What to do with my two Marks

T

treysviii

Registered
I have a problem. I spent some good money on my car and it has treated me well. It has a pretty new engine (about 70,000 miles on it), a brand new tranny with a lifetime parts and labor warranty (that gets voided if I put it in a different car), and brand new suspension. With 180k on the car, it is starting to want more attention than I wanted to give it. It needs front end work, door handles, window motors, A/C buttons, etc.........

So I found a 96 with 113k on it for $500 with a blown motor and bought it with every intention of moving the motor, tranny and suspension out of my old car into the new one. Now I'm thinking about moving the headlights, A/C controls, door handles, window motors, complete interior, exhaust, rear bumper, etc. into the old car.

Somebody with some experience in this tell me which way makes more sense. I like the color of the 96 better and it has a sunroof. I'm just afraid of how many problems are going to come up in the motor swap.

Thanks!
 
Need more info - What year is your "old" - original Mark and how many miles on the vehicle? (Not just the engine/tranny) The '96 is an OBD II, so if your other one is OBD I, that is one big problem, but maybe no. You just have to use the '96 electronics. It wouldn't be too hard to remove - install the suspension on the '96 either. Easier, I think than removing everything off the '96 and installing on the older one.
 
Well...its going to suck to void the warranty for your trans, but it sounds like the 96 is in better shape all around or you wouldn't consider this.

Swapping the motor over will be easy because you just use ALL the sensors from the "old" engine and basically just swap over the "long block" as they call it. The transmission should be the same as far as electronics and stuff.

Suspension is all the same and pretty straight forward.

Bud, his old mark has 180K on it. :)
 
treysviii said:
I have a problem. I spent some good money on my car and it has treated me well. It has a pretty new engine (about 70,000 miles on it), a brand new tranny with a lifetime parts and labor warranty (that gets voided if I put it in a different car), and brand new suspension. With 180k on the car, it is starting to want more attention than I wanted to give it. It needs front end work, door handles, window motors, A/C buttons, etc.........

So I found a 96 with 113k on it for $500 with a blown motor and bought it with every intention of moving the motor, tranny and suspension out of my old car into the new one. Now I'm thinking about moving the headlights, A/C controls, door handles, window motors, complete interior, exhaust, rear bumper, etc. into the old car.

Somebody with some experience in this tell me which way makes more sense. I like the color of the 96 better and it has a sunroof. I'm just afraid of how many problems are going to come up in the motor swap.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Trey, I have a buddy out on Bastrop that would do this swap for you.

he got tiffs old car and did pretty much the same thing you are talking about with Tiffs car and a low mileage Junkyard car he bought.

Same guy did the engine and trans swap on my car.

He works for a very good price, as in he's "not a rapist".
 
OK, decision was made.

I won't get a sunroof, but that's OK I guess. Will be parting out the 96 in about a month. Lots of 94 parts, too. I'm moving the interior, headlights, wheels, whatever it takes to get my front end right, rear bumper, exhaust, door panels, window motors, door handles, etc to the 94. The bodies are about equally bad. The interior I can re-upholster as I get time since I don't have to pull the interior on my car until I'm ready. The main reason for the decision was that the fuse box on the white car is melted out and shorted around in several places. That scares me. Also, I can do all the work myself now, which gives me $600 I can spend getting other people to fix what I break in the process. Wish me luck!

The keeper:



The donor:

 
Awww....that poor white one :( No wonder its broken, someone put its legs on backwards!
 
One Question...

One Question...

How hard is it to just move the doors over to the other car?

All of the insides need to be moved anyways. I have someone that can help get them painted right, but he wants $$$ to move them.
 
The doors are pretty heavy, when I did my door hinges it was a two person job, in order to make sure you dont hurt the doors.
 
OK, now another question. I see from reading that the front bumper is free of the trim so I'll be moving that too. Is the rear end in the LSC really faster on the low end than the one that is in my car? I'll move it too if it is.
 
treysviii said:
OK, now another question. I see from reading that the front bumper is free of the trim so I'll be moving that too. Is the rear end in the LSC really faster on the low end than the one that is in my car? I'll move it too if it is.
Click to expand...

The difference between 308 and 327 is less than if you were crusing in OD/4th and turned the OD off... the RPM's wont change "that" much if that make sense.

We did a side by side comparison on the hiway between a stock geard 308 car and a second gen w/410's.
The 410 car with OD on was at the same RPM as the 308 car with the OD off.
(just adding a useless fact to this thread, sorry}
HAHA
 
Actually I found that the RPM with 4.10's was slightly lower than with 3.07's in 3rd gear. 3.07's in 3rd gear is closer to 4.30's in OD, IIRC.

Could be wrong though, I sold my mark a year ago now, and it was another year or so before that that it got the 4.10's.
 
We did it side by side with cruise control on..

the RPMs were so close there was no measureable difference.. maybe 50-100 RPM, hard to determine with no 100 RPM increments
 
I'm pretty sure they are 3.07's. :)

Did you do your side by side w/cruise on the freeway AFTER you calibrated the 4.10 cars' speedo? :laugh:
 
J said:
I'm pretty sure they are 3.07's. :)

Did you do your side by side w/cruise on the freeway AFTER you calibrated the 4.10 cars' speedo? :laugh:
Click to expand...

SInce we were side by side with the cruise control on...and my stock gears didn't require any calibration... we were talking about RPM's.. not speed.

Tachometers dont need calibration after a gear change.

RPM's being the KEY WORD HERE BRO
 
307-308..meh semantics.. not enough difference to worry about.

You couldn't tell the differnence between 307's and 308's in a side by side taste test.
 
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