Well I ordered a body lift to make life easier for me since I'll need to run some brake lines and fuel lines because the ones in there are so rusted. The engine is going to be completely out so what better time to run new ones. I ordered the polyurethane replacement body bushings and the PA 2" lift, and was delivered two days later. The next day, thankfully a Saturday I put the lift on.


the directions for the kit were pretty good, a few things they talked about disconnecting I couldn't find so I skipped those parts. But the kit pretty much has you pull the front bumper and grill off as well as the rear bumper and eventually the trailer hitch cause it got in the way of the rear most body mounts for me, and I found it easier to just remove it to do the work. Then some of the miscellaneous wires and connections for brakes/batteries/relays had to be loosed from frame/body depending on where the connections were.





And here sits the pile of parts I removed lol



That was the easy part really. I didn't get any pictures in between body part removal and the finish due to the frustration of two snapped body bolts on the drivers side. The whole project took me a total of 10ish hours if I don't count break times for food and bathroom. I'll get some pictures of the post lift later today when I can make room to open the garage (hopefully I'm parked back far enough so the garage door doesn't hit the roof rack)

 

Well it has been one heck of a couple months, between it being ungodly cold and catching the flu, progress has been slow but it is still coming along nicely! The 97 5.7L vortec has been reassembled with new everything! It'll be a brand new engine with 0 miles when it goes in woo!

But so far I have all the 4.3 accessories (and also the brackets for the ALT, PS/AC) installed; alternator, power steering, water pump, ac compressor, idler pulley, and tensioner...I'm using the temperature sensor on the drivers side head from a 4.3, and also using the 4.3 distributor with a 5.7 cap and rotor (just a note is that I aligned the distributor to the "8" not the "6" when I installed it). The crankshaft sensor has also been swapped over from the 4.3 (since they have the same PN).

I figure I'll document what I do since I have come across a god awful amount of threads about 5.7 swaps (mostly 1st gens and 2wds) and still had questions because theres very few 4x4 5.7 swaps that I've found lol.

So I still have to pick up, motor mounts and adapters (probably gonna wind up using the 2.8 with a trans-dapt adapter), a 45* elbow (which should be 1/4 NPT 20) for the knock sensor since it mounts by the passenger motor mount on the V8 and not by the distributor like the V6, and then shorty headers! or manifolds from something (I still haven't figured out which I want to do).

But here are some pics!












(hacked the **** out of the manifolds to get access all the bolts to hopefully pull the block tomorrow)

I just want to make a note that this is a slow project because I will be redoing corroded brake/fuel lines, sandblasting the entire frame and underbody and monsta-lining the underbody (because I loath rust!) but if anybody has questions, I will answer to the best of my knowledge!