2.3L Turbo 4

September 17, 06

This is the engine I bought to rebuild for my mustang. I decided to go with it after owning an 84 SVO, and finding out that the 2.3L 4 was an option in the MII, meaning engine mounts should be easy to find. Fitting in the 5 speed, and converting to a clutch might be a pain in the rear, but what can you do. Nobody said this would be easy. But it will be very cool.

Chris, who bought my SVO, hooked me up with Mike, who had the engine. He had pulled it out of a Turbo Coupe for another project and not used it. So Mike sold it to me, complete with accessories, wiring harness, underdash wiring harness, gauges, and computer. Oh, and a T5 Transmission. Only problem was, Chris and Mike are in Southern Oregon, and I'm in SW Washington.

So this weekend my husband and I were in Ashland seeing some plays, and we dropped in on Mike and picked up the engine. A whole crowd of mustang nuts were hanging around, including Chris and his Dad, and helped up load the engine up, sliding it into the back of our van (a full size E-150), where I tied it down to the seat mounts.

My husband Dave is such a great guy, because he doesn't like any of this car stuff, yet he lets me do it and helps me do things like dragging home an engine in the back of our van. So, with the engine and tranny in the back, and the wiring harness and extra parts in the backseat, we continued our vacation, and finally hooked our Airstream trailer and headed home.

  The view from the garage

It was a little awkward getting it into the garage. The van is too big to get it more than a foot or so into the garage, and still have room to open the doors. Plus the Mustang is still taking up half the garage. So I assembled my cherry-picker, hooked a hefty chain on the engine, and picked it up. The main problem was that in reaching into the van, the front wheels of the cherry-picker went off the garage slab and onto the driveway, a drop of about an inch. But we were able to work our way back onto the garage slab with the assistance of a 2x4, which I used as a lever while Dave pulled, to get the wheels back up. I'm so glad we watched that show about how they built stonehenge last week, it's good to know how to make heavy objects move without killing your back.

So there it sits in the garage, ready to start being rebuilt. Right next to the pony it's going into, someday...