My first 3.0l swap

[JSVT]

Well, my clutch went out on my 99 silver frost so I decided to do a 3.0 swap while the engine is out. Doing this swap has been a dream of mine for many years even before I owned one of these cars so I'm super excited. I went the port matched route. I've been at this for quite some time and thought I'd post my progress with the swap on here. I am keeping the SVT cams. SVT Warehouse (SVTTOUR) sourced the engine and did the porting and installed the cams and timing components. Luckily the drive was only a few hours away from me to pick it up.

Engine: 05 Sable 3.0l with 57k miles

Here is the 2.5l (313k miles) removed.

Bugzuki plates and porting


SVT cams, NOS Ford timing chains guides and tensioners installed. 2.5l motor mount and pcv box installed. I had the timing cover powdercoated smoke grey. Put all new timing cover gaskets, front seal and rtv in the correct spots. Bolts all torqued to spec. New pulleys too.


Valve covers powder coated


Valve covers installed with new gaskets. Motor mount powder coated spice black. Power steering pump and pulley installed. Lower intake manifold cleaned out and new gaskets put in. New water pump, belt and tensioner as well.


These were so bad looking before. Went with smoke grey. Looks so much better.



Powdercoated intake and throttle body. Went with a lighter silver to match the car. Found an old style plaque to better match my color scheme. Need to adjust it slightly. EGR will be deleted and tuned out.


Replaced old rusty studs with burnt titanium. New silver cerakoted MSDS headers(y pipe as well) with new gaskets.


Brand new escape oil pan powdercoated

 

[theboss3512]

This is gonna look so good under the hood man!! I just picked up a second 98 CSVT that's already swapped with a 3.0 from a Taurus.
What will you be doing as far as tuning? My daily has a built 2.5 with 11.1 comp, ARP rod, main, and head bolts, forged rods and pistons, and king bearings. I installed msds headers and y pipe, but the car is running the stock ECU and tune currently. I picked up an old SCT x3 thinking it would work, but when I plug it in it says the ECU is not supported so I'm a little stumped.
I also have no idea if the new one I got yesterday has anything for a tune, not sure if you need to tune these when they are 3.0 swapped to be honest. Trying to learn some things!

 

[JSVT]

This is gonna look so good under the hood man!! I just picked up a second 98 CSVT that's already swapped with a 3.0 from a Taurus.
What will you be doing as far as tuning? My daily has a built 2.5 with 11.1 comp, ARP rod, main, and head bolts, forged rods and pistons, and king bearings. I installed msds headers and y pipe, but the car is running the stock ECU and tune currently. I picked up an old SCT x3 thinking it would work, but when I plug it in it says the ECU is not supported so I'm a little stumped.
I also have no idea if the new one I got yesterday has anything for a tune, not sure if you need to tune these when they are 3.0 swapped to be honest. Trying to learn some things!

Thanks man! I can't wait to get it all back in the engine bay. As far as tuning I'm gonna get it on the dyno but I'll probably use the SCTx3. I do see a lot of people using SCTx3 but I don't know enough about it. But I do know plenty of people drive these 3.0l swapped svts without a tune and it does fairly well. I just wanna get the most I can out of it and get rid of the EGR. Tuning is not my area of expertise I will say. I know there is some info in the tuning stickies on here. I'm gonna be digging through it soon.

 

[JSVT]

Swapping to the escape oil pick up


Got the escape oil pan on! Looks pretty cool! Ending up powder coating the alternator bracket too.

 

[JSVT]

Got the transmission cases back from powdercoat. Smoke grey looks so good! Looks even better in person. Now gotta get the transmission rebuilt and the MFactory LSD installed.

 

[wadeness98]

Good evening. Where are you getting all this done. Evaluating to do the same thing soon. Thx.

 

[JSVT]

Good evening. Where are you getting all this done. Evaluating to do the same thing soon. Thx.

My garage and driveway. Powdercoating at a local shop

 

[wadeness98]

Exactly what I want to do. Beautiful job. Look forward to all the updates. Right now I'm working on the exterior work and interior trim; plastic renforcement/replacement through 3d printing. But I'll bring my car to you when you're done.

 

[JSVT]

Been super busy but I managed to get a some things done. At first I was just gonna scrub and clean the dirt from the engine bay. But after cleaning it three times I decided I was going to do some rust treatment, some sanding and put down some fresh paint. I went and bought silver frost from paintscratch that they mixed for me into cans. A good 2k clearcoat as well. Here's how dirty everything looked before. 312k miles worth of dirt.


After cleaning it three times lol

After rust treatment and sanding


Scrubbed and cleaned it three more times. Removed the stickers on the radiator support and the strut tower and starting priming and painting.


It's been raining almost everyday here in FL and a rain storm was headed my way so I had to tape up everything super quick and lay it down. But for rushing it, it didn't turn out too bad. Much better than just cleaning like I originally was going to do but the motor is just too pretty to be in an ugly engine bay lol. Overall I'm happy with it and was able to get all the surface rust out.