ssei to sle swaps

[jdecker]

My son has an 03 SLE and recently purchased a 01 low mileage ssei that was in an accident, with the hopes of swapping the motor/trans and interior pieces.
I know the leather seats and various interior bits should be fairly easy, but I was wondering if anyone has done the heads up display and what all is it going to take to do the motor/trans swap.
I've read that the dash wiring might not be the same from 01 to 03, can anyone verify this? and if so is the HUD swap even possible?
As far as the engine/trans if we take the harness off the ssei is there anything that will need to be done besides pcm programming?
Also, the engine in the ssei seems to run very well, but is there anything preventive that anyone would recommend to do while we have it out and easy to work on?
Any help or recommendations are greatly appreciated, thanks!

[harofreak00]

The motor and trans will be a direct bolt in. Just swap over the entire subframe with suspension and wiring. Use the SSEi PCM, you'll still have to do a security relearn. You'll have to figure out smaller issues like the fuel lines.

As far as swapping the HUD, you'd have to remove the entire dash down to the firewall as they use a different ducting system and wiring harness. Also, the 01 dash harness will not work with the 03 main body harness, so you'd have to swap that too.

Basically, to make it easy, tear both cars down to the bare shell, and swap all SSEi components into the SLE. How bad was the SSEi hit? Might easier and cheaper just to repair the damage.

[jdecker]

The ssei has minimal damage to the body of the car, but in the accident it went over the curb at a high rate of speed and somehow bent the sub frame. The right front tire has been pushed back and rubs on the back of the fender well. The previous owner was able to provide us with all of the service records since the car has had around 20,000 miles, and it looks like they have taken good care of the interior, but for some reason it looks like they have neglected the outside, it's straight, but looks like it has been outside and never waxed in its life.

[harofreak00]

A subframe swap is going to be 1000x easier than what you are suggesting.

[jdecker]

I'm totally with you, I wish he wouldn't do anything to the sle, it truly looks and runs like new, but I know he's going to get about 20% in to this and I'll have to finish it.
His feeling is the sle is "his" car and wants it to be as unique as he can make it.

[jdecker]

Ok, have more questions! How will the traction control work after the swap (or will it)? Also assuming I can talk him out of the dash swap, is there a place the factory boost gauge attaches that I could tap into for aftermarket gauge? We've decided to pull the ssei engine and at the very least replace all gaskets, depending on how things look we may do more - hopefully not! So we're not in a super huge hurry to toss it back in.

[harofreak00]

If you swap over the entire subframe with suspension and wiring like I said before, you'll also need to swap the EBCM (brake module).

Why talk him out of the dash swap?

[jdecker]

Not sure why on the dash swap, just seems like lots of work for very little gain. We recently did a full blown custom stereo install in the SLE seems like it hasn't been back together long enough to rip it out again - okay maybe I'm lazy.