Harold's Forsche

I'v been posting on another thread here, but I haven't collected everything into one of my own. I keep meaning to put something together and just keep not getting around to it. I'm hoping this post will give me the kick in the pants I need to get all my info together in one spot.

The basics:
1984 944, black with black interior
1990 Ford Windsor 5.0

Pretty much every part we put into the car is scratch-built or modified in some way. I worked with my friend (a mechanical engineer) in his garage on and off for 2 years completing the swap. Including the purchase of the car, I've got under $5000 invested in the project. We started the swap around December of 2011 and I drove it home from his place in November of 2013. We worked on it at most 1 evening and 1 weekend day per week with several months off after his son was born. Knowing what we know now, replicating it would take a lot less time.

A big driving factor for using the Ford engine was cost. The Windsor is cheap and well-developed and will do everything I want it to do. It's also shorter than the LS engines, which allowed us to install it without a crossmember drop or hood bulge. We weren't able to use a standard 5.0 upper intake, so we made a box upper to fit an OEM lower.

Look for some more info in the coming days.

chadfjones wrote:
So, any unique challenges with the Windsor?

Run into steering shaft vs exhaust manifold issues like we hit on chevy engines?  or did you just fab up some custom long tubes to work around it?

I assume the stock brake booster still had to be eliminated as well?

How hard was the wiring and PCM/ECU to hook up?

I don't think any of the challenges were unique to this engine. The closest thing would be the need for a custom upper intake, I think.

We made our own left header to clear the steering shaft, but the right one is an out-of-the-box block hugger made by Patriot that just happened to fit perfectly. They're short tube headers.

I'm running hydroboost like everybody else, but my power steering pump is from a Ford with hydroboost, so it has the correct pressure and 2 returns on the reservoir.

The ECU was very easy to wire up. I probably could have done it in a single day, but we went through some iterations of various parts. I'm running Ford EDIS for ignition and I'm using a slot MAF from an '05-'11 Ford, so both of those required some changes. I also removed quite a bit of length from the harness, so I've modified every single wire.

Well, my plan didn't work. I was going to update this when I was out of town for work, but I ended up working really long days every day that week.

I did the first 2 autocross events with the car since the conversion this past weekend. The first day went without a hitch and I got 9 runs in. The second day, I had some overheating problems that I think may be down to a faulty thermostat. I need to tear into it to know for sure.

I also need to get a heater control valve in this thing. I figured the HVAC box had a blend door in it, but boy was I wrong.

I drove my Focus for the first time in over a week today. I had to make a conscious effort to remember to start in first gear and it was so incredibly slow and tall. I felt like I was driving a minivan. The Forsche may have ruined me for other cars already.

That's funny, same here. My wife's fun car is a 81 911SC and I drive it on rare occasion, and I have to consciously remember to use 1st gear.

And the 911 is soooooo slow!

Andy

I've been having trouble with the fan only working sporadically lately. When I put it in, I used the computer's trigger wire to ground the stock relay and used the stock wiring up to the front of the car with a new fan. Since that's 30 years old, I decided to eliminate that and put in a new relay and wiring directly from the battery. I fired it up and decided to datalog just to see if the ECT sensor was reporting properly since the gauge seemed to work (it's got a new sender).

I noticed that it was working great until it hit about 190 degrees and then dropped to 128. I wiggled the connector and it came back up. I used some contact cleaner and dielectric grease on it and it worked fine through several cycles of the fan after that. Hopefully that was my issue because chasing intermittent wiring problems is not my idea of a good time.

Just got back from a 450 mile round trip. Looks like I need to replace my ECT sensor and/or pigtail because I've got an intermittent issue with the coolant temp not reading correctly, which is an issue since the fan is controlled by the computer. The temp started rock solid cruising at 65 in 80° weather, though.

Perhaps try to bleed the cooling system again. I've fixed poor temp readings by letting an air bubble out of the steam vent.

Rich

Rich L. wrote:Perhaps try to bleed the cooling system again. I've fixed poor temp readings by letting an air bubble out of the steam vent.

Rich

On my engine, there's a permanent steam vent at the top of the engine that's connected to the coolant tank. I've been able to fix the reading by unplugging the sensor and plugging it back in. The harness is from an '86 mustang, so the wire is 28 years old. I'm willing to spend a few bucks for a new pigtail to eliminate that as a problem.

Ah, cool. Good luck.

Since the last time I posted, I've run a few more autocross events. My issues with puking coolant appear to be related to the surge tank being old and work out. I bent the tabs on the cap to put some more pressure on the seat and haven't lost any coolant since.

I also had a chunk of metal go through the oil pump. I've got it apart now and hope to be putting it back together this weekend. While I've got it apart, I'm going to be replacing my single 16" fan with Cougar fans and adding a heater control valve. As I said before, the car never had any trouble running cool if it was on the move, but at idle it'd get pretty warm. I had the Cougar fans sitting around, and now I'll finally be putting them in. I need to trim the shroud on the bottom right corner and fill it back in where I had to notch around the fittings on the radiator before it goes in the car, but I'm hoping I can make some stand-offs and bolt it right to the radiator.

Since I've got it apart, I figured I'd make a visual inspection. It turns out there are some scratches in cylinder #4. I've got another block lined up, but it'll need bearings, so I'm hoping this one will hold up for the last 3 events I'm doing this year. The plan then would be to swap engines over the winter and change to an OBDII computer so I can do datalogging without needing a computer in the car during runs. It'll allow me to run something like SoloStorm and have data overlay of engine parameters on the video.

It's been to an autocross event with a codriver since putting in the new oil pump and it performed admirably. Oil pressure isn't as high as it used to be, and coupled with the scratches in the cylinder walls, it's reason enough to swap the engine this winter. I've got a '99 Explorer with 122k on it that I'm taking the engine from.

While I had it apart for the oil pump, I also added a heater control valve and switched to the Cougar fans. Now the temps stay reasonable while sitting in the conga line on an 80 degree day and you don't get your feet cooked while driving around.

I do still need to work on the heater and A/C fans, though. The A/C fan worked before the swap, but the heater fan didn't. Now neither of them work. I'm sure I forgot to plug something back in when I put the A/C box back under the dash. I haven't even started troubleshooting the heater fan, though. It would be nice to have some actual defrost action for rainy days.

Last season, the oil pump ingested another piece of metal, so I decided to get another engine. I put a cam and better valve springs in this one, but it's otherwise stock. I also updated to a newer Ford computer with OBDII. I just fired it up last night for the first time since the old engine came out.

I took the caps off all the rods and mains and the bottom shell of each bearing was shot. Some were down to copper, but some of them were scored. That made me feel pretty good about my choice.