I used a junkyard one from a early 2000's impala, its super long. The firewall/ pedal fit like stock mazda, I just had to do a little fab work for the throttle body end mounting bracket.

This summer I decided it was finally time to "upgrade" my V8 swapped FC.

I bought this car around 20 years ago and did a 350 swap in my backyard. It was a 4-bolt main engine I pulled from a van in the junkyard, completely rebuilt with Edelbrock goodies and had around 350-375hp.

It was a fun car but somewhere around 2010 it got parked for no real reason and I haven't had it on the road since. Last year I started it up for the first time in 10 years and found some coolant in the oil, corrosion on half the electrical in the engine bay, a bucket of corrosion gunk in the gas tank, and some other issues.

I had 2 choices, rebuilt the car as it was, or LS swap it and do some upgrades. The LS swap was cheaper on paper and I knew I'd be happier with it, so I went that route and started the conversion early this summer.

Future plans are to toss on a turbo, upgrade to a 4L80, and swap in an 8.8 IRS. I had all the parts to do the 4L60 install and with the one wheel peal skinny tires it currently has I don't think I'll break anything. So this winter I'll get all the turbo/trans/rear parts together and swap them in next summer, while driving it around NA which should still be plenty of fun.

I've been making some videos of the process for your viewing displeasure. I also have a few photos from over the years, I'll try to find them to upload also. I've pai9nted it twice so far. It was originally white, I went silver in the mid 2000's, then yellow last spring to fix and cover a little rust that was forming.

https://youtu.be/eXnBtOzoQQ8

Fresh after it's yellow tractor paint job last year

I have a question for anyone who's done the 8.8 IRS swap into a FC.

My question is: How much farther forward is the front face of the 8.8 pinion flange mating surface compared to the stock FC pinion flange?

Right now I have the stock FC 4 lug rear axle. I plan to swap to a 8.8 next year and wanted to get the right length driveshaft made now. For now I plan to make an adapter/spacer to take up any extra space, then when I swap the 8.8 I can just ditch the spacer and bolt the driveshaft right to the 8.8. This just saves me the trouble of either getting 2 driveshafts made or getting it modified later.

Or, if you have an 8.8 installed and we can figure out some measurement on the car chassis that I could measure off of to the flange face, that would work too. I'll have to crawl around under the car and find something standard and easy to measure from.

Thanks !