• Welcome to the Contour Enthusiasts Group, the best resource for the Ford Contour and Mercury Mystique.

    You can register to join the community.

Not the Typical 3L Build...Advice Welcome!

Heywood said:
Just clicked through the link - awesome info. Rara seems to back your position on the intakes - but I have to disagree - 3l oval port intake on oval port heads has to flow better, theres just more area and less distrubance of the flow. And I'm not saying that because I have a full 3l - I actually have a ported 3l that is completely torn down in my garage right now to be rebuilt with forged components.
Click to expand...


I've never done the analysis between the two, but I may have to now. I've got a SVT intake and a 04 Sable intake in the garage. I'll spend a little time trying to figure out a way to compare the two.

The ratio of cross-section perimeter to cross-sectional area is one measure of flow effiency. That's why air flows most efficiently through a round cross-section. When you're comparing two round sections to one oval, those might be close to the same ratio of perimeter to area. Of course, runner length and number of bends affects flow too.
 
aboythatskates said:
remember:horsepower sells cars, torque wins races
Click to expand...


I've got to disagree with that. You've got that backwards, if anything. Torque sells cars, horsepower wins races. Torque creates the forward thrust that you feel in the car. It's what can make a car feel fast.

Races are always about covering a certain distance the fastest. Horsepower, by definition, is work done (distance traveled) over time. Horsepower is the rate at which torque is applied.

What's even more important than horsepower? Weight. Racing (the stuff I do anyways) involves accelerating the car in 4 primary directions. Left, right, acceleration, deceleration. Adding horsepower only helps with one of those. Reducing weight, that directly helps all 4.
 
TennTechMan said:
I've got to disagree with that. You've got that backwards, if anything. Torque sells cars, horsepower wins races. Torque creates the forward thrust that you feel in the car. It's what can make a car feel fast.

Races are always about covering a certain distance the fastest. Horsepower, by definition, is work done (distance traveled) over time. Horsepower is the rate at which torque is applied.

What's even more important than horsepower? Weight. Racing (the stuff I do anyways) involves accelerating the car in 4 primary directions. Left, right, acceleration, deceleration. Adding horsepower only helps with one of those. Reducing weight, that directly helps all 4.
Click to expand...

Im goin to be nice a leave this post alone.
 
i actually dont have it wrong. i dont wanna start a bash or anything. but how does torque sell cars?
u walk into a dealership and all they have is hp ratings. for some average person who doesnt know all that much knows somewhat about horsepower and that more is good.

i personally raced 2 different turboed civics and won. even tho i have more low end torque then high end power. my upper end of the mph is alot faster then my low mph. (for example, my 0-60 isnt as fast as it should be, but my 70-whatever kicks ass.)
 
There are a lot of people here who think Oval port is better than Split port these days. The only reason Ford went to the oval port design was as a cost savings, they are not superior. If anything they are both pretty equal all things aside. There have been examples of both configurations that yield similar horsepower/torque numbers. Oval port might be a few lbs lighter with the plastic intake manifold. If you're doing your own tuning/fab work I think either setup would be similar in cost, after you sell the leftover parts. I would look for an 04'+, see if you can find an escape oil pan/pickup for better fitment with the MTX.

I don't think I would even consider a hybrid in your situation (unless you're using Cougar 2.5L heads as mentioned before), the 2.5L heads are supposedly the root cause of the oil draining issue.

Yes people who used to do the split port 3L 99-00 engines ran electric water pumps.
 
Oval flows more while the split port flows faster. While the split port isn't flowing as much as the oval ports, they are pushing air threw at a faster rate....IIRC there was a thread or article with the SVT engineers a while a go basically stating that. And that is one reason why they went with that design...or at least Porsche did.

Do what ever configuration you like. All truth be told, most builds are around the same amount of power. It just depends on how you like that power. Down low or up top. Heck, the two full 3.0L I have had were almost the exact same (both had torsens, tunes etc), but one was MUCH stronger than the other. So, people saying one is better than the other are just stating an opinion since even similar builds can have vastly different power ratings.
 
Here are some numbers from various builds: http://www.newcougar.org/forums/thread89951.html

People that run full 3L's prefer those and people that run ported 3L's perfer those. There isn't a clear winner for max hp. I'd lean toward the split port with SVT cams for top end power like you were stating. The full 3L has always been more known for the nice low/mid range (daily driver).

Good luck with the build!
 
elraido said:
Oval flows more while the split port flows faster. While the split port isn't flowing as much as the oval ports, they are pushing air threw at a faster rate....IIRC there was a thread or article with the SVT engineers a while a go basically stating that. And that is one reason why they went with that design...or at least Porsche did.
Click to expand...

I believe that, however the problem is that air is being dumped from split port runners into an oval port head which creates turbulence and slows the whole flow down as its about to pass through the valves. My machine shop fabs race engines and when I explained my port matched setup he basically said anything that is ported by hand flows less than stock - even if you are opening up the flow area. He was ready to put my heads on his flow bench just to see how they performed but I don't have a stock set to compare with.

And anyone suggesting 2.5L heads - there's no point unless you swap the valves. You make around the same power by introducing flow restriction and offsetting it by higher compression = higher stresses, higher risk of detonation and engine failure. i.e. same power, bigger risk of failure.
 
I picked up the new motor from Pull A Part yesterday. I had found a motor in a 2003 Taurus, 130k on the odometer. We got the engine ready to pull, and while we were waiting for the hoist to be brought to us, I decided to try to turn the engine over. It took a lot of effort to get the motor to turn at all. Once It turned a little, I heard something fall into the oil pan. Needless to say, we cut our losses there.

I went looking through the Ford stuff again and found that we had overlooked an Escape. It was the first of those that I've seen at a Pull a part. It was a 03 with a 3L. I'm leaning towards going full 3L, but still weighing some options. I've never done the full 3L swap before, so I need to do some reading about it to see what is involved in getting that going.
 
After looking over the Escape motor, it looks like we're going to be able to make use of it. The plan for now is to get it running as is. If we discover some problems once it gets running, we'll look at doing head gaskets, bearings, and piston rings if needed.


I found something interesting when pulling the spark plugs out of the motor. One side of the motor has spark plugs with a green dot on the ends of them. Anyone else ever seen that? I thought it might be something that Ford did at the factory.


We'll be doing a lot of work on the Geo this weekend. The goal is to have a motor and trans in place, and get the rear suspension in place. At that point, it goes to the cage shop. After that, it's back to my place for wiring followed by the first start up.
 
We've made some pretty good progress on the car over the last week or so. In case you've ever wondered what a 3L looks like in the back of a Metro, see below.

The Facebook page has lots more images (and higher quality than my cell phone).


IMG_20121209_181453_zps7031981d.jpg

IMG_20121209_173156_zps2cb50a8e.jpg
 
TennTechMan said:
I found something interesting when pulling the spark plugs out of the motor. One side of the motor has spark plugs with a green dot on the ends of them. Anyone else ever seen that? I thought it might be something that Ford did at the factory.
Click to expand...

That is a Ford factory thing.
the colored tip designates which electrode is platnum tipped, factory plugs are only platnum on one tip, the replacements are double platnum.
 
Some how I missed this thread and just now read through it. You'll be happy with your choice using the Escape engine. However more power can be had if you swap in another set of cams. I'm not sure if you have the SVT cams or not. I think I remember you saying you found them scored and beyond the point of fixing. Also I'd like to through in my opinion on the UIM's as I did actually study this at college while obtaining my mechanical engineering degree.

The SVT intake was designed and optimized for the different RPM ranges to achieve the most power. I'd reference Helmholtz SAE paper, Design of a Tuned Intake Manifold, which someone appears to have scanned it in here (http://www.scribd.com/doc/71940853/Design-of-a-Tuned-Intake-Manifold-Engelman) This will explain a lot rather then me regurgitating it here.

The 3L intake has one thing over the SVT intake, and that is volume. The 3L intake really is more valuable for a forced induction application in my opinion, which is why I chose to use the Mondeo ST220 UIM for my build. To improve the flow characteristics I sent to Kennemetal to have them use their Extrude Hone process on it. As it sits the OEM 3L intake can only be optimized for a single RPM range, which is where it falls short from the SVT UIM.

Bottom-line you need to look at your application and figure out what RPM range you are planning to be in and chose accordingly.
 
Thanks Mike for the link to that paper. Being an engineer, I really enjoy reading technical papers on a topic I'm interested in. The page has been open on my PC for over a week, but I haven't had time to read it yet.
 
Lots of progress has been made on the car recently. All of the fab work is now complete. Front/rear suspension is all done, roll cage is complete, etc. The next step is to get the mock-up motor/trans out, get the good motor/trans in, wire the car, and fire it up.

I had decided we'd go full 3L using the Escape motor, but I'm having a little trouble sorting through the fuel stuff. Is there a single thread or small group of threads someone could link me to that shows the details of how to deal with the fuel rail?

I've seen lots of threads that talk about buying the NPG adapter. At $120, that's out since this is a Lemons build, we prefer to not spend so much of the budget on that.

I've seen mentioned a soldering method in a few places, but no details on exactly what's going on there. I've got both an 04 Taurus fuel rail and a 03 Escape rail that could be used for that if I knew what I was doing.

Fuel injectors. For a full 3L build, I should be using the 3L injectors right? Do they connect directly to the Contour harness? Or am I going to be doing some connector swapping?


I'm starting to think about the port-match setup again. Mostly because I've done that swap a few times now, and know what I'm doing with it. We'd prefer to do the full swap so that replacing an engine during a race will be simpler without having to do a second port-match as a backup.
 
you dont have to use the npg adapter. i you have access to a machine shop you can make one fairly easy, just takes some thinking, thats what i did. after that it was $12 at the part store to get a hose made. if you are using a returnless fuel pump you dont need the adapter. do you need to use a fuel cell in lemons? if so then you can run whatever fuel pump you want
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top