I found a couple 3.0 transaxles on car-part.com and drove 20min to atlas auto and check them out Saturday and they had no overlap. The sport transaxle has one, but it is looks like a different bolt pattern and drive shaft connection. Nice to know they have what's left of a '96 LS to strip parts from.
The motor is bolted in and fits perfect. I cut a 2" extension of the trans shift hole and bolted the shifter in place while the motor was shifted forward 2" and transmission down 2" to cut the hole and get to the top two bellhousing bolts. If this trick is not in the manual, it should be and I wish I had thought of it to get the 3.5l out. Unbolt the motor mounts and pull the motor/trans forward before attempting to undo the top belhousing bolts. Makes it MUCH easier to get to. (you will have the hoist and transmission jack in place for this...) Once the motor mounts were in the shifter has ample clearance and should only be a minor effort to modify the console with some trim and cover the opening with a plate.
Looking at mounting the intercooler where the oil cooler was...in front of the condenser (sans fan). I will need some fancy bending and shaping to get 2" tubing in from the side where the cold air intake and cooling tubes go through. Still not sure if it will fit. Also looking at fabbing brackets to mount top right of motor will probably be easier.
Thinking of using the original air cleaner with AFM in place for now, since I will need to build different mounts for the diesel air cleaner. It looks like the 4M40 intake hose will fit to the turbo from the AFM, but I have not tried it yet.
Decided to just remove the in-tank fuel pump and attach a tube with strainer to the 1" hose section that attaches the pump output to the flange assembly output pipe.
Bought a new section of exhaust (pre-muffler) from Rock Auto Walker p/n 22224 looks like it will bolt right in.
Did not get as much done last weekend as I would have liked, but still good progress. Hope to have it running in a week or two. Will upload photos to blog Thursday cause I got some real work that is due soon.
