5.3 to 6.0 engine swap??

[DanL13]

Long story short I have a 2013 Chevy 1500. Quite a number of miles, 197k ish, on it but in good shape outside of an engine issue. In typical Chevy fashion it suffered AFM failure. All the necessary diagnostics and tear down was done and it needs an engine. Looking at doing a junkyard engine with something with fairly low miles. The issue is, I want it to be fairly reliable and as far as I’m concerned the AFM engines are garbage and a ticking (quite literally a lot of times) time bomb. I could delete a new/used engine but $1000 in parts on top of the engine cost and then labor as I am admittedly a poor mechanic isn’t exactly going to be super cheap. Which had me pondering a L96 6.0 swap, eliminate the AFM with a tune and keep on rolling for another quarter million miles. And yes I know it’s also not super cheap. I know it’ll drink more gas and not worried about it. Has anyone here done this and have any experience with it? Worth doing?

 

[redhat]

Yes, it isn't a bad job. Essentially, L96 will bolt up without an issue. You'll have to run the intake manifold off of the L96 as it has square port heads, where as your 5.3 has cathedral port. You'll want to copy parameters from an L96 engine calibration to your truck's calibration and turn off DOD in the cal.

Your current engine -- is it down a lifter? If you've maintained it well and it's got a healthy bottom end, you may want to seek out a local place to pull heads and DOD delete the thing.

 

[ctechbob]

I believe @clinebarger has done these in the past with pretty good results.

 

[PontiacHO]

After all is said and done, overhauling your 5.3 with the cam and lifter delete will end up being the most efficient effort. Everything bolts up. All the electrical and emissions components remain the same.

 

[4wd]

After all is said and done, overhauling your 5.3 with the cam and lifter delete will end up being the most efficient effort. Everything bolts up. All the electrical and emissions components remain the same.

Yes, assuming it has Okay cylinder compression … On that - I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Fort Worth …

 

[DanL13]

Yes, it isn't a bad job. Essentially, L96 will bolt up without an issue. You'll have to run the intake manifold off of the L96 as it has square port heads, where as your 5.3 has cathedral port. You'll want to copy parameters from an L96 engine calibration to your truck's calibration and turn off DOD in the cal.

Your current engine -- is it down a lifter? If you've maintained it well and it's got a healthy bottom end, you may want to seek out a local place to pull heads and DOD delete the thing.

Cylinder scored bad. Compression down. Not really wanting to the machine shop and rebuild route on it

 

[DanL13]

After all is said and done, overhauling your 5.3 with the cam and lifter delete will end up being the most efficient effort. Everything bolts up. All the electrical and emissions components remain the same.

My 5.3 is no bueno. I need to buy an engine regardless. I mean if it was just a lifter down and could throw a $950 delete kit in it and call it good I would but this one’s beyond that unfortunately