00 S70 GLT to 98 S70 Base Engine Swap?

bluesmokeworkshop · Post by **bluesmokeworkshop** » 07 Oct 2025, 19:19

So I have a 2000 S70 GLT that I've put a ton of work into. With only 100k miles, the engine is in great condition, but the car was in an accident with its previous owner, so there's frame and body damage I can't fix myself. I have a neighbor with a '98 S70 base model who is looking to sell for a few hundred bucks. The body is pristine, but the motor is on life support.

What I want to do is do a direct swap - Take my 2000 GLT motor and drop it into a '98 chassis - But I'm finding conflicting information online about whether or not that's as easy as it sounds.

My questions are:
- Is it a direct fit?
- Are there mods needed in order to make it fit?
- Any other considerations to ... you know ... consider?
- Has anyone done this exact swap before and have any advice to part with?

Post by **abscate** » 08 Oct 2025, 02:38

TheRN motor in a 2000 will have two electrical things you will have to sort,

1 VVT exhaust camshaft , a 1998 ECU won’t drive that

2 You will have to mount the distributor on the 2000 motor of course. That’s straightforward.

There are some mechanical changes on the timing belt but if you are in good graces with the creator the 1998 will be a late model year and already have those.

Post by **scot850** » 08 Oct 2025, 08:50

I had a 98 V70XC that did not have the hydraulic tensioner on the timing belt. It had the later manual tensioner. So the issue in swapping the later motor with the exhaust cam cvvt solenoid is how to block the oil feed and lock the cam pulley gear, or swapping the one over from the 98 to the later motor.

Neil.

bluesmokeworkshop · Post by **bluesmokeworkshop** » 12 Oct 2025, 09:15

Awesome, thank you guys! Great information.

Post by **Sveedy** » 12 Oct 2025, 09:45

Isn't the '98 a M 4.3, and the '00 a M 4.4 ? One is a turbo, and one is not. Seems like there will be wiring issues.

bluesmokeworkshop · Post by **bluesmokeworkshop** » 12 Oct 2025, 13:36

Yeah, I'm planning on switching everything over. Everything. Stripping it down to the bare chassis and swapping everything over. Still debating if it's worth the trouble, though. (depends on the potential obstacles I'd run into)

Post by **scot850** » 12 Oct 2025, 14:20

A few other thinks you need to also take into consideration is the electrical changes from 98-99. The dashboard harnesses are different, turbo and non-turbo engine harnesses are different, even the ignition key/immobilizer and SRS (incl. airbag operation and seatbelt triggering) are different from a 98-99 car.

So it is hard enough to swap a NA to NA, or a turbo t turbo car motors over, but trying to do the cross over from NA to turbo is going to be harder. Even the compression ratios are different from NA to turbo so just swapping the block and heads over brings challenges.

You are a brave man and I wish you loads of luck!

Neil.

bluesmokeworkshop · Post by **bluesmokeworkshop** » 12 Oct 2025, 17:35

lol Thanks, Neil! I may just shelve this entire idea indefinitely.

Post by **Chuck W** » 12 Oct 2025, 18:55

I mean, a full body swap is kind of a task. However, just swapping drivetrain wouldn't be that terrible. Even going from n ME7 turbo car to an M4.4 NA one. Well, I suppose that depends on how handy you are.

I personally would have no issue with swapping a turbo motor into an NA car, and have thought about it.
I have however swapped an '01 RN LPT motor into a '97 GLT.

There are some caveats to this though. It wouldn't be something plug and play.
You could get away with using a 98MY turbo M4.4 ECU, but you'd be limited to matching to engine type (HPT vs LPT), injectors, and possibly even turbo (but that's a grey area). Seeing as you have an LPT '00 motor, you'd want a 98MY GLT LPT M4.4 ECU.

Doing this, you would need to swap the '00 motor to distributor and get rid of the intake and e-throttle and use the 99MY stuff, including the cable throttle.

Looking at the 98 M4.4 pinouts, you should be able to "reuse" the NA engine harness in the '98 and you're only missing a couple wiring connections to the body side harness for the boost control solenoid.

You will lose the function of the exVVT, but it doesn't matter, and you can just leave it alone. The cam timing events are fine when it's at its "base" position. The motor won't care, neither will the new ECU.

Now, if you're feeling froggy, and want to play a bit, you can get a tunable M4.4 ECU set-up from VAST Tuning, which would allow for converting to COP and having the VVT functional if you like, as well as tuning for a bigger turbo, non-standard injectors, etc.

Background on our swap. The original motor in her '97 GLT was toast. It had been overheated by a PO and it was limping along. Since the '97 GLT is kind of it's own beast in regards to the ECU, etc, I'm not going to go down that road of our issues with that.

I picked up an '01 LPT motor, which was basically the same motor that was in her car (and similar to yours). I kept the better exhaust manifold and swapped in a larger 16T turbo, but swapped everything else from her old motor, intake, accessories, etc, to the new motor. The only issue with the accessories was one bolt location wasn't there, and I needed to do a little clearancing of the timing cover for interference with said accessories and clearance for fuel line stuff.
Had to open up the end of the cam to allow the distributor trigger to bolt up, but again, no big deal.
Since I changed the turbo, I did need to mess with the coolant pipe, etc. That was mainly because we kept the RN oil pan with the oil cooler on the pan, instead of the radiator. Bonus, this got rid of one set of cooling pipes to the radiator.
No issues on the swap, aside from the aforementioned ECU issues which required us to drive it with the stock '97 GLT ECU and injectors and the 16T (larger turbo) for a year before the ECU issues got figured out. The car ran perfectly fine, aside from getting a little lean on the top end with that larger-than-stock turbo (16T vs 13G)

On down the line we swapped to COP and messed with the exVVT stuff, but have since disabled it again, as it requires a little more fiddling. Tuned it a bit and the car is more than peppy enough. It's actually pretty angry at times. After doing the COP swap on both of our cars, even just a base tune with the COP conversion would be worth it, but it's for sure not needed to get the car running.

She put 10K on it in that first year on the stock ECU and we have 65K on the swap (55K after the tunable M4.4 ECU was sorted and installed).

As far as the rest of the '00 vs '98 stuff goes, others will have more insight into what you might run into, but you'll have lots of useable parts for the '98 from the '00.

(Sorry, that was a ramble. I tackle things like this personally all of the time because I have a problem...)