1987 t-bird turbo coupe 2.3 swap into 1990 2.3 5 speed

[Juddys123]

A couple of questions here:

1. I recently learned that on the 87 t-bird any gear past first was limited to 10 psi of boost and I want to know if I need to figure out how to overcome this issue. I plan on swapping in the La3 ecu and repinning the ecu connector on the ranger harness in order to keep my factory harness. And I don't care about running more than the stock 15-18psi of boost I just want to make sure that I can use it all the way through the gears. Should I run an external boost controller? How does the t-bird even control boost stock?

2. The ecu pinnouts and excel sheet are for a 1990 ranger with a 2.3 maf but my truck uses map instead. Will this make a difference in how I re-pin my ecu connector to accomodate the VAM harness and connnector?

 

[franklin2]

I never had a t bird, but had a SVO mustang with the same engine. It had a fuel switch on the console. If you ran 87 octane, it limited the boost to 10 psi. All this was is the wastegate spring. A little tube hooked to the output of the turbo ran around to the waste gate. The waste gate had a 10lb spring in it.

When you were running 93 octane or higher, you flipped the switch on the console. What that did was switch some fueling relays in the console, and activated the computer to control the boost.

In that little tube I was talking about they had a tee fitting. This ran to a solenoid controlled by the computer, and the solenoid was just a vent to atmosphere. The computer had a sensor for the manifold pressure (I guess the MAP?) and it would open that vent solenoid and bleed off the boost pressure in that little tube. So the 10lb spring didn't see 10lbs and would not divert the wastegate. When the computer saw 15 lbs of boost, it would start cycling that vent solenoid on and off to start controlling the wastegate and try to maintain 15 psi of boost. You could hear the solenoid on the fender vibrating when it was working.

I do not know how the t bird compensated for different fuel quality. I would think if it did do something depending on what gear you are in, there must be a switch on the transmission that you could fudge so it thought it was in 1st gear all the time.

 

[scotts90ranger]

The octane switch is the fuel pump confirm wire to the ECM, I'd pull that guy out... Mine pinged like a mofo before I figured that out... I never had the wastegate solenoid connected correctly, now I have a boost fooler deal and set my wastegate at 14psi which my setup is happy with on mid grade or whatever...

The stock MAP sensor is the same as the baro sensor on the turbo engines so just leave that there, you'll have to add the wires to the stock harness to go to the VAM.

If it were me I would keep as much of the stock 2.3L as possible, including head and intake manifold just swap the turbo pistons and injectors in, that'll let you keep the DIS much easier and cleaner... maybe tonight I'll post up some pics of my current engine compartment, it's kinda a mess but yeah...

 

[Juddys123]

Okay, it's starting to make sense. Just picked up my donor car last weekend so i'm trying to come up with a plan for how to do this. I think if found almost every resource on the internet at this point and I'm just tying up some loose ends before I start. I think there are a few good ways to go about doing this. I would use the factory head but i'm concerned about cracking and exhaust valve seat issues that are known problems with the dual plug motor.

I'm also concerned about how boost may amplify these failure points. Of course I would have my head rebuilt if I went down this path but I'm okay doing a little bit of rigging with the DIS if that means keeping the turbo head.

 

[Mechrick]

On my Mustang I changed the wastegate to one that had a 15 lb spring in it. You will have to run an intercooler with that much boost.

I recommend ditching the stock PCM and low impedance injectors for aftermarket. The stock vane air meter is a restriction.

 

[scotts90ranger]

Depending on if you have a stock tach (I had to add one to my Ranger, but I like having it) depends on what you "have" to do to make one side work... If you don't have a stock tach you just have to plug in the exhaust coil and leave the other off. If you have a stock tach get into the leads to both coils and splice the output from the drivers side coils into their respective leads going to the passenger side coil (IE splice the 1&4 and 2&3 leads from each together, I have a drawing at home that should help) and it'll work fine. The only other thing to do is mount the DIS module to somewhere that is a heat sink and grounded, the grounding is important as I found out the HARD way, it'll work just fine not grounded until it stalls out randomly which mine decided to do while I was going around a "bowl" in the sand dunes and it rolled sideways to the bottom... I fixed it but wish it hadn't done that

 

[scotts90ranger]

Ok, the file I have isn't as helpful as I thought, it's more for adding the DIS to a TFI engine, I think...

 

[scotts90ranger]

Here's some random out of date but pretty close to current pics, they're over 10 years old but the only difference is it's a different bottom end since then and a different turbo and likely a bit of cleanup like taking out the boost control solenoid that I wasn't even using right... I say that because it was making 16psi before I ported the head... I really need an intercooler, it's on the list...

 

[Juddys123]

That’s a really neat setup. Just spent some time after work today trying to get my parts car t-bird running. Rats chewed up ignition switch power wires, so once I got that sorted I tried spraying some ether into the throttle body and it backfired once but nothing else. I guess I’ll be going through the entire ignition system to confirm good spark tomorrow and possibly a compression test to make sure everything looks good if the spark seems to be good. Hopefully a spark issue tho as I’m hoping to use the complete long block.

 

[scotts90ranger]

I'd probably just do a compression test...

When I jumped in without knowing enough in 2009 (I learnt things... ) I had picked up an unknown engine with wire harness and computer and stuff from craigslist that was a '85 T bird engine and just went to town and pretty much used it as is, the intake gaskets blew out, blew a coolant hose that I didn't change, etc... I just took the guys word for it being a good engine. I think I changed the valve stem seals and I did put the Ranger cam in it (I forgot to mention that before, use the Ranger roller cam and followers, similar profile and well it's roller vs flat tappet)

That's pretty much why I didn't want to use the distributor, the DIS setup is more reliable than the TFI system even though it's very similar...

 

[scotts90ranger]

When I said I learnt things, I was dumb enough to think I could do my first engine swap on a thanksgiving weekend on my daily driver... it ended up taking me a month and got it running on new years on one of the worst winters we'd had in a while... Knowing what I do now I'd surely be able to do the swap in a normal weekend but I have more space, tools and experience being 42 instead of 28ish... that and I have more "extra" vehicles now not just one