Chevy LS1 Engine Setup - Fun With Fuel Injection

...Turn Key whipped up this fancy plug to fill the sensor hole in the side of the oil pan. The stock sensor unscrews, and with a bit of thread sealant, the plug goes right back in. Of course, do this with the oil drained.

Simple enough so far? In the box is all the OE and miscellaneous wiring that Turn Key reduces into this nifty, easy-to-use engine harness. Their all-new harness uses OEM connectors and is marine-grade to last. It also comes wrapped in a soft yet strong woven loom that is far from the common bulky plastic type, which will aid in a clean-looking finished product.

Starting at the rear of the passenger-side head, the harness runs up along the motor between the intake and head. It will be obvious which connector goes to its mate thanks to its length and connector style. The wires to go the left side of the engine are in a loom that branches off the main section. Take the time to route all the wires neatly so the end result is just that-neat.

The brain of the system is this small Delphi MEFI-4 ECM that is easily mounted under the dash of your truck. Turn Key preprograms this for you depending on your specific engine needs. On their custom-built crate engines, it has a programmed break-in schedule with rpm limits, too. They also remove all the antitheft codes and other soon-to-be-unused factory settings to make the engine universal and not dependant on all the OE equipment.

These two connectors go to the oxygen sensors in the exhaust. You don't "need" the sensors, but your engine will be more efficient if you use them since the ECM reads the exhaust on its way out the headers to make sure nothing is wrong. When compared to a carbureted engine, sensors seem to be an evil device, put there to cause us headaches and cost us money, but they really are there for a reason.

Now the accessories can go back on the front of the engine. There are basically three different pulley configurations from the factory: trucks, Camaro/Firebird (F-body), and Corvette (Y-body). The Corvette setup will hug the block the tightest, followed by the Camaro, and either one is great for street rods where space is key. The truck pulleys are great for most any fullsize engine bay and are probably the most plentiful.

Chris busted out a bolt kit to reattach all the accessories for just a little shine. If you get a motor with little to no accessories on it, Turn Key can help supply you with OE-style parts, or you can upgrade to their chrome billet pulley setup. For simplicity at this stage-and for the foreseeable future-I'm sticking with the stock setup. Turn Key did replace the power steering pump and alternator since they were junkyard casualties, and with the new ones came peace of mind.

Don't forget to check the idler and belt tensioner pulleys; we don't want to throw any belts! The tensioner proved good, but the idler was replaced due to dry sounding bearings.

Unlike conventional small-blocks, the LS-series has the modern coil-on-head setup for the ignition and uses one coil per cylinder. This is where using junkyard parts doesn't really make the cut if your engine has been out of the vehicle and bumped around a bit. We found that about half the stock coil packs were cracked and beat up, so they were replaced.

Looks like we are headed into the home stretch after only about two hours as the coil packs are attached to the valve covers. Turn Key has upgrades in this area, too, with custom-made coil pack brackets and new coils. The stock PCV hoses are hooked up and just the water temp sending unit and alternator need to be connected to the harness using the two wires hanging off of the left side for the engine before it goes to the test stand to be fired up!

Every complete motor leaves Turn Key having been run on their test stand, tuned, and brought up to operating temperature to ensure all is well. After adding fresh oil, coolant, exhaust, and power, our former junkyard engine proved to be a jewel after all and purred like a sewing machine. Turn Key is almost done with their engine dyno, so we could only speculate-but Super Chevy just did a stock, boneyard 5.3L that dyno'd with a surprising 344 hp and 370 lb-ft of torque. Stay tuned for the actual installation of the engine into the '72 C-10!