My Buick 231 v6 swap

Figured i'd give it it's own thread. Hopefully helpful to anyone looking to do the swap and wanted pics for reference.

Made my motor mounts from $11 of steel from the "remenants" section at the local metal-mart. Cut off the 4cyl mounts at the rivets, and cut off the stock battery tray:



Here's the "new to me" Buick 231 even-fire, T90, and D18 ready to go in:



Found a small bolt patter 2-jet off an old Chevy v8 at the junkyard and rebuilt it. Gotta love glass beads in the blast cabinet!:



Test fitting the engine before I finished welding up the new mounts the rest of the way:



Finished product:








I used a throttle pedal/cable assembly from a 94 Chevy pickup, the air filter housing is from an 89 S-series blazer. Used an aluminum 4" furnace/water heater elbow to connect the fresh air intake to the intake on the shroud. Painted it satin black so it didn't stand out too much.

The hot air intake is attached and functioning as well, so it should give me excellent winter weather driveability. I had to cut off the snout and attatch it to the middle of the manifold since it wouldn't clear the firewall at all.

Stock battery tray was modified to mount on the firewall in it's new location.

Engine is actually mounted just a hair too low. I am sometimes bumping the driveline against the starter and bellhousing. Might just shim the suspension stop down a bit to stop that from happening. I already clearanced the starter and bellhousing and groud a bit of the steel casing away on the starter as well. Just barely rubs sometimes.

Brake pedal also hits the engine, so I had to adjust the brake shoes better, and adjust the pushrod into the master cylinder to get rid of a lot of slack to keep that from happening.

Indexed the pitman arm on the Ross steering box one notch forward so I could steer left all the way. Just used a torch and bent the drag link to line the steering back up like normal.

Hope the pics/info helps someone out doing the swap.

It was TOTALLY worth it. The jeep is so much more driveable in traffic that it's just silly, and the power on the trails is pretty sweet as well!

 

I see you had the BFH out as well looks good man

 

"Used an aluminum 4" furnace/water heater elbow to connect the fresh air intake to the intake on the shroud."

Thats really supposed to go to the heater air inlet. If you're running a top, you could wind up sucking oil & gas fumes inside w/the heater on. If you're topless, then no worries.

" I am sometimes bumping the driveline against the starter and bellhousing. "

My dad's 69 CJ5 used to do that, too & it's all stock. Just eyeballing it from your pictures, it looks like your engine is at the same height as my '70.

 

Yea, still trying to figure out where to run the fresh air for the heater. I am getting a bit of debris and mud on my heater core with it "open" like that. But I like the cold air intake for the engine more, so i'll figure something out there.

Good (?) to hear that the driveline sometimes rubbed when stock, means I didn't mess it up too bad. I can't imagine going much higher with the engine or the firewall clearance would have really gotten bad. Thinking of having my stock springs re-arched to get the ride height back to stock. Either that or a 1" lift kit maybe. Time will tell.

Thanks guys!

 

Get some furnace air filter material or something similar, cut it bigger than the inlet hole and attach it with a large hose clamp that will fit the diameter of the air inlet on the heater. That will keep debris out.

 

Looks like you can put a matching inlet on the passenger side of the grille, and use that for your cold air intake.

 

Nice thread!!! Looks like it went easy!

 

Put some cheesecloth or even window screening over the end to keep out all but the smallest chunks of debris.

 

Nothing foreign has ended up in the heater core in over two years now. At this point i'm probably not going to worry about it. I'll be switching to hanging pedals eventually anyway which will take the stock heater out of there as it is.

 

Reviving an old thread with a question.

What engine did that air filter assembly come from?

I've been searching for a similar air cleaner, but most appear to have double stud mounts.

 

68 BuickV6............read #1 above

 

Am I missing something? He lists the year, but there are different air cleaners am I finding for that year, for different engines. I can't seem to find that specific style.

 

Nearest I have been able to find the carburetor came off a 1961 Chevy C10 with the 283.

I can't remember if it was a 2.8 or the 4.3 for sure, but I believe it was the 2.8 that the air filter came off of. I had to modify it to fit the top of the carburetor, it was not a direct fit to the old Rochester