Stang swap pain
Hi, me again; the bloke trying to put a five-litre Windsor in a 1970 Mustang. Last issue I asked about headers and thanks for your advice. What I eventually did was bolt the standard cast-iron factor y jobs back on. A bit less horsepower, but a lot less brain damage.
This time, I’m wondering about whether I can use the original harness and ECU with my T5 manual box and no body module. Or do I have to immobilise the Smart Lock or what? Do you have any data on that? Harry Ockers, email
HARRY, I’LL admit up front here that I know as much about ECUs as my dog knows about astro-physics. She howls at the moon, but she doesn’t have the faintest idea why. Fortunately for you, Harry, fellow UC contributor Glenn Torrens is much more clued up on the topic (despite the fact that I suspect he also howls at the moon). Way back when, Torrens was project manager on a
Street Machine magazine build on the Falcon Ford should have been making but wasn’t. It was an EA that was converted to a two-door layout and fitted with a five-litre Windsor from a later model Falcon.
Now, you’ll recall that the EA (and the XF before it) are two models tarnished by the fact that they were never offered with V8 engines. So the entire wiring loom and a million other things had to be invented/imagined/built/ jury-rigged to get the Sony Scorcher (as it was known) to work. According to Torrens, the big issue was making the engine talk to the car.
Back in those days (mid-90s) nobody else was tackling a project of this magnitude, so there was no aftermarket support for what Torrens and his team were trying to achieve. They were dead-set pioneers. In the end, GT resorted to a Holden ECU from a Commodore (a VR, as it happened). He reckons it was the only way at the time to get around the Smart Lock (Ford’s thief-busting central-locking and ignition disabler) and get the engine to actually take a hint from the ignition key.
“We just couldn’t find anybody at the time who could get inside and disable the EEC4 (Ford’s name for its electronic control module at the time). So what we had was a car that was constantly looking for a message from the body computer that it had been unlocked and not broken into. And it wasn’t getting that message. But by going for a VR Commodore ECU, we were able to find people who could fiddle it. Not because it was easier to break into, but the popularity of late-model Holden engine swaps into early cars back then meant that there was an industry to support it. There’s was just a bigger pool of knowledge to wade into.”
Fast forward to 2017 and it’s highly likely that there’s an aftermarket computer out there that will do exactly what you want it to. And you know what? That might be the quickest, most painless way to go, especially if you can buy it from somebody who has done this type of swap before and can give you a step-by-step set of instructions. Let us know how you go.
“NOBODY ELSE WAS TACKLING A PROJECT OF THIS MAGNITUDE... THEY WERE DEAD-SET PIONEERS”