nice man

 

Well today I finally started the motor swap. Just need to unbolt exhaust,motor & trans mount then yank the 2.9 out.

The 5.0 is done except for the new roller rockers Im waitng for the UPS guy to drop off. In the mean time I will be dropping it in minus the rockers,valvecovers and upper intake stuff. I wired the efi harness on the stand and moved some sensors around and had to modify the harness to work with all the mismatched OEM parts Im essembled. Here is what I used.
87 T-bird 5.0 block,crank & rods
88 Mustang forged pistons
Melling oil pump
FederalM bearings & rings
Milodon HV waterpump
March aluminum pulleys
Energy Suspension mustang motor mounts
88 Mustang HO roller cam
FMS hardened pushrods
E6 heads,ported,Comp springs,screw in studs
ProComp 1.6 roller rockers
95 5.0 Mustang upper and lower intakes
Rebuilt 19lb injectors
89 F-150 5.0 fuelrail
3g alt
87 T-bird wire harness
87 Mustang GT ecm {speed density}







I also modified the non-A/C heater box I had to clear the valvecover.Once motor is out I will swap out the a/c box.
Taking tomorrow to spend the day in Cleveland with my girl so by end of the day on Thursday I will have the 5.0 set in.

 

gotta love a Bronco

 

This is gonna be nasty!

 

I want a BII every damn time I see yours. hope it goes smooth!

 

looks sweet still cant wait to see that axle swapped

 

You and me both!

Made good progress today but not as far as I wanted. To many distractions.
Got T-case out, trans drained and everything unbolted and unplugged. Motor is ready to be pulled and I was hooking up the cherrypicker rite when the storm rolled in so I had to abort that since Im pulling it outside the garage.

With it raining I decided to finish up the 5.0 by installing the new rockers and bolting the valvecovers down. After dropping the rockers on it was obvious that something was off. Not one single rocker tip was lined up correctly over the valve. No way to adjust the guideplates to fix it either. Looks like whoever drilled these heads out for screw in studs didnt get the holes in the right spot thus throwing off the rocker alignment. My only option was to cut the guideplates in half and set up each rocker/valve by its self.

Look how far I had to move them to get everything to line up.

After lining them up.

Sooo, I got that taken care of only to find out the steel valvecovers dont clear the polylocks. A quick call to a buddy and I had some factory aluminum valvecovers that just barely clear!



I also went ahead and primed the motor today and dropped my 3g 130amp alt off to Kenny at Wally's. He is rebuilding that and going to up the amps a bit and make me a adapter for the different wiring harnesses.

Im getting the motor yanked at the butt crack of dawn tomorrow....

 

sweet **** man keep it going

 

Brain, those cut guideplates scare me. I can't see how they sit on the bottom of the rocker, but I would be afraid of them walking around and running into your pushrods, which would obviously cause you some issues. What is stopping the guide plate from pivoting around the rocker arm stud/bolt?

 

The studs with red Loctite and 55ftlbs on them.
There really is no side to side load on the plates,its just the pushrods sliding up and down in them so they shouldnt ever move on me unless for some reason the stud were to come loose which I dont see happening. I know somebody used to sell slotted adjustable plates that you could weld after they were setup correctly but so far I cant find em. If I can find these I will swap em out after motor is in the truck.

 

Ha! Found em!

 

Well I sure hope they stay in place for you. I just think it defeats the purpose of a guideplate. It can't "guide" the rocker position if it isn't mounted in two locations to properly locate the rocker on the valve stem tip. I think the rockers are going to walk around the stud until it runs off the tip or into something else. By chance do you have any pictures of the rocker assembly un-assembled?

The slotted weld in place guides seem like a good idea, never seen them before, but I don't see why you couldn't do something similar with the current ones now that they are in place. Use a piece of flat sock to tie them back together.

EDIT: Your picture beat me to the post. Those are sharp, if you can pick them up for a reasonable price that should be perfect!

 

Already on order! I will leave these on for now just to fire thw motor and check my wiring. Then I will swap em over once I know there are no other bugs to work out.

Truck is gutted now BTW! Takin a lunch break now. Goin back out to remove a/c heater box and start pulling wiring harness out.

 

No turning back now.........

Truck is gutted. Got motor,trans and all the A/C **** out today. I also started going thru the trucks harness figuring out what goes and what stays. This will be the hardest part of the whole thing.



Fixed my non-a/c heater box to clear the passenger side valvecover. Just need to smooth out and apply reflective heat tape.


And Kenny from Wally's Starters and Alternators hand delivered my fresh G3 alternator on his way home from work!! What a great guy to deal with.



I think tomorrow will be more wiring stuff and Im leaning towards cutting the core support out between the headlights so I can make a new one out of square tubing and move radiator as far forward as possible.

 

great progress! glad you were able to find those weld together guides, thats a nice fix!

 

Yeah those should be in today so I guess Im doing that after work today.

I also got all of the 2.9 wire harness out yesterday. Wow is that thing a mess! I want to get the 5.0 harness layed in today also but with all these storms we have coming thru I might not be able to since truck is outside of the garage now.

 

All the a/c is gone. Got the new non-a/c heater box in and its notched for valvecover clearance. Going to use more of the reflective heat tape on the firewall also.

Before...


After...


Also I was wondering if anyone knows what this is? It hooked to the shift selector on the trans below the shifter cable. It goes up into the firewall.

 

Awesome progress!

Maybe I missed it, but why the automatic transmission?

 

Just wait.....motor and trans will be in this weekend!

I kept it auto because I prefer autos for off roading.Dont even wanna think about including a 5 speed swap into this whole project!

 

Lol thats fine, I understand completely. I would also prefer an auto for offroading, but at the same time if I was going to do a v8 swap I wouldn't want to be attempting an auto trans swap at the same time...

 

sooo much cleaner with that non AC heater box. Autos are pretty strait forward not sure why it would be harder than a manual? swapping a manual into an Auto truck is alot of tedious work.

 

Honestly if I had wanted a manual I would have just done a 4.0/5speed swap instead,that would of made the motor swap and wiring alot easier. I had this c4 sitting around and a bunch of parts for it so it just made sence to me to go for the v8 and use a trans I know wont break on me. I just feel there isnt a auto trans for a v6 worth a dam when it comes to serious abuse.

 

Its offical!! I now own a 5.0 swapped Bronco2.

What a p.i.t.a............to this point I have done every bit of this project by myself and boy did today test my temper getting the motor and trans in with no help!

I got a set of early 60's exhaust manifolds prolly off a 260 or a 289 that fit pretty dam good. I also went with different motor mounts as well. Turns out the c4 is about 6" shorter than the a4ld trans so the trans crossmember dont line up anymore and now I will need to make two new driveshafts.

I actually have more room at the back of the motor than I was expecting and I have LESS room up front than I was hoping for.Looks like Im getting the sawzall out this week and cutting the core support out and I will make my own out of tubing to allow me to move the radiator all the way forward for as much room as I can make.

Im a happy man today....now time to roll it inside and get cracking on all the small stuff.








Sorry for the bad pix,I think the sun was tryin to melt me today.

 

Dude that's awesome! I know I would have never attempted that without an extra set of hands, so I'm sure it was frustrating on your own.

Thats great though... so now I can recruit your expertise to help me with a 5.0 swap into the B2 I picked up last weekend!?? Lol

 

looks great man! some of that looks all too familiar. imo this isnt the fun part of the project!