Rich's 87 GLHS SRT4/568 Engine Swap

[rbryant]

Here are the pictures of the SRT4 engine with 568 being installed from the bottom.

I am using 96-99 Stratus accessories because I feel that they fit into the lbody engine bay better than the SRT4 accessories. I also didn't want to mess with running PS hoses to the front of the engine when there isn't much room in an lbody.

It turns out that there is a lot of room on the rear of the car for a remote PS reservoir where if it was on the front I would never have had a hard time running the TB on the passenger side because the PS pump/lines/reservoir would be in the way and if I ran a remote reservoir I would have had to run yet another set of lines....

The biggest disadvantage of the Stratus accessories is that they run a 6 rib belt for the AC/Alternator and there isn't a readily available cheap underdrive pulley for this setup and the stratus pulley is kind of a beast compared to even the stock SRT4 pulley... I believe there is now one manufacturer for it but it is something like $200 for the pulley. IMO money would be better spent on a lighter flywheel as weight is the main savings on underdrive pulleys as the accessories will just run more if they spin slower and they are usually off at WOT anyway.






The tightest clearance on the whole install is the PS pulley to the frame rail. It really doesn't clear with the engine properly centered with stock length axles.




Here are some measurements that I wish I had before I started. Hopefully they will give people an idea of what they are dealing with.








AC fits into the bottom of the bay but is tight in the very front corner (bottom left). I may need to either tilt the engine forward or clearance that part of the body a little. I can always invert it and reweld. If it wasn't a numbered car I would definitely cut the car here for clearance and reinforce it with a new piece.

The stratus bracket normally connects to a boss on the oil pan which doesn't exist on the SRT4 pan so only 2 bolt holes align. I drilled a new hole in the bracket and used a button top bolt into an existing boss in order to get a 3rd bolt hole. If you look closely you can see the button top bolt in the center of the bracket behind the compressor.




The alternator fits just fine with no problems. I did take a lot of material out of the bracket so that I can run the waterbox bypass to the heater core through where it used to be. It also interfered with the plenum on the soon to be custom intake manifold.




The header is angled slightly between the head and firewall to give some extra firewall clearance. I also had an ATP cast manifold but the turbine housing hit the firewall heat shield so it was a no go.




Here is a shot of the clearance of the Hy35 turbine housing to the firewall. I would have liked to have it turned upward just a bit more but the welder couldn't do much more and still get the tip in for good welds on the manifold.

The angle between the firewall and head is about as good as I can do without having the exhaust outlet get into the firewall. I can always remove the stock heat sheild and run something thinner but I have about .5" of clearance so it should be fine.

This also shows the oil return line. It goes to the stock SRT4 oil drain hole which I threaded for 1/2" NPT and used a 45 degree 1/2" NPT to AN-10 fitting on. Make sure you tap the threads extra deep so you can get the 45 degree fitting in as far as possible so it doesn't hit the starter...

I found this to be a better option than running it into the pan and trying to keep the line away from the axle... The AN-10 line also has a 45 degree angle back up to try and keep the line as vertical as possible.




Here is the firewall clearance of the compressor housing. This isn't the actual housing I will use but it is the same size. The HY35 and HE341 are the same diameter. The HE351 is about 1" larger so it would be .5" closer to the firewall.

[omni_840]

Looking good

Please keep us updated on the progress

[blk86trbo]

Looks nice Rich, that's gonna be fun once you get it on the road

[t3rse]

what intake are you using?

[rbryant]

what intake are you using?

Full custom sheet metal manifold from all_motor_mike on the neons forum. I am very lucky that he is local to me.

It is just about done but is getting some touch up work to clear my radiator. The rad is thicker than what anyone else has ran with the swap so the runners are super short. The Intake will also have the TB on the passenger side similar to what turboshad did with a shadow swap.

The shadow had a lot more room than mine so I will have much shorter runners and more of a true box plenum.

Turboshad seems to have a lot of the same ideas I do. I was also looking at running the wategate from the EGR mounting holes like he is even before I saw it. I also will run the TB on the passenger side, and of course his tranny boss is basically the same as mine.

It is a good example of how showing the build logs really helps everyone.

-Rich

[2.216VTurbo]

Looking good Rich Any idea what thickness the sheet metal is for the intake, mines 3/16's and I wish it were 1/4. It's cracked at the seam once and now it has a barrel shape in the top where it used to be flat-this just happened at the Team Shelby event in Vegas even though the manifold has been on there for 8+ years so it's still may fail completely at one point. If ALL-MOTOR_MIKE is used to all motor manifolds, he may be using relatively thin sheet... Got a project completion date? Mopars at the Strip maybe?

[rbryant]

Looking good Rich Any idea what thickness the sheet metal is for the intake, mines 3/16's and I wish it were 1/4. It's cracked at the seam once and now it has a barrel shape in the top where it used to be flat-this just happened at the Team Shelby event in Vegas even though the manifold has been on there for 8+ years so it's still may fail completely at one point. If ALL-MOTOR_MIKE is used to all motor manifolds, he may be using relatively thin sheet... Got a project completion date? Mopars at the Strip maybe?

The plenum its self is a fairly thin wall.

It doesn't seem like the wall should really matter considering that the intercooler pipes are even thinner. I suppose they don't have seams though...

Is the reason for the thicker wall just to make it so things don't flex as much?

I know that he does weld the seams on the inside and then the outside to get them as strong as possible and they have already been used with turbo applications on neons.

I guess we will see but his welds are very nice and I am sure he will fix it if it breaks because he is local to me and I can find him..

Getting something that will fit is the first challenge after that I can always copy the plenum with a thicker wall material in the future if I really need to and if it cracks he will be giving me a a deal on a thick walled replacement!

Thanks for the tip!

-Rich

[t3rse]

It is a good example of how showing the build logs really helps everyone.

poke at me? lol

If I were smart I would have done something similar so I wouldn't have had to go water...but I wanted to anways.

My other idea was to make an integrated intercooler/intake where the charge pipe would run in near the front motor mount then travel up through the intercooler into the plenum with water running horizontally...maybe later I suppose.

[rbryant]

poke at me? lol

Definately not!

There are lots of ways to do things. It is also very hard to get things documented. Your project is clearly farther along than mine is!

I am just getting around to adding the pictures to a build thread and nothing is even close to running after months of on and off work.

It looks like some pictures also disappeared... I will have to look into why that happened and put them back....

EDIT: Apparently you have to actually have the gallery process the images after you upload or they will go away if you link to the original path they give you...

-Rich

[t3rse]

I haven't assembled a log because I don't know yet that everything I did will work and I don't want to lead someone down the wrong path via speculation...at least you will be able to use an a/a i/c...lol. My problem is that I did everything on a college budget with income from bouncing at a bar so I cheaped out in a lot of areas...thank God I have awesome friends with machine shop access. All the pics can be found here: http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~dberry/2.4swap

edit: sorry for getting off topic

[rbryant]

I haven't assembled a log because I don't know yet that everything I did will work and I don't want to lead someone down the wrong path via speculation...at least you will be able to use an a/a i/c...lol. My problem is that I did everything on a college budget with income from bouncing at a bar so I cheaped out in a lot of areas...thank God I have awesome friends with machine shop access. All the pics can be found here: http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~dberry/2.4swap

Awesome that you took so many pictures it will be really cool to see your writeup. Different types of builds all have their advantages and disadvantages.

The water to air route also has some advantages. I am only running 2.25" IC tubes and I am not sure if I can even fit the 2.5" if it becomes a restriction. I also have a lot of bends in the IC pipes.

I think your setup is actually much more of a race setup than mine is so it makes sense that we did some things differently. I would have never been able to do the build you did when I was in college. I was still just messing around with a simple TII swap at that time...


BTW:

You freaks in the put the engine in from the top club really amuse me....
Do you put your underwear on from over your head too? (this really is a holy war but I can't help but comment)

Ok enough with the light hearted jabs I look forward to seeing your writeup in the future and I will keep working on this one once things get closer...

-Rich

[t3rse]

I don't have jack stands tall enough and to reiterate...I'm a cheap azz.

[rbryant]

I don't have jack stands tall enough and to reiterate...I'm a cheap azz.

Ok I will forgive you if it is through necessity rather than choice. :P

If it works for you that is fine I am just stirring the pot on this ancient debate because I wanted to document how even the 2.4 fits from the bottom.

I might even have some pictures of rolling the engine in through the wheel well which I can include in the thread.

-Rich

[rosie]

..... and I wish it were 1/4. It's cracked at the seam once and now it has a barrel shape in the top where it used to be flat-this just happened at the Team Shelby event in Vegas even though the manifold has been on there for 8+ years so it's still may fail completely at one point. ......

Dude That SUCKS!!!! I love that intake with that ghost of a shelby sticker and the crinkle coat on it.....

So sad

[rbryant]

Dude That SUCKS!!!! I love that intake with that ghost of a shelby sticker and the crinkle coat on it.....

So sad

That does suck. Hopefully I won't have that problem.

The main part of the manifold is a 4" round cut in half so that portion should be strong. The runner plate is just sheet metal but it is reinforced by the runner connections and the taper portion isn't really very wide so I am hoping it will be ok. Things are double welded everywhere except the connection to the runner plate because it is not possible to weld the last inside portion...

Alan,

Do you have pictures of the crack?

Thanks,

Rich

[rbryant]

I will post some pictures of the intake test fitted tonight when I get home.

I ran into a snag now... The engine had to shift toward the passenger side about 1/4" to get the axles aligned....

Now the PS pump pulley hits the frame rail. I am looking at either modifying the pulley, moving the pump, going with a manual rack, or running an electric PS pump (which actually doesn't seem that bad).

[turboshad]

Hmmmmm, I already wrote this post but for some reason it didn't make it to the thread so here goes again

Things are looking good Rich. You've got more balls than me trying to fit in AC and building the intake right from the runner flange. I cheated and used the neon to start with

+1 on seeing some pics of the intake Alan. On mine I used a .065" wall 3" 90 and then 3/16" for the body. On my analysis with 30psi the most I saw was .016" (~1/64") of displacement in the body and on a fatigue test cycling from 0-30psi it wasn't even close to failing any time soon albiet it is pretty hard to simulate a weld. I would be curious to see how yours was designed and where it ended up failing.

Now the PS pump pulley hits the fuel rail.

You mean frame rail right?

[rbryant]

You mean frame rail right?

Yea I must have entered into some type of auto-complete typing mode.

The pulley was about 1/4" from the frame rail before and now it is touching. It is basically at zero clearance. I could probably modify the pulley and run a 3 rib belt but I am not sure it will work.

Alternatively I can try to run a 1g neon pulley with a v belt to see if that gives enough clearance.

It looks like you also went with the stratus accessories... How close was your PS pump pulley to the shadow frame rail?

Thanks,

Rich

[2.216VTurbo]

I'll dig for the old pics of the crack/welding and take some new ones of my new (now round) intake manifold

Rich, 4" tube is super strong, it's what I use for my IC end tanks, if your sheet is just a short (narrow) strip, you want have any problems. Remember Shad, it's not the 30PSI or whatever boost, it can handle that no problem. It's the 1500 bazillion PSI it sees when you get a backfire pop Strange how I didn't get any deformation (or backfires presumably) for 8+ years but when it hit the track in Vegas at the Team Shelby event, that's all it did was pop Admittedly I had some tuning issues...

[turboshad]

Ahhhh..that makes more sence. I didn't know it happened from a backfire. If we were going to design an intake to handle that we might as well also build the engines with 2" thick pistons to handle detonation. That clears up my confusion with the 3/16" yielding. Either way, it would be cool to see the pics and how it failed.