worthwhile mods for a NA 2.3?

[89Stang]

$60 for a mandrel bent 3" tailpipe? You sure?

There are no muffler shops anywhere in this area that can even crush bend 3" pipe, much less do mandrel bent stuff.

well it straight aluminized steel I think he said... Not sure... He owns the shop and its pretty much just the cost of materials... heh plus the "beer fee" and its only the over the axle pipe from the rear of the muffler to where the beginning of the stainless steel or chrome tip would start.

 

[MrKwik]

Well we'll either go one of two routes with my car..

A: Fix it up real good and swap a 2.3t or 5.0 in her, then i would want to a do a tranny swap.

or

B: Fix it up real good, runnign very well, repaint the finish ( dad was in auto body for 20 years, it WILL be a good paint job. Plus we wont have to pay thousnds, just a couple hundred for paint stuff, and we paint it ourselves.) Some pony wheels. Make it all around a nice looking car. Then sell it for a HUGE profit then buy a 5.0 or something.


We'll most likely go down route B, so i would want to do some minor mods to it to increase its value.

I bought her for 300$ didnt run, spent about 120$ on it, now it runs really good, fixing alot of stuff. we could probably get 700$-1000$ for her at this point. With a new paint job, wheels, minor mods, etc. we could get about 2000-2500$ for it hopefully.

Does route B sound good?

As a general rule, you would have to do quite a bit of work to turn a $300 car into a $2500 car, especially a 2.3. Around here, you can get a pretty damn clean 2.3 car for that kind of money. By the time you did the paint, wheels, mods and fixed all the little nickle & dime things, your "huge profit" is in the crapper. If your ultimate goal is to have a 5.0 car than I would either say just do as much free stuff as you can and sell it. You almost never get out of a car what you put in it let alone turn a profit, so I think that doing a bunch of work before you unload it is an excercise in futility. Also, any 5.0 car you find for 2-2.5k is probably going to be pretty beat unless you just get lucky. I would save your wheel, paint and mod money to put into the new one.

 

[140cilx]

I have n/a mod suggestions on this page that I have tried/used http://140cilx.stangnet.com/about.html
however, turbo is the only way to go.

Any guy w/ a n/a 2.3 that wants more I think should be patient and locate an SVO while they are still affordable. Sell the LX and have an awesome car for cheap.

 

[mightypoof]

http://racerwalsh.zoovy.com/category/4cylinder/

and about the block thing from what I read on here in order to make a na block for turbo you have to drill out the hole for a distributer...

You may want to do a little more research. There is NO difference in the distributors. If there was why would you put your old on on the new engine anyway? The only difference between the blocks are the oil drain line and I've heard rumors that the turbo blocks have a higher nickel content.

Pretty much EVERY single part swaps over from an N/A to a turbo 2.3, unless you start getting into the DP motors. The heads do have hardened exhaust valve seats and I believe different exhaust valves as well.