soooo, i've heard of the dohc 2.3t being built, theres actually a guy in minnesota thats building one for a merkur. here's the deal, i have an 88 tbird turbocoupe that i bought for a parts car a few years ago (its in my parents garage in connecticut) my brother has a volvo with a dohc 2.3 in it, he's going to junk the car, so i'm going to buy it instead just for the head. now i know there is a lot, and i mean a lot of work involved in this, is it worth it to do? what kind of numbers can i make doing this? the main reason i wanna do this is cuz its unique, its not common like a honda sohc block with a dohc vtec head, this is something on another level. it'd be a true sleeper, i'll be putting it in a mid-late 80's ranger 2wd with a t5 from a mustang, 9 inch rear with either 3.73 or 4.11 gears, and it will be megasquirted. before i go and do any of this though is it worth it? the engine in the tbird is basically complete, it needs manifolds, dizzy, valve cover, and some other misc things but the block and head are there and together and the cam doesnt even show surface rust from sitting in the open for 3 years. should i just build the sohc motor? or should i actually do the dohc conversion?

 

Are you talkin about the newer duratec 2.3? those are DOHC but the older lima 2.3 are SOHC design..

 

I believe hes talking about swapping the 2.3 Volvo DOHC head, onto the Lima 2.3. Its 90% direct bolt on. The other 10% is alot of fabrication.

Its not entirely common, but its a fairly old conversion.

Go to turboford.net and search on it. There are quite a few guys on there who have done it.

 

don't you have to weld a huge chunk of aluminum onto the head or something?
i was looking into it at one point and its really not worth it, i would rather go with an after market head at that point.

 

Yes, thats a major part of the extra fabrication to it. There are some pretty good low end gains having the 4 valves per cylinder, but the top end is really no better than a worked Essy head.

The swap is usually done in conjunction with the turbo conversion. Otherwise, you'd only get meager results on a N/A motor.

 

theres a better head then the esslinger, i forgot what it was tho.
i would get on rps and look but im lazy.

 

SVO head? ARCA head? D-port head? Aluminum D-port head? Those are all esslinger heads. There is nothing out there better for a performance 2.3 than an Esslinger. Though I wouldn't ever buy one, their finish work has been "sketchy" for the amount of coin you have to drop on one.