Conversation Kit vs. Donor Vehicale

dagger · Post by **dagger** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 10:03 am

Ok well which would a better idea. the donor vehicle obviously comes with all the harness, all the sensor and everything else I may need but it doesn't mean that everything will work. now over at L&L they have a kit for around $1,200 that comes with an oil pan, headers, filter relocation kit, and the motor mounts. So which would you go with? Also what did most of you do about your transmission mount, did the stock one work or did you have to create a new one or what?

jbaer619 · Post by **jbaer619** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 1:27 pm

well what i did was give the guy at the junkyard $1,000 and he let me take the motor and tranny ( 89 mustang 5.0l H.O. and T5 tranny) and he let me take whatever I wanted off the car. So I got everything I could need off the donor without having to get rid of a junk frame and body. Then I picked up a set of mounts off summit for $150, a relocator at a local shop for $50, and a set of hooker full length headers off of cee21 for $315 (the stock oil pan fit for me). So I got the best off both worlds $1515.. As for the tranny mount (I dont know which tranny you have) the T5's tranny came up about 2 inches too far back for the stock mount, so I just welded a 1/4 inch peice of steel onto it and drilled new holes and it fit perfectly. I had some pics of it but I cant find them, but I will probably go out and take a couple more when I get some time. Hope this helped!

dagger · Post by **dagger** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 2:38 pm

Ok, I think I'd get a whole donor though if I was going to pick parts out of it. I'd end up forgetting stuff and I don't want to have to deal with that.

cgrey8 · Post by **cgrey8** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 6:39 pm

Well it's not as simple as just having the donor. However here are the gotchas I'm aware of:

If the donor is an Explorer, the headers from L&L or Summit won't work. You'll either have to reuse the stock manifolds, buy FMS Explorer headers, buy Torque Monster headers, or buy MAC GT40p headers. If the donor doesn't have GT40p headers, then then your options on headers range from those Ranger swap L&Ls to old stock Mustang Tri-Ys. Since you have a 4x4 application you are swapping for, there is no "perfect" donor unless your Ranger is a similar year to the Explorer you are pulling from. The Explorer is the closest fit since the accessories, motor, tranny, and Tcase are all designed for tight space, but being so electronic requires you to really do your homework on how to overcome those obstacles if you don't maintain the stock computer and harness. The F150 is an option, but the intake on F150s often causes clearance problems with the hood in the pre-93 Rangers since it is so tall. I think most people get around it by either ditching the F150 intake for a Mustang style or carburated intake or installing a body lift.
The oil pan isn't likely to work from anything stock. If you find that there is an OEM 302 pan out there somewhere that does work in a 4wd Ranger, that's valuable info. The closest thing to working is most likely the Explorer 4wd/AWD oil pan. Malcolm made his dual sump pan work but it took quite a bit of welding and time to seal a multitude of oil leaks. He admitted that if he'd known about the L&L 4wd Ranger swap pan, he would've gladly spent the money to get that pan vs all the crap he went through getting his modified dual sump fox pan to quit leaking.
The L&L mounts are nice. A bit pricey, but on older Rangers are a sweet bolt-in solution...at least for me they were. Although relocating the stock Ranger rubber mounts further down on the crossmember and making your own 1/4" steel flat-plate mounts to go between the Ranger rubber mounts and the motor is not terribly difficult. If you are looking for a place to save some money, this is one of them.
The L&L 90Â° oil filter adapter is again a little pricey but worth the money. The alternative is a "spin-on" adapter. They are much cheaper, but the location of the oil hoses is up to wherever the spin-on adapter tightens up at. The L&L adapter can be tightened down via a bolt, independent of hose location. Canton also makes a similar adapter to the L&L adapter for cheaper, but is slightly thicker. I have one and out of fright of it not working, I got the L&L adapter and am using it. But now that the engine is installed, I think the Canton would've worked just fine for me.
The tranny mount problem is easily solved. Some people relocate their tranny crossmember forward some, but that requires a lot of rivet grinding & drilling the frame. And even then, you have the chance of running into interference with the parking brake bracket assembly that's on the driver's side right where many people find the crossmember needs to be. You can easily solve this problem with nothing more than a 1/4" steel flat plate (same as what's used for the motor mount above). The plate will bolt to your Ranger's tranny crossmember in the stock location. And your tranny mount will bolt to the flat plate. Done.
As for donors, yes it is nice having a complete donor, but it also depends on what your plans are. If the donor is injected, but you are going carb, then little on the donor will be useful to you. The coil packs (if it has them), upper & lower intakes, wiring harness, all that will be useless to you if you are going carbed. A slightly different scenario might be you are going injected, but want to use an older EEC that doesn't have as strict of emission requirements. In that case If the donor is an Explorer using an EEC-V computer, but you are going with an older EEC-IV Mustang system to avoid the headaches of satisfying the emissions requirements the EEC-V computer requires, then that again abandons a lot of the stuff in the donor. So if you know what your plans are for the swap and you know what your donor is, you can predict/research 80-90% of what you can get. This alone may decide for you which direction you go (carbed or injected)

Did I hit everything?

dagger · Post by **dagger** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 7:27 pm

Thanks, thats rather in depth. Personally I'd rather go with carbed but I don't know what I need to have or not have just yet. So I defianly have a lot of research to do. EFI would be nice but I'm not sure I'd be up to it for a first swap unless totally necassry.

cgrey8 · Post by **cgrey8** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 8:00 pm

I tackled it just because it was a necessity for me to pass emission tests. Had it not been a requirement, I might have fallen towards not doing it as well. But now that I've done it and gotten it behind me, I'm really glad I did. The wiring surgery I had to do was interesting, but mostly just tedious. With the wiring diagrams of my Ranger and a point-to-point derived wiring diagram of my harness which didn't fit the Mustang diagrams I had, I was able to get most everything where it was supposed to go. The only goof I had was getting the Fuel Pump status wire back to the EEC right. I got that backwards. It was looking for power and I gave it ground, or some-such. I still haven't bothered to fix it since it doesn't affect the running of the vehicle, it just always flags a Fuel Pump code when I run the self-test.

But more than anything, I'm glad I went EFI because it opened up a whole new world to me, the world of tuning where the black box mysteries of the EEC reveal themselves. I've been deep in the Ford EEC tuning forums ever since I got the TwEECer and I'm just as engaged with tuning today as I was back when I was solving "real" problems. Mostly what I do now is tweak stuff in the tune that most people leave alone just to see what it does and find useful ways to solve other problems using that info. Sometimes I find useful stuff. Sometimes I just learn what not to mess with or at least find how far I can adjust something before bad things happen. But I always find it fun.

dagger · Post by **dagger** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 8:44 pm

Really if I had something that showed me better where everything goes, something that I could understand I'd have no problems going EFI. It get pretty cold up here and I'm sure a carb would give me some trouble. I'm still checking into the whole DMV emission thing.

cgrey8 · Post by **cgrey8** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 4:30 am

The biggest help for me was getting the wiring diagrams for my year Ranger. I got them from helminc.com for a very reasonable price. If you do go EFI, the easiest swap is one from an 89-95 Mustang where you can pull the engine and wiring harness together. The longer accessory setup requires that you either relocate the radiator fwd to get a mech flex fan in there OR run pusher fans like many of us do. But this doesn't help you with the tranny. You'll still have to find a suitable donor for the tranny and xfer case.

However for best fit in a Ranger when going EFI is the Explorer 302 with 4r70w tranny (wide range electronic AODE) and AWD Tcase. This gives you a solid foundation for future mods by getting you GT40p heads, 65mm stock TB, Cobra inspired Explorer intake which is much better than the Mustang GT intake, but at the cost of now having to deal with special GT40p headers. Install the headers and replace the cam, and you got ~250hp machine in near-stock form. You solved a lot of fitment and 4wd problems, but your EFI complexity just went up and the cost for having to get special headers also went up unless of course you decide to keep the stock manifolds. The good news about this swap is both Malcolm and I have done it. So there's lots of discussion on the forum in previous threads about our experiences.

And then there's pulling the 302, tranny, and tcase from an F150. Then you get pretty much everything all setup, but you still have to do a fair amount of wiring harness surgery to get the F150 harness to plug into the Ranger chassis connectors. While doing all that, you might even consider a MAF-conversion for the motor using a Mustang MAF & EEC. The downside to this method is you may end up with a less-than-stellar performing motor since F150 302s were never credited for having a lot of power.

I have no clue which direction is cheaper or better for you. I'm just throwing options for you to consider.

dagger · Post by **dagger** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 11:13 am

Well, is there anyway I can go with a 302 mustang motor then throw an AOD trans with some kind of transfer case behind it. I don't want to go AWD, I like to offroad my truck and I have a locker up front and a LS out back already. I know that the locker may causes breakage problems with the front end seeing as how its a D35 but I'll tackle that when it comes down to it.

I know the wiring is going to be a pain no matter what so I might try to go the easier route with the F-150 stuff and just try and swap in some performance stuff for that. Who knows. All I know is I'll have torque torque torque. Which is what I really want.

cgrey8 · Post by **cgrey8** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 12:04 pm

Are you looking to do any engine mods (i.e. cam) while it is out or will the engine go in as-is?

dagger · Post by **dagger** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 1:41 pm

I planned on doing a whole rebuild on most things. You know all new gaskets, some P&P of what I can do by hand. I'd throw a cam on it if I found I liked. Its not going to be any hot rod thats for sure but would I like it to be pretty quick then sure hell yes.

EDIT: actually thinking about it I wouldn't mind putting some spray on it. Not that much just a good bit of spray.

EDIT #2: Seeing as how I'm going to be swapping in a lot of stuff how much of a pain would it be to put in cruise control. Its such a pain not having it. Driving for 3 hours having to control the gas pedal get a bit annouying.