I scrapped the turbo six and am going ahead with the 5L for my XF. The motor I have is out of a '93 NC Fairlane. I'll be using the whole driveline from the flywheel backout of my '79 LTD(rebalanced flywheel, T5 box and 2.79:1 lsd diff).
NOW FOR THE BRAINTEASER!!
The ecu for this fairlane was part No. R93DT 12A650 BB (9/93 onwards). does anyone KNOW(fact) whether this has smartlock? Or could I use the earlier R91 DT 12A650 DA INSTEAD. Will I need to splice the engine bay loom into my XF GHIA dash and body loom(electronic cluster + luxo items)or is it just a matter of fitting the engine loom and ecu?
I asked these questions at my local ford dealer and all they could do was look up part No.s
Any help would be GREATLY APPRECIATED as this is all that is stalling the project.

I would look at using the whole NC wiring loom and dash, probably going to be far easier than stuffing around trying to get the XF dash working with the 5L (although it is probably possible).

As for the 3DBB EEC, not 100% sure if it has smartlock but I would bet it does as it is a late model high range EEC and all of them should have got smartlock. And yes you can use any EECIV V8 EEC to run the engine, just buy one and plug it in.

Thanks for that EDXR8.Do you know if the engine ecu controls any of the auxillaries(a/c,trip,speedo,cruise)?Or just the motor/fuel + sensors.

All EB's and NC's after October 92 had smartlock, so if your donor vehicle is a 9/93, then your ECU supports smartlock. You will need to get a V8 Manual ECU or make up a loom/circuit to satisfy the auto ECU's need for a neutral signal, as your XF with T5 will not have the 4sp auto loom that usually goes with using a T5 with an auto ECU, after a manual conversion. Your engine will not run correctly (ie idle) without tricking the ECU into thinking the auto box is in neutral.

Also the trip computer in your XF may not be compatible with the NC ECU as it uses input relating to fuel injector pulses, road speed and throttle openings to calculate fuel useage.

Also the cruise control actuator on your XF will need to be modified to suit the location and connection of the 5L throttle body.

I find it highly unlikely that the engine bay loom fromt he 5L will hook up with the dash loom of the XF without a fair bit of heart ache as they are using diiferent EEC versions and completely different dash electronics.

Good luck though!

Yep, EEC controls a/c, trip computer, speedo and auto trans (not a prob if you are running a manual). Fooling the auto EEC for use with a manual is no problems, just need to modify on wire (neutral input).

Done a couple of these over the years mongrl,

The Auto EEC will pose no problems as EDXR says. The EEC only talks to the trans controller for A/C strategy(ie trans shift conditions with A/C on and throttle learn for the trans controller....the EEC already knows about A/C through pin 10 and it communicates this to pin 18 on the trans controller...therefore idle is not affected) and Reverse gear torque truncation strategy.
The workshop manual states that with EOD failure the EEC would always pull spark because it assumes the worst. I've found this not to be the case if there was no VSS plus if you exceed a speed normally associatated with reverse it won't pull spark out either. I actually made a 555 timer based signal generator that will spit out a 25hz square wave for vehicles that wanted to still have a VSS input to the EEC. I have never actually fitted one because no VSS was an easy way to eliminate Dashpot delay on the throttle(something that most people don't like).
I can probably supply you a crafted binary with smartlock turned off if you wanted to use a TwEECer but you may as well use the early EEC instead.
It's pretty straight forward to modify the NC harness to work in the XF. Your van should have the oval shaped harness entry on the firewall. The NC harness will go straight in there.
Another option is to modfiy an XF EFI harness to fit the V8(did a ZL like this) or use a Mustang 5.0 harness(or new Ford racing street rod harness) which does not have any other stuff not related to engine control in it. Having said that I would use the latest harness available(the Ford racing harness is excellent value too)...some older harnesses are rather britlle now days.

Pete.

The instrument cluster isn't a problem at all, get hold of electrical schematics for the XF and NC, you can still use the original loom after modifying length etc and the dash will still work.

If you have a complete Ghia dash fitted and it has a trip computer, from memory it needs just one data wire from the ECU, I am unsure if the V8 EECIV ecu will have the same data wire or be compatible.

Smartlock will be a bigger problem for you, you could get an earlier ECU or find a bypass adaptor (search the forum, harder than you would think), you could also just fit smart lock, wire in a BEM (limited features of course ), fit the smartlock ignition lock from a XG/XH and Bob's your uncle, well that is a guess anyway.