So you should be able to adjust the shift points to what you need in the PCM.
You will use the cav bcm.
We dont piggy back in the 00+ stuff. If you do It will cause your mileage to jump when you cycle the key.(draw back of class 2 serial)
The dealer doesnt have the ability to pick and choose what tranny is in it, unless you work for gm's software dept you have to do it with the HP tuners as said before for your stick stuff. If HP has the ability to change the shift points in the 03 mali flash then that would be an option also.
Sunni,,, your making it sound like its easy as cake to do the swap. there is no plug and play wiring at all. actually there arent any plugs that directly plug together. You will spend hours upon hours sorting wires and still not knowing if your did it correct till you try to start it and see if there are any codes stored. If you arent confident about yourself and lots and lots of wires to connect, this might not be the swap for you.
What needs to be researched is the ability to pop a cav axle into a 03 malibu auto trans. If we can do this its a slam dunk auto swap.
so if any one gets bored and has acess to the parts, like a salvage yard employee , see if they will work and let us know.
01 cav w/01 3400 gam gt 4t45e
Thing about that.
I did a look up for the halfshafts on Autozone.com. The PN for whatever the AZ part on the Malibu was 9465. For a 2000+ Cav 2.2OHV 5spd it was 9464 and 9463. My guess is that it's just the length that's different. The Auto Trans listed was 8498 on the cav.
That's for the same brand.... just whatever brand AutoZone happens to sell.
It could be any nunber of things, Im thinking that the mali are using a internal wheelbearing wspd sensor so you wont have a stater wheel. the grand am uses the same thing. so the part#'s wont be any where close because of that. And the outer of the shaft is a larger spline count.
What we need to actually find out is if the inside shaft spline count is the same. That just the inside yoke is the same where the trans recieves it. the length of the mali shaft and other specs really dont make a diff since we are looking at using the cav shaft on the mali trans.
For example you would have to pull an 00-01 ish cav 4spd auto axle and compare it to an 03 malibu 4spd auto and see if the inside yoke is the same dimentions in the tranny. Any one work at an autoparts store?????
01 cav w/01 3400 gam gt 4t45e
anyone? this intrigues me...
I'll eventually take the time to put something here. I swear.
I can check and see if my ex still works at one of the local CSK's... since we're still on speaking terms, I might be able to get some info, but don't think they carry axles in inventory...
I didn't say this is an easy swap. Physically putting the engine into the cavalier will be simple and straight forward. I have all the wiring diagrams and what not at hand, and will be going over everything to see if we can pre-figure out everything before diving head first into this project. "joe malechowski" You're making me out to think I know everything about this, which is not true. This is most definitely the swap for us, no question about it, we know what we're getting into, and we both have had a lot of time to play under the hoods of vehicles and learn the in's and out's. I haven't been a GM mechanic for 10 years for nothing... (Reminder: I work with STOCK vehicles ALL DAY, not CARS WITH MODIFICATIONS, hence why I have questions.)
Again, physically putting the engine in the cavy will be peanuts, it's the wiring I have questions about, the last thing we want to do is end up really messing something up.
BTW: The nick name is "-sunnirae-" NOT "Sunni"
So, just to reiterate for a 2000+ J-body 4-speed auto-to-4-speed auto swap:
engine, auto trans, harness, and ECM from 00+ Grand Am, Malibu, Alero
ECM flash from an 03 Malibu, and HPT reprogramming shift points for auto trans
slap that mofo in, wire it up, and drive? gauge cluster works, climate control works, headlights work, etc?
so, ideally, if I can find an 03 Malibu, everything will swap over with no problems, no reprogramming, etc.?
"so, ideally, if I can find an 03 Malibu, everything will swap over with no problems, no reprogramming, etc.?"
As long as the cav axles will work in the mali trans. Thats the combined theory.
01 cav w/01 3400 gam gt 4t45e
even if not, you could swap the ends out with a little effort...
hmm, now I'm thinking, which is never good
If the Malibu uses the 4T40-E trans, you may not even need to swap the tranny.
I was looking at work today (Advance Auto), doing some research, and the Malibu does indeed use a 4T40. And, since I have a 2200, it should have the same bellhousing as the 60-degree V6. So, in theory, my tranny should work fine. The only thing that would keep me from using it is the steep gearing (I think it's 3.63 final drive for a 2200). The Malibu uses a 3.05 final drive, which would cut down on tire spinning at launch and should also help boost highway fuel economy a lot. Unless, of course, it's easy to swap differentials (and maybe add a Team Green LSD at the same time).
I also found out that 2000 Malibus, Grand Ams, and Aleros use the same ECM. 2001-02 are the same (but different from 2000), and 03 is the same (but different from the 2000-02's). So, would I be able to use, say, a 2001 ECM and flash it with a 2003 Malibu map? This is becoming more and more promising every time I discover something new
