How many I5 to 5.3/6.0 swaps here?

How many of you have done the I5 to LS style v8? If you had to do it again would you do the swap or buy the Alpha? Who has the best build info on the swap?

The easy and cheaper way is to buy an Alpha and regear it to 4.56 front and rear (so that will be the same as a V8 swapped I5 plus an Iron front diff)

Unless,

You score a used engine, trans, harness, exhaust for a really good price. If its from an alpha even better. Otherwise it will be too costly. (You also need to justify the total price given how much a price difference is between an I5 and a V8)

Im not even factoring in labor!

Humvee bought my 5.3L engine with all accessories and did the swap, he said he ended up paying north of 10K. The accessory bracket themselves cost him 1K!!!

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Just went with a Alpha after 2 years of searching.

amrg said:

The easy and cheaper way is to buy an Alpha and regear it to 4.56 front and rear (so that will be the same as a V8 swapped I5 plus an Iron front diff)

Unless,

You score a used engine, trans, harness, exhaust for a really good price. If its from an alpha even better. Otherwise it will be too costly. (You also need to justify the total price given how much a price difference is between an I5 and a V8)

Im not even factoring in labor!

Humvee bought my 5.3L engine with all accessories and did the swap, he said he ended up paying north of 10K. The accessory bracket themselves cost him 1K!!!

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I have done 5.3 swaps in older cars for as low as $1500. Not sure about this because of the bcm, and keeping the electronics happy. I also have HP tuners and can tune ecm.

If you have a compatible pcm then your good. The 2008+ have an E67 pcm which works straight with the Gen IV engines. The older H3s have a diff ecu so that needs research.
You will still need a H3 specific oil pan and pickup tube to clear front differential, H3 exhaust manifolds to clear frame rails and truck accessory brackets that locate the accessories in the engine bay to clear fuse box for alternator, frame rail for the power steering pump and ac compressor.

That all adds up to the cost.

It's true, on our swap it was the little things that added up and cost a fortune.

I’ve done it Jake and I’m sure you can too...you know how to build stuff! Lol

Got a complete running car for 2k 5.3 4l60e 2wd

Got a harness made, put 5.3 in with adapter motor mounts...took bellhousing off 4l60e from the 2wd and had mine rebuilt since I had over 130k hard miles on it and figured I’d be dumb to put that trans back in even though it still worked fine.

I had to cut and splice wires into the BCM because I’m an 06. 06 and Early 07 have to splice some wires. Mid 07 up is true plug in once you get a harness

As for is it worth it or not?

It depends, do you have a sentimental attachment? If so then it’s worth it.

Have you done other mods that will be a pain to get replicate on another rig? If so then it’s worth it...

Is it worth stripping your rig down to keep your bolt on upgrades, selling yours, finding another one then bolting up all that stuff to it? That depends!

For me, with the sentimental attachment to mine and having done the solid axle swap and spring over it would have cost more to buy an Alpha.

I did the same SolidusJ and bought an Alpha. JPaul did too. It took me about 6 months to find a truck that I liked. I wasn't that far into my first build yet and most of the stuff was bolt on and easy to take off. If you go the Buy route, I would also recommend you buy a truck with:

· A 2009 or 2010 Adventure package – No need to install lockers + You got an iron front diff
· Rancho Lift Kit - Next To Impossible to find these days. Unless your doing a SAS soon
· OEM roof marker lights – Super hard to find for a good price. Unless you don’t care for them

Any other attachments that come with the truck are a huge bonus. The one I bought was loaded with stuff and I probably only paid 1/4 of what those accessories would cost new. I really like to have the best accessories for the H3 but only for a great deal!

2006 H3 Luxury



2008 Alpha Adventure Luxury W/ Lots of stuff

My 07 is paid for, dont want to pay 20,000+ for an Alpha that will have more miles than my 07. I guess a bad thing about my 07 is the bottom is pretty rusty, frame crossmembers ect. It's from the rust belt.

Ho can you tell if it's the newer 07 or the older style like the 06? ECM numbers? BCM?

jakesz28 said:

My 07 is paid for, dont want to pay 20,000+ for an Alpha that will have more miles than my 07. I guess a bad thing about my 07 is the bottom is pretty rusty, frame crossmembers ect. It's from the rust belt.

Ho can you tell if it's the newer 07 or the older style like the 06? ECM numbers? BCM?

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My 08 has a separate PCM and TCM, older ones do not

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I was in the same situation contemplating an engine swap in my ‘06 Adventure vs finding an Alpha. I wasn’t comfortable doing the swap myself after researching here and other sources. It was my daily driver and I didn’t have the time and space to do it myself quick enough to be back on the road in a timely manor. There were not a lot of local shops that wanted to take on the task and those that did wanted enough (10K to start) that I opted for the Alpha. Also, the shops portfolios of past swaps wasn’t very convincing. I’ve seen others on here that have done a great job swapping theirs but I just knew mine would turn out looking like a swap with messed up wire looms and a jacked up looking firewall.

I just went ahead and bought an 09 h3t Alpha w adventure and lux package. My lil 06 5speed base was great but the h3t is pretty much dialed in with the exception of the bolt ons(roof rack, grill guard, sliders). By the way, I have h3 oem sliders I am willing to trade for h3t ones, other I might just extend them

Whats the price difference between an 09 alpha vs an I5 these days? That should be a very important question to justify a swap! If you are gona go from an I5 to a 5.3, its already available but if one was to go to 6.0 then thats different.

Offcourse swapping an alphas 5.3 to a 6.2 is super easy since you have everything done except the engine block!

Btw Alphas come with a cast iron front diff, but 4.10 gearing.

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Alphas are still $30,000 dollars or they have 150,000 + miles on then. My 06 only has 80,000 and is paid for. I'm not trading it in and paying 20,000 more for a 5.3L.

jakesz28 said:

Alphas are still $30,000 dollars or they have 150,000 + miles on then. My 06 only has 80,000 and is paid for. I'm not trading it in and paying 20,000 more for a 5.3L.

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I could see not going that route for $30k but I was able to find my Alpha with just under 100k miles for $20,000 and sold my ‘06 Adventure w/ 162k miles for $8,000 so essentially I paid $12,000 for a clean engine swap with 60k less miles vs the $10,000+ for a hopefully good engine swap plus I got the cast iron front diff with locker, heated leather seats, sun roof, roof markers and other goodies that came with the Alpha. And I didn’t have to deal with any engine swap headaches. It made sense to me to go that route instead. A lot of variables to consider. It is getting hard to find them with low mileage in the right price range though. Best of luck to you which ever way you end up going.

jakesz28 said:

Alphas are still $30,000 dollars or they have 150,000 + miles on then. My 06 only has 80,000 and is paid for. I'm not trading it in and paying 20,000 more for a 5.3L.

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Not always, I got mine for $28K and she had only 48K on the clock. This is also a fully load adventure package, there are deals still out there if you look.

My alpha was 26k with 28k miles on the clock, adv pack lol just gotta search and be patient.

Around here you can pick up an alpha for $11-18k with 120-160k miles on it. At this point most H3s need all of the usual maintenance parts so it doesnt really make much of a difference if you get one with 90k miles or 150k miles. No matter what H3 I bought id plan on new bushings, balljoints, upper control arms, tierods, steering rack mount, wheel bearings, shocks and radiator. Id also set $$ aside to do a rebuild transmission soon...

Personally I would not spend over 15k (Maybe even less) on an alpha. My thinking when buying an Alpha isn't really focused on miles at all. I know this may not work for everybody, but I don't daily drive it my H3 and I barley rack up any miles at all. For longer trips (8hrs+) I would trailer it. Personally I think getting a truck with lots of accessories and factory options is the biggest part. I look for the best performance, capability, and Utility I can get while still keeping it at a average below market value price. I think the sweet spot for me is having a trail rig that goes mostly off road but it still able to whip around town if necessary. This is why when I bought my 2008 Alpha with 250K miles on it I didn't care much. Yeah the physical condition isn't great, but the amount of accessories I am getting for a 1/4 of what they would cost new is worth it to me. I should mention that my truck isn't about to fall apart as it has a new Front differential, CV axles, Hubs, Transfer case, Front & rear drivelines have been put in the last 50K miles. On top of that, I really don't want to be concerned with a huge financing burden since I have 2 page long list of mods I want to do. I think you have a lot of negotiating room when it comes to buying a rig with a lot of accessories since it really only appeals to guys like us. When I first saw the truck I would come to buy, the guy wanted an astronomical price figure for it. A year later it was still sitting out there and the two of us worked out a deal! Remember their loss is your gain! Once you are one the trail, nobody is concerned about how many miles your truck has, but what it can do! Also I really hate the idea of a $2K crawler toy being able to out wheel me. Just my thoughts!

I picked mine up for a steal, even with the cost of the flight and gase and hotel coming back from Seattle. I redid the loan for $15k but I still have $2500 left in case I need to pay down my red Base H3 when I go to sell it. 157K on the clock, but the engine is just as strong as ever, just needs the oil pan gasket redone to fix the leak it has (common with those years of 5.3's no matter what). You can find Alpha's in pretty good shape under 20K pretty easily. Frankly the cost of doing a swap isn't a whole lot less than just buying an Alpha from my research. Not to mention the sheer amount of time and effort it takes to piece the swap together. So many unique parts that you have to pick up, and it's even worse when you're dealing with a pre-'08 since there's even more stuff you have to source and modify. And like Atvspeed4 mentioned, once you start approaching 100K you are going to want to redo most if not all of the suspension anyway, and this is especially true if you take it offroad much as that wears out the suspension components pretty quickly. My red Base '08 had 72K on it when I bought it, it now has 107K on it and it's still in pretty decent shape but it could really use all new bushings and the arms and such should probably be replaced as well. And I've taken it offroad only a handful of times really.

And as far as mods go unless you've done some serious custom work that cost you a ton of money and time, just redo all the mods on the new truck. Then you can fix mistakes you made the first time and improve them.

Ultimately it's up to you if you want to do the swap instead of buying an Alpha, just know that if you end up paying someone else to do the work it will easily cost just as much if not more than an existing Alpha.

I am looking to do a SAS swap in the future but it almost seems pointless in a 06 I5. I more than likely will look for an 08 Alpha because they are cheaper and I don't need CI diff. If there is an 8k -10k price bump to move to an Alpha than it is worth having 0 headaches in a swap, especially here in CA where the DMV nazis are stupid.

I swapped my 5.3 to a 6.2 and it gave me alot of headaches.

One of those was the tired wiring harness. I live in a hot environment and the oven of an engine bay doesn't really help. Same applies to all connectors, plugs, seals, etc...

That and the fact that once you got more power under the hood, all those tired drivetrain parts that are on their last legs will be exposed and possibly break.

My 100k mile trans died 60 miles after my swap and I wasnt really doing anything stupid or crazy, just doing the breakin procedure that involved a few full throttle launches up to 4k rpm!

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15-20k around here for an under 100k Alpha. I would never bother swapping out an I5 for a 5.3 the cost issues are just not worth it, besides the money you have a never ending amount of fiddling to do on modern computer controlled engine getting all the kinks worked out and your resale also takes a massive nose dive. I've had I5's and Alpha's, I would never buy another I5 unless it was to be a trail only rig where get up and go or passing no longer matters. Once's you put 35's on it turns into a slug, I would rather completely gut it, rip the doors off, and put a cage on it.

Funny I bet a can do this swap for less then $5000. You guys act like an engine swap is rocket science.