I recently purchased a '98 Expy with 230k on it, the truck is in very good shape inside & out with the exception of water in the oil. It may have a blown head gasket, I don't know or really care with that many miles on it, I'd rather just replace the engine. I found a '01 5.4 with 60k on it for a good price & was wondering if it would be a "plug & play" type of swap? Is anything different as far as wiring goes? I know as far as bolting it in there won't be any problems but didn't know about the electronic side of it.

Thanks,
Aaron

 

for the most part yes it is plug and play kind of deal. but the 01 uses a cylinder head temp sensor and the 98 uses 2 coolant temp sensors(1 for computer and 1 for gauge). other than that you may need to get a tune. the 99+ 5.4's had PI(performance improved) heads. they flow better. it may addapt for them but you may not get the most performance out of them and some of the parameters may be at borderline specs.

 

Use the wire harness off of the old engine and tap the coolant crossover at the front of the intake manifold so you can use the coolant temp sensor and the coolant temp sender from the old engine. Get a tune to be on the safe side.

Options while the swap is going on.
Electric fans - The rad is out and accessible.
Headers - While the engine is out you can easily remove the old exhaust manifold.
Cold Air intake - Easier to install than old inlet piping.
Performance torque converter - The old one is just sitting there waiting to be swapped.
Clean/detail the engine compartment - The engine is out of the way, why not?


.

 

Thanks for the help, I picked up the engine today & started pulling the old one. We'll see how it goes.

 

Is your truck originaly a 5.4 or 4.6?
I would like too know how it turns out

 

It's a 5.4, just going with a later engine.

 

Update:

I got the new motor in, just need to button a few things up. It's taken me a while because of my work schedule & my wife & I just had a baby, so I haven't had much time!

It turns out the '01 motor was from a 4x4 so I had to use the oil filter adapter & left side motor mount from the '98. Also the exhaust manifolds were different, I don't know if it was from the year difference or being from a 4x4, but they did line up with the exhaust. I did need to elongate the holes on the exhaust flanges because the studs were a little farther apart on the new ones. The '01 engine doesn't have the coolant outlet at the rear of the intake like the '98 did, instead it is at the front. The old hose reached with no problems. I used the engine harness off of the '98 engine so I can run both coolant temp sensors, and luckily the coolant crossover in the '01 intake has a plugged hole in it so I just removed the plug & the sender is going in there.

And here is where I've hit a small snag. It seems that the throttle cable brackets are different between the two, and I seem to have lost (or thrown away for whatever reason) the one from the '98 - which is the one I need. I can modify the newer one to accept the throttle cable but the cruise control isn't going to work. The '98 cables are secured by bolts & the '01 are clipped in. I'm going to drill a bolt hole in the bracket I have as a temporary fix until I get the right one, just to make sure everything is working ok. I'll post up how it works out.

Aaron