I have a 2001 limited edition SS and was trying to figure out what to do with it to power it up more than its NA 3800. Was about to buy the zzp L67 upgrade kit and was checking to see how my tranny was. By some weird luck or the former owners replaced it my tranny is an almost perfect condition 4t65HD, looked up what that meant and my options. Found an LS4 crate engine a shop near me felt wasnt going to sell and let me get it for 500 bucks. Supercharging it wont be too hard either. Well I saw how the rwd conversion went and loved it, also saw the crazy high HP modded one and read about how hard it was to control. Think i figured out the solution. Wheelbase and width matches a few vehicles and some of them are AWD smaller suvs of certain years. And my local LKQ has some good ones including a cadillac SRX awd. Looks like I wont even need to do that much besides some heavy lifting to fit it all. Whats everyone's thoughts on an AWD 6th gen with a ls4?

 

Assuming you'd leave the engine in a transverse mounting setup like stock (really the only reason to ever use the LS4 over any other LS), how do you figure adding a supercharger will be easy? No one offers a kit for the LS4 that ive ever seen. No doubt a LS base kit could be made to work with money and time, but its not just going to be a bolt on and go. Would have to be a positive displacement blower though as there's really no space for a centrifugal without some really creative packaging and maybe a huge jackshaft.

Which RWD conversion are you talking about? TBH there are plenty of RWD cars out there putting down 1k+ whp these days - there are certainly plenty of options for hooking up a SC SBE LS4 thatll maybe do 500-600 whp at best with a proper tire and good RWD setup.

I'm confused, by 'heavy lifting' are you implying cutting the body off your monte and welding it onto a SRX chassis? If so, thats a pretty serious job even for a good fabricator.

The other issue I see is assuming you mean a 2G SRX (again because it wouldn't make sense to use a LS4 if you were going to change to a longitudinal engine layout), the transmission will likely be problematic. The stock 6T70 is rated for well under 300 ft lb and would probably struggle to hold a stock LS4, much less one with double the torque.

 

Yeah youre right on all of that and I probably shouldnt use the term "easy" more like possible. It will be alot of hours and such but it will be not as much of a nightmare as I originally thought. The reason for alot of it too is because the price for everything but labor will be decently cheap due to the ls4 fwd setup being not so popular and at least in my area nobody wants to deal with it due to like you said other LS engines to deal with. If I cpuld get my fatass under the car and take some pics it would be easier to understand. For some reason I have more room for a drive shaft and such in the 6th gen montes over the 7th gen so i shouldnt need to cut out more. Also the rwd setup wont be bad too and if this doesnt work as planned I wont need to go too crazy to just go rwd. Like it wont be that much more work than just doing the rwd setup. Btw thank you for your insight on this because I am new to this stuff and knowing what issues to look out for will be good to know so I can be ready. Also I have access to my first 01 monte carlo ss so if I mess it up Ill have a much needed parts car. But yeah I wanna have every possible issue covered. My reason for choosing awd over rwd is because of an ocd issue where it seema like theres pros and cons of rwd and fwd and figured why not try to get the best of both worlds.

 

Its good that you understand all the labor that goes into it. Thats the trickiest part of budgeting for these kind of builds. Even with free / cheap parts, the money tied up in the huge number of hours (assuming that time couldve been spent working to make money) can end up being extremely expensive in the end.

Figuring out which trans to use will be the tough part. The LS4 having the oddball FWD bellhousing limits you to transverse based transmissions for AWD like the 4t65, 6t70 and such. To find one thats AWD and can be built to hold the power will be tough, especially a supercharged v8 and AWD traction. Sure there are also some RWD transmissions thatll bolt up, but they're generally from lower power vehicles and won't hold up any better (and none had a AWD option IIRC).

Using a regular LS block would give you a lot better options for a trans to hold up to the power (either built in or with a t case), but of course it'll take a lot more fab work as yoire going to need a lot of tunnel hacking to make a big longitudinal trans fit in there with a front drive offshoot.

Its definitely a cool idea. Not really any downsides either besides the added weight once you get it to fit.

I'm not entirely sure I've seen a AWD W body that wasnt also twin engine, so it would definitely be unique.

 

Yeah well Im on a pension so my time isnt money which is what makes this alright for me. Remembered something else for some inspiration for it, few years back my grandmother was duped into buying a dodge magnum before she passed and I ended up taking it. Turned out to be awd but used the same engine layout as my wifes charger from the same year. Had to sell it because I couldnt get a pcm for it that was less than 3000 due to it being too uncommon. But for my project ive done some measuring and got to check out an 07 monte a couple days ago. It really looks like a 6th gen will do better for this than a 7th gen. Way more room to work with and the design seems generally better.