Hi Steve,
I finally got hold of a 302 by buying a complete 1988 ford thunderbird £290 , got the engine out and it is HEAVY, the engine hoist we had would not lift it without taking the inlet and heads off the throttle body looks like it is a max of 50mm dia on the plus side it does have a roller cam and the bores are mint.
Do you know what the shortest front end for this engine is as there is a problem with parts swaping with the early and late engines regarding the strange setup Ford have with external balancing of the engines , early engines have 28 OZ balance factor and later have 50 OZ. mix them up and vibrate the crank to peices

cheers

mark

edit if any one wants a cheap Tbird with no engine
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=290010510736

 

Fuck me, a 5litre Tbird for 290quid

The 50mm dia TB shows why theres easy power gains to be made!

Im suprised about the heavy thing, we used an engine crane on it, and hell, 2 of us carried mine a few feet to where we wanted it! It had the top half of the inlet off, but thats all.

IIRC the late Explorer V8 has the shortest front end unless you go for an electric pump, and im considering both options.

Ive not looked in to it hugely yet, so there MAY be other options.

Regarding the balancer, honestly no idea yet, not done much with the 2 we got so far, not had time TBH! Wish I did, I soooo want to get it running!

Ill be v.interested in anything you find out tho, and anything I can do to help, I will

Doh is one who can prob help as he already got a 302 running in his Sierra.

Ill also be v.interested what people do regarding engine mounts and gearbox, as ive not decided yet (barring I want to use a manual, so T5).

 

WOW a T-Bird 302 all the way there? Did not know they were exported to the UK. If you can get the intake from a mid 90's Explorer (same one as the '93 Cobra) that will give you some additional performance.

 

mark the front covers are all interchangeable and rare not dependance on the balance weight, i.e. you could fit a 28oz balance crank with a suitable crank and damper although there'd be no real reason too.

you just need to make sure all the other bits match up i.e the puleys and water pump and alt bracket etc

 

Cheers for the advice, the EFI is probably going in the bin TBH and I will use a 4 barrel inlet with either 4 barrel throttle body and MS/Emerald or carb. I'm short on time and cash at the moment with a ton of household DIY to get sorted and I really need to have the 302 to MT75 gearbox and sump arangement 100% before I blow any cash on tuning parts.

Mark

 

302 will mash the fuck outa a MT75 wont it?

 

get a weiand stealth manifold and a 4barrel vac secondary holley, although you'll need to figure out a dizzy coz the standard ford one won't work without the efi, althought i'm sure there'd be a way to make it work i bought a second hand mallory dual point then converted it to optical with a it for like £40 you could get a cheap HEI dizzy of ebay in the states

 

One way to find out
I don't plan on tuning the engine too highly and a chap on XROC forum is running a power engineering 3.7 V6, positive displacement supercharger etc making 370lbsft on a stock MT75, in theory I might get away with it as the blown V6 would have plenty of low down torque that would be the cause of damage and he has had no big problems.




Mark