Magnum Swap

I have a 74 Dart sport, factory 318, 3 speed on the floor AC car I will be building with my son for a daily driver. I was thinking about trying to swap in a 5.2 magnum, with aftermarket fuel injection, and upgrading to an A833 OD trans. I would like to keep the factory serpentine belt setup and all accessories including AC compressor, has anyone made a complete swap like this to upgrade to the newer accessories? What would the best donor vehicle be? Will I need to grab all the modern AC equipment, or can I Frankenstein it with the original controls, condenser, radiator etc?

On my Challenger I had to use the Van Power Steering pump bracket. The truck one put the power steering pump where the battery should be.

I will be using the Magnum compressor since I am using the complete magnum intake EFI etc. and it fits, but haven't finished the swap so I haven't made the hoses yet. I plan on running the 70 OEM condensor, evaporator etc with R134a. I will wire int he Magnum cutoff switches on the AC so it cuts out at high and low pressure.

Hope it is some help.

HotLumpy
head over to A-bodies only they have an entire thread dedicated to magnum swaps. very good info on this over there.

worth checking out

We did a 5.2 swap into an '84 Ramcharger. Both the donor and '84 were 2wd. We swapped everything: engine, transmission, and wiring.

I Magnum swapped my '68 Barracuda Convertible and used the stock serpentine belt accessory drive. I chose a 5.9 Magnum, because after doing all the work and expense to swap in the Magnum installing a diminutive 5.2 just didn't make sense to me.

Hotrod wiring has a very nice harness to use the factory JTEK ECM, which I had reflashed to take advantage of the various performance modifications were done. At first, I ran the Summit Headers and later upgrade to TTI's. I used a 1999 Dodge truck with no security for a manual trans model. I got that from Solo PCM's in Florida. I tried a few different tuners over the years, but ended up with Chris at Performance Injection Equipment. He's the best out there in my opinion.

I initially used the truck power steering bracket with a narrower battery and tray, but eventually switched over to the van bracket so get a higher CCA battery. My next phase of upgrades will require mounting the battery in the trunk to get more room in the engine compartment.

For the fuel system, I installed an in tank pump on the factory sending unit and use a surge tank mounted pump to feed the motor. I find this a much better solution than trying to use one of the poorly designed baffled or sumped tanks I see out there these days. This system will flow air-free fuel down to the last gallon of fuel in the tank.

As far as the A/C goes, I used a new Sanden Compressor plumbed to an after market 134-R condenser and a Gen 5 Evaporator. I had custom hoses made at a local shop.

long time ago, I swapped a 5.9 into my 65 coronet.
used the 5.9 out of a 2000 durango.
kept the serpentine belt.
But the van power steering bracket is a must, or you have to pull the battery to fill the ps resevoir.
if you take the whole engine out of the van, be aware the bracket is different that holds the a/c and alt as well.
I have parts from one so I could pull in the ps to just next to the battery tray.
but mixing and matching parts made me have to figure out what belt worked.
eventually I had to swap the idler pully as well to get a better routing on the belts, so you might be better off starting with a van motor. lol.

I found a custom hose shop to splice all the hoses.
power steering and a/c.
in my case I was using an aftermarket a/c setup so it didn't matter that much.

as for the efi, my car was the test mule car for the painless performance 5.9 perfect engine management system that they never made because the hemi's came out.
they sold me the parts to get it running.
I eventually switched to the mega squirt2, trying to save a buck over going to something like the sniper.

Thanks everybody, I am going to keep my eyes open for a donor van, sounds like the best route. I appreciate all the insight, used to seem impossible to swap out for a magnum, but now there’s a lot of folks with experience to share.

Wow, super clean engine bay! Nice job.

[quotethe] van power steering bracket is a must, or you have to pull the battery to fill the ps resevoir. [/quote]

I put a 5.2 Magnum from a Jeep Grand Cherokee into my Older CJ7 , And the power steering pump is in closer than the truck set up
So If you use that front brackets should work in an older car

I did a quick search and just bought a separate van power steering bracket. it bolted right up, but I had to buy a shorter belt.

while that is basically what I did, I noticed the shorter belt didn't have a very good wrap around a few pulleys.
I discovered that a 5.7 hemi idler is smaller and allows you to use a different longer belt to get better wrap.
the path is hard to visualize and I have a hard time putting it back on every time, but it turned out to be a stock 5.9 length, but for a weird application. don't remember off hand.
if it doesn't bug you , then it does work without going through that. but I remember hearing a chrip of belt here or there and decided I needed to fix it.

I was going to mention this but you beat me to it. I would keep everything on the magnum just get hoses to match everything up. Get a new receiver dryer for the 134a and do the conversion. Why not run a carb? Also if you find a magnum that is 1995 or older it will have the 46rh(won't need a computer to use it) you can install that also but you have to mod the trans bracket.

electronic connectors change between 97 to 98 and injectors are different too as I understand it.

also some year model exhaust is larger than others. the durango exhaust manifolds worked pretty well for me.