Junkyards are proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy... I took a trip to a local one around here trying to find a Merkur for a turboswap. The guy at the desk was more or less clueless and just told me to go take a look. Got distracted for a moment by a large portion of ground littered with engines (one of whihc was a 5.0 EFI, looked pretty good, but it wasn't what I came for, so I had to leave it alone) wandered around there for awhile, then asked about where a Merkur might be. "Turbo, huh?" was the guy's response. I nodded and he directed me over a hill where a Merkur lay waiting. Unfortunately, it was a Scorpio, so that was worthless. Wandered around for about 15 more minutes and I spotted a T-bird. Popped the hood, but it was a 6 cylinder, and also worthless to me. Now, here comes the good part of the story. Out of the corner of my eye I see a grey T-bird sitting pretty much abandoned right next to the fence. First thought was "That's the one." Walked up to that one. No hood on the car, and just over the fender, I see the head for a 2.3 Liter with the black body and silver "stripes". Got closer and looked down inside; there was the turbo. As if that wasn't enough to make me joyous, looking inside the car revealed that it was a manual tranny. So I got both aspects of what I was looking for in one car, so I'm pretty excited at this point. Now, the bad-ish news. Somebody got to the car before me and the intercooler and intake line from the turbo to the TB is gone. The turbo outlet, therefore, is filled with gunk of some kind, or it might be dirty water but I'm not sure. The oil cap is missing so the inside has been exposed to the elements, I forgot to check to see if there was any oil in it still, so I don't know much past that. After sitting in the car playing with it for awhile, I discovered that the transmission (or at least the stick) shifts gears without clutching. My guess is that that is a rather simple problem, but I'm not sure. Stupid me also forgot to check the miles. I'll be making another trip out there though to take a second look at it. Bottom line: Is this car worth yanking the engine and tranny from to do my turbo-swap? I plan on doing a complete rebuild on the engine to begin with, so I'm not sure how much I should worry about that. I'm going to buy a turbo by itself to familiarize myself with its workings and assembly, so I'm not sure how much I should worry about the turbo either. The transmission is the next point of concern, not really sure what to expect from that, so any input? If its worth it, the offer I plan to make for engine and tranny is $175 to open, and negotiable from there (but I'm not gonna pay more than $250 for it maybe $275 tops, since I can go out and buy a running donor car that I know works for roughly $5-600 anyway.) Allright then, what does everyone think? Should I go for it, or should I keep looking? Dan
Stick shifts always shift gears without clutching if the engine is NOT running BTW...for $175 it may be worth it...the tranny is worth that and the rest may be redeemable. Even if the engine is full of water, most of it would be coated with oil and not rusted and no damage is done unless it's been started while full of water. It'd still require a tear down and inspection, plus new bearings and gaskets at a minimum.
Is it an '87-88 Turbo Coupe? You should find out if you could get the whole car and have them haul it to you if you have a place to keep it. You could part it out and make back more than you spent on it. Hell, the rearend alone is worth at least $100. I bought a whole '84 TC for $150 this last summer, pulled the engine and tranny, ended up making back more than that from selling parts and somebody hauled what was left away for free.
I'm not sure of the year, and yes, we *have* room for it, but its a matter of whether or not my dad will go for having a junked car in our backyard (suburbia sucks) right now I'm leaning toward no. Its a possibility if I can get him hyped enough about the swap, but just having a car in the backyard, I don't think he'd go for that. Now there is the possibility that I could keep it in the garage and just go to town on it there, which has a good chance of happening. I will simply argue that since its gonna be in there to pull the engine and transmission why not just leave it in there until I actually go ahead and do the swap? That has a chance. As far as the transmission question yeah, I still have alot to learn. More thoughts?
Miles would be a big plus, knowing that will help to decied wether its a good pick. Find out the year aswell, it should be on the door panel (if it hasnt weatehred off like most of the jy cars). If you really plan on rebuilding it before your swap, pretty much any motor will be a good canidate, miles have less meaning on your final decision. If you cant find what year the car is by the door tag, go look at the injectors, (take a rag to clean the gunk off the top of one of them), it they are brown, the car is 86.5-88 a very worthy car, if you can ID the car by looks...that helps too! 87-88 ...take the passenger side kick pannel off ,pull the sound padding outa the way and locate the comptuer mounted right there, look for the ID tag on it, see what the code is, EEC-IV will be there (hopefully!) but u need something that looks like LA3, or LB2 , that will help in identifiying the year aswell! hope you found a gem in that pile of junk!
All points noted, I'm hoping for the same thing . All things said and done, if I can get this car to 200 HP and ~240 ft/lbs tq, that would be awesome. Anything beyond that is even better. Hopefully I'll have a very nice setup going on here. I'm going to be videotaping a large portion of this project, and then editing stuff, so I'll be sure to post pics for all you guys. Between this forum and alot of the web sites hosted by members and suggested by members, I'm hoping to make this one wild buildup. Hmm, maybe I should set up a web site? Dan
Go for the website ... and lots of vids/pics of the build ... post them on there ... that is what i am doing, as soon as I find a cheap 4cyl to put my engine in ... i need my 91 as a daily driver so thats out of the question. Good luck!
Shouldn't be hard, the '87-'88's are rated 190fwhp. Boost controller and airflow stuff should put you close to 200rwhp. Ash
Nice, very nice. Anything else about the worthiness of the car? Oh yeah, there was a link to a website for porting awhile back, I checked it out but didn't get much from it. Does anyone have any other links or recommendations for books ont he matter? I also want to looking into gutting the upper intake and knife edging the lower, so any help that can be offered on that would be good. I'm getting ahead of myself here.... before I forget thought, any recommendations on file sizes for vids/pics? I want to get good stuff but not leave dialup people behind. Dan
You should grab the brakes and rear for your car if you can. Turbo Coupes had 11" front discs (yours has 10 inchers) and they had a disc brake 8.8" rearend. Also...trust me when I say that the front seats in a TC a hundred times better than the seats in a mustang. I dunno whether ford just built them better or what, but the seats in my TC have none of the "gangsta lean" to them that my Mustang seats do, and I even have GT seats in the stang. Only thing is that the seats probably won't match your interior. Also, of course, if you take the engine make sure you grab all the associated hardware (VAM, computer, etc)
Yeah, right now I'm leaning toward just making an offer for the whole car. Dad will let me keep it somewhere out of sight and out of mind, like under a tarp or in the garage. So I'm headin out there today to try to acquire my new toy. The brakes are a good idea, I thought about taking the rear but now I definately will. I had planned on the seats as well, I like them alot. Well, that's my check in for this morning..er, early afternoon, I'm on my way out to the junkyard. Wish me luck! Dan
Well hey, if you get the whole car I may be interested in buying a couple parts off it I'm pretty sure the spindles are the same.
Dang, missed this post. I might just have to go yank the spindles off a TC sometime if they're the same. Ash
Its been awhile but the 10th digit should be a "J" for 88 and a "H" for 87. I would double check that but it sould give you a better idea on what year it is, because the other stuff could be swaped out. There are other things to look for like if its got, a IC or not, pointed ft end, or even the castings on the exhaust mainifold should be E6. Also the 83-86'TC has rear drum brakes with a 7.5 rear end while the 87-88' TC has the disc 8.8. Now I got a 88 that someone swaped in a older turbo set up etc, its got a T-3, E3 and the intakes are older ( you can tell because the 87-88'TC has the 2.3L on the upper intakes and the older ones are bare mostly. this is squal intakes only) I hope that helps I.D the year TC your looking into
