454 TBI and 4L80 from 95 burb into 69 van

[AzDon]

Not sure I ever introduced myself....
I'm AzDon
I'm going to attempt to put a 454 and 4L80 from a 95 Suburban into a 69 van and make it run
As far as I can tell, there are no aftermarket harnesses available to do this, so I'm going to have to work the original Harness...
Wish me luck!

[notime2d8]

Not sure I ever introduced myself....
I'm AzDon
I'm going to attempt to put a 454 and 4L80 from a 95 Suburban into a 69 van and make it run
As far as I can tell, there are no aftermarket harnesses available to do this, so I'm going to have to work the original Harness...
Wish me luck!

Fuel injection connection has one for $305 Link (https://fuelinjectionconnection.com/e-commerce-solutions-catalog.html)

[AzDon]

Awesome Tip! Thanks!

[myburb]

I went to a local yard that had a 95 7427 454 (tel:95 7427 454) 4l80e truck and told them I wanted the complete harness and they pulled it out for $75. Sorry maybe I missread. Looks like you have an original harness. I thought you were talkng about reworking the old harness.

[AzDon]

I went to a local yard that had a 95 7427 454 (tel:95 7427 454) 4l80e truck and told them I wanted the complete harness and they pulled it out for $75. Sorry maybe I missread. Looks like you have an original harness. I thought you were talkng about reworking the old harness.

Yeah, I have the entire donor Suburban...… Three problems I have using the original harness... 1) Knowing how much of it to remove from the car and knowing how to tie the existing car's controls into the harness … 2)Knowing what can be eliminated from the original harness.... and 3) Getting the harness without breaking all those fragile connectors or their latches....

To me, $300-500 is a bargain to get new stuff and some help/direction to making it happen.... It's when the stuff takes me past a Grand that I start looking at retreating to non-digital solutions...

[AzDon]

I'm a little overwhelmed by the complexity of most of the stuff in these forums..... What I'm looking for is a simple, complete how-to that will direct me to get all the stuff needed from a 95 burb (454/4L80) into my 69 chevy van and wired up to run..... I'm not going to use the suburban instrument panel or ignition switch, so i'm a bit confused about how much of the stock harness to save and where to tie-in inputs/outputs for gauges and such and what the values should be. If it would be easier, I'd be willing to strip out the gauge wiring and put in standalone aftermarket stuff, even maybe mechanical... Does the whole thing begin with building some type of power/relay center and maybe centralizing all the grounds? Am I overthinking this? I know I'm about 20 years late to the party, but....

[dave w]

Maybe the schematics below will help? I'm unaware of a comprehensive step by step conversion article here at gearhead-efi.com. Maybe google is a search option for a TBI conversion.

If looks don't matter? Then the option of a rats nest looking harness is the easy low cost way of getting things done. The rats nest harness only needs a few wires figured out.

Connector Pins A1, A2, A12 and Pin A on the ALDL diagnostic port are ground wires. Maybe the grounds in the used harness are good?
Connector Pin E16 and Fuel Pump Pin A is BATTERY HOT "+". Factory uses a 16 gauge fusible link for circuit protection.
Connector Pin E15 is powered by ignition switch when the ignition switch is in "ON and START" position. Factory uses 10 Amp fuse for circuit protection.
Terminate unused wiring with heat shrink tubing. Terminating unused wires is required to prevent electrical fires and / or an unwanted rapid oxidation event! Unwanted Thermal Events should be avoided also! Be warned everything electrical is smoke powered, if you let the smoke out; the subsequent and / or associated events will be costly and possibly life ending. :yikes:


dave w

13076

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[myburb]

If you haven't done so, go to definitions on the first part of this obd1 forum and go to pcm 6395, $OE. Towards the bottom is 6 wiring diagrams. With that you have what you will need. You pretty well will use it all except gauges. You will need the drac, the check engine lite and the obd1 aldl port. For gauges you can just put in original senders for those. You will then be running the computer off the efi senders and gauges off old style senders. Ignition switch will just control a power relay. Of course there would be other ways to do it but this is pretty simple.

[AzDon]

Thank you for the replies!.... I spent a couple of hours in the burb dash today working on deconstruction.... It looks like I'm going to need to pull the dash apart completely to get the complete harness......A while back I de-constructed a 91 wagon and pulled 100% of all wiring out and started verifying wires and routing and had the entire floor of the 2 car garage covered with wires....Decided to do it later when I installed the 305 into the van, but changed the plan to this 454...…..I guess the way to do it is to get the engine, trans, and necessary components in place and then lay the harness over the whole setup and start connecting and pruning (?)……. By the time I get to that point, I'll probably want to just buy that harness from fuel injection connection....

[AzDon]

Thanks for the schematics, Dave!...…….These are the correct diagrams for a 7427 ECM and 4L80?...… This is too cool! I should be able to make this work!

[dave w]

Thanks for the schematics, Dave!...…….These are the correct diagrams for a 7427 ECM and 4L80?...… This is too cool! I should be able to make this work!
Actually the 1995 schematics posted above are for BOTH 5.7 liter and 7.4 liter engines with 16197427 computers.

dave w

[DavidBraley]

Be warned everything electrical is smoke powered, if you let the smoke out; the subsequent and / or associated events will be costly and possibly life ending. :yikes:

But Dave! There's a fix for that... :rolleye:

[dave w]

But Dave! There's a fix for that... :rolleye:

LOL:laugh:

Is there a picture of the smoke applicator / smoke repair kit?

dave w

[AzDon]

I've owned a british car, so it seems logical that Lucas would be the best company to offer this product.....I usually let some smoke out with a soldering gun.....So maybe a fire alarm pull switch operating a master battery disconnect might be a good thing?

[DavidBraley]

LOL:laugh:

Is there a picture of the smoke applicator / smoke repair kit?

dave w

Here is the link to the website page where I found it. It was originally based on an Ebay listing.

http://www3.telus.net/bc_triumph_registry/smoke.htm

[AzDon]

Still workin it!

[1project2many]

Hi Don,

This is going to be a fun project. My grandfather had a '69 3/4 ton van that he kept until he passed away. I'd had dreams of working it over for years but it had rusted away too badly to be worth restoring so we ended up junking it.

Because those old vans were a "cab forward" design the front of the engine will be at the driver's feet and the rear of the engine will be in the van storage / passenger area. Your wiring harness from the Suburban is designed to go through the firewall behind the passenger side valve cover and the ecm is only a short distance away. I'm not sure there is enough wire in the harness to allow the pcm to be positioned in an ideal location. If you find that you want a longer harness, the '90s van chassis harness was much longer. In the newer van the harness was routed forward of the engine then back under the driver's floor then passed through the floor under the driver's seat to the pcm. One ton cutaways such as box trucks and short buses from 93 to 96 should have compatible harnesses and many of these models were equipped with 4L80E transmissions. Keep in mind that the van changed body styles for the '96 production year but the cutaway lagged behind by one year.

Good luck!

[AzDon]

Yep!...… Engine is actually going in 18 inches rearward of the stock location...… Once it's in, I'll lay the harness over it and connect everything and try to figure out what it will take to do something clean and orderly...… I'll either use the harness from this burb because I already have it and it belongs to this drivetrain.... Or I will just use it to determine what the dimensions of a new harness should be...…The most logical plan would be to have an aluminum drop-in box set into the floor right inside the side doors outboard of the chassis on the right side or maybe having a side bin on the right side of the engine box...… I'm also going to have A/C stuff to conceal, as well, so it's going to require some creativity

[AzDon]

I got a bit ahead of myself by starting to ponder what the wiring harness might look like......I'm still fabricating the basic infrastructure changes to the van itself that become too difficult to fabricate with the engine in.... So far, I've done a front axle flip with a stabilizer bar, which required re-configuring the master cylinder, Custom mounted a new aluminum radiator three inches below stock and built a custom underpan air scoop system. Made custom parts to adapt the 3sp manual shifter to operate the 4L80, Custom foot throttle, custom hub adapter to use a 19" Peterbilt steering wheel, custom crossmember for engine, and I've been working to build a custom engine box and adjustable height trans crossmember...….. The engine and trans still run in the donor Suburban...… Gotta long way to go!

Here is a link to my project: https://vintage-vans.forumotion.com/t59138-azdon-s-108