Project: Swapping 94 Gt drivetrain to 1999 V6 Vert chassis

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today I took all my brackets and timing cover to the powder coater as well as my headers for the chrome ceramic coating. Place is called Custom Coatings in St. Augustine, very nice bunch of guys over there. The pulleys are going to be done in gloss black, the timing cover and brackets will be done in the chrome/clear. It's not as reflective as polished aluminum, but looks very nice and is easy to maintain!

I degreased my engine, wire wheeled it and hit the block with some black and the heads with some aluminum paint.

before
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after
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The ugly stock valve covers and lower intake were kept in place for masking purposes.( anyone need stock valve covers or intake? lol) When I put my polished fox valve covers, polished alt and polished Edelbrock RPM intake on it will be looking sweet.

I still have to install my timing set, new oil pump and gaskets among other things.

My stack of driveline parts, gonna paint the tranny and bellhousing with the aluminum engine paint:
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Pro Tip: Greased lightning is MUCH MUCH better than that Gunk engine degreaser. I wasn't getting anywhere with the Gunk, used some greased lightning and you could see the crud just melt off the motor!
 
Got all my goodies back from the powder coater today. The brackets were really rough so that's why they don't look the best, they did a really good job on everything. The headers are ceramic coated and are semi polished, I will bring them up to a better shine before I install them. The place is called Custom Coatings in st. augustine FL in case any of you need powdercoating or ceramic coating.

Here's some pics:

Brackets and timing cover: (This chrome powdercoating looke awesome in person, the camera makes it look more silver)
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Pulleys and heater tube:
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Headers, not fully polished because I was impatient and I do polishing for a living so I can get them looking pretty good.

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Tomorrow I will begin reassembling the engine and relooming harnesses as I'm installing them back on the engine. I'm hoping this engine will look nice after all is said and done.
 
Here's a couple pics of the engine with most of the parts mocked up. I'm just making sure all my hardware is going to work correctly.

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Tomorrow I will put it completely together and also make sure the new oil pump is primed and pumping oil like it should be. I'll also probably swap the 8.8 from the 94 into the 99 tomorrow as well. I know it's going to look silly for a little bit. It can't look any worse than a 94 with stock wheels on it. And having 10" wide wheels on the rear will help I'm sure.
 
I got some work done today. Mostly just gutting the interior. Having never owned a SN95 vert I had to familiarize myself with the way some things came apart in the rear seat area.

I was about ready to pull the dash when it started pouring down rain. Ticked me off because once I was all cleaned up it was sunny outside with no rain in sight!

Here's a shot of the engine bay after the V6 was pulled:
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The job just getting started:
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Seats and driver side airbag removed:
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Console, steering column and rear seating area/panels all removed:
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That's as far as I got today due to rain.

Tomorrow I hope to get the dash removed, swap the dash harness, body and door harnesses, engine bay harnesses and get under the car and remove the fuel system/tank from the 99. If I have time I will see if I can swap the fuel system in from the 94.

After that I will be left with swapping the K member in, reinstalling the brakes and then drop the motor in. I hope to have the motor in by the weekend, if I'm lucky maybe I'll even have it running! wish me luck!
 

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Dash is out and all swapped out. It was so much easier to swap the plastic dash cover to the new frame than swap out all the wiring. The fuse panel from the 94 dash wouldn't have fit the frame from the 99 anyway. The plastic housing swapped right over without any surprises!

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Here's a shot of the front clip removed, this was necessary to access all the wiring behind the fenders. It's amazing how many things are different between the 99 and 94. There would be no way to make the dash harness work from the 99 at all. Even the wiper motor plug was different!

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A pile of old wiring harnesses from the 99:

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So a summery for today, we pulled the dash and swapped the dash skin to the older 94 dash frame/wiring. We began pulling the main body harness through the firewall and removed all harnesses from the engine bay. Swapped out the wiper motor so it would mate to the 94's harness.

For some stupid reason Ford decided to make the cowl vents on these body styles out of crap plastic! It was so brittle that there was no way to remove it without it coming apart into pieces. The 94 cowl vent doesn't fit right to the hood, but it will cover the wiper area and look "ok" until I can score a new one.

On Friday I will continue working on the car. It'll finish removing the main body harness and door harnesses then reinstall all the harnesses in the car and reinstall the dash. I hope to have everything inside the car all finished up and I can move to the fuel system and drive train.
 

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i was there helping today and after really getting into the harness there is no way to really do this swap without removing all the wiring , i would not even try to attempt this unless you have a parts car, there is so many little things that have to be swapped over that numerous trips back and forth are needed, it is not for the faint of heart by the least bit, not terribly hard but alot of time to detail work needed, it is not just a motor swap matter of fact the motor swap will be nothing, and to top it off working in 95+ heat sucks too lol,, btw ill be there friday morning my goal is to help get the inside of the car alll done and then the fun part of drivetrain starts ( to me thats the fun part) all that wiring sucks ass
 
Put in a full day on the car today. Got the body harness installed and the dash put back in. Had to used the trunk harness from the 94 which was no big deal. It connected right up to the 99 tail lights. I got the fuel tank dropped from the 94, now I just have to drop the tank from the 99 and swap them. I also need to pull the fuel line front to back and snag all the exhaust hanger brackets from the 94.

Ran into a snag with the passenger side door harness...i used the door harness from my 94 coupe, but it would not mate to the 94 vert main harness, so I had to order up a 94 vert door harness to make it work. I'll just finish everything else in the mean time.

I'll try to get a full day in tomorrow, hope to have it ready for the motor by tomorrow evening.