My first Suburban!! Engine swap

[gkomp]

Hello all, looks like I'm the new kid on the block. I picked a 93 slt suburban in awesome shape with 115000 mile on it a few days ago. Beautiful truck but has a spun bearing. I am not looking to get any major hp here, just looking for a street friendly truck. My plan is either to pull the motor, inspect everything, and afterwards cut the crank, new bearings and freshen up the top. I have done tons of these, no big deal. My other option is a 1989 350 motor that came out of a pontiac formula that I have sitting in the garage. Low miles and ran fine. Years ago it had some work done to it, I think the guy had a cam put in and maybe pistons. My cousin ran it in his Grand Prix back in the day and I remember it running well, not crazy fast, but ran good. I'm thinking max torque and hp are reached at a higher rpm than the standard 350 throttle body. Anybody here done this before? I have vortec heads and other motors laying around but I really want to bolt and go and not mess with searching for new intakes all the other crap that goes with it. Any ideas, comments?

The truck does run, knocks on start a little bit, runs quiet (surprisingly) loses oil pressure when it warms up and starts knocking again. I figure spun bearing.

 

[Bob Purinton]

Apples and oranges

Chevy and Pontiac engines don't like each other. They are totally different in construction and very little parts will interchange. I know Pontiac went to chevy engines at some point but I'm talking about PONTIAC engines. If your talking about a chevy engine in a Pontiac then disregard the rest of this.
The mounts to the frame are different. Bellhousing bolts up differently. You'd have to get a bellhousing to match the engine. That's if it's a manual shift. If automatic, you'd need to match the transfercase up with the Pontiac tranny by changing the outputshaft housing so your transfercase will mate up with the Pontiac tranny.
I'm not sure but don't the two engines rotate in opposite directions? Seems I heard that somewhere in my mis-spent youth. I could be wrong.
Also, finding the various bits of plumbing to make the vehicles gauges work with the Pontiacs sensors/sending units. Plus the various linkages to get throttle and shift to work.
Bottom line, you could make it work if you dump enough money into the project. Money that could get you the proper engine rebuilt and some goodies added for the same expenditure.
My opinion? Fix your old engine.