Transit powered Mustang???

[Goth_Man]

I have a current project of a 1980 fox body Mustang, and it has the pitiful 3.3L straight six in there at the moment, which produced 85hp many years ago!!! Got bored of how weak it is (although the torque isn't too bad), but wanted another Ford engine to drop into it, and thought about a Transit turbo diesel from an old mk3/4/5. I've had a few Transit, mk4s and mk5s, and always been impressed with them, hence the thought process of sticking a Transit engine in there. Transit engines have always been good to me, and older Transits are nice and cheap, so won't break the bank doing a conversion.

My aim, is for about 150hp+ and 200ft.lb+ torque. If I can get it nearer to 200hp and 300ft.lb I'd be very happy!!


This is the Mustang in question. And before anyone says about ruining a classic, I paid £250 for the Mustang, so I'm not worried about it. I'm an old skool hot rodder, and I go for the most bang for the buck by any means necessary, rather than forking out money left right and centre.




The 3.3L straight six that currently sits under the hood





My first question is going to be an easy one to predict..... What's the most powerful (both bhp and torque) Transit engine that is readily available?

I've had Transits with banana engines, and ones with normal turbo diesels in, almost always had mk4s and mk5s, and always been more than happy with them, but I just picked them up cheap and used them as parts haulers and never really paid much attention to the engine performance specs.


Next question will possibly be a bit harder, are there any Transit engines that have good performance figures that don't require an ECU or have a stand alone ECU for the engine? I'd like to keep the conversion as simple as possible, and don't really fancy having to wire in an ECU into the wiring of the Fox as that just won't end well at all.


Cheers guys

[oldyellar]

viewtopic.php?f=27&t=85523&hilit=tdi+project

[Goth_Man]

Definitely some good stuff there. Loving the plumes of black smoke kicking out too, will go well with a matt black Mustang methinks

[ake]

I knew Ford had built some shockingly ugly Mustangs over the years, but that one takes the crown!

Thank god the latest batch look nice

The highest stock turbo Di was the 130ps marine variant

If you can get a Di in and connected up diesel head will get the power up for you

[Goth_Man]

Oh yea, the fox certainly isn't going to win any beauty contests, but it's still a mustang so apparently it's cool, even if it's ugly! Lol

I do think an oil burner in it would certainly be interesting, especially on the torque figures too! What sort of torque are the Di engines kicking out? I doubt I'd be able to pick up a marine spec 130ps engine as cheap as a normal 100ps engine, so I'll probably go with one of them instead. I want it for ease of parts too, and a cheap manual conversion as it's an auto at the moment.

[dieselhead123]

Wow mate, what a lovely old skool motor

Yes, stick an oil burner in it!
A di engine would work well in there.

My advice, get a genuine turbo engine, the camshaft profile is different from the na di, and will help spool the turbo up quicker.
It does not matter if it is 85 or 100ps, you will be well advised to ditch the lucas epic electronically controlled pump and fit a bosch mechanical one, easier when transplanting the engine into another vehicle.
With a decent intercooler, or chargecooler set-up and 130ps marine spec injectors then 140ps should be acheivable with a bit of injection pump tweaking!
Larger turbo, free flowing exhaust, larger exhaust valves, hybrid injection pump and lots of boost would all be needed to further improve the di output.
I see 200hp as the 'holy grail' for these engines, probably only acheivable with bore/stroke increases, but I do believe that 170 would be possible and still retain fair reliability.

The only drawback I can see is that if using the transit di gearbox, the gear lever might be too far forward for a car application and fitting a different gearbox to the rear of the di, (one that will handle the torque anyway), would be problematic given the diameter of the di flywheel.

I wish you success with the project mate, happy to assist/advise if required.

TIM

[clifford76]

hi mate, could you finally fit the engine in that amazing mustang??
incredible the things people can do, i change the oil of my transit and a little bit more