"if you can devote one complete week to the swap you can have it done i have spent about 5hrs on the TC trying to remove the engine and i have three bolts left to remove the motor and tranny in the stang it will be much quicker because there isnt any turbo so that is a full days work if you started at 10am and didnt stop until 8pm to have two motors out then doing the wiring and the other stuff you need to do it truthfully doesnt take as long as you think as long as you can devote a week or so to it. its been slow going for me because i have to drive 50miles to work on the car which means i can only work on it on the weekends. "
you only need about 2 days if you have everything you need in 0ne weekend i swapped my car from auto 4 banger to a 5 speed turbo banger i can redo the 87-90 wiring in like 30mins and after that its a straight foward swap bring it to me and ill do it 4 ya for the right price lol
It's kinda funny to be reading down the thread and my name pops up. I guess I'm famous for blowing up an NA 2.3.
Yes, I ran a turbo on my NA 2.3. Definately swap in the correct turbo coupe motor instead of doing what I did. My way costs a lot more money and time in the long run.
I ran a T3, with an LB3 and the matching 35lb injectors and big VAM, and 91 (the highest we can buy). This ensured fueling was absolutely correct. However, timing was always a problem. Ford added lots of light load timing to get the heavy, low compression turbo coupe moving. This meant I had to back off the timing on my 9:1 engine a lot, to prevent pinging at light load conditions. In fact, I was running around 0-2* BTDC base timing (instead of the regular 10* base). Because of that, it never made the power it should, and always had excessive EGTs and frequently a glowing exhaust manifold. I ran 9psi for a while, and that was fun. I could run dead even with stock, poor running 5.0 at 9psi. I later up to 14-15psi (still no intercooler). It wasn't a problem because there was so little timing, that detonation wasn't an issue.
But of course, the pistons and rings are much weaker than what the turbo coupe got, so even just a hint of detonation can cause major damage. I was merging into traffic one day, getting into boost hard and apparently the vacuum reference line popped off the fuel pressure regulator. This of course made it go lean. It smoked pretty bad the rest of the way home, especially at idle and light load conditions. When I took the engine apart, the rings in one cylinder were broken.
So there is your first hand experience. Sure, it might work for a while, but one little problem, or one tank of bad gas and you will grenade the motor.
I wonder at what level of boost. I would also be curious if all the other systems were up to snuff. (Enough fuel, good plugs and wires, 93 octane, etc.).
I'm not trying to grind an axe, I truly am just seeking answers. Normally I can sort through all the information and come up with something close to the facts. In this case, I just haven't seen enough info for me to say, "I can't put 6 lbs. of boost into my stock motor utilizing my MAF meter setup".
Ohh, my engine was an 88, so I origonally had speed density. If you are adding a turbo to a MAF car, then it is quite a bit different. You can still repin to run a turbo computer, but you have no control of the base timing. You also have even higher compression which results in an even more likely failure.
As for adding 6psi with the stock air meter and computer... first of all you'll have to buy a wastegate with a lower setting because the ford gate is 9-10psi minimum. Then, the computer isn't programmed to add fuel and remove timing for the extra pressurized air, so you'll have too much timing and not enough fuel. I read of one person on turboford who did just this, and ran successfully for a couple of years, but alas, some small thing went wrong and kaboom.