Full disclosure: it’s after one in the morning and I’m wide awake listening to the wind attempt to rip the roof off of my house. I’ve been looking over so many ideas for the one really bad idea parked on the concrete pad that right about now I’m able to recite Mustang info about as well as I could recite Imperial info. That’s not good. I’m working out early details for the engine swap, trying to get my ducks in a row, and just when I think I’ve got a grasp on what I want to do…I hear this thing.
This isn’t the first Mustang (or Capri, as they’ll be quick to point out) that I know is V-10 swapped. That honor goes to Brett Behrens’ 1978 Mustang II that’s known as “Mustang Evolution”. Or, rather, was known…shortly after I conned Brian into naming it his pick for the Gran Turismo Awards in 2015 and it’s workout at the Optima Ultimate Street Car shortly after SEMA that year, Behrens and the M-deuce were involved in a rollover wreck. The Mustang was in a trailer and didn’t get too banged up, but it got rattled enough and we haven’t seen much of it since.
This Fox Capri is running the same 6.8L V-10 that was in the Mustang II, and it’s the same one that was probably powering the last airport shuttle you rode in. Unlike Dodge’s V-10, there wasn’t a performance model of the 6.8L unit (unless you count this particular Mustang mule) so if you needed a Super Duty to haul some dirt around, you were good, but if you wanted grunt, you stuck with Mod motors. What I’m digging about this engine is that from inside the car, it sounds like a V8 with a bit more beef to the exhaust note. There’s a lot of win in this car, even if it’s a rough early version that’s still in tuning!
Just one question. Was the “6.8L V-10 that was in the Mustang II” fueled with unicorn urine?
I would have liked to see the Mustang II version. These Fox bodies have plenty of room under the hood, both in length and width, to swap in just about anything (there are 429/460 kits that are bolt in), but the Mustang II not so much!
In it’s last few years, Ford did offer a 255/302 in the Mustang II but they had to move the radiator support forward and design a smaller diameter bellhousing to get the tiny Windsor to fit – I’ll bet the V-10 swap took a bit of fabrication!
The mule with the v10 was based off of a 4.6 4v with 2 additional cylinders and was not a variant of the 6.8l which is based on 5.4 2v and 3v architecture.
I was wanting to do a 3v 6.8 in my fox, but they were hard to get ahold of at the time
I have thought about this swap for years. What was the factory horsepower rating on the triton v10? What transmission are you using?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtJN3hWc2A0
don’t forget about the update