2.3 turbo swap

[patch79]

Hello, since my 17 turbo went up in flames and i got a 340dl ive been wanting more power, ive slowly been collecting parts and now think i have everything i need, A B239et block, supposedly this is the strong one? a 531 head, a jetronic ecu loom and all the bits, ive near enough unpicked the loom so i can make sense of it. I know everyone will say it'd make more sense to do the swap to a 360, but i work in a scrapyard so ive stripped a dead 360 of its box, and all the rest of the running gear, engine mounts and everything i thought was useful.
Now just before i pull my car to bits, has anyone much experience of doing this swap? is there any obvious things that i might miss that you could warn me of? Ive read that the jetronic system should be able to handle the boost being turned up a bit, the artical i read claimed about 300bhp should be possible on the standard ecu, is there much truth in this?
Has anyone sorted anyway of stopping the rear axel tramping once you get some proper power going through it? I'm convinced my rear axel moves about since i put 3 inch lowering blocks in it, i dont want this happening when the car actually goes fast.
Any information would really help, i'm trying to not have the car of the road for to long! thanks.
I will remember the head shields around the master cylinder this time! I dont think i could handle watching another load of work going up in flames

[SteveP]

Sounds like a nice load of kit The B230ET isn't the strong one though, the ET only has 9mm rods... compared to the B230FK or B230FT which have 13mm rods and oil squirters. However the Motronic wiring I'd imagine to be pretty straighforward for the ET and the 531 head and 'A' cam are pretty good. Don't get me wrong, the B230ET is strong but it's not the strongest of redblocks and if you're talking about 300bhp I'd go for an FK/FT block.

I think you will be pretty limited with the Motronic ECU, it's very basic and I'm pretty sure it's not even lambda controlled. You can get chips for these to give about 230bhp IIRC... but I'm unsure of the accuracy of the fuelling with this... both of the Motronic modified 740's I know of quite quickly reached the limitations of this fuelling system and upgraded... eg. Megasquirt.

[patch79]

Thanks for the reply, just to check, are you totally sure the et's are the 9mm con rods? I'd read the et was 13mm, there was 3 different versions of the ft, the first 2 having 9mm rods and the third having 13mm and the oil spray you talked about. Also I've got jetronic injection, I stripped an early 740 for the engine, a late 940 for all the injection senders and wiring and a 360 for everything else I'll need. I'm maybe being a bit hopeful that this will all run together but I'll give it a go!

[SteveP]

As far as I've ever seen... both on Turbobricks and from the UK Turbobrick guys with 740's their B230ET's all had 9mm rods... You're right about being different versions of the FT, I forgot about that... I think you'd want one from late 1994 ish onwards to be sure.

Ahh, using the 940 LH 2.4 system will be much better.. it's pretty adaptable and chips available for these too, can't see it being a problem at all for 300bhp. I reckon you'll be best off keeping the head and cam from the B230ET and finding a late B230FT/FK bottom end to match it to. If you didn't know already the B230FK is just a low pressure turbo version of the FT - the hardware itself is the same.

[Chris_C]

I'm convinced my rear axel moves about since i put 3 inch lowering blocks in it, i dont want this happening when the car actually goes fast.

Mine moves about without lowering blocks. Mainly forward and back on the LHS without the trampbar

[patch79]

yeah thats exactly what mine does, i always blamed my welded diff, i wont be welding the new one, i could see it ending in tears backwards through a wall with some proper power. Im not that up on five linking or any crack to do with rwd cars, ive always been into vws and audis, so any information would be useful!

[Chris_C]

My plan is either to mirror the leaf bracket on the other side of the car so there is a second anti tramp pickup and weld in a strengthening piece to the chassis rail like the RHS, or otherwise to get a rally design 4 link kit on the de-dion ( I think this is what Adams done, though he also has a panhard or maybe a watts too and I've been asleep since I last looked...)

It's stopping the axle "rolling up" the leaf thats mainly required, then after that it's stopping it escaping out the side!

[patch79]

yeah id been thinking along those lines, i bent my axel a while ago, snow sideways and kurbs! so since i replaced it ive got the old one sat complete with the rod, i dont think it'd be to hard to do. considering how little ive spent on the car, it wouldn't be right to go out and spend a fourtune on a four or five link set up, i'm wanting to build it on a budget. having a weekend job in the scrapy helps, you wouldnt belive how little all the engines and parts ive got for this swap have cost me!