well I hooked up most of the lines and what not.. I'll get pics today if I can since it snowed last night and I felt really sick on the way home
FUEL
I got the fuel lines hooked on, and like I said the feed line hooks right onto the eco rail without a prob... the return line on the other hand... well... you have to cut it as close to the OHV rail as possible, then I pushed it onto the eco rail. Its a nice tight fit, but the line is a little taut. I have a clamp holding in place for now and I'm a little concerned, but not too much since its the low pressure side.
I'm going to end up buying ecotec fuel lines from the dealer.
HEATER HOSES
The ones in the car for the OHV are pretty long, but you can man handle them into the right shape to mate to the ecotec. Like I said, they're long and need to be shortened. But they're on there and clamped so it should be ok.
The hose on the driver side of the car needs to goto the higher pipe, and the one on the passenger side needs to goto the lower pipe.
Again, I'll probably get ecotec heater hoses from GM just since they're kind of a formed rubber and I won't have to bend them as much. Be careful when/ if you do this because if you pinch the hose thats a bad thing.
EVAP
This was something I never even thought of but was brought up by others in some of my earlier posts. The plastic hard lines are a bitch to work with and I can't get the quick disconnected I wanted to on the line (i'm sure there's some kind of tool to push the barbed section into the hose) But I used a rubber 90degree bend from the EVAP system on the OHV to get it to work and the evap line is very long on the OHV so I cut it with shears to shorten it for the eco.
I'll prolly buy the evap line for the ecotec from the dealer too.
BRAKE BOOSTER VAC LINE
This I am going to get just a much longer hose and some plastic bends to get to the manifold. You could run a hose straight to it, but it would more likely than not, bend or pinch.
Like everything before, I'll probably end up picking this up from a GM dealership.
PS LINES
The high pressure PS line feeds RIGHT into the pump on the eco without a prob, but the hose end is pre bent, and it doesn't go in easily. I had to sit under the car where the radiator goes to get enough leverage to get it into the pump and screwed in place. The low pressure line does NOT reach at all. I have to get a tee and lengthen it substantially.
Turns out the ecotec hard line on the steering rack goes to the other side of the car. This I will have to make something I'm a little more comfortable with and I'll post about the results of what I do and how I do it.
WIRING HARNESS
well, the harness I waited so long for went on easy onto the engine. I started at the ignition module hook up and wired around the engine like that. I'm a bit confused as to how the starter / alternator is hooked up but I will figure it out with some more trial and error.
the harness I have, unfortunately is the wrong one. I don't have an ABS plug on this harness so now my car doesn't have ABS either anymore. I was thinking about taking the ABS plug off my old wiring harness and splicing it into the new one, but I may just goto the dealership and cough up the $400 to buy a brand new wiring harness for the 04 ecotec with ABS and a/c along with all the other crap.
RADIATOR AND HOSES
well the aftermarket radiator I bought did NOT fit at ALL. It wasn't even relatively close, I would have had about 4 inches of radiator sticking out below my bumper.
And its jsut as well, I ended up getting an OEM radiator for an automatic. The extra slot for the trans cooler (which I don't have auto btw) will be used for probably an engine oil cooler in my application. It looks like threaded braided stainless steel line will go right into it. This is actually a really cool mod I think.
You get an automatic radiator, and run lines to it for a built in oil cooler for the engine. I don't know how well it will work, but we'll soon find out.
The radiator hoses is the hang up I'm stuck on now. The lower rad hose has a Y in it, and part of that Y is smaller and goes to the bottom of the overflow tank. The hoses I bought would never be able to do that, so I'm currently trying to find an OEM lower rad hose and I could have had one today but strauss doesn't let you order over the phone which means I Have to do it in person later today which means I won't get it until tomorrow.
So looks like the skwirl will not be reborn for at least one more day, and it depends on if I work on it tonight or not cuz last night I felt really sick and dont' feel like pushing my luck by busting ass on the car tonight.
Its going to cost a lot of money to replace all the stuff, but the way I will have things hooked up, even tho its temporary for me, SHOULD work for quite a period of time, if not permanently. I just don't like how things are routed, and in order to clean up the engine bay I need to get the ecotec specific lines for a lot of things.
here's a recent shot of the engine... it doesn't show much and the wiring harness is not in final position yet...
lol
