The car:

'86 Turbo Coupe donor on the way home:

This is the kind of 28 year-old desert dirt and grime I had to contend with. It was still encrusted after
three motor bath + pressure washing sessions. I finally said "Enough!" and pulled the driveline.


After many hours of grueling scraping, degreasing, sand blasting, and painting, this is how the engine is shaping up:


I left the longblock alone and just tidied everything up. I wanted to port the head, intake, and exhaust manifold. This engine has 214k on it already, so I figure it's probably going to come out for a rebuild in the next 50k anyway. I also elected to not invest a bunch of work in the head if it's cracked all to heck...and 80-90% of 2.3T heads are.

I probably shouldn't have pulled the turbo and manifold off without replacing all the nuts and bolts. Time will tell if they relax and cause leaks.
I am going to be using a MegaSquirt-II v3.0 standalone EFI controller, which needs to have an intake air temp (IAT) sensor. My '86 engine had an IAT in the air meter, which I am not using. This meant poking a hole in the lower intake and mounting a sensor like an '87+ engine. Left hole is for the knock sensor, right one that's fuzzy is for the IAT.

'85.5-86 "square" EFI intakes like mine have the tall upper part. In '87 they were shortened to fit the TurboCoupe. At this point I am not willing to blow a big ugly hole in my stock hood or cut up the intake, so I have to make a low-profile upper intake plenum that faces forward. This is the start:

I have made some progress since taking these photos, but nothing very noteworthy. I'l probably relocate the alternator to where the 2.3t's A/C compressor was in front of the turbo so I have lots of room to deal with throttle body positioning. That is also where the 2.0's alternator is, so maybe a little wiring to do too.