302 into a sierra? (pipe dream)

Imo the conversion to have for the Sierra is the 24v Cossie lump with a set of 6 throttle bodies. Or if you are brave three twin webbers. That's different, easy to do, high value and makes the right noises. If you want performance then you can't do a lot better than the YB really.

I've looked into the 302 Sierra conversion for years, it used to be a dream of mine. But these days I am of the opinion that if you want a Ford V8 in a family car just buy a Mustang or Falcon, Ford did it for you.

On the surface the 302 conversion sounds a doddle, doesn't everything on the net, the reality is 'just making up a set of mounts' isn't so easy. Anyway these are my findings.

The XR8 had many many changes over the standard Sierra, as far as I know you can't just phone up Ford SA and have them send you some V8 engine mounts, I hope I'm wrong. The home of XR8 parts seems to be the domain of Jim DeBerry in the USA who claims to have been involved with the production of the XR8 and sells conversion kits for Merkurs over there. He emailed me a price list and the full conversion would buy you a tidy 3dr Cossie or a FoxBody Stang and turbo kit.

Magnum engineering have proved to be a bit of a dead loss for the Sierra V8 conversions, it seems these were big business back in the day but really now they aren't interested.

curse word (Capri Racing And Performance) might still be an option but I've yet to see any evidence they are.

A very nice bloke in the XROC named Pete (username Doh) went and did this conversion last year. I believe he was fortunate enough to catch wind of a 302 converted Sierra shell which he took the various mounts off, even with many kit parts he had to fabricate various things and have items made. I also believe he found the low bonnet of a Sierra a hindrance.

Something that really strikes me about this conversion is it seems that as cheap as 302's come up you need to throw money at them before they produce good power. It seems to me it's only worth doing if you have some special desire to keep a Sierra but really need a V8 in your life. Then I guess cost isn't a problem. Or if you do have the skilzors to go making up engine and gear box mounts and shortening props plus know where to find good cheap power upgrades then this is no less an option than converting any car to a V8.

the main reason to go for the ford v8 over a rover is baicly its easier and cheaper to tune (under£500 to get a good 300bhpout ofyou'd be talking at least double that to get the same from a rover) and long gone are the days when american v8's were hard to get hold of both ford and chevy are readily availble I would say more so than the rover is now days

Nightmares, when you refer to a 'cut out' from the Mustang, do you mean a clip? (I've always been confused by this term).

Was thinking of dropping a 289 or 302 in the Amazon if I had the money \ skills \ time. I know ghettoeddie wants to put a Rover V8 in his 121.

What about the Yamaha Taurus SHO V8? They developed the 4.4L Volvo XC90 from it, and ideally one of those in the 121 would be teH sex, but I imagine it'd be a logistical nightmare in the same way an SH) V8 would for you - so far as I remember it was transversely mounted as the Taurus was FWD.

There's a bloke from PC or PPC who's putting a 302 in a Cossie shell, I think some of the purists want him dead.

yeah thats basicaly it but the later engines do tend to be removed a little better now days you can get what is called a cutout thats actually complete with ecu and wiring ect there a few importers over here doing this now

Yea, I'm on the lookout for a 302, so, ya know, poke one my way if you got a cheapun. Don't mind rebuilding it either, full rebuild kit for ~400 quid, FTW!

I did get as far as buying a 302 / C4 back in 2001 and had every intention of fitting it to my then daily-driven Sapphire! Ended up buying a house and a Cavalier instead.

Anyway.... Magnum Engineering seem to have little interest in manufacturing the parts and the people I've spoken to who've used ME parts had to do a lot of work to fit said parts.

I can easily see the appeal of the 302 though and if you're keen I say do it! Probably best to accumulate ALL the parts first and get it well planned. I'm sure I have a copy of Fast Ford somewhere with a feature on the conversion (includes 302 and Rover fitting), I can try to find it if you like.

so would I! trying to convince the cousin it'd be more fun if he dumped his s13 for a sheddy sierra with V8 sleeper.

Here's a good example:

"The foundation for the test was a bone-stock 5.0L H.O. engine taken from a '91 Mustang. As delivered, 5.0 engines of this vintage had forged-aluminum pistons, a hydraulic-roller camshaft (see spec chart), a double-roller timing set, and stamped 1.6:1 nonadjustable rocker arms. Rated static compression runs around 9.0:1 with the stock cast-iron E7TE cylinder heads, which are equipped with puny 1.78/1.46-inch intake/exhaust valves and nominal 60cc chambers. With stock fuel-injection, this engine was factory rated at 225 hp at 4,200 rpm and 300 lb-ft of torque at 3,000.

Our test engine maintains most of those specs, with the only alterations being a quick bottle-brush hone to clean up the cylinder walls and a set of fresh rings and bearings. We baselined the freshened-up short-block with a pair of rebuilt but otherwise stock E7TE factory heads, the stock hydraulic-roller cam, stock tubular exhaust manifolds, and a Weiand Stealth dual-plane intake topped with a four-barrel carburetor. That combination developed 278 hp at 5,200 rpm and 315 lb-ft of torque at 4,100 on Westech Performance's SuperFlow 901 engine dyno."

(I think around 250BHP is a pretty average output for them, on standard heads. Of course, you can eek more out but it involves reworking the standard items and going to progressively more aggressive cams.

After that, or instead, you start getting into remanufacturered alloy heads with better flow and improving rods and pistons.)

"We bolted the AFR heads onto the short-block with a set of ARP head bolts and a new set of Fel-Pro head gaskets, and reinstalled the Weiand dual-plane along with a brand-new Road Demon Jr. 625-cfm carburetor (see sidebar). With 35 degrees of total ignition lead and 70 jets in the primary metering block, the little 302 produced a jaw-dropping 382 hp at 6,000 rpm and 368 lb-ft of torque at 4,200, a gain of 104 hp and 53 lb-ft solely from the heads and headers."

my old mk3 2door ran a 93HOblock with stock HO roller cam edelbrock rpm heads tubular headers and rpm inlet with 600cfm holley and made close to 400bhp only downside was the stock c4 box and cortina axle = bogging off the start line which quicly turned into lighting one tire once it came up on cam ;D great fun though and 13.01@113mph