Greenbean - The 98GT - turbo 460 swap

It's green and it's from the jellybean era of auto design = GREENBEAN

With the 73 F100 and the 83GT both nearing "complete-ish" status (I know I just jinxed myself) I found myself perusing FB Marketplace every evening for a new project. I ran the gamut of different ideas, old cars, foreign cars, old foreign cars, Fox chassis cars, MN12's, etc, etc. The only real requirements were: 1.) cheap, 2.) titled, 3.) interesting to me, 4.) stuff I own can be used on it. The last one is a biggie because part of the goal is to mostly use stuff I already have, like BBF parts, C6/E4OD transmissions, etc. I really had been looking at a couple of different Lincoln Mark 7's that fit all of the criteria. But, for some reason I just couldn't quite bring myself to jump in. An ad popped up for a red SN95, that was partially disassembled, but otherwise fit the criteria very well. It was a GT so it had an 8.8, hydroboost and all the GT bells and whistles. I decided it was the one and Judd and I loaded up to go get it. Well, en route to get it, the guy messaged and said he just sold it. Nice. Thanks for the heads up dude.

That night, I decide to look at Craigslist and ran across a dealer's ad in Fort Worth for a 1998 GT that was had the trans removed to attempt to fix some leaking freeze plugs. They were asking $1000. I clicked the "Make an offer" button and told them I would give them $800. Deal! I put a deposit on it and I will drive down to pick it up on Saturday.

It is a 1998 dark green satin GT. Looks to be in very good condition for an $800 car. Both of my last two projects were in far worse shape when I bought them. Currently it is a 4.6L, with a T45 trans. The trans is included, but I won't be using it.

Now, to the part everybody wants to know about. What are my plans for it?

Park it under a car cover. Well for a little while, until I open up a slot at the shop. Then I will set out pulling the 4.6 and getting everything cleaned up and sorted out.

Then the hope is that one of my 460's/C6/E4OD will find it's way under the hood with power steering, and air conditioning and if I play my cards right, running on the 4.6's MAF EEC-V ECM with the stock EDIS. Really the only two inputs I need to add are crank and cam position sensors and I have really good ideas for both. Right now I am thinking the '96 shortblock, re-ringed and with new bearings and gaskets and a set of D3 heads, if I do not stumble upon some D0VE's for next to nothing. The '96 EFI intake *can* work with the old heads, but not vice versa. Plus, my Hooker headers fit the old style heads. If the efi proves to be a flop, I can always plop a carb on it and go from there. Cam will likely be a flat tappet hydraulic, semi-lumpy, stock valve train components will be used.

The mod motor k-member is wrong for the BBF swap mounts I have, but I also have a BBF motor plate. The motor plate is steel so it should be fairly easy to create a power steering pump bracket and AC compressor bracket near the stock 4.6L locations. I will attempt to use the idlers and tensioner from the 4.6 to create my own "serpentine" belt routing. I have a Meziere electric water pump to handle the coolant pumping duties so I don't have to deal with spinning a pump.

Chassis-wise, the stock stuff will stay in place. Sway bars, quadshocks, stock control arms, etc will all go untouched. I will probably lower it and do some different wheels. Maybe a 17" front skinny and a beefy-ish 15" drag radial on the rear, but that will be some time down the road.

I want the big block Mustang Ford should have made in 1998!

Pics from the ad.

Well, it's home. Judd and I left at 5:15am and drove to Ft Worth, some 350 miles away, finished the purchase, loaded it up, drove 350 miles and arrived home at 5:15pm.

The lot was owned by an older gentleman by the name of Butch. Real nice guy. I'm sure we could have talked cars for hours. Bore a striking resemblance to Jeremy Clarkson but with a Texan accent. lol. The lot has been there for 47 years and he is finally closing down and retiring. The office was straight out of the 70's. It even smelled vintage in there. I kinda wish my office had that vibe. Nothing fancy, just functional and very well kept.

Ok on to the car:

Impression. It's an $800 car. Looks about like I imagined. Interior is decent. Needs cleaning but It's in waaaaay better shape than the 83 or the truck when I bought them. There are just a few mouse pills. NOTHING like the truck or the 83 though. Bleeech. The 4.6 is toast. It has a big ole crack in the block behind the waterpump where it froze. In all honesty, a guy could probably clean it and fix it with JBWeld and never think about it again. Not gonna do it though. Haha. Odometer shows 228k. Believable for sure. Engine is bone stock and it still has the factory Ford mufflers on it. Engine bay is cleanish, radiator looks new and the trunk is awful. Why do the trunks of cheap cars always look.like someone was murdered in them?

Carfax shows 1 owner thru 2016. I bet it has been on that lot since then.

Oh and the axle code is BH, so it is supposed to have 2.73's. Boo.

Overall, I am very happy with it and can't wait to dive in!

Some pics.

I had a few minutes so I went outside and vacuumed the mouse turds and cleaned the plastics. The trunk was kinda gross.

I need a battery so I can move the power seat. I can barely get in it.

Tires are old, 2007 date codes.

I pulled the intake off the efi 460 today. Eeeeewwwww. Looks about like the 83GT's 302 looked when we took it apart. Haha.

I overlaid the efi intake gasket on a D3 head and it *might* seal, but not by much. Minimum overlap is about 1/8" at the bottom of the port. It would probably work, but that sure does not seem like a lot of sealing width and there is a significant mismatch at the top of the port.

Won't take much of an "adapter" flange to seal these up. This is a non-CJ gasket. A CJ port (like my Hooker headers) is a bigger mismatch a the top of the port.



I hooked a battery up to it and was pleasantly surprised that everything seems to work. Lights, power seat, power windows, wipers, power mirrors, remote lock/unlock. Best of all, no smoke came out and nothing caught fire.



Finally dug it up to the shop and parked it in it's new home.

I couldn't stand it. I just had to start the process of extracting the busted 4.6L. It is actually not far from being able to come out.

Also, this thing is HUGE.




Out the top. I was very happy that I was able to remove it from the top.

4.6L vs. 460

I put some feelers out for a Kmember and a buddy has an AJE that he is no longer using. Only caveat is that AJE's use their own engine mounts, but they do sell BBF mounts for $80. I am only going to use the K, not the rack or a-arms.



I trimmed up the spring mounts I made and previously used with the 83GT. Instead of bolting them on like it was on the other car, I decided it would be easier to just weld them to the k-member. I just need to shoot them with some black paint in the K member will be ready to install.



Test fit. Fits perfect.

Motor mounts arrived. They look ok. Welds are kind of cobby, but I figger they will work.



Test fit it and decided it will need to use the 1.5" kmember spacers I used on the 83GT.

Mocked up the intake just for grins.

Next obstacle I need to overcome is the front engine accessory drive. The distance that the serpentine belt is off the front of the motor plate is completely driven by the lower pulley position. A stock 460 6 rib lower pulley throws the belt way out there. I need a pulley that is flush with the face of the harmonic balancer or even one that will slip partially over the balancer. Every 1/2 or 3/4" matters to make this all fit together like I want.

Pulleys are hard to research! I did find a Dorman 594530 pulley for a 4.3L V6 that is large enough to be mounted backwards and will partially cover the balancer. It will need some modification to work, but that is pretty much a given in this situation.



It needed a spacer to bolt to the balancer.

I used a 2-1/8' hole saw in the drill press and slowly cut a hole. It took a while because I didn't want to clog up the saw. Then I sawed it off and dressed it up on the belt sander. I finish sanded the hole to fit snugly on the balancer snout.




Made a template for the pulley.

Bolted the pulley on and started thinking about belt routing.




I managed to get the front suspension pretty much back together. Replace the lower ball joints, swapped struts to 87-93 Fox, installed lowering springs, and stock spindles and lower control arms.

Next move is to drop the engine back in and start working on accessory mounts.

I mocked up the fan and coolant tank and it does not look like I can run the electric water pump mounted to the front of the engine. It is just too long. I mean I *could* but then you end up modifying a bunch of other things just to accommodate it. A mechanical pump will not fit either. I briefly considered rotating the electric pump 90 degrees vertically with some adapter blocks of some sort, but then it interferes with the intended alternator location.

I am considering remotely mounting the water pump (maybe in front of the core support) and just running lines to the block. This would simplify belt routing as I would be able to mount an idler pulley or tensioner where the pump normally sits. There is a large space behind the bumper cover in front of the core support so I think I can mount it there and then run the lines right under the core support right up to the block. This would keep it out of the way and keep it fairly easy to access for maintenance.

The power steering pump and ac compressor mounts are mocked up. The ps pump was pretty easy. The ac compressor was not. The stiff ac lines made it extremely hard to move it around and position it where it needed to be. The difficulty is compounded by the fact the antilock pump module is right there in front of it. I ended up using bungy cords and a ratchet strap to hold it in position so I could lower the engine back down on it's mounts.

I fiiiiinnnaaallly got it in the position I wanted and it is touching the sway bar. I may ditch the sway bar. I never ran one on the red car and frankly never missed it.

My hope is to make the ac compressor and ps pump easy to unbolt from the plate to facilitate engine removal. Take out a few bolts and the engine will lift out leaving the ac and ps pump in the car.

Coming up with a suitable belt routing path has been quite the challenge. I think I have a workable plan now.

My son has a 95 mustang we damn near stole. We went to visit his aunt couple years ago. Her neighbor had a mustang in his driveway, trying to get it running. V6/5speed. It was his dad's car, bought it new when he passed away his son got it and put it in his garage. Hadn't been running in 15 yrs. We walked over looked it over while he was tinkering trying to start it. I asked how much for the car. He said it wasn't for sale. We left and came home. The next night my sister in-law called and said her neighbor told her he would sell it. We called and ended up getting it for $600. Couldn't pass on that!! Hopefully we can get started on that project in a year or two after we get my sons mud drag truck done. I really like that vintage body style for some reason. Good luck with your build.

2 wicked wrote:I really like that vintage body style for some reason.

I had an 03 for a while and it was ok, but I really like the 94-98 body style better. They make really good looking drag cars.

Time out. Back to the water pump stuff.

I've been measuring and thinking about this quite a bit. While I would like to keep the stock electric fan, it is a thick sucker that takes up a ton of room. It is a little over 5" thick and is very bulky. My HHR fan in the red Mustang is right at 3.5" thick at the motor. It has been flawless over the years. I currently have 9" from the motor plate to the face of the radiator. The Meziere pump is right at 6" deep. A Moroso electric pump is only 5" deep but they STUPIDLY expensive. If I used the HHR fan, I think I can come up with the additional 0.5" to make it work, particularly if the fan motor is offset from the water pump motor. The motor plate is 1/4" thick. I *could* trim the holes in the plate so the water pump bolts directly to the timing cover.

This will completely blow up my belt routing scheme, but I'll figger something out.

Take it for what it's worth, the moroso w-pump is nice but expensive. We bought a comp products house brand w-pump, 35 gpm. We've run it 4 years mud racing. Works good. 557 cui, 13.5 comp. Never gets over 190 temp. They are only $150. We are buying another for our new engine combo. Cory

I ran a Procomp for 5 years with good results, but it finally started leaking. I was in a bind at the time (during Drag Week 2014) so I had to order a Meziere from Jegs and have it overnighted to the next track. Otherwise I prob would have just run another procomp.

I just wish they didn't stick off the front to the motor so far!

I have decided the remote pump is the best way to go. It offers flexibility in the cooling stack that I can't get with an engine mounted pump.

I planned to use a jet boat water pump plate to block off the water passages and provide a place to connect the pump lines, but it seems like 460 water pump plates are sold out pretty much everywhere.

I decided to take the "free" option of welding up the square holes in the motor plate and drilling/tapping them for the water lines.

Nice progress

Mounts are roughed in. I will trim them up a bit with the cut off wheel because they are bigger than they need to be. Next is making some tabs for the alternator at the top of the plate.

The ac compressor mount also bolts to the block for added stability.

Back up to go forward time.

When I drilled the initial coolant holes I just randomly drilled them in the center of the water ports. Later, I decided it would be far more intelligent to drill them in the same location as the electric pump, in the event I ever need to bolt a pump on there. So, yesterday I welded them up and redrilled.

Built some alternator mounts and welded them on. Looks like they will work ok.  This approximates the alternator location of the 4.6L.

I always liked green beans! At my local track a fellow has a convertible like yours its green too with 460 power .Good progress so far .Doug

nice work on the plate !!