Thanks to a generous donation from a 1994 GMC G20 Van and an ebay seller that had the 2131 Edelbrock for slightly cheaper than Summit and Jegs... the future for my 360. 16168625 ECU and, well, every bit of wire harness from the van from the doors forward. Throttle body from its surprisingly low mileage 350 that seems to be in good working order without any excessive play in the shaft. Plus, all the various little sensors, relays, and doodads. He even threw in the forward lighting harness (I'll use those 3157 plugs to get away from 1157 bulb bases, I need to adapt the rear lights too) and all the modules behind the dash rather than spend the time unhooking anything. He was happy to have more of it taken apart so he could cut the van up anyway.
I'll start thinning the harness in the next couple weeks and doing some more homework. I've still got to buy a fuel pump, the parts for converting my ignition, and a VSS. I'm also thinking about pulling an electronic cruise control module from a later model GM to avoid any future vacuum issues with my cruise control. I've got an HHR fan sitting in a closet, so I'll probably use the electronic fan control from the ECU. If that isn't a good fit, I'll go pull one off a Contour. I've also got to wait a little while until I'm ready to do the exhaust since the previous owner cut out the cat, and did a pretty bad job of everything else from the Y-pipe back. I'm not in an emissions controlled state, but I figure it won't hurt to throw a cat on. Should actually help scavenging with a more modern high flow cat in place of the old air injection style.
1: SO... I'm not so sure about how confident I am with the ECU modifications and programming. I've never done this type of thing before, and I don't really follow the threads where people are discussing it well. I wonder if it wouldn't be better just to send it off to someone who does a lot of these and have them put on the chip and load up the new Bin, then let the ECU compensate? Maybe when I just dive in and do the stuff, everything will make more sense.
2: Next up, as I said, it's a 16168625 ECU. Is working with this one any different than the 7747 everyone else seems to use? I found this on Gearhead EFI. LINK Would it be easier just to grab a 7747? They are super cheap anyway, so it wouldn't bother me. But, if it's not adding any difficulty or losing me anything, then I'd rather stay with what I got.
3: NON-EFI question. Is there a better Y-pipe than the walker one? I don't like those cheap wrinkled crush-bent pipes. If not, I'll go to the local exhaust shop and have them make me one. It will still be crush-bent, but at least it will be slightly thicker pipe, and it won't have those wrinkles on the bends. Plus, then I can eliminate the heat riser and donut. But, if there is something ready-made, I'd rather that, just so I can do things on my own time and not have to deal with finding time to bring the truck over to the shop.
And this is the point where I feel the same thing any of you other guys felt that didn't rush into this and kept to a reasonable budget and time-table so as not to disrupt anything else going on in your lives... Seriously, my wallet is burning a hole in my pocket the whole time I'm looking at my parts yet to buy list, but I think I'll drag this project out for about a month to keep from dumping too much money into this at a time. I've got some other projects to do anyway now that it's getting warm again.