3.8 sc upgrade

Well most of my car projects are finished up...and my brain has started thinking...my brother and me love the Thunderbird SCs. My dad had like 4 of them and we would buy them and sell them all thr time. They're such fun cars! Im not sure if SVT part of ford was around when the SCs were made (I'm pretty sure it wasn't) buy they should have called them Thunderbird SVTs. Now an even cooler car than the tbird (we call them thunder chickens) is the XR7 cougar SC. They only made this in '89. They were all 5 speeds (I think). There's a quite a few of the TSCs around and they're not too expensive. So...

The contour SVT was designed to compete with BMW M3, a rear wheel drive sports car. Now I LOVE my SVT however a "REAL" car (IMHO) should be RWD. So in order to build a true BMW M3 competitor I want to build a CONTOUR SC SVT


Any thoughts?

I do realize the work that's involved and calculating measuring welding cutting grinding remeasuring etc etc etc. I also have seen the contour RWD build that has suddenly fallen off the map. But 3.8 supercharged motor with forged rods (stock From ford) and crank would just totally trump any other contour build... LET ME KNOW IF YOU THINK IM CRAZY

Night guys

awesome idea and i would pay to see this setup. i believe a guy that goes by the name of pole120 or something like that is in the process of converting one of his svtc's to rwd so you may wanna
get up with him and see just how much work and what type of clearances their would be. he would be a good start.
hope this helps.

formulad3 said:

awesome idea and i would pay to see this setup. i believe a guy that goes by the name of pole120 or something like that is in the process of converting one of his svtc's to rwd so you may wanna
get up with him and see just how much work and what type of clearances their would be. he would be a good start.
hope this helps.

Click to expand...

Yea I saw his RWD conversion however it seems he stopped that project. My question would be if the 3.8 would fit in the engine bay at all. I enjoy talking about cool car projects this one however would be WAAAY down the road.

I Think the plumbing for the Super charger and itercooler would be the most difficult part about this swap (except for changing the entire car to RWD)

The 3.8L V6 as I recall, was a poor breathing, heavy, piece of push-rod rubbish. Pulling its M90 blower is a good idea though. I ran that blower on my Probe years ago - then opted for the M62 as a better fit. A custom IM to fit the blower between the valve covers would be good, but I don't know if it'll make hood clearance. An M62 is compact, and on my Probe I simply replaced the AC compressor with it, and all is well -- It seems as if we'd have room for that with the Duratech as well. The Superchicken blower might work as well, though a shortened snout should be necessary. Then again.. I think that this is the wrong forum section to go on about forced induction.

Kresnik said:

The 3.8L V6 as I recall, was a poor breathing, heavy, piece of push-rod rubbish. Pulling its M90 blower is a good idea though. I ran that blower on my Probe years ago - then opted for the M62 as a better fit. A custom IM to fit the blower between the valve covers would be good, but I don't know if it'll make hood clearance. An M62 is compact, and on my Probe I simply replaced the AC compressor with it, and all is well -- It seems as if we'd have room for that with the Duratech as well. The Superchicken blower might work as well, though a shortened snout should be necessary. Then again.. I think that this is the wrong forum section to go on about forced induction.

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Funny thing is I actually have a supercharger from an SC in my garage... now you got me thinking

Anything is possible with enough time and money. Make it happen.

Although my $0.02... if I was going to go through that much effort I would pick a different powertrain. Something that could make a ton of power for cheap. Late model Mustang GT powertrains are a dime a dozen now a days.

CSVT#49 said:

Anything is possible with enough time and money. Make it happen.

Although my $0.02... if I was going to go through that much effort I would pick a different powertrain. Something that could make a ton of power for cheap. Late model Mustang GT powertrains are a dime a dozen now a days.

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Would a 4.6 V8 RWD setup fit in the engine bay of a contour?

CSVT#49 said:

Anything is possible with enough time and money. Make it happen.

Although my $0.02... if I was going to go through that much effort I would pick a different powertrain. Something that could make a ton of power for cheap. Late model Mustang GT powertrains are a dime a dozen now a days.

Click to expand...

sorry i never saw this post until now

Quicksight said:

Would a 4.6 V8 RWD setup fit in the engine bay of a contour?

Click to expand...

They've been stuffed in a Focus engine bay before, so I'm sure they could fit in a Contour bay with enough fabrication.

The 4.6 has been fitted into a contour before (or possibly it was the Mondeo, European version of the contour also slightly smaller) not sure what all it took to do but there use to be a video of it on Google if I recall passenger side air bag was ripped out for room (not sure what for) I know the firewall had to be cut into also, its possible to do and I was going to do it myself (only cause I was getting the 4.6 for free from my mom) but stuff came up and didn't get the time to do it, but in my opinion the 3.8 is out dated I'd start checking into the 4.6 for what your trying to do, I hope you go through with it, it would trump any other build on this site and it would put the contour in a class bigger than the M3