'86 hatch, have questions

[Desert Stallion]

Well, for starters I'm sorta new to the 2.3L realm. Trying to convert myself away from my beloved V8's I guess.

I'm pickin' up a '86 hatch, straight car, torched motor. It originally has what I would call the 4-banger's version of CFI, and a C4 non-OD auto tranny. Neither is appealing to me.

I do have access to a Ranger motor out of a '94. From what I understand these are the dual plug, roller cam motors, and should run much nicer than the 'CFI' motor in the car now.

However, I have intentions of turbocharging the car, but in my world of V8's and such we don't have 'VAM's, just MAF's. My question is, did the 2.3L ever come with MAF's, and what's to keep me from turbocharging a mass air car rather than trying to find a TurboCoupe for parts, near impossible around this area? What about the availability of a twEECer for a 2.3L MAF car?

Really I want the economy of a 4 cylinder car, and I want the performance of a V8, so's I figures that a 2.3L with a turbocharger equipped with an adjustable wastegate to tone down the boost for daily driving and tweak it in for racing would be the ticket. I don't want to run 20+ psi all the time and get worse mileage than my 5.0L's which will pull 19-20 in town and 24-25 on the highway consistantly, ya' know? That's somewhat self-defeating.

Thanks all.

 

[notched86]

The n/a 2.3's don't come with forged internals, and with the high compression, if you just put a turbocharger on a n/a 2.3 it would fly apart in a hurry. You'd have to rip apart the block and rebuild it so it could hold up to boost.

There's a member on here, bhuff, who turbocharged his n/a 2.3, but he put in forged internals first. I think he still had a bunch of headaches with it though.

Alot easier (and cheaper) to just find a complete 2.3T motor and swap it in.