Project: Swapping 94 Gt drivetrain to 1999 V6 Vert chassis

Luckily the hardest part of the wiring mess is done. The body harness goes from the engine bay, down the length of the car and back to the trunk. But it's not really that bad, once you get into it you see it's all just plug and play.
 
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Today was a productive day. I pulled the K member out of both cars. After I got the spindles loose from the A-arms I saw that the ball joints were completely wasted! So I spent like 2 hours going to get new ones and installing them.

The way this will work is I'll use the 99's brakes and A-arms. I'll bolt these A arms to the 94 GT K member. Reason being is the 99-04 A arms set the spindles out a little further for a wider track. Plus the bushings in the 99 arms are in much better shape.

Upon removing the 94 K member I soaked it down with greased lightning and pressure washed it. Then I let it dry, primed it and painted it white to match the car. Tomorrow I will hit it with a few coats of clear to make it easier to keep clean. Tomorrow the fuel lines and tank will be installed/swapped and the front suspension will be put back together. I'm hoping to have the car ready for the motor by the end of the day tomorrow.

There will be plenty of pics posted up tomorrow evening.
 
that's going to beast car man. how much do wrecked 94 and up gt's run? like would it be worth it to do that as opposed to buy a 99-04 gt? because i really want to do that to my 2002 v6
 
Well, the cheapest 99-04 GT I've seen was 3 grand and it had a lot of rust. Clean ones are still 5k and up. So I say since you own your 2002 already, this swap would be good for you.

I see wrecked 94/95 GTs go from 500-1500 bucks. Some scrap yards will actually bring a car to you for you to take out what you need and then come back to get the car. So there are definitely options.

Just consider that the PI motors in 99-04 GT's is much more powerful than a stock 5.0 will be. On the other hand, other than bolts ons, there's not many inexpensive mods you can do the mod motor to build a lot of power. Plus the 5.0 takes up less real estate and is easier / cheaper to work on. On top of that, the 5.0 just sounds so nice singing through a pair of flowmasters!

I'll help you any way I can if you decide to do the project. Mine will be completed within a couple days. My K member is back in and all the front suspension is back together, now I just have to install the 94 fuel system and drop the motor in. Hopefully by tomorrow evening the motor will be in it's new home.
 
Got lots done today. Got the entire fuel system swapped over to the vert ie: lines, tank, etc. Swapped over the entire cat-back without cutting anything. Boy was that a chore! Had to unbolt the upper control arms from the rear end and unbolt the shocks as well so the rear could drop down enough.

And if you look at the rear fascia of a new edge car and a 94-98 model, it'll look as though the 94-98's have a shorter bumper cover, but in fact they are exactly the same size (top to bottom). The tail pipes tuck under it just like they did in the 94 which is very nice since I'm not a fan of the New Edge GT cutouts.

I spent a few hours relooming the various engine harnesses and reinstalling them on the motor, along with all the accessories, brackets and headers. The car is now ready for the engine! We will drop it in tomorrow and if all goes well it will be running. Plenty of pics will be up as well.
 
SO CLOSE!!!

Finally, the engine is sitting in it's new home! Unless something holds me back, this car will run tomorrow.

Here's a shot of the K member after I pressure washed it and painted it white:

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Here you can see the differences between the 2 fuel tanks. The one with all the crazy hoses all over the place is the 99. The 94/95 tanks are so much simpler.

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K member, steering rack and sway bar reinstalled.

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Here's a shot of the motor all put back together awaiting the transmission to be mated up:

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Some shots of the installation in progress:

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And here is the motor sitting in it's new home. It was getting hard to see, so we had to stop here.

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Ran into a problem when I tried to install the overflow. The ABS pump on this car is oriented in a different position so it interfered with the overflow. I can use the V6 overflow but it will require me to relocate the CCRM. I'm going to try and mount it behind where the CAI goes, that is where the V6 CCRM was mounted.

I also broke the damn VSS on the tranny while installing the motor, so I'll have to pick up another one of those tomorrow.

Amazingly, the transmission crossmember went right in with no issue.

So tomorrow is do or die, I hope it all goes well. I will have more pics of the finished product as well as some vids.

:nice:
 

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Why not find a new edge 4.6L off craigslist or something? The swap would be soooo much easier and you could keep your gt

That wouldn't be any easier. He has a 5.0 donor car, but not a 4.6 donor car. You'd need almost as many original pieces out of the 4.6 car as the 5.0 car. Plus as covered earlier, the 5.0 body is not driveable anymore.

Kurt
 
Well after a long, tiring battle, it's almost there. The engine runs, ran pretty good at first but now it's missing a little bit. I'm gonna check the plug wires in the morning to see if any of them fell on a header or something. It feels like someone pulled a plug off.

Anyway, here's some pics. Screamin5oh was here today to help out and he took some video footage, but we aren't sure it came out right :(

Here's the motor all complete:

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Car all put back together:

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I'll get some better shots and some video after it's all washed and waxed up good. I still need to finish installing the rest of the interior and figure out the issue with the top motor.

I installed some white face gauge covers, but I don't like the way it turned out. Some of the needles don't move freely anymore and its not lit up very well. I'm just going to replace the cluster with a stocker and leave it alone. If anyone has one pm me!
 

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yea before i left it was running absolutely perfect, i have a feeling gas is low, because you said after it sat for awhile it acted up, could be that the fuel pressure is low now, or a wire got melted or something. try cycling the switch a few times to get fuel pressure up again and see if it runs better
 
Like I said, many in these 94/95 forums are probably sour about me destroying a 94 GT to make this happen, but if there was any other way I would have saved the 94 and bought a wrecked car for this purpose.

Anyway, the car is finished.

The top didn't work right away and I figured out that it was a missing fuse, since the fuse block came out of a non vert car, it made sense that the fuse wouldn't be there. Top works perfectly now.

The issue with the car running like ass was my fault. I dropped an injector while installing them while the motor was on the stand, I thought all I did was break the little orange "hat" that was on it, but I guess the fall broke the injector internally. Swapped to another injector and all is well.

And guys, I can't stress how important grounds are on these cars. Even after we cured the miss by replacing the injector, the car still fell on it's face when I would stomp on the gas. Turned out I needed more grounds.

So now the car is running perfect. I still have to replace the water neck gasket due to a pinhole leak, but that is elementary compared to the work I just did! The car will be getting a full detail tomorrow and I'll post a video and more pics of the finished project.

I will leave you with this one photo I took before it got dark.

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i really cannot believe that more people are not as interested as i thought, this was a very cool project and.. i know we have all said it,... man those newer mustangs are nice but i wish it had a good ol push rod 5.0.

Speaking for me, don't think there wasn't interest just because I didn't post. I think this was an awesome project, and I'm thoroughly impressed with your ability to actually make it work!

Congrats!:nice:
 
Speaking for me, don't think there wasn't interest just because I didn't post. I think this was an awesome project, and I'm thoroughly impressed with your ability to actually make it work!

Congrats!:nice:

Thanks! Now I'm going to do a full detail on the entire car and then go get the A/C charged up. Too freakin' hot to be without air conditioning!
 
Like I said, many in these 94/95 forums are probably sour about me destroying a 94 GT to make this happen, but if there was any other way I would have saved the 94 and bought a wrecked car for this purpose.

The thread has 1260 views, I would say that's a lot of interest. It is a really cool project. And you are not destroying a 94', you are correcting the vital flaw on a new edge. The vital flaw of course being that it had a truck engine in it.

Kurt
 
we had a big mustang convoy today and we cruised all day long, that new edge ran great..... sounds very good, runs perfect had a fun day!! he is very brave to have that thing just put together and putting it on like a 100 mile trip today lol but it did great
 
Including my little trip to the westside this evening I'd say it's closer to 200 miles! And it drove so nice.

And as a bonus, the lights in my rear view mirror work now! I was adjusting my instrument lights and I turned the knob all the way and the lights came on. What's weird is when I first got the car, we couldn't get those damn lights to work for anything. They had power and ground so we figured it was the mirror. I almost ordered a new mirror too, but it's working nicely now!

And Kurt, that's funny about the truck engine...lol