with an earlier engine bay. In some applications, the front suspension determines how the engine is mounted in the engine bay, and items such as superchargers may force the position of the engine toward the firewall in early first-generation Mustangs. Items such as a brake booster can interfere with the wider DOHC heads. The alternator location on some engines is down low and can conflict with the frame rails of some vehicles. In this chapter I discuss the items you need to address to physically make the modular engine fit in the engine bay.
Your engine must fit your car, and so I’m going to talk about the things you need to do to fit it in the engine compartment. The modular engine is generally wider and taller than traditional pushrod engines, so fitting the engine in some chassis can be a challenge. You may need to make changes to your suspension system to fit the engine in your project. Items such as oil pans, steering systems, and braking systems can also interfere with the engine mounting. This section may be covered in detail in other chapters, but you need to consider these items before you get the engine in the engine bay.
A front view showing the serpentine belt system on the modular engine. The 1970 Boss 302 engine isn’t dressed out but you can tell accessory fitting on the modular engine needs to be considered. This supercharged engine has a single belt running everything; some supercharged applications use a separate belt to run the supercharger, making the front end even longer.
Some of the more common dimensions and weights of the modular engine compared to the earlier pushrod Ford V-8s. These numbers vary greatly, depending on options and materials.
One of the reasons people avoid modular conversions is the belief that the engines are much heavier than traditional pushrod engines because they are bigger in some dimensions. Weights and dimensions vary depending on engine size, accessories, and component material. Items such as aluminum versus iron blocks and superchargers lead to great variability. The above chart is provided as a comparison of the 4.6 and Coyote engines to traditional pushrod engines.
Most small performance cars are unibody construction or constructed with a unitized frame, and this means the sheet-metal panels of the body are welded together to form a functional frame and the structural rigidity of the vehicle. Trucks, full-size vehicles, and most older GM and Chrysler products gain most of their body strength from a traditional ladder frame, and the body simply mounts on top of the frame. It is much easier to modify a full-frame car than a unibody because cutting away the structural metal (like a shock tower) severely affects the integrity of the body strength.
In general, Ford used frames on midsize and larger vehicles and trucks, and these cars had fairly large engine compartments, so the physical dimensions of the modular engine don’t come into play as severely as with the smaller cars. Vehicles such as Mustangs, Fairlanes, Falcons, Mavericks, and later T-birds used a unibody construction, so making room in the engine bay may be necessary. The biggest hurdle to getting the modular engine in these cars is the bulging shock towers. They severely limit the ability to install these engines. Most of these vehicles must be modified to accept an entirely different suspension.
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