Looking to do an Acclaim swap (long)

[MerkXRTurbo]

Hey guys, I'm relatively new to turbo dodges, I have a little experience with them (I'm currently helping another friend with a turbo 1990 Dakota project and I'm just finishing the wiring on it, but we'll save that for a different thread), but not much. I'm not new with automotive in general or turbos (I've got a lot of experience with turbo Fords and I also own a 1998 Ram with a 12v Cummins).

Anyway, a friend of mine just had the engine in his '92 Acclaim die (nasty rod knock), and now we'd like to put a turbo engine in it. The car currently has TBI and an automatic transmission. We'd like to know the easiest route to go, since he needs to get the car back on the road relatively quickly.

First of all, we've got some friends who run a local junkyard, and they have a lot of turbo dodges there... everything from a couple Daytonas, to a handful of Lebarons, to several turbo vans (one of the vans donated its engine and harness to the Dakota ), and I think I even may have seen a Shadow too, so our options are relatively vast. We will initially use a TBI engine if we have to for quickness of installation, although we'd MUCH prefer to use a port injection engine (we can always upgrade later if TBI is our quickest route).

So lets get to the main question since putting the engine itself in will be the easy part. What wiring harness will plug into the bulk head with the least repinning? Is the Lebaron wiring harness the same or similar? I'm not afraid of a little soldering (I've done about 8 hours of it on the Dakota, after all), but as I stated before, time is an issue.

Second question (not as important). He would much prefer that the car have a manual transaxle, but we'll use the old automatic if we must. Is there a Dodge manual transaxle that will accept Acclaim axles (or if the Acclaim hubs will accept the axles that come with the tranny, then that is ok too)?

[envyyourethics]

For the wiring, take a pic of your bulk head(unplugged) and look for a similair match in the yard, this is what i did
the daytonas and lebarons seem to share alot as do the k cars(for the pm and lm setup at least) not to sure on the other ecu's

Do not try to use the old tbi auto on a turbo motor...it will burn up and slip much sooner then you think..there is a difference between the turbo and tbi autos(more clutches ect.)

[MerkXRTurbo]

Well, the swap has been completed (kinda). We found a 1990 Spirit Turbo that was a new addition to the junk yard inventory, and we pulled the engine/tranny combo from that. It's an automatic, but we'll swap for a 5 speed at a later date. The bulk head plugged into the body harness just like stock, so that made all this very easy.

So we fired it up, timed it, and it sounded pretty good, except for the blown head gasket that we found out it had. We pulled the head, and found that it was cracked between the valves in every cylinder... yes, 4 cracks. I assume this is a common weak point in the head??? Anyway, now we're going to pull the head off of his N/A engine (the casting numbers are all the same), port it, and slap it onto the turbo engine.

I know that turbo dodges can make big power without many mods, but I also know that speed density setups don't usually sense airflow changes very well (if at all). Is there something that makes these engines different than other speed density configurations, or is there something that we have to do to keep the tune the way it was meant to be?