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It's time for another EcoBoost swap! Before we start, I'd like to give a big thanks to Ecostang for documenting his build! Without his build as a proof of concept I probably wouldn't be comfortable going forward with this. There are a few key differences in our swaps though. I'm starting with a 2012 V6 which means I don't have to make quite as many changes. I'll also be using a Ford Racing Control Pack to simplify getting it running. My swap will likely remain very street oriented. This is (or rather will be) my daily driver, and I'm perfectly happy to make compromises to keep the car extremely streetable and comfortable. I don't care if it's loud or rides a bit harsh, I just want it to drive and feel like a typical bolt on car. This means no roll cage, seat deletes, fancy tires that can't handle hurricane season, NOS, insulation removal, or anything of that nature.
The Car:
Around May of last year I picked up an Ingot Silver 2012 V6 with a manual trans with around 40k miles on the clock. My other car (basically a modified WRX) had turned into a less than reliable, if still very fun money pit. The Mustang was supposed to be a mostly stock daily ...yeah right. It didn't take long for the first mods to start and you can probably imagine where it ended up. This was my build thread before I decided on a swap: 872361-gator3-7s-build-thread.html
The Engine:
I picked up a 2014 3.5L EcoBoost V6 on eBay for a steal. It only has 34k miles on it and came with literally everything, from turbos to accessories. I won't need all of it obviously but it's nice to have and I can sell what I don't need.
What's done so far:
As of right now, the car has everything BMR makes for the rear suspension, a Dynotech 4" aluminum driveshaft, Koni STR.Ts with BMR street springs, and a few other things.
Right now I'm working on getting the 3.7 out and putting the 3.5 in. Unfortunately I have a strong feeling this is going to be the easiest step lol. I have ordered the clutch and flywheel that will be going on the 3.5 and the 3.7 is just about ready to come out. Once everything gets here and I have a free weekend, I'll go ahead and make the switch. I'm also in the process of moving the battery to the trunk and finishing up the suspension. I'll be doing YouTube videos as I go along as well. The first one could be better, but it's not too bad at explaining what's going on with the car right now:
Very cool! Your pic of the car on jackstands with the hood and wheels off brings back some memories lol. I may have led the way to your build but I have a feeling your build will lead to many others. Your approach will be much easier than mine and will be the path of others wanting to do this swap will take. I had to learn some things the hard way! You've got the right year car, the right year ecoboost engine, and the control pack so it should be smooth sailing. Also you need to make friends with Lexiion to help you with the electrical hurdles you will encounter, with proper documentation this should be the How-to for the mustang ecoboost swap. Good luck and I'll help where I can
Btw it was much easier for me to pull the fenders off, I didn't want to scratch them and it got me closer to the engine....less leaning over.
Very cool! Your pic of the car on jackstands with the hood and wheels off brings back some memories lol. I may have lead the way to your build but I have a feeling your build will lead to many others. Your approach will be much easier than mine and will be the path of others wanting to do this swap will take. I had to learn some things the hard way! You've got the right year car, the right year ecoboost engine, and the control pack so it should be smooth sailing. Also you need to make friends with Lexiion to help you with the electrical hurdles you will encounter, with proper documentation this should be the How-to for the mustang ecoboost swap. Good luck and I'll help where I can
Btw it was much easier for me to pull the fenders off, I didn't want to scratch them and it got me closer to the engine....less leaning over.
Sometimes I wish we would have done the control pack. Keep all the mustang wiring, just add hs-can and off we go. No windshield wiper wiring, no oss sensor issues... etc.
But hey that would be boring, wouldn't it? Why easy when you can do it difficult
Then sometimes I wish Ecostang would have bought a non salvage car, so we could register it without all the crap around it.
I wish you luck and I am confident you will be very successful!
We will definitely finish Ecostang I. It will be unique and a dealers nightmare
I've made some progress but things are about to get a bit crazy (finals week is coming up) so I probably won't be able to get too much further until around the start of May. I finished pulling my 3.7 out and got the clutch and flywheel on the 3.5. I went with a stock GT flywheel which cost me less than $150 shipped with bolts. At 21.8 pounds it was over 10 pounds lighter than my stock V6 flywheel. The clutch I went with is the Exedy Mach 500 which should be able to deal with the torque the EcoBoost will put out, plus I installed a new hydraulic throwout bearing and a .5" RAM slave cylinder spacer (the difference in thickness between the 2 flywheels is almost .75" but I think the .5" spacer should be adequate). The engine is being a PITA to mate to the transmission but I might have a bit of time to bolt it down later today. I'm hoping to order my control pack today so I can get this thing done next month!
As far as suspension is concerned, I think I've decided to at least attempt an S550 IRS swap. This means my Watts link is coming off and going up for sale as is my adjustable UCA and bracket (both of which are new so I might as well try to sell them now so they don't lose any more value). I've done some measuring and it seems feasible and given the modifications I already have on the SRA, I can probably sell a lot of parts to help offset the cost to a point that could keep it in budget. While I'm pulling parts off the rear end I might as well pull the whole axle, buy a bare IRS subframe, and try to get some good CAD drawings of that and the underside of the chassis so I can figure out the mounting situation. I'll try to keep updating on this as I go!
Also, if anyone knows the weight difference between the full IRS and 8.8, I've been searching with little success and I'd love to know!
3.7 out
Exedy Mach 500
GT flywheel top versus stock V6 flywheel bottom
flywheel on
clutch on, ready to drop in
engine hanging in place, getting ready to be bolted down
I finished up getting the engine in last night and just ordered the control pack today! It fits like a glove. I'm super excited to get this thing done, hopefully within about a month or two. I got a killer deal on the control pack, plus the FRPP sway bar kit so this thing should handle pretty darn well when it gets back on the road, even if I do take out my watts link.
The BMR motor mounts. They're at full height right now but I may try to drop it down a 1/4 inch or so when I start experimenting with the exhaust setup.
Really cool for me, your building the car I started out building before I changed directions. I get to see both versions! How far are you from Brandenton Florida? The ecoboost battle has a race there for the past 2 years, I'll be going to it next year. Would be great to see your car during that trip.
Thanks! I'm only a couple of hours from Bradenton, so hopefully I'll be there! I might even be able to make it up to Bowling Green this year, I'll just have to see how the cars doing in September.
I wonder if they will let you race or not. The rules say the car must have a factory PCM, technically the control pack is made by an aftermarket company. I feel like they should allow control packs, but I wonder why that's specifically written in the rules if they were going to allow them. The description of the race is "to find the fastest ecoboost in the country", why limit the participants when it's such a small group already.
I called them to verify my car can compete with the Mustangs, he said that the rules allowed that but they might change it next year. I could still compete in the open class but maybe not with the other mustangs.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I don't really care if my car is competitive to be honest, I'll enjoy it either way, but it would be cool to race with all the other EcoBoosts. But I don't think the control pack really offers any competitive advantage, so I think it would be kind of silly for them to not let me race. I guess I'll just have to ask though.
Unfortunately Ford still hasn't shipped my control pack 2 weeks later. They keep giving me dates of when my order should ship but so far all they've done is send me a box full of stickers. So right now I'm working on getting the cooling system finished, and all the other little things I can do in the mean time. I went with a Mishimoto G Line intercooler. It's a bit on the small side and the internal fin density isn't very good, but I believe it should still be an upgrade over the stock F150 CAC. In addition, I'll be using meth injection (most likely AEM V2) to keep the air cool and raise the octane without using E85 which would almost certainly require new injectors. I got the intercooler mostly mounted but I want to get the cold side piping in there before I make it permanent.
In other news, I got the MGW MT82 shifter bushing, so I'll probably be putting that in later today. It looks pretty good, and hopefully the NVH increase isn't too bad. I'm hoping is stiffens up my shifter a bit, because I'm not big on short throw shifters for this car. The factory shifter is already short enough for me, I just want to get better feel out of it.
Great news! My control pack is finally here! The engine is now fully bolted in now too and I've started on the plumbing. I have no idea how Ecostang got all this intake piping to fit though lol, it's quite massive. I'm sure I can find a way to make it work though. While I had the trans dropped down to get the upper bell housing bolts in, I installed my MGW bushing. I'm pretty disappointed with the quality though, It was too wide and I had to grind it down to make it fit tightly. Granted it's only $25 but I expected better given MGW's reputation.
Other big news! I bought a set of GT Brembos and an S550 IRS! I haven't picked them up yet, but hopefully I can next week. I wasn't planning to buy it yet but I got too good of a deal to pass up. There's a local shop that supports 3 drivers in Trans Am, and I'll try to get their help on the conversion. They're very busy though and I'm sure they aren't cheap either, so this may take a while. I have lots of research to do on the subject too, but I'm really hoping this works out.
Wow that is a huge box of parts, more in there than I expected.
The piping was very difficult for me, I redesigned it many times before getting it to barely fit. Keep in mind that I have 2 water-to-air intercoolers shoved in between the motor and the radiator fan too lol. If this helps, I rolled the intake y-pipe back towards the motor to give clearance for the hood. I also used a couple of silicone adapters, one of them is a 45, to connect it. I can send you some specific pictures or we can talk on the phone if that helps at all.
I'm interested to see the IRS swap for sure!
Btw I spoke with NMRA about a couple questions I have for the race. They said control packs are OK for the ecoboost battle. They said the rules were pretty relaxed, they want as many competitors as possible.
Thanks for the offer! I may have to take you up on that if I can't get it to work. I think I have it pretty much figured out though but we'll see soon. I still have a good amount of space in front of the engine and I got the air inlet to be low enough, the most crowded spot right now is the passenger side of the engine.
Progress has been kind of slow this last week. I was out of town for a few days so that doesn't help and I'm still waiting on a few parts. But there's still a bit of progress to report. I've spent at least a few hours just staring at the car and trying to figure out where I'm going to put things in the engine bay. I'm making slow progress on the intercooler piping. I'm still waiting on a few key parts but I think I have a design that will work. I had to move the AC condensor up about an inch, and relocate the factory PCM (but I'm not sure where I'll put it yet). I may have to move a few other things too but we will see.
I picked up my IRS and my new brakes
Though this is a very minor detail, I'm pretty happy with the results for now. I got some vinyl on Amazon for 6 bucks and wrapped my dash. My car was a total base model so my dash was pretty drab before and mine might have been cleaned with some weird chemicals because it was kind of discolored and splotchy in places. Either way it had to go and this was by far cheaper than buying a new one.
Another very minor detail, but I got some Rockford Fosgate 6x8 speakers for the doors and I'm going to try to make some 6x9s I had laying around fit on the rear deck. This way I can ditch my subwoofer if I run out of trunk space without having terrible sound again. If that happens I'll probably get some premium door panels and a 4 way amp for the rear deck and the door subs.
I'm about to pull the trigger on some 18x10 Forgestar F14s, so hopefully that works out. Unfortunately that's about all I have for now, but hopefully this coming week is more productive.
I'm getting pretty close on the intercooler piping, I just need to finish it up and get the aluminum pipe beaded.
I got a Full Race throttle body spacer with boost/vacuum ports for the BOV and possibly a boost gauge if I can't just plug an aeroforce gauge into the control pack's OBDII.
I've got the ECU mounted on the firewall using a few 1/4-20 wellnuts. I might try to put some T nuts in there instead, but either way, it works.
And finally I got my 18x10 Forgestar F14s. They're only 20lbs, so even with tires, they shouldn't weigh much more than my 18x8.5 stockers and they will clear my Brembos. Only down side is they're an interesting mix of turquoise paint and brake dust, so I'll probably either get them powder coated or just paint or plasti dip them.
The brakes are done, the system just needs to be bled now. The finish on them is a bit messed up, but I'm not trying to build a show car here lol.
I test fit my 18x10 Forgestar F14s and the caliper clearance is fantastic.
I also got this 2010-12 GT bumper off eBay for a great price. It's almost like new and it came with the lower valence for 275 with free shipping. I would rather just wrap it myself than paint it, so I ordered some silver vinyl samples and hopefully one will be close enough. Again, I'm not building a show car here so I'm ok with a bit of mismatch. Unfortunately I bought a grille a few months ago that said it was for a 10-12 GT. Now that I have everything to mount it, I found out it's actually a 13-14 grille. I'm pretty annoyed because now I have to order another grille too, but if anyone wants a 13-14 GT grille, let me know.
I got to meet Ecostang and see the car on the dyno for a little bit. It was cool to hang out with him and Mike from MPT for a little bit, but unfortunately they were having a lot of problems with the car. It worries me a bit, but it still made me want to get the car done now lol.
3/27/16, 11:21 AM
