Changing engine Cady 4.1L to 95 Mustang

[Liger86]

My friend wants to know if it is possible to change an engine from '86 Cady DeVille to 95 mustang which originally has 4.6L V6.

I told him that it's kind'o stupid.

but I was curious if it would fit?

[RoD]

Nah its smart, ford sucks and their engines are weak.

Hes going to need to remove the adapters on the motor mounts of his car. His car comes with 5.0 mounts adapted to the smaller engines. Also going to need to modify them to take the engine.

The drive train needs modification. The driveshaft is going to need to be shortend and be fabricated to have a chevy style joint on one end (for the chevy tranny hes going to need) and a ford on the other side for the rear.

He can keep the rear but should invest in a ford 9inch.

Transmission wont take it. He needs an A40LDE from a 93 or newer 5.0. The A40LDE in the 2.3 and 6cyl mustangs has differeny bearings and seals than the 5.0 designed one, and cant handle it. You can tell its a 5.0 by the slightly shorter tail housing and the bolt pattern on the flywheel. If hes really serious get a C6 small bellhousing trans instead, can u say big difference?

The ECU wont work. Going to have to make it a chevy ECU, perferebly programmable. This means converting the ENTIRE electronic ignition system and emissions components.

The radiator will NOT work, its not heavy duty enough.

The brake lines need to be ran across the car at the front in order to run down the other side of the car, because the 5.0 and C6 transmission will rub them and the heat and rubbing can cause them to fail.

Fuel lines need to be re-routed, and hes going to need a bigger fuel pump. Not a bad idea to add a manual regulator and upgrade the fuel line size.

thats just for startes, theres alot more involved. We put a chevy 454 in my buddies 91 mustang and its not for the in-experienced or cheap minded. If he wants performance for cheap, go to a junk yard and find a Ford 351 CLEAVlAND. You can tell its a "C" motor because of the very large square exhaust ports, and the seriel numbers.

That engine and a C6 trans will make a better, cheaper, solution.

Anyway, possible, but a pain in the rear end. If you need help let me know, ive done a chevy>ford swap, and i do work in a parts house : )

[Liger86]

Thanks, a bit more info than I've expected.

Anyway,RoD I'll give your reply to my friend so he can read over it.

But since you know lots about swapping engines... I got a '92 Cavy 3.1L and I was wondering what would be the best thing to do with it, 'cause it's a Z24 and I like it I want to make it faster. My Cavy is allready packed under the hood, the stock V6 takes up all the space because the body was designed for a 4cyl. Someone told me I could put a 3800GTP engine on it (Grand Prix Supercharged) but does that make sence?

Any advice is apreciated!

[RoD]

Pontiaic motor is going to be a whole chore in itsself to put in there, not worth it for sure. The Z24's have a fair amount of untapped potential, so all the typical things like cold air intake, exhaust, engine computer, etc will wake it up.

[chrismiceli]

My brother fit a 5 liter v8 mustang engine in a 1982 volvo diesel station wagon, so anything is possible. He had to change the tranny and a whole bunch of other stuff though.

[RoD]

we squeezed a 2001 viper 10cyl into my dads 88 jeep wrangler, now thats a tight fit.

[VirtualAce]

I wouldn't do anything with the '92 3.1 V6 but get rid of it. Good engine but finding mods for it will not be easy. If you can do what RoD says and get a cold air intake which will probably only add 2 to 4 hp - but it helps because you need to put cool air into the engine not warm air. Unfortunately most car manuf. put the stupid thing either right by the radiator or somewhere else where all it does is grab warm air.

Also, use a K&N air filter when you get the intake. Another important thing is the exhaust. Factory exhausts are extremely restricting which causes a lot of backflow and major reduced horsepower. There are two things to concentrate on with exhaust. First if you have a plastic exhaust manifold which you prob dont given its 1992...get rid of it. There are far better manifolds than that. Also change the exhaust system to an after market catback hi flow exhaust system. Again finding this for a 1992 3.1 V6 is not going to be fun but I'm not real sure because all I've modded are Eagle Talon's and Eclipses. Also make sure you change the downpipe for the exhaust. Factory downpipe's are not designed with efficiency in mind. Overall this will give you the biggest boost in horsepower w/o getting into engine internals.

After you do the air and exhaust you can turn to the computer or the ECU - there are several after market chips and after market add ons that plug into the system. Since the current engine is not turbocharged you will not want to attempt this because it would require a lot of internal rebuild. Your pistons are not designed for turbocharged so the compression ratio is all out of whack. You try and put a turbo on it and you will create too much compression and blow the crap out of the head and out of the engine.

You can also take the head off...if you know what you are doing...and take it to a local machine shop to get it ported and modified. This will help quite a bit. The next thing would probably be to concentrate on the throttle body setup. Factory throttle bodies are small, restrictive, and do not perform well. After that you may have to change the injectors to high fuel flow injectors because the factory ones wont respond well to higher flow rates. Because of the added fuel requested by the ECU you will also probably need a new fuel pump that is higher flowing than the factory one. I'm not sure what the rating on the 92 3.1 V6 fuel pump is...that is for you to find out. Be careful when you mess with the fuel system as you can produce major problems.

After all of that pretty much the only power gain left....if I've covered everything....is to supercharge the engine with an aftermarket kit. Supercharging will pretty much give you the most bang for the buck but it is extremely expensive. For instance, Ripp Moddifications makes a supercharger kit for my 2003 Eclipse. Would take me from 145 whp to ~350 whp (includes air intake, exhaust etc.) but its like $4000 uninstalled. I dunno if there are kits for the 3.1 V6.

Also since you will start to generate a heck of a lot of power...expect things to break bud. The car is old and it wasn't designed to put out a lot of power anyways so stuff is going to break when you add horsepower. You will want an anti-roll bar or whatever its called running from strut to strut to reduce horizontal movement - you can get these anywhere pretty much. Also don't forget to change the easy stuff - get after market plug wires (more difference than you would first imagine), and good plugs.

Things to stay away from because they are 'gimmicky'

1. Synthetic oils - many companies have been sued for making false claims about their oils.
2. Special spark plugs - I doubt highly that any type of new fangled spark plug will ever give you any performance boost - and definitely not 5 hp like some claim. I'd steer clear of this crap. Get platinums and you will be fine.
3. Cutting out the catalytic converter - yes this will add horsepower but quite simply...its illegal and many aftermarket manuf. make exhausts with very high flowing cats - so you can stay legal if that is important to you. Building an awesome car and then getting it taken away because of something stupid...is not my idea of fun.
4. Any product that makes outrageous claims but really is not that expensive (special fluids, etc)- probably 2 good to be true.

Use the web....you will find tons of information about modding cars on it. Just be careful and if you cannot perform the work then have someone like RoD do it because you can royally screw stuff up. IMO even the most basic mechanic with some skills and tools can perform most of this....but some people are not very mechanically inclined and shouldn't touch an engine to save their life.

So really all you have to think about are - w/o their sub categories. These are not in any certain order they are just categories to think about.

1. Intake - getting more cool air to the engine
2. Exhaust - allows the entire system to flow smoother thus more horsepower.
3. ECU - amazing what a single chip can do to a car these days.
4. Fuel - more fuel, more power, but less MPG too.
5. Weight - carbon fiber panels, hoods, back seats....etc. If you don't need it...get rid of it or mod it.
6. Aero - actually a bit gimmicky....usually not going fast enough for aerodynamics to even be effective. But there are some good packages out there that might help a bit from the factory designs - and heck if it doesn't do anything...at least it looks cool.
7. Tune up - first make sure the engine is ready for all this modding - get it to OEM specs.
8. Forced induction - this can either be RAM air (not hard to do), turbo (hard to do on non-turbo engines...but not on stock turbo engines), or supercharged - very nice.
9. Clutch - factory clutches....suck. More horsepower will result in major slippage so you need a racing clutch or some type of aftermarket clutch setup.
10. Transmission. This one is important. With all of the increased horsepower it will be very easy to overburden the stock tranny unless your car was designed with performance in mind...which it wasn't. I'm not sure what the rating on stock 1991 GM trannies are....but you might want to be careful.
11. Motor mounts - since its a 1992....get new ones. The old factory ones are not going to withstand that much added horsepower before they decide to give out.

This is just the start of modding. There is much more info available on the net and/or RoD could tell you much more since he works in this field.

BTW if anything I've said is incorrect feel free to correct RoD. I'm so used to working with the 2.0 DSM turbo engine and so I'm not well informed about other platforms. Most of the info I provided is general info that every car would probably need not just a 1992 V6.

Incidentally if you want a fast way to get performance get a platform that is 'fast enough' to begin with. A good starting point...and a biased one....is a DSM platform (1990 to 1999) if you like 4 cyl performance - new DSMs are...weak....I know because I drive one and my 90 talon can beat the crap out of my eclipse. Or you can start with the older Mustangs (1986 to 1988 i think) that had a very good 5.0 in them and supercharge it. Had a friend who did this and it was beating some very high performance cars hands down.

I had some links to DSM sites.....but I had to reinstall my OS so ......sorry. Google it.

[RoD]

Very good advice, but i want do want to touch on the sparkplugs. As you modify an engine you raise compression and tempatures inside the combustion chamber. Stock spart plugs are rated within the tempature specs of the stock engine. Are Bosch +4's overkill? Ya most of the time.

But platinum 2's have a purpose. When you dont have a spark plug that will fire in the proper tempature range you end up with detonation, which robs you of power and engine life.

If you have a plug that is to hott, such as +4's in a stock engine, you end up with the reverse effect. Now the plug is TOO hott and can cause the plug to burn the top of the pistons. I've seen countless engines fall victem to piston holes because the owner thought that platinum 4's in a stock civic added HP.

HP does increase because of the plugs, but not directly. The plugs allow a more complete burn, and a better overall combustion cycle, which in turn can add a few HP.

[VirtualAce]

Ditto that. I cannot emphasize enough to avoid detonation at all costs. Detonation will destroy your car's engine and rob you of horsepower. There is a fine line between a good running modified engine and one that detonates. You will always be walking the line between power and complete disaster when you mod the engine. Face it...you are modding the sucker way out of OEM specs and producing more HP than the engineers even dreamed about. It's not always the safest or most reliable proposition. But then I'm assuming this is a 'project car' and not a point A to point B car. If its the latter....I wouldn't ramp up the horises too high.

Detonation is something I deal with quite often in the talon engine. It is very easy to detonate within a turbo charged engine and it is the probably the number one cause of modded engine failure. Its a complete system under the hood so you cant just bolt one thing on and not change another. And be careful of just 'sticking a chip in it' because this can also cause you to detonate or...best case....the chip will ask for fuel the pump cannot deliver and the injectors cannot handle thus causing damage or it will account for this and you will hardly gain any performance. Most chips will prob account for the entire system and simply won't perform up to spec with stock parts.

In a word...be careful. It's not impossible and it is very rewarding...but like anything else you gotta know what's going on and how/why the engine is/isn't producing the power.

I also want to hit this synthetic oil again. What they don't tell you about these is that if you have not ran synthetic from day 1 on the car then running synthetics is a very bad idea. Pure motor oil is thicker than synthetics and thus it does not leak through the seals quite as easily as synthetic. I know A LOT of modders who thought...ok....now I'll switch to synthetics only to have to use some ridiculous weighted oil just to keep the stuff in the engine. It would nearly pour out of the valve cover gasket and/or rear main seal. Lots of companies have been sued for making false claims about their synthetics. I used to have a link related to this very topic but I lost it in reinstall. My advice...just don't run the synthetics - I've seen nothing in specs or performance charts that shows any difference.
Also beware of Pennzoil oil. Most of this is parrafin wax. They claim that their super cool molecule will stick to your metal. Fact is that damn molecule sticks to itself more than anything and produces this nasty sludge in your oil pan, on your engine parts, and on/near your cams (especially on SOHC and DOHC). The minute I take the valve cover off and especially the head I can usually tell if they have been running Pennzoil. BTW Quaker State is simply a cheapo Pennzoil. Same company. Stay clear. Use Castrol GTX, Valvoline, etc. Do some research on oils. You can also buy some Pennzoil oil, put it in a pan, heat it up, and watch what happens.

I'm not sure how RoD feels about Pennzoil....but I'll never touch the stuff again.