Drivetrain 94 V6 to 5.0 swap ignition / starter wiring

[Craig12]

I have a 94 convertible with a V6 and automatic. Everything is in great shape except the motor. No rust at all, was in Phoenix for most of its life! Anyway the V6 is dead and it's tough to find a remanufactured V6. So I was thinking of a 5.0 swap. This isn't a racecar, just a nice daily driver. Finding the engine and trans seems straight forward. I didn't want to mess around with all the fuel injection wiring so I was thinking about just putting on one of those throttle body style aftermarket fuel injection units and an MSD distributor. Is this reasonably easy to tie into the factory harness? I'm not that concerned about the gauges, but would like the speedo to still work. Issues here? Thanks for any help that will allow me to go in the right direction!

Craig
Oxford, GA

 

[LILCBRA]

How attached are you to the car?

What's the feasibility of picking up a V8 car that needs some work and using yours as a parts donor or vice versa?

I'm thinking about harnesses, and possible gauge cluster issues @Mustang5L5 , k-member, EEC, fuel system, accessory drive, etc...

Not sure what other driveline differences their might be.

This seems like a more appropriate thread to get into this than the welcome thread....

I believe his K member wouldn't be an issue. I don't know about the gauges, but he said he's not concerned with them anyway. As for everything else I'll let his post speak for him.

Now, my 2 cents (if it's even worth that....) would be to find an Explorer 5.0 and use it as is as long as it ran well. I'd even see about keeping the stock fuel injection set up. The reason I say that is you'd most likely be into it for less money than if you swapped to a carb manifold and bought a TBI system. I'm not sure if the 3.8 shares the same fuel lines or not, but it's possible you wouldn't have to do much more than an engine swap - maybe an upgraded fuel pump too? But you'd need the engine harness and a 5.0 ECU for sure. There's a lot of info out there about cam swaps and stuff, so I won't get into that too much, but if you DID swap the cam for something like an 87-93 HO cam you'd want to be sure to grab the appropriate ECU. Beyond that, I think most of it would end up being plug-n-play.

Disclaimer: I have *0* experience with 94+ cars, so hopefully someone with more knowledge will be around to give more solid advice than I.

 

[SorsCode]

www.sorscode.com

I have a list of everything needed. I've done a number of them.

 

[BrightVa]

I'd put a Blueprint 347 stroker in it and convert to a manual transmission too.

 

[Mcmahst]

You should compare the cost of the conversion to just pulling the v6 and having a local shop rebuild the short block. That will be the easiest path forward. I know, not the most powerful, but the most straightforward. Good luck.