81 Malibu 3.8 turbo conversion

[BigWillie]

I bought a wrecked 87 Grand National with 11000 original km, I plan on swapping the drivetrain into my 81 Malibu. I have the dash, wiring, column, fuel system, brakes, AC, and most everything I should need for the conversion, but I'm wondering if I should just get a stand alone harness, and sell the Grand National parts to someone that needs them for their GN.

I have the frame and suspension just about wrapped up, and should be able to drop in my engine and transmission shortly, then I can install my Malibu shell.It would be a lot of work to remove my Malibu dash, wiring, column and the install all the GN pieces, and I'm wondering if its worth the effort . I wish that I could afford a Grand National, but I guess this is pretty close.Please chime in with your opinions

 

[forcefed3.8's]

A stand alone harness will be the easiest. I married a GN harness to a 79 Cutlass harness to retain the factory dash. I also swapped the Cutlass body on a complete rolling GN frame.

 

[Boxcars]

I installed a GN dash in my turbo V6 el camino to simplify the job of wiring. It's not that difficult to change over and you already have the dash and the harness.


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[bpman1234]

Forcefed what does it take to do what you said ? Let's say the opposite a Gn body on a 81 Olds frame ?

 

[BigWillie]

Forcefed what does it take to do what you said ? Let's say the opposite a Gn body on a 81 Olds frame ?

The frames are the same, motor mounts, fuel lines and brakes are different.

 

[blacknight80]

I swapped harness from my 82 tr to a ha. I know not as different as your case but I still had to repin the dash harness. It's not hard if you have a shop manual to make sure the dash harness lines up with the gn. I added a an aux fuse panel to make up the circuits I didn't have in my stock panel.

 

[blacknight80]

R, P, L, G, B, and A aren't needed and if you have a egr detete you don't need D either. The speed sensor might be the snag with the stock Malibu cluster.

 

[79TurboCutlass]

For the speed sensor, Caspers Electronics had the components to hook that up when we did mine. You can also get a chip burned to not use vehicle speed and not even worry about it.

 

[88boostedmonte]

So did this swap get finished

 

[blacknight80]

I found that if you want to run razors alky you will need to splice the TPS 5 volt if you dont use the tr dash harness.

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