anybody know of someone that has done them?

thinking of putting a 302 in my 84 rx7, since i dont see much potential with the 12a, and well always liked fords 5.0 egine

anybody know of someone who has done it?


ive found sites with kits of parts needed, but does not come out with a rough estimate of what all it would come out too

 

As a great fire erupts from the pits of hell.................. ahhhh run for your lives!!!!!


it's burning, burning, oh the pain of it all.......


Oh by the way

S E A R C H ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

V8 swap are on here 271 times a year......

 

http://www.v8rx7.com/

 

In a good HillBilly West Virginia Voice: No help here....Best just move along ....

 

 

That picture made my day lol.

 

Now thats funny right there! I dun care who ya are.


Theres a forum just for this topic. We have a member here with a 302 in his FB. He'll answer what you need to know. If not, ask and Ill move the thread.

 

There's a ton of potential with the 12A.

The V8 conversions just let you have your cake (plenty o' power) and eat it too (still have legal emissions levels).

 

www.torquecentral.com

The best place for info. I got tons of help on my swap from here.

 

Gilby - You are getting good advice from "85 GSL 302"; he seems to be smart enough to build a pretty nice street rod, although I think a few patches of brown and green would make his camouflage paint more effective. Browse around and read a bit and you will soon realize this forum has some very knowledgeable members, who can be very helpful. There are also plenty of guys who don't have the technical skills or creativity to do anything original, and will try to talk you out of doing this swap.

I am an Aero engineer, and tend to worry about weight. The Ford small block is about 75 pounds lighter than the Chevy. With aluminum heads, intake, radiator and water pump, my swap only added 100 pounds, mostly in the automatic trans. I fabricated everything myself, no kit, except I got the driveshaft flange from Grannys. I had all my parts fabricated before Grant started doing Ford kits. Grannys site has writeups from Brad Bergholtz on the wiring which are very helpful

Once you get it running, you will quickly find the stock brakes are marginal for so much performance. I adapted the bigger discs and 4 pot calipers from a 1990 RX7 convertible. This took some engineering and machine work, a big project in itself, and not cheap. The stopping power is far superior to the stock brakes. My machinist would make parts for anyone interested in doing this. You can read details of my swap and see photos of the brake conversion at

http://www.cardomain.com/memberpage/646433

I have been doing engine swaps since the 1960s, and this small block V8 into a 1st Gen RX7 makes a really nice driver if you do it right. Yes, you can get a lot of power from a rotary engine, but the driveability goes to hell, and even the most powerful rotary will not have torque like a V8. I have owned a lot of sports cars in the past 40 years, English, German, Italian and Japanese. My V8 RX7 is the most fun to drive.

Lastly, if you don't have reasonably good fabrication skills and tools, then make sure you have a friend who does!

 

Just buy a Mustang!

 

youmight want to check out some 4cyl swaps also I have a 2.3turbo ford in mine. It runs pretty decent for what it is. Here are a couple video of an 1/8th mile pass and 1/4 mile pass.
The 2.3 is a little bit lighter than a 302, and the weight sits back much farther from the front of the car.
http://members.sigecom.net/randyh/735.wmv 7.35 n te 1/8th
http://members.sigecom.net/randyh/1154.wmv 11.54 in the 1/4
These are not my best passes to date, just the two I have uploaded.

Later
Randy

 

Which will have:

Less interior room
More body flex
Even worse suspension geometry (the 1st-gen is only slightly bad but any generation Mustang with possible exception of the Mustang II is waaaay off)

In other words it's not an RX-7.

 

I think the biggest problem with V8 RX-7's is that 90% of them are built b rednecks. With a little planning, and some consideration, you can create a pretty bad *** street rod. Unfortunatly, it's also pretty easy to Redneck up the project, at which point you might as well throw on some superswampers and go mudding, because the car will be junk.

Give some serious thought to the Ford 2.3 Turbo motor. It's freaking bad ***, has huge power potential, and is lighter than the V8. I think if I had it to do over again, I'd give the 4cyl Turbo a try. Research is the key. You should spend as much time planning as you do building.

 

If it's lighter than the 302 it's only marginally. The Turbo block was substantially beefier than the N/A block, and the 302 is, uh, *not* beefy.

I have seen a 2.3T engine weighed at ~450lb, which is similar to a 5.0.

Put it this way - the 302 block is good to about 450-500hp before it simply fails. The 2.3 Turbo block is good for *more* than that, and it necessarily is dealing with higher cylinder pressures (less than half the displacement) *and* you're simply not going to be winding it up as high as you could with a 302 since the cylinder heads available (that can deal with high power turbo abuse) can't breathe too well, so you're limited to about 7000 maybe 7500 rpm, whereas 5.0's that wind it out to 8500-9500 are, if not commonplace, certainly out there with available components.

 

I agree with PEEJAY that a high revving motor is more fun to drive in some respects - that is why we have had so much fun with our RX-7s all these years. You can argue forever about turbo 4 and 6 cylinder engines vs V8s - there are alot of good swaps. I used a V8 just because I have never owned a hot rod V8 with a lumpy cam and an exhaust note that "strikes fear in their hearts" when you drive into the parking lot. Immature perhaps, but it is fun. However, if you really want the best engine for a daily driver, a drag racer, or maybe both at once, there is nothing out there that will compete with a Buick Turbo Regal V6, (or Grand National, basically the same motor). With readily available bolt on mods you can get 300 to 400 HP, and the automatic trans that comes with it works really well. You should be able to find a Turbo Regal that runs fairly well for $2500-3000, and you will have everthing you need. These engines are very smooth, quiet and will still give you fairly good gas mileage if you drive conservatively. With turbo and intercooler, the weight is slightly less than a V8. If you don't speak electronics, you will need some help with the fuel injection wiring.

 

Check out http://www.rx7v8.com Which is FiberCan

They make the Python which is a 1st gen RX7 with the whole Camaro drivetrain, suspension, and steering. Plus body mods. However. You could just get the info you need to do the Camaro swap. FiberCan also does other engines. A Corvette engine will fit too. I think You just gotta do your homework. I know a guy who has a 2nd gen with a Buick Grand National turbo engine in it. Has just as much, if not more, room under the hood.

I like this:

 

Never said anything of the sort. Just that the 2.3T block has to be really beefy, to handle making MORE power at LESS RPM than an engine twice its displacement will fail at.

This is saying two things: The 2.3T is a really stout piece, and the 302/5.0 was designed first and formost to be LIGHT IN WEIGHT.

A 302 engine block, bare, weighs 135lb. To put that in perspective, some JGTCC teams were removing 66kg of material from the RB26 engine block to lighten them for racing - that is more iron than is in an entire 302 block!

I am all for midrange grunt. Midrange is wonderful. High RPM engines are generally a nightmare since higher RPM shortens the life of any engine, and you wind up throwing a ton of money at the engine to marginally extend its life (but still not getting very much from it). High RPM is wasteful inertially speaking, on many levels. I don't like high RPM.

But if the engine is making a ton of power in the 3k-6k range, that is a glorious thing and a ball to drive.