putting motor and electronics into an 89 body?

[7Matt-GE]

Hey Guys,




Thought id ask the question since it doesn't seem to appear anywhere (or I'm just extremely retarded at searching) if i were to say slap an 87 motor and GTE electronics into an 89 body how difficult would it be electronics wise? would i have to purchase a bunch of different plugs? would the dash work? what kind of difficulties would i be getting myself into if i were to do this? Not to say I'm discouraged but more of a curious question.



Thanks for your input!



- Matt

 

[hvyman]

You'd have to rewire it. It's a pain.

Better off just finding a 89 harness and Ecu that is pnp.

 

[IBoughtASupra]

You'd have to rewire it. It's a pain.

Better off just finding a 89 harness and Ecu that is pnp.

+1

Well said.

 

[7Matt-GE]

89+ will work with an 87 block? would anything need to be changed in the process?

 

[GC89]

Coolant sensors or the connectors that's it, 88 motor 89 harness/ecu here.

 

[Dan_Gyoba]

I have an '87T harness and ECU in an '89 chassis.

It's not that bad, really. I think it's addressed in a FAQ somewhere.

There's one pin that goes to the ECU for the idle-up for headlights that needs to be moved, or else your headlights will stay on all the time. I just cut the wire and re-wired from the integration relay to the headlight relays, but that's not really the best solution.

The ABS connector is different, but it's not difficult to figure out which wires are supposed to go where, and my ABS works just fine. I made an adapter with the '87 chassis side connector and the '89 ECU side connector, but it's a 3 wire harness, it's not like I couldn't have made one up with a cheap trailer connector harness.

My car was NA and I swapped the turbo into it, so the tach needed to be fixed, but the rest of the dash was fine without modification. Changed the tach driver box and the tach works. (It reads low, but it works. My rev limiter kicks in at an indicated 5200 RPM or so, so I keep it below an indicated 5000.)

No problems with anything else, including cruise (Though the cruise control cannot take the car into boost)

 

[Backlash2032]

If you have an early 89 with a yellow plug ecu it *might* be plug and play. You're better off just selling your harness and ecu and getting the correct one for your car

Sent from my HTC Rezound using Tapatalk 2

 

[Dan_Gyoba]

My car is an early '89 (Square motor mounts, production 10/88), but had grey plugs. The yellow connectors plugged in, and with the exceptions of the ABS connector and the one pin to the headlight relay, it was plug 'n play. No other problems.

I've been told that the electronics did not change at all for '89, even after the motor mounts and crossmember changed, it was still the same ECU and harness.

Now, crossing between pre and post '90... Then it's way easier to just get a harness/ECU that fits the car.