Holy crap!

[takdashark]

Hello everyone!

I've been going through the forum and am amazed at the amount of info on modular swaps there is. I also noticed how helpful everyone is, and when doing things outside of the norm, like a modular swap, it's amazing to have a site like this to get help (any sympathy)

A little about me and my car.. It's an 86 coupe with a MMR built 5.4 2v Anderson PI heads and stock PI cams with a Precision PT76 and a Tremec 3550. I'm currently running a 03 Cobra ECU. I just had it retuned yesterday and made 524hp and 597ft/lbs at 15 psi on pump gas. The car is a driver, and was built with the intention of being a fun, fast, and reliable (somewhat) car. I bought it off a close friend whom had already swapped in a 5.4 out of an Expedition with a MP T70 diy turbo kit via a MegaSquirt. It was a 4 cyl car originally and very solid underneath and in all the common rust spots. He had already done torque box reinforcements, full length connectors, and welded all the body/chassis seams. I bought the car and pretty quickly started looking into making more than the 7 psi he was running, but nobody wanted to tune it so it all began! Called MMR and ordered a Mod1000 5.4 and scored the heads from a buddy. Then the 03 ECU came into play, the friend I purchased it from helped A LOT with the computer swap. Since then there has been lots of high and lows, most the lows were me having "bright ideas" like fabrication a hydraulic clutch set up and so on. I could go on for hours with all the headaches i have created for my self but I'm not capable of typing too fast and I doubt you want to hear me blab on.

I found the site while researching swapping in a 99-04 instrument cluster. I wish I did from the beginning, but that would have made sense, and that's not my style. I'm trying to figure out what I need to do to give the computer a oss signal. The speedo get in the car has a 2 wire connector on it, so I'm trying to figure out if I can feed that into the ECU and have my tuner change the parameters in the tune, or if I can simply use a 99-04 oss sensor in my 3550?

I have been searching the forum for any info that would help and keep getting side tracked in other threads and builds. lol

Hopefully I can contribute to someone's headache sometime!

Taki,

 

[takdashark]

And somehow I screwed up my age, I'm not 14 unfortunately. If a moderator can correct this my birthday is 9/11/1983.

Thank you!

 

[Zach_Endicott]

Welcome fellow newbie! I'm interested to see more info and pics of your car.

 

[takdashark]

Thanks! I'll try to get some pics in the next few days. The body isn't anything to look at right now. I currently don't have a garage so I'm going to hold off on stripping it for paint. I'm going to go down to bare metal on the whole car when the times right.

I'll gladly answer any questions I can.

I forgot to mention I have 93 black interior with a custom cup holder, with 04 Mach 1 seats, it's got 94 or 95 (don't remember) Saleen Speedline Magnesium wheels 18x8 all round. MM coil overs out front, MM adj lowers inthe rear with boxed uppers and Bilsteins.

The pics are from 2010

 

[takdashark]

 

[Zach_Endicott]

Great looking car! If you had the choice between the 2v 5.4 or a 4v 4.6, (with a single turbo on both to keep it fair) which would you lean towards?

Very cool cup holder! I need to share that idea with a buddy of mine.

 

[takdashark]

Oh man! Please don't give me choices, my mind goes crazy lol. Truth be toall, I've been contemplating a 4v swap for a few years, but I would have to make a new turbo headers which cost around $1000 after ceramic coating. Plus the physical size of the heads are my reasons for not doing it. Trick flow heads and a set of cams are next, that's what's limiting me from making real power, it falls off around 5k. My little trusty 3550 is getting tired and way past it's limit, so if I can get some ot in the next few months a T56 Magnum is going in.

To simply answer your question, in a street car application, I would do a 5.4 again. The torque is awesome at low rpm's compared to a 4.6. But, with the options of stock 4v motors, Mach 1, 96-02 Cobras, Termis , your getting a better starting point and bang for your buck imo.

If you ever just want a "simple" answer from me..... Good luck lol

 

[takdashark]

My tuner told me to run the fuel rail pressure sensor, which the original tuner said "nah", he ran a race shop full of drag cars so wot was all he cared about, my new tuner is all about drivability, which is my objective. So I'm waiting on a Aeromotive adapter to add it in on, he also recommended giving the ecu a speed signal which what I'm trying to figure out now.

Here some pics of the motor, it dirty and the pics arent great, but you get the idea.

 

[takdashark]

A few pics of the headers I made, I replicated the modified Motorsports headers the we used initially to make the kit. The cracked in a few spots so I made them with 1/2" CNC flanges and 16 gauge tubing. I made a jig of the old ones and went from there.

 

[takdashark]

Eboost2 gauge pod in my vent



For those of you you say to your self "I don't know how to do this or that" stop! I did a lot of this stuff like the cup holder and gauge pod in my restaurants basement in between lunch and dinner with out a clue of what I was doing. Just like this awesome forum, there are others out there to learn from, and a ton of videos on you tube if you want to spend some time to do your research. I screwed a bunch of stuff along the way, and have done things over so many times. I'm not of those people who just reads something and gets it, my buddy Pat who has helped me with the car is like that. He learns something in a weekend and just good t it from the get go. Drives me nuts lol

 

[Bill 4v coupe]

I feel your pain about doing things.multiple times. I started with n20 whrnt to blower than smalk mp turbo all blow through carb. Wanted to do turbo on thiss swap but had intercooled procharger. So whent with it . Previous owner said it was tuned and posted 440 to wheels. Seems stronger had some spark knock after getting warm. Under heavy load. Was hoping for 10s After driving think 9s might be possible.

 

[takdashark]

I loved my MP T70, it made 482rwhp and 554 ft/lbs at 10 psi but it ran out of steam at 5k. I was going to get their new BB 76 that was supposed to come out, but they stopped production. Magnum turbo took over, but it was new and I didn't want to experiment. I got a good deal on the Precision Billet wheel 76 so I pulled the trigger.