It's time to make a thread for my 245 Betsy. I bought her after she was stranded at a mechanics suffering from a blown head gasket. Changed the head gasket and had some good adventures but she always suffered from a bit of overheating going up big hills. I decided to try a process of elimination and swapped the B23 for a B230, but when that didn't solve the problem, it left the radiator as the remaining cause. With a radiator from a 144 thrown in it was much better, but then as Tassie winter set in I found she wouldn't run in the rain. The most likely cause for this was my Megasquirt conversion so when the rego came up I decided to let it run out. She still helped out as I built my new shed by being a mobile storage unit and occasional work platform.
Once the shed was built and the seized front brakes finally annoyed me enough, she moved into the shed and sat for a couple of years with the engine out and a whiteblock sat in the hole. I was originally planning to put it in my 144, but decided the wagon was a more practical vehicle. Being able to throw a mountain bike in the back without having to remove the wheels was a big incentive.
She sat there like that for another year or so till covid hit and I finally decided to get her going. I already had a B5234T that I'd bought a few years prior, as well as a Commodore T5 gearbox I rebuilt and converted over to Mustang spec. With all the time I spent looking at the whiteblock in the engine bay I decided I liked the upright look better. This meant modifying the adapter plate I'd bought to suit the rotated bolt pattern. A bit of welding and some drilling and tapping and things lined up.
Next challenge was modifying the 960 sump. This was shortened and the bottom chopped off and rotated to suit the upright engine, as was the oil pickup. After a bit of searching I settled on a ClassicSwede lightweight flywheel and Sachs 707 pressure plate. This was combined with a Ram clutches disk (RAM-375) and Tilton hydraulic throwout bearing from Summit.I had an ebay GT2871 turbo sitting on the shelf, so made a log manifold to suit. A radiator from Summit and a Mishimoto intercooler got mounted up the front with an 850 thermofan on a shroud that took way longer to make than I planned and looked pretty average. It's better now it's painted black and seems to work well.
The intercooler pipework fitted through the holes already in the front so no cutting required. Everything else on the swap bolts up to existing mounts wherever possible. The only real additions are a few rivnuts in various locations.
Wiring and ECU were the next step. It's running a Haltech 2500 with an expansion module to get all the analog inputs I wanted. Harness construction commenced after many hours of thinking and writing up a big spreadsheet of connector pinouts.
Suspension was refreshed with polyurethane bushes all around, Bilstein HD shocks, new tie rods and ball joints. New brake calipers, rotors, pads, booster and master cylinder got the brakes back up to scratch.
A TORQ Locker diff centre went in too. That's probably the biggest mistake in the build so far. It works great, but is a complete embarrassment anywhere people are about with it's clicking and clunking. A proper LSD is certainly on the upgrade list soon, but I did want the ability to maintain drive with one wheel in the air, so might have to suck it up for a while.
The finished product.
Once she was up and running I gave it a bit of a shakedown driving carefully on the road for a few hundred kms. They added up quick as I ended up running out of fuel one night. The instrument cluster went back in the next day! Then it was off to the dyno, where she was tuned on a couple of boost settings. It ended up choking fairly quickly, which I now think was down to the flow divider I put in the manifold. That's been largely ground out now, but I haven't been back to the dyno yet to confirm.
It makes enough power to keep me happy at the moment. I might send it back soon to see if removing the flow divider has helped, and get an E85 tune so I can do my bit to reduce fossil fuel use.
We competed in the Domain Hillclimb in Hobart and the Tas Khanacross championship and had a great time. Not the fastest, but lots of fun, and definitely the most practical, not everyone can sleep in their race car.