I picked up a crashed tII for cheap and it so happens that my GXL's engine is slowly kicking the bucket (bad coolant seals).

I know I have to swap the whole drivetrain (halfshafts, diff, driveshaft, tranny, engine) and also the ecu, boost sensor, idle lean/rich air-fuel adjuster, knock sensor box, and fuel pump. My question is do I have to change the wiring harness that goes behind the front bumper or am I cool with the one my GXL has?

Can I keep my n/a gauge cluster (speedo, tach, temp..), have it work properly, and just get an aftermarket boost gauge?

My GXL is an '87 and the TII is an '88. Both series4 cars.

Am I missing something? I did a search but most of the results are about adding a turbo to the n/a block. Thanks for reading this long post.

 

Only the last few months have had a lot of activity regarding turbo on N/A engine. Geez, there is TONS of stuff on the TII N/A conversion.
Do a search with "TII swap" !!

And I know the engine/ecu harness has to come out, but I don't know about the front bumper one you are talking about.

 

lucky bastard found a smashed TII. Man I wish I could find an 89+ TII for my vert swap.

Get the turbo gague pod off of ebay.

 

Souds like you're on the right track. You'll have the setup I'd like to have, a volt gauge and a pillar-mount boost gauge. I'm fairly certain you can just use the TII engine/harness/ECU/all sensors, and use the GXL dash harness.

Also, don't toss the injector resistor pack thats under the AFM (if your car is a pre-87.5), you can use it to put 680 or 720cc secondaries in.

 

u can keep the "front bumper" cpu wiring harness, just the ecu egine wiring section needs to be changed.

 

i have talked to people that have done the conversion you are wanting to do, and they said they wish they would have never done it...i thought about doing that myself and was told that it was too much work to put into, almost everything has to be changed, if thats something that you want to do, just remember that it will be a time consuming job......i have only talked to 3 people about it so get more inputs before you decide to do it

 

I'm pretty sure its time consuming but not hard. Its either swap all the TII parts into my gxl OR wait 6months to a year for me to get the $1,000+ for a rebuilt engine.

I swapped my engine, tranny, exhaust without knowing much about cars and I thought it was very easy. Car runs great with the exception of a small hole in the coolant seals.

I dont think this will be harder but I want to make sure I have all the parts needed and a list of things to swap.

If I can keep my n/a gauge cluster, then thats good news. I dont want to change it just to have a boost gauge thats not very accurate. I'd rather have an aftermaket one.

Thanks for the replys. If any of you have PERSONALLY done this, please give me some pointers or a link to a write up.

 

I just did this, not as hard as everyone says. I'm on a complete T2 drivetrain w/ 91 J-spec T2 on a '89 GXL. As far as wiring goes, you can use everything except for the engine harness and the ecu, the T2 ecu will plug into your dash harness without a problem, no other harness has to be changed. The conversion was fairly easy, and didn't take very long at all, until I found out the engine I put in had stuck side seals (go figure) Which explains why it always idled high. If you have some time and want to get dirty, then go for it. I'm running the original gauge cluster with an a-pillar boost and air fuel. See the picture below. (Sorry it's so big)

 

your car is/was an automatic?? Never seen an auto gauge cluster before hehe

 

Nor have I, what does "HOLD" do?

 

Yeah, im curious, does your volt gauge still work?

 

Yes, it still works, just look in the picture Yeah, it was an automatic, sadly. The hold is an option where you can drive the car around like it's a manual, it won't go into any other gear other than what you put it in.

 

There’s a Hold button on the shifter. It holds the gearbox in whatever gear is selected on the shifter, sort of turning it into a manual. So 1, 2 and D give you 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively, and you can’t select 4th. This is a common feature of Mazda auto gearboxes of the time.

 

Man...that was a sight for sore eyes. I fell as If I was In the dark all day and than suddenly exposed to a sharp beam of light, your Instrument cluster...automatic!!!