I’m very inexperienced in mechanics, however, l own a beautiful 68 fully restored I’m thinking about doing a Ls swap. I have a lot of friends in the car game and l here Everybody’s different opinion. What is the most inexpensive build ( motor, trans, rear end) that you recommend that l can build off of down the road but, not break the bank now.

 

Beautiful car... but in my world, it will break the bank no matter what is done. How much did you put into the car as is and is it worth it to upgrade for that much more. I'm not one to tell you what to put in or the cost, but it can depend on if you plan on keeping the car or selling and want a return on your investment. The buyer and market is different if you have all original with matching numbers or if you upgrade. If you upgrade and can afford to not sell original parts, plan on keeping the engine, trans and other parts. There are regrets to swapping out and I'm one of those who love all original no matter the engine.

 

It depends on what you want out of the finish project. There is a saying. "Fast, Dependable, Cheap " you can only have two. A big part of a project cost would be how much of the work you plan on doing. Example. You can buy a LQ9 with high miles on it, ring and bearing it and put a CAM in. and have less then $1500 in the hardware. You can then take the factory PCM harness strip out a bunch a wires and get the PCM flashed to get the tune close. Again with research you can do most of the yourself if you buy HPtune or you can find someone local that does have it that may charge you less then what HPtune costs.
Now if you do the above yourself it would be about 2 grand and you could hit 500hp but if you have to pay someone else to do the same thing the labor cost cost would make it not worth while. You would be better off with a crate motor or a low mile used one.

As for transmission, again it depends on what you are looking for. If you are talk strictly budget the 4L80e is tuff to beat and if you got you 6.0 out of a two wheel drive truck it could be easier cause the PCM will already be setup and just needs tuned. Of course you need to shift kit it. A nice upgrade to that would be a rebuild but once you start down that road the price starts to get close to a crate trans. There are no economicaloptions for a stick shift for any over drive setups. .

You can go budget on rear if one of your friends knows fabrication and read geometry. You can find a read out of a modern ford SUV shorten it and install the right mounting hardware and it would be fine with the above this is beyond most people. Rear end is one place it is tuff to skimp.
oAll told you could do everything under 6K. The reason it jumps to 6K is all the light things your going to need. Fuel system, electrical components, fan/front accessories, cooling system. Again is your are knowledgeable you can find economical solution for just about any issue in the 500 hp range.

It would also be real easy to to spend 30k on an all new drive line based on a crate LS3, Monster trans and moser rear and that is still with you installing everything yourself.

Check out sloppy mechanics on you tube and there website for budget builds, They have a ton of information on what parts to use and what not to. They have a wiki page for "how too" and you can even down load tunes for factory PCM depending on your config. He even has a Sloppy cam they sell on jegs can you can buy the cam and get the tune for it. I would also sugets there 8's for 8's series where matts goal was to built a 8 second car for 8K. I am not saying you want a drag car but he uses mostly stock parts and his his setup can handle a 1000 hp even for even a few runs if may be fine to be dependable for 500 hp.

I don't know your friends but I have been cleaning up other peoples messes for decades, friends will always claim I can do this and I can do that but when things don't work they tend to disappear and leave you with a pile of parts. You can rely on friends to help you, but not to manage the project. The research should all fall on you on what works and what does not work together. One of the great thing about buying all new name brand is you have someone to call. When you build from used cheap aftermarket parts you are on your own.


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