Ford engine swap

[oxford]

Hi folk's,i have a Rover V8 engine in my 82 Esprit fitted bout 18 years ago,runs fine but i want to change it to a Ford Duratec 2 litre,ST 170,mainly due to lack of performance and super high road tax here in Cyprus,it's a good engine and sound's lovely but being standard power output and fuel consumption not great,anybody had any experience fitting the 2 litre Ford engine?,the car is running the Citroen gearbox,I'am an ex mechanic so not phased by any work involved,many thank's,Tim

[silverfrost]

Hi Tim,

To my knowledge,  No one has fitted the ford duratec to the early esprit sadly,   I think one member did it to the later stevens car with the renault gearbox and a few folks have done the ford v6/jaguar v6 engine conversions on the later cars also.  

 You will have no choice but to design a bespoke adaptor plate for the ford to citroen gearbox sadly,  It sounds like it may to a cheaper option time wise and money to take the hit with the road tax in cyprus and look into doing an EFI conversion and some decent cams etc and custom ecu ?   As i take it you are running on an old carb set up ? 

It may be better to work on what you have already got,  To be honest it would probably be better to pop a used lotus 2.0 twin cam back in, That would be my preference over the ford 2.0 duratec all day long imo  

Look forward to see what route you take,  

Regards Dan

 

[andydclements]

Hi, as with Dan I cannot say I'm aware of such a conversion.

I would suggest having a look at Punky's thread about fitting the V6 Duratec, if anything it will give an idea of size, layout etc as you'll be able to compare donor cars with both ST170 and V6 engines,  and check that ancillaries etc will fit OK.

The engine itself may have some over-hanging components, as it's transverse in the donor, that may alter what boot space you have in the Esprit, or not if the V8 conversion in yours already did away with the boot space. As to the conversion, the 170 seems a reasonable swap in terms of power, displacement etc, so if that fits nicely below a massive tax-band jump then I'd say it's a good choice, but if you could go bigger displacement without tax jumping then consider those V6 Duratec , Punky's was really nice.

[oxford]

HI Dan,thanks for reply,will continue on the Ford route for now,have done many transplants !,have retired now so time isn't an issue,thought bout the Lotus engine but with the heat and crap petrol here thought better of it!,any fabrication ,adaptor plates etc I can do,spares here for the Ford are easy to get as well,maybe go for an Audi box as well,Tim

[oxford]

Hi Andy,thank's for reply,food for thought!!!

[21gg]

I know of a Stevens that had a cosworth engine fitted but not an early car. They picked the Stevens at the time as the bell housing was available, but that was 15 + years ago!

[punky]

Hi Tim

As Andy and Dan said I did a V6 Duratec Conversion in my Stevens X180 which is still running great.

I think the original old build thread has chunks of info missing now though.

I believe a guy called Nigel Cowell put a Zetec in an S3 

[oxford]

Thanks all for your replies,think I will try the 2 litre route but will not rush into it,as retired have plenty time!,had even thought bout Audi TT engine,maybe one of the inline Audi boxe's would fit on? decisions decisions!!,

[silverfrost]

Good call Tim, 

A you could also look into the vw passat, audi A4 set ups,    Both inline engines and will already come with the transmissions attached and all gubbins required and most are 20v versions   Very easy for spares and i am sure some salvage breakers near you or if not in Europe can be shipped easily for decent shipping costs also. 

Good luck

[cbclotus]

Hi Tim .Good luck ...I know they are a new engine .Ford Eco boost .small and powerfull.Diffacult when you have had the engine in your car running well. For so long .Do you know when yours was converted .Mine was started in 1988 Mike

Sorry Tim just read 18 years ago ....Mike

[oxford]

Hi all,again many thank's for all replies,have just ordered an ST 170 engine complete with box,ecu,manifolds etc so in few weeks time will make a start,every body say's it's impossible to fit an engine and box in East/West not inline Lotus style, I have a spare chassis so will look into that!,if not possible then will connect to Citroen box,thank's again everybody,will keep you informed!!.Tim

[andydclements]

I'd say if you go for cross-wise engine layout you'd risk altering the handling of the car due to changing the weight distribution.

[oxford]

hi Andy,already thought of that,just when i have the Ford engine dangling from the hoist and the spare chassis kicking about would see out of interest what's involved,maybe a future project?,Thank's, Tim

[silverfrost]

I can guarantee that you will not get the engine/gearbox to fit transversely in the esprit chassis, unless you cut and widen the chassis.  The space is very tight and only designed for an inline engine/gearbox set up unless massive chassis modifactions are done,

And even if by a miracle you did manage to shoe horn the engine and box in, the driveshafts would have no where to go as the path would be blocked by the engine/chassis mounting plates. 

 Also to hubs would be miles away for you to join the driveshafts to unless you do a 911 and hang it off the back of the car, which would defeat the objective of centre of mass  

[oxford]

hi folk's,thank's for reply,will forget trying to fit the engine and box transversely!!,it was just a thought,anybody got any ideas where i can get a custom clutch plate made in UK?,want to try and use the 1st motion shaft [Rover V8] already in my box so a V8 clutch center in a Ford plate,had the 1st motion shaft made years ago,lovely job but can't remember where!,haven't got the engine yet but need to start making enquires,thanks Tim

[silverfrost]

Probably best to go to a local motor factors and hopefully find a friendy member of staff that will check the shops stock on the shelf and see if you can measure stuff up. 

 You may find that the rover friction plate is well suited to the ford depth and circumfrance wise to fit onto the ford flywheel, and that the ford pressure plate also tallies into it,   So best to check off the shelf stuff first by  cross matching and trialing different parts from rover/ford. etc  I would think the release bearing is going to be the pain in the backside as you are going to be using the lotus/citreon fork with a rover v8 mainshaft so it throws it out a bit, otherwise the lotus release bearing would of been usable possibly. 

May be worth looking into sourcing and fitting an orignal lotus mainshaft as not only does this make all the transmission side of things standard, which is a good starting point, it may open up better options of compatabilty by using the lotus friction plate and o.e spec release bearing that fingers crossed would slip inside the ford pressure plate.

    Much easier to miss match o.e than bespoke made clutches imo, just for simplicity as you are not going to be pushing major bhp and the cost of future replacement parts will be cheap and readily availible in years to come.  

It may be worth asking the owner who has recently purchased a lotus esprit s2 project off ebay, that already has a efi rover twin cam engine fitted,  The owner plans to swap the engine out and convert back to factory spec.  May be worth asking if he wishes to sell it ?, as it seems to suit your needs and the current owner i presume will not want it.  Shipping will not be that bad and could make a quick conversion which would be an ideal situation as it ticks all the boxes you are after  

[cbclotus]

Hi Tim .I was thinking the same as Danny ref k series engine .if I had my time again when my engine was out .Should have thought about a smaller engine I don't like the way it goes into the firewall .good luck Tim.Mike

[greentengu]

Just an FYI regarding the Focus ST170 engine. I’ve been a Focus owner since 2002 and have been on the Focus boards since around that time. For the Federal market, the ST170 was called the SVT Focus, and sported the Zetec engine, which was named the “Duratec” engine in European markets.

Thus, the Duratec engine is, in fact, a Zetec (the Zetec 2.0 appearing in both 130 and 170 horsepower guise), and remained that way until 2005, when Ford switched to a full Duratec package that featured Coil on Plug rather than separate Plugs/Coil pack, among other differences. 

If you want to get quite ambitious with the Zetec, there are still aftermarket suppliers such as FSWerks in California who sell full turbocharger kits (which probably wouldn’t even begin to fit in the Esprit). 

The Zetec can be a reliable and relatively low-stress engine, and is very accepting of modifications. For example, my original, 2002 130 hp Zetec sedan had a full PowerWorks Supercharger aftermarket kit installed in 2006. It’s been my daily driver for nearly 278,000 miles—180,000 of them with the installed supercharger kit. 

Anyway, if Mr. Cowell is the man who put the pictured Zetec in an Esprit he would surely be the person to contact for advice. Both the engines (“ordinary” 2.0 Zetec vs. ST170/SVT Duratec/Zetec) share similar dimensions and many, many parts—and most are still commonly available. 

Cheers, 

Scott