Hello, all.

I've been reading the posts and ordered the manual from Monster Miata to review and plan a V8 swap on an unsuspecting girly car. I can get a buddy from work to do any welding. Other than this, I'm looking to make the operation as simple as possible. I am not really interested in spending a lot of time optimizing Hp for my first build, I just want it to go as straight-forward as possible. I'm also at an age where I can trade some dollars for sweat equity.

With this as background, I'd like some advice. I plan to buy the Monster Miata kit, and take MRR up on their offer to do the harness work. I was going to buy a rebuilt Ford 5.0 and T5 tranny.

I see two cars available within an easy drive for me around $3k, a 1990 and a 1992.

If my goal is to have the least amount of custom work, and get a nice product out the other side, what else would you recommend I consider?

Any preference on engine type or year? Is the '90 or '92 better for any reason? What other tid bits should I buy to make my build as much of an assembly instead of a job shop operation as possible?

 

If the two cars are low mile cars or have been rebuilt they may be worth the $3K. Honestly, I've found it very hard to find a 20+ year old Mustang that's worthy of being a donor. Even if you do find a good one the heads, starter, alternator and even intake are all parts that even most Mustang guys have swapped out by this point.

The real advantage of a drivable donor is that you can feel the engine out beforehand. You also get some of the harder to find bits like the proper alternator bracket, donor harness, a9l ecu and bellhousing. All of these parts only came on a fox body Mustang. You may also get a good trans (maybe) if the car was not abused. Nearly everything else came on some other Ford at some point, often in a better form.

Case(s) in point:
XXX block (Mustang) - much better YYY block can be found in Lincoln MkVII's
E6 heads (Mustang) - much better flowing GT-40 heads on a Explorer
Can starter (Mustang) - much better PM gear reduction starter on V6 Mustangs
G2 Alternator (Mustang) - Much better G3 type on Tauruses, V6 Mustangs, Aerostars
Intake (Mustang) - Much better flowing GT-40 type on Explorers
55mm Throttle (Mustang) - 65mm on Explorer

If you have a U-Pull it near you you may be better off with a reman bottom end (about $1500) which you then build up with the parts above. There's really not that much Mustang left on many of our Ford builds. On mine the bell housing and alternator bracket are about the only Mustang-only parts on it at this point.

Just food for though,
-Jason

 

OK. Sorry, I was not very clear, and I appreciate the feedback. The two cars I was talking about were Miata donor cars (the 90 and 92). I was going to buy a rebuilt motor and transmission. One of the rebuild companies I looked at offers a package to send the motor with accessories. My goal is to stay out of inside of the motor, trans, diff and get to the assembly of the car as quickly and cleanly as possible.

 

Sorry about that, I though you meant the Mustang donors.

As far as the Miata donor goes, look for the nicest one you can. Remember, you're going to be investing a lot of time and money into it. If you can find a nice cheap one then go for it but if it takes a few thousand more to find one that will not require body work or rust repair than that may be worth it.

I've found the best donors to actually be automatics. They sell for cheaper because no one really wants them, typically they are female owned and weekend driven which often means garage kept as well. Because automatic are often laughed at at Miata meets the owners are not typically in touch with the local Miata community and as result have very little idea what the car is actually worth. You typically can print out the KBB page for the car and and get it for that. Because the automatic is a sled its virtually impossible to abuse the car which means a very tight chassis.

As far as parts you would need that that the manual would have, you'd be looking at a clutch pedal and dead pedal and that's about it. The clutch master comes with the kit and the clutch slave should be replaced with new anyhow.

-Jason