Engine

The engine and transmission is out of a 1997 MarkVIII. The following picture shows the actual car it comes from.

The engine in these cars are basically the same engine as in the Cobra mustangs, but the Cobra had a forged crankshaft, and another intake as the biggest power differentiator between the two. Cobras had other cams, but the difference is small. I bought the Cobra cams, but did not swap as I could hardly measure any difference, so they are still on the shelf.

These 32 Valve engines looks so brutal and impressive, so it is hard to undersnad why Ford placed them under big plastic covers for years. To my opinion these motors would make a living room nicer, almost like a art of furniture.

I have replaced the 1997 intake with the 1996 for two reasons. It gave me more hood clerance and it look more symetrical, and leavs the nice valvecovers exposed.

The stock exhaust manifold were dismissed as it had a integrated catalyzer integrated , and it would not work in my setup, so I bought a set of Ford Racing shorty headers. They have a marginal positive effect.

I had the valve covers, front cover and oil pan off, and found the engine to be almost perfect, not even dirty inside, so I just re-sealed it.

The valve covers have been polished and the coil covers have received Thunderbird emblems. I also made up a "cold air" tube out of strights and bends that is polished. I tried to route the tube in a sophisticated route to make a good looking system.

I asume that the engine will put about 300Hp to the ground with the modified chip and enhanced exhaust.

ActuallyI have noticed that there should be room for a supercharger like a procharger , reverse mounted in front of the engine. Time will show if there will be one or not.

I had to re-route the heater tubes to give room for the intake tube.

The transmission dip stick, a flexible Lokar dip stick for AOD is here hanging loose, but it had to be mounted over at the other side due to the intake tube did block acces to it. That other back side of the engine is a story of its own, I will get back to the other side soon.

Transmission

The transmission is a 4R70W that is a computer controlled 4 speed with overdrive. I have installed a 2200 rpm stall speed converter in it, just in case...

Shifter

Since the goal was to keep the interior "original",  the Thunderbird shifter would have to be used. The Thunderbird shifter has PRND2 ( 5 selections) on the scale and the interlocks between the selections is hard to modify the way the shifter is constructed. The 4R70W transmission that is a 4 speed with overdrive has a conventional scale that is PRND21(6 selections). What I found was that when I made a rectangular hole in the shifter arm on the transmission, to make the ratio between the shifter and transmission arm adjustable, the scale will fit perfectly with the transmission's PRND and 2. This means that I can not manually select the new transmissions 1'st gear on the shifter. As most cars, this car will now start in 1'st gear with the selector in "D" anyway. Ask Yourself, is that a big problem that You not can manually select 1'st gear ? . I found the answer to be no. Problem solved. I use a cable pointing backwards from the shifter that turns and come back to the transmission from the rear. like seen in the picture below ( red cable). If I routed the cable forward from the transmission, it would also have to enter the shifter from the front, but doing that made some sharps turns on the cable, and I found it being to close to the exhaust at the front. These cables do not handle a lot of heat.