Hi all! I have been very bad at keeping my original thread about my ongoing project. On top of that, I am doing so much more than just a motor swap, that I figured that starting a new thread might be beneficial.
This is my 1984 GT-S that I am currently swapping a 1989 Ford 5.0 into my car. I’m definitely not the first to do this swap, and I honestly hope I’m not the last either. I wanted more power and at first this would’ve been more cost effective than a turbo kit for the 22R-E
Now the original plan for my car was to take a stock, running foxbody and put it into my celica. We all know how things don’t go to plan. My dad found an article from hotrod magazine about turning up a stock 302. They got AFR heads and a 625 cfm carb and made decent power,
https://www.hotrod.com/articles/ford-302-v8-engine-buildup/. The bug bit me and I decided to go for power.
Now I recommend keeping the motor stock if you are going for cost efficiency. Doing the math out on just motor parts, bellhousing, and labor, the number is one that I don’t like but it was over time. And if I was to do the swap over again, I would’ve got a running parts car. I initially went to a mustang shop and was going to get the motor, ecu, and wiring harness from a running car that I saw… but they tried to scam me. So I ended up finding a long block for $350 and built that instead.
A quick run down of what my goals are for the motor and the car in general. I am shooting for 325-350 whp. I’ve heard that the rear axles can’t handle more than 350hp. To do so I have a comp 264 cam, a 650 cfm carb, AFR heads, and full roller rocker assembly. I want to refresh my interior and do supporting mods such as suspension. I’m going to get techno toy coilovers are the way around the car, along with their adjustable front control arms. I want it to be a nice, powerful daily that is track ready.
So as time went on, money dictated what got finished first. I recently shifted my attention from motor work to some body work. My sunroof never worked in my ownership, and it leaked as well. One of the previous owners decided instead of replacing the sunroof gasket, to self tap the roof shut and silicone sealed it shut. Patched up the body poorly with bondo and sprayed the roof poorly. Maybe the gasket wasn’t available at the time, and it certainly isn’t available now.
I was able to find a new sunroof panel with the gasket intact at a junkyard. It was 4 hours away from where I lived but it was a steal compared to what people are asking on ebay. And so began the body work. I had to take care of rust on the sheet metal on the inside of my roof, sand the whole roof down along with the new to me sunroof assembly, and repaint it. The color was honestly one of the harder things to match. But it works beautifully and now seals. On the note of the color, I tried three different colors and had to restart and sand it back down to primer. Currently I have yet to spray the third color, but since I bought a quart of paint instead of a spray can, it cost me $180 for the paint, the hardener, and the reducer all said and done. So whatever the final result will be, I’m going to leave it, it’ll still look 100 times better than before.
Next I got to weld the motor mounts. I Also need to swap my front subframe. With years of neglect, my eccentric bolt holes are warped due to bad bushings. So I got a new to me front subframe from ebay, cleaned it up, and weld some support plates to stiffen up the subframe, paint it, and throw it into the car. But I can’t put the new subframe in until I tach the mounts. The motor is resting in the bay on the mocked up mounts.
After I get the finished motor and the the subframe wrapped up, I want to rebuild my rear diff. A year ago I swapped a 3.73 LSD and supra rear subframe into my car. Now I don’t know the mileage on the diff so I decided to buy Weir Performance Rebuild Kit. I’m throwing 3 times the power of the stock 22R-E into the chassis, the more refreshed all the parts are, the better.
My motor is still at the machine shop, but with that said, I still need to buy more parts for the motor before I get it running. But damn I can’t wait to hear it roar to life.
