Pontiac Solstice Forum banner

2008 GXP Engine Swap - Guidance

6K views 15 replies 7 participants last post by  Saveaux 
#1 ·
I posted a while back about a timing tensioner that broke on my wife's 2008 GXP, taking out a few valves, thinking a rebuild may be the way to go. Taking advice from forum members and a local recommended mechanic, I've opted to do an engine swap with a new Euro NOS Crate Motor from ATK Performance Engines.

After getting a quote for labor for R&R, I'm contemplating taking this on myself (2X the cost of the engine itself) . I'm looking for advice here - any recommendations on manuals, instructional videos, best contacts here on this forum for Q&A ?? Are there special tools required or any special concerns? Or is this enough of a pain in the rear job that I should get it done?

Thanks in advance,
 
#3 ·
ok, so can someone chime in with some words of wisdom?? things to watch out for, things that will be a bitch , any special tools required?

for $2200 should I just let a shop do this?

I'm swapping in a euro spec complete engine for what's in the car. see ebay item 283543939691..

thanks
Michael
 
#5 ·
I have done several of these engine swaps. A few things to consider. The sensor on the intake manifold will not plug into your existing wiring harness. You have two options, use your old intake or have the hole in the new one reamed to allow your current sensor to fit.You will also need your dual front pulley from your old engine, the new engine only comes with a single belt pulley. If you use the new oil pan you will find it holds about 1 quart more of oil. Other than that it is a straight forward install all other connections will fit from your old engine. You will also need the fitting on top of the head that the cooling line from the turbo connect to, it doesn't have the second outlet to allow the line from the coolant reservoir to be hooked.. I would also order new motor mounts most times you will find the old ones are broken.
 
#6 · (Edited)
I bought an ATK engine from their website in July and installed it pretty quickly. Apparently the ebay store is different than their website. I called and spoke to the owner of ATK who said he bought over 200 engines. He didnt know what the engines were and told me to call JNR Cobalt to ask about them. Supposedly the engines were made for Fisker for a Karma car? I also heard that the engines were made for use in generators, I'm not really sure on this one?

JNR said that hes installed many of these with no issues. Martin at RPM told me out of 8 that hes installed 2 had problems. He told me that one engine died with less than 250 miles on it. ATK sells them as is and told him that it died because he broke it in with synthetic oil as opposed to conventional oil. I broke my in with 2 oil changes of Lucas break in oil.

It has Opel injectors, you'll need a tune before you ever start it. I used Dave at PAW for this using HPtuners. Or you could reuse your fuel rail.

You'll need to swap your oil pan with its FWD oil pan that it comes with.

You can use your intake or the one it came with. The one that it comes with needs one hole drilled and tapped, the other hole simply reamed out larger. I can tell you more about this if youre interested. I used the intake that it came with.....it seemed to be slicker on the inside as opposed to my factory one.

You'll have to swap the pulley ou ,,tl that it comes with with yours. It uses s TTY (torque to yield) bolt. These bolts are one time use, it should be replaced.....i did NOT replace mine, just reused the one that came on it. Time will tell if I made a mistake or not.

I never beoke the AC lines to swap. I installed the engine with one motor mount on, the other off. The LDK head is fine, no need to swap for an LNF head. The engine comes with AC Delco 41-108 plugs.

Im at 900 miles and the engine is running perfect.

The engine got from Texas to Denver in two days.
 
#7 ·
Supposedly the engines were made for Fisker for a Karma car? I also heard that the engines were made for use in generators, I'm not really sure on this one?
It's probably the same thing. The Fisker Karma (now Karma Revero) hybrid-electric cars used the LNF as a generator to charge the batteries. There was no direct driveline connection from the engine.
 
#9 ·
Saveaux, are the FWD and RWD pans visually different? I dont know if all fo the ATK engines are the same so not sure that I'll need to swap pans and wondering.. Also, tell me more about the intake swap and tuning if I stick with the injectors the ATK engine comes with. Should any speed shop be able to do this tune? Are they better (more HP? )
thanks,
 
#10 ·
@Michael_P_H I don't remember if the pans were visually different, but it would make sense to me that they are, I'll attach pictures of the pan that I pulled off. Yes, all of the ATK engines are the same. Intake swap, I'll find and attach pictures of it in the next reply. Tuning - since all of the engines were made to European spec they have Opel injectors installed. These injectors flow more gas and will need a tune to support them without fear of damaging the engine. I already had a Trifecta tune so removed it using the Trifecta cable, and then purchased an HP Tuners MPVI2 kit and tune from PAW. You can easily install the tune if you own a laptop and tuning cable (USB to OBD2 port cable). Dave at PAW wrote a tune to support the injectors he emailed it to me, I used the HP Tuners software thats on the laptop, which is connected to the car via the cable, you use this software to install the file that Dave emails you. I datalogged (ran or drove the car and recorded lots of data with the laptop hooked up while running or driving it) saved the file and sent it back to him, he reviewed and made any changes. The injectors are capable of using E85 fuel, therefore you could get an E85 or E47 tune for it which yields more hp/tq than premium fuel. To do one of those tunes you need two of the following three things: opel injectors, camshaft with larger fuel lobe, new HPFP. You could install your factory fuel rail and injectors and be fine, then you wouldn'need a tune (at least I think).

Tunes can raise your hp and tq by quite a bit, it achieves this by raising the amount of boost that the engine can push.
 

Attachments

#12 · (Edited)
Saveaux - Thanks for the pictures - have been working on other stuff and getting the wiring taken off of the car in prep for engine pull. My car is an automatic. Any suggestions on how to get to the dang flywheel bolts ? What a pain. Do I need to suspend the engine, remove the lower left motor mount bracket and A/C compressor?

Also, on the manifold sensor changes, wouldn't it be easier to get the mating connector to the sensor that comes with the engine and just replace what is on the wiring harness?

I'll have more questions regarding the tune stuff you mention, but gotta get this out and new engine in first.
thanks,
 

Attachments

#13 ·
I removed the flywheel bolts while laying on my back, under the car. Reaching up from below, I put my socket right where you took the picture. My dad was at the crank bolt with a long breaker bar keeping the flywheel in one spot. This required constant micro-adjustments from him.

I removed the AC compressor after I had the flywheel bolts off. I raised the engine a bit before I could get it off. I never broke the AC lines, just set the compressor to the side after I unbolted it from the engine block.

The manifold was very, very easy. 2 drill bits and one tap = done. Maybe $5 in tools if you were to buy individually. For the hole that you need to tap - i went through my taps and misc. bolts that I had lying around until I found a bolt that matched the threads of a tap, its a smaller bolt than what I used on the other side of the sensor. The hole you need to drill out....i just started small on drill bits, would drill a hole then tried to see if the sensor would fit down in it, it didnt a couple times until I got the correct bit.
 
#14 ·
Ok, so I'll go down that path you've described for flywheel bolts. The shop I had the car in prior to deciding to do this swap myself had already opened up the AC system, removed condensor and radiator and removed some A/C lines, so removal of compressor is no issue. Is there an advantage to using the new intake / fuel rail over just swapping in the old stuff from the old engine? If I have to remove the intake from the new engine anyway to drill out the holes, why not just put the old one on? That would also avoid the need to do any mandatory tuning for the opel injectors (I don't have the HP Tuner tools to do that ). I don't mind doing all of that, but would like to understand the benefit.
 
#16 ·
It's a PITA to remove the AC compressor without raising the engine a bit because of the steering linkage that's on the frame in front of the compressor. My cherry picker wouldn't reach over the engine from the front so I just removed the front nose but never removed the radiator, I saw no reason to? No need to break the AC lines therefore needing to suck the system down and then repressurize it. I started with my old intake but I had overtightened the two outside bolts (was using a phenolic spacer that had been torqued down multiple times and I crunched the spacer down, the outside bolt tabs just cracked) and broke the intake, so I needed to use the new one. It was my belief that the new intake had smoother runners in it as compared to my factory one, so that made me happy. Using the old intake has nothing to do with tuning for opel injectors; you would be changing intakes, not injectors. These injectors are ethanol compliant, so you could run a stronger tune for that but would need any 2 of the following three: opel injectors, modified fuel lobe cam, different high pressure fuel pump. HP Tuner is the way to go, I highly recommend Dave at Werks to do your tuning. He will take care of you the entire time through everything - will review a datalog of your initial engine start up, make adjustments, review more datalogs and then once the engine is broke in he'll write a new stronger tune and review new datalogs you make. This is all covered for the $375 he charges, it was the peace of mind that a professional was doing all the work....I saw no sense in dropping a new engine in and then run the risk of burning another hole in a piston due to it being too lean or rich from a tuning perspective.
 
#15 ·
@Michael_P_H The Opel injectors flow about 12%-13% more than the stock LNF injectors. They're capable of supporting more boost than the stock units, and are happily E85 compatible (though you'd need an E85 tune and an upgraded HPFP).

Actually, I'm not sure if the HPFP on that engine is E85 compatible. Perhaps someone else can chime in?
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top