This must be the place to ask.

[Guest spscars]

Hi All,

 

I am fairly new to Z cars so please bear with me here. I have recently completed the restoration of a 78’ and have some leftovers to play with. Besides another 78’ and an 81’, both are fairly complete but are otherwise destined to be parts cars, I may soon also have another first generation Z to play with soon. I have a complete 95’ Crown Vic police interceptor with a 4.6L overhead cam engine in it that was to be used in a project that fell through, a 5 speed Mustang GT transmission, and as for Ford parts, about 10 Mustang and T-bird parts cars left over. I have a shop and a growing little scrap pile at my disposable from previous projects, so one of my primary objectives would be to do the conversion at low cost utilizing parts I already have when possible. My question is: What will it take to swap the motor out of the Vic into a first generation Z? Will it fit? Has anyone done this with this motor and trans combo? I have not seen many Fords being done until I came across this site. I’m not really looking to build a fire breathing snot slinging bastard of a car at this point, just to see what it would take to get the motor and 5 sped trans in an old Z low and far back enough so that the car would handle well. Again I’m not looking for a straight line setup but a driver with the guiding method of my madness being to use the Ford parts I already have.

Thanks, Jim.

And is it any more compatible than the combination of the 2 editors I used to post here?

[Mike kZ]

Welcome to the site! You need to search and read, you can start with these: http://forums.hybridz.org/search.php?searchid=320365

[blueovalz]

The 4.6 will be more of a challange than a 5.0 conversion due to the size and wieght of the 4.6. We (this site) would be very interested in seeing a 4.6 conversion, but at this writing, no one has completed (or even started) one, I personally feel you should do this just to see if it can be done

 

Some of us on this site have the SBF (mostly 302, but some have the 351W, and I have a 289). It's fairly easy, but the pitfalls are oil pan to crossmember clearance, and the exhaust manifold to steering rod clearance, and lastly, the fabrication of the motor mounts (no kits for this). If you've got any fabrication skills, then these are not significant issues, and placing the motor close to the firewall works best. Lastly, spend some time in a thorough search and you'll find a ton of information.

 

With aluminum heads, pump, manifold, and flywheel, my 302 was about 40lbs lighter than the L24

[rayaapp2]

If you could get your hands on a 5.4 you'd be a lot happier. At least with my dealings with the trucks the 5.4 was still a bit torque-less but in comparison with the 4.6 it was far stronger. I'm sure most people here would agree it's fun to stomp the 4.6 stangs to... If your gonna sqeeze get the 3 valve 5.4 and get modifying. Custom headers, chip it, or supercharged...

 

See what others have to say about the 4.6. If you look into the archives of this site you find far wider motors have made there home under the Z hood.

[alabamaman882]

I am a parts guy at a ford garage and from my first hand experience the 5.4 is that they have a tendancy to blow the spark plugs out of the cylinder head(not all but enough to call it fairly common), and the heli coil remedy will work for a short time but it WILL damage the internals of the engine, my advice is to read into it before you do it, especally scince the only right way to fix a blown spark plug hole on a 5.4 is to replace the head, and at over 1300 a pop id make sure that i wouldnt have to worry about something like that.