Engine Stay With The Factory 6 Or Go For The 8

Love my '78 v6 with home-grown turbo. This video was my inspiration: View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6bq9aOk2qQ


They did this on a 2.9 with stock bottom-end.

Most everyone will tell you to stuff a v8 in there, but that wrecks the handling of the II in my opinion. And I can pick up half a dozen 2.8's from Broncos / Rangers / Aerostars at the scrap-yard for pocket change. So heck with the forged stuff, the stock engine's been fine for me up to ~10psi with no issues at all.

Parts are tough to find, in my case I run the stock manifolds (reversed, exiting up front, the driver-side one replaced with a ranger passenger manifold to clear the motor mounts) and the rest of the pipes are custom. If you want anything on a II you'll be customizing anyways, so what the heck. If you like the motor (I do - gear driven solid cam, awesome lumpy sound for a v6) and a clutch you can actually still find then keep the 6.

I'm actually running the 2 barrel intake with one of those Mr. Gasket 4-2 or 2-4 barrel adapter plates. I thought it wouldn't run very well but it does great. It's topped with a 600cfm Holley 4 barrel home-modified as a blow-through carb with non-functional secondaries essentially (figured I could use it on my v8 at some point). If I'm not wrong the II's had c4's behind the v8 or v6 and c3 behind the 4-cylinder (usually). I've heard the way to tell them apart is that the c3 vacuum modulator faces out towards the passenger side, and the c4 points rearward.

I have the Rad4, it's a decent transmission for its time, definitely shifts a little clunky but it does what I need it to do and it's a few steps above the top-loader 3 speed I had in my '66. A T5 swap is pretty common, but I don't think it's feasible with our bolt-pattern unless they made a manual bell for a 4.0 at some point.

I've not heard of stroking the 2.8, that would be interesting. I imagine a drop-in replacement with a 4.0 would be somewhat simple physically, though they never came without fuel injection so there would be quite a bit involved with that swap. I've never looked into headers, I took this line from an article I read on the Aerostar headers as some pretty good guidance: "Headers don't help Cologne V6's, as the flow problems aren't related to the exhaust." Basically with that Offy intake, cam, and a decent carb, you'll be making much more power. Still it wasn't quite enough for me after seeing that video.

eBay for the win, that was exactly my thought, use what I can (the tubing and silicone fittings were aok) and the turbo and bov are still working just fine several years later. it's not the "best money can buy" but it's a good starting point for a project. since flanges are all standard, I can always upgrade if I want. a lot of folks knock eBay turbos, but no one's making a kit for the 2.8L II.

If you're capable of welding up an exhaust from J-bends then it's really not all that hard especially if you stick with the stock exhaust manifolds like I did. I'm sure it's not 100% efficient, but it got me where I wanted to go..

This post goes into some detail about what it took:
https://www.stangnet.com/mustang-forums/threads/78-v6-turbo.880529/#post-8864606

Thank you that's very kind. You'd be amazed at what a pile of scrap it started out as - the interior mismatched and faded (everything you see is vinyl dyed), rotted carpet and seats, and absolutely everything was broken. I mean everything, every single mechanical and electrical part was broken. Name one and I had to fix / change it. It's still a 10-foot beauty - my first attempt at painting a car myself and everything was done as cheaply as possible. It took almost 3 years when all was said & done, mechanicals year 1, interior and paint year 2, and turbo year 3.

My welding's also far from perfect, especially overhead. If it's off the car I can do ok but can never get a decent bead when the parts are anything other than completely horizontal. A project like this is just the excuse to practice!