gt40p explorer intake

Where in east TN are you? There are a bunch of 5.0 guys that hook up in the east TN thread in the Southeast forum of Corral.net.

There are quite significant changes needed to make the Explorer throttle body work on the Stang - but it can be done. The intake should bolt right on, however, depending on the year intake you it is, there may be no provisions for your egr valve. There's also no threaded hole for coolant return for the egr spacer. And there's no provision for the ACT sensor in the number 5 runner. I relocated the ACT to the intake tract before the t/b, and I deleted the egr system completely. If you want to use your egr system, you'll need to be sure the manifold you found is from a 95-early 97 model. After that (through 2000) they didn't have the egr provisions - mine's a 2000 model.

You're welcome to take a look at how mine's set up if you're close by.

What Michael said regarding the year model and modifications. I have it and thoroughly recommend it. I don't have any pics right now, but it takes a little work to get vaccum lines and such routed, but it all makes sense once you begin. Also you'll want to plug the vaccum line under the front corner. Makes good power and looks almost stock. Great for surprising the ignorant.

$250 is a good price. If you want to use the 65mm Explorer TB and can't do the conversion, send me your old TB with the Explorer and $25 labor + $10 return shipping and I'll convert it for you. This is the exact set up I'm running.

I got mine off a 96 Explorer with the 19# injectors and 65 MM throttle body for $250.

The ACT (Air Charge Temp) sensor will probably need to be moved. The GT 40 manifold isn't drilled & tapped for it to go into the intake like the stock manifold was. There is a boss cast into the GT 40, but a machine shop will have to drill & tap the new manifold. The best spot for the ACT is the air box if you don't do the drill and tap thing. You get to cut and splice the 2 ACT wires in order to make them long enough to reach the air box. Solder the wire extensions on the existing wires & use heat shrink tubing to cover the splices. Offset the place where you cut the wires so that you don't have a big bulge when you put heat shrink over the 2 wires to cover & protect them. The stock air box gets a hole (5/8" or so) for the ACT drilled about 1 1/4" down & 1/1/4" in on the front top side near the upper radiator hose. A brass fitting nut from Home Depot or Ace Hardware secures the ACT into the air box.

If you are very clever, you will find that the ACT connector comes apart so that you can remove the pins. A very small screwdriver releases the lock in the front of the center insert, while another small screwdriver inserted in the back pushes it out. Once the center insert is out of the connector shell, the pins come out easily. New pins are available from AutoZone in a $5 electrical pin kit for Fords. Crimping the pins on the extender wires saves you from having to splice them twice: once to put the connector on and once to extend the wires.

6 ft black 18 gauge wire
6 ft green 18 gauge wire
6 ft 1/4" heat shrink tubing
1 ft 3/16" heat shrink tubing

Use the TPS and IAB from your old throttle body. All the EGR passages were there and fit OK. Use you old fuel rails and regulator. You will probably need a new EGR spacer adapter and gaskets. Without the EGR spacer, there is no place to mount the throttle linkage support bracket.

I used the stock water lines on the Explorer manifold and they connected up to the EGR without any problems. I made a “U” out of ½” copper pipe and sweat soldered it together. Then I used it and some hose with clamps to bypass the leaky heater I have. You don't need heat very often here in Central Florida...

The vacuum lines you need are 1 small line for fuel pressure regulator, 1 small line for A/C, 1 small line for EGR and another small line for the smog pump. One big line at the back goes to the vacuum tree for the power brake & A/C. The other big line goes out the front for the carbon canister. In a pinch, one of the small lines can connect to the spare port on the vacuum tree.

The stock Explorer linkage didn't come anywhere near fitting, so I made an adapter plate for the throttle linkage so I could use the 65 MM throttle body.

This is what I did:
Make a drawing of the position of the old throttle body linkage arm and its angular position relative to the centerline of the throttle body. Remove the ball stud off the explorer TB to make way for the adapter plate. Drill and tap a 10-32 hole in the linkage parallel to the TB shaft. Make an angle bracket out of 1" angle iron 3/8", drill a 3/16” hole in the center of each one of the legs. Then bolt it on where the hole was drilled & tapped. Then make a circular adapter plate out of 1/4" thick aluminum to bolt the two linkage arms together. Then bolt the aluminum plate to the existing linkage, and the angle bracket. Next mount the arm with the ball stud off the old throttle body on the adapter plate using the drawing to get the angle correct. You will need an aircraft type countersink for one of the bolts that secures the plate to the explorer linkage arm. It ends up being under the arm with the ball stud for the linkage. It works great and looks neat.

A trip to the welding shop with the explorer TB and the arm from your old Mustang TB would probably accomplish the same thing. I didn't have access to a welder, so I fabb'ed the plate in my shop. I took about 1.5 hours to do it, it was a measure, cut, and fit type of operation.

Also see Tmoss's adaptation technique at http://www.veryuseful.com/mustang/tech/engine/ConvertingExplorer65mmTB.pdf for modifications to adapt the 65 MM Explorer TB to a Mustang

Another method is to remove the old bracket from your old TB by grinding off the end that is mushroomed over. Do the same thing to the Explorer TB and then drill and tap the shaft for a 10-32 machine screw. Put the bracket from your original TB on the Explorer, and install the screw with a big washer. You might want to put some Loctite on the screw threads before tightening the screw down.

Just an aside - the early lowers may have the bosses for the ACT and the egr cooling return line; but the later lowers (those not equipped for egr) don't even have the bosses in place. As JR said above, relocating the ACT is probably the easiest approach. Here's a shot of mine and you can clearly see the relocated ACT sensor in the elbow just upstream of the throttle body - it's pointing towards the firewall.

Just a question.......when you move the ACT sensor to the intake track, the temperatures it sees are going to be alot lower than if it was located in the lower intake manifold. This will screwup your a/f ratio because the computer is expecting to see higher temps from the ACT sensor when the engine is at normal operating temp.

How did you guys fix this? Did you reprogram your PCM with tweecer or something? Or did it not affect things too much?

Thanks

It's a non-issue. First, once the engine compartment is heat-sinked, the temps don't vary that much. Second, the ecu's adaptive strategies will easily compensate for a change such as this. Remember, once in closed loop the O2 sensors do more to dictate a/f than any decision the computer would make based on inlet air temps. Over a relatively short amount of time, if the O2's sense changing mixtures because of different temps, the ecu will 'fix' things by altering pulse width. And, it will remember those changes moving forward.

So - it doesn't seem to be a big issue in any event.

Glad to hear you don't have any problems. I beg to differ on one point though. The ACT sensor absolutely WILL see a much cooler temp in the intake track than the lower manifold. Fresh cool air is rushing past the ACT sensor in the intake track. Touch the air intake tube with your hand, then the lower intake manifold on a warm engine..........big temperature difference.

Anyways, I forgot O2's take priority for A/F once warmed up. Good to hear it works well.

Cheers

Silver - the surface of the air inlet tube or the intake manifold is at a different temperature than the AIR temp flowing through those devices. Simple surface temps of components don't tell the whole story. Also, and I've actually taken quite few temp measurements in my engine bay, I'll stand by my original statement. The AIR temp flowing just upstream of the throttle body compared with that of the air stream flowing through the #5 intake runner (stock location of ACT) isn't that much different once the entire bay has become heated. You might notice slightly more differential between those locations on a cold start - but after 15 minutes of driving - everything under the hood gets warm. Even the plastic/rubber inlet bits; however, they don't feel as warm to the touch because they loose heat less quickly than a metal surface would. That's why human touch isn't a very reliable surface temp. indicator -- other than to tell you something's burning the crap out of you!

I measured voltage output of the ACT in both locations - my data showed very little difference once things heat up. Of course 'your mileage may vary depending on how you drive'...

As for fresh cool air rushing past the sensor - depends on how people have configured their intake air piping. Many are duped into hanging a big-ass conical off the maf and pulling fresh hot underhood air into the system. In that case fresh hot air is definitely rushing past the sensor....

jrichker said:

A trip to the welding shop with the explorer TB and the arm from your old Mustang TB would probably accomplish the same thing.

Click to expand...

Exactly what I would do with your old TB and the Explorer TB

jrichker said:

Also see Tmoss's adaptation technique at http://www.veryuseful.com/mustang/tech/engine/ConvertingExplorer65mmTB.pdf for modifications to adapt the 65 MM Explorer TB to a Mustang.

Click to expand...

Yet another way you might do it yourself - but you have to have the right tools.

Not trying to start an argument here. BUT! I've talked to alot of experienced SN95 guys who have done the swap back to the Fox A9l computer and intake manifold. They all said they had to make adjustments (tweecer) because the ACT sensor was in the lower manifold on the foxes vice the intake tube on the SN95. Logically, you would have to make adjustments if you moved the ACT sensor to the intake tube while still using a Fox PCM.

With regards to warm air with conical filter, you're right, air needs to be drawn from outside the engine compartment. My car is setup to draw air from the fender.......therefore the same as OAT.

Having said all that, glad to hear you're combo works well and the ACT sensor isn't an issue.....in a Volvo no less!!! Good job!!

Not sure what to tell you - my set up is the same as what you've described in your friends' (A9L - aftermarket intake) - and there's nothing about Volvo vs. Stang that makes this application any different - I don't think the engine/computer has figured out yet that it's in a different body. I'd say the majority of Explorer intake users out there relocate the ACT without doing anything at all to the computer. And I talked to several people that went the other way with it with no problems (that the computer's adapative strategies couldn't handle) -- they simply laid the ACT sensor/plug on the surface of the lower intake under the upper where it's reading higher temps than air flowing through the runner.

I'm curious - do you know for a fact that they had drivability or other issues that REQUIRED a tweecer/chip fix, or did they have the twEECer, and decided to alter that parameter because they could? I'd bet more fell into the latter scenario than the former.

But - he's got all the perspectives now; I'm sure he'll decide what makes sense to him and move forward accordingly.

There's a debate about this on corral right now;


http://www.corral.net/forums/showthread.php?t=530863


One more thing, when measuring the air temp of a typical floor heater, where are you going to see a hotter temp? One foot from the heater or on the metal case of the heater?

Cheers

Not sure I get your heater analogy....

With ref to the air temp, the engine is just a big heater. With the ACT sensor in the intake tube, it is much further away from the heat source, therefore getting a much more accurate OAT reading. When the ACT sensor is attached to the "heater" (#5 intake runner), it is not getting a true OAT reading. It is my understanding that the Ford programmers compensated for this when programming the FOX PCM's.

Have a look the following post from the corral thread for a couple of potential problems;

http://www.corral.net/forums/showpost.php?p=3818153&postcount=26

Cheers

Silver - thanks for the link; if I can ever figure out what they're talking about, I may learn something in that thread. Just glad I'm not dealing with SN95 ecu issues.

I understand now - my point is that the heater is so effective at heating the space, that after a bit of running, everything - even the piping attached to the throttle body - gets hot. It sounds like the SN95 cars have an issue there - word to the wise for all. It simply doesn't seem to be an issue for the fox body era engines/computers.