On with the engine. The sick patient. Extracting the engine, with accessories and wiring removed. Note the poor condition of the heads. Working late into the night. Here's a pic of my 2500 stall converter, and if you look closely, you can see the 1/8
yellow decal from Performance Automotive and Transmission Center. I have had a few minor problems with this transmission, but I don't know if it was the fault of the trans or the installer. The block was ordered new from Summit, and is unbored, meaning the engine is a 302, not a 306. The crank was part of a kit from PAW, and included crank, race-prepped rods, forged pistons, rings, gaskets, etc. 2/8
I actually got those grotesque heads from the junkyard for $20. I used them for a core for some ported E7's that had the smog ports removed. Note that our block still had some casting flash that had to be ground down (arrow) Don't forget your bolt boots. Pic of the pistons being installed. Action shot of me torquing down the mains. 3/8
Note the completed bottom end. Girdles are for women. background. Dad tapping in the cam dowel. You can see one of my new heads in the E303 being installed. Here's an interesting story. I wanted some roller rocker arms to replace the el cheapo factory pieces of stamped steel. I bought some Proform rockers since they were the least expensive; however, I didn't realize that they were stud mounted, and my heads were machined for pedestal mounted arms. If you look closely at the second pic (sorry for the blurriness), you can see the ball of the pushrod, which does not quite reach the cup of the rocker arm. This is because of the fact that the stud seat makes the arm sit higher, due to the fact that the pedestals should have been machined down. The price to machine them was $100 per head. See, everything's not like "Hot Rod TV", where they show a bunch of parts, and then everything's assembled after the commercial break. I wound up having to send them back and get a set from Steeda, which set us back about two days. Moral of the story: make sure you double check before you place an order. 4/8
Here's a pic of the Steeda rockers installed. Here's a comparison of the factory intake compared with the Trick Flow. Which one do you think will flow better? Here are some pics of some of the new parts going into the car. I painted those headers with a high-temp paint, and its actually still holding up fairly well. Note the rust and oxidation on the top header. Note the factory fan to the left. If you look closely, you can see that it is cracked in several places, and is in generally poor condition. I believe Ford issued a recall on some of these fans due to this cracking problem. The fan on the right is the new and improved fan that I got from PPI. Although they're probably the least sexy part of an engine, the motor mounts 5/8
are one of the most important parts of your Mustang. The ones shown in this pic are actually from a convertible. Note how the convertible mounts are fully enclosed, unlike the hatchback/coupe mounts equipped from the factory. My mounts had been abused from years of launches, and virtually crumbled once the engine was out. If you have a 5-speed and your shifter won't engage properly, or is rough, poor mounts may be the problem. Also, if you have a supercharged 'stang that keeps throwing belts, and you've tried everything else, this may help. Superchargers require the pulleys to be perfectly aligned, and broken mounts may cause your pulley alignment to be out of whack, causing belt slipping or throwing. Carb guys can sit back and laugh, because this was one of the biggest headaches of this project. I had to remove the throttle body/iac valve assembly from the factory intake manifold. Unfortunately, the rusted and corroded studs wouldn't allow the assembly to slide off. I soaked it in WD-40 and every other penetrating lubricant that AutoZone had to offer, but to no avail. I even tried to pry it off, but it was frozen on one side, and every time I pressed against it, I felt like either I was going to break the studs or the prybar. It wound up taking me a few hours, but I finally got it off without breaking anything. Problem solved, right? Wrong. The Trick Flow intake doesn't come with studs, and the instructions say to use the ones off the old manifold. That was out, since there was no way that those bolts were going to come off, but we finally managed to extract one of them. We took the thread measurement and went to the hardware store and bought one long stud. We measured it against the old one, and then cut it into four separate studs. After we put some threadlocker on then, they slid right in. Here are the new studs. The throttle body then slid right on with no problems. 6/8
Here's a pic of the completed short-block, you can see that I painted the block black and am using ARP head studs. Now, if you've ever taken apart a Ford, you know that unlike Chevy engines, you can't just go pick up a timing chain cover at your local parts counter, since they're made of aluminum. In order not to have to disassemble the old engine, I opted to get a used timing chain cover and bolts from the junkyard. We also bought a new double-roller timing chain from Ford Motorsport. Needless to say, it didn't come with any hardware. The arrow in this pic points to the case-hardened washer you'll need to use in order to install it. The Rosetta Stone was easier to find. I went back to the junkyard to get the one off the same engine that I got the timing chain cover from. No Dice. They had sold it already, and of course they weren't going to strip another engine for one washer. It's not like you can just stroll into your local hardware store and get one, either. I briefly considered taking the washer from the old engine, which I didn't want to do, but some kind of way my dad pulled some strings and used his washer connections to find one. I don't know where he got it from, but it still had mechanical fuel pump parts attached to it. Almost finished. Once we finished the engine, we still had a small problem. We assembled it on my dad's back porch, but we still had to get the engine down a set of steps. Obviously, we couldn't roll it down on the engine stand, so we had to come up with something. We extended the engine hoist as far as it could possibly go, connected it to the engine, and lifted the engine and engine stand together. If you look closely at the picture, you can see that the engine stand is actually 7/8
suspended in the air attached to the hoist. After we separated the engine and stand, we had access to the rear of the engine and installed the freeze plug and rear main seal. This is a shot of the engine finally in the car. I got that set of fuel injectors for $50 from Parkway Ford. They told me that since they're an authorized Saleen dealer, when they install superchargers, they take the factory ones off and replace them with 36 lb./hr units, and sell the 19 lb./hr. ones. I don't have a pic of the fully assembled engine because we ran into a few minor issues. Once we had the engine all buttoned up, the car cranked on the first try. However, the lifters wouldn't quiet down, and the car was shaking somewhat, and not because of the cam. The oil pressure read zero, so we shut it down, fearing a bad oil pump. My dad tried to prime it by hand, but that didn't work either. We drained the oil, and noticed that three of our small freeze plugs were in it. Apparently, they popped off, which is unusual, since our oil pressure shouldn't have been that high. We got some more, tried again, and those lasted about a minute before they popped off. We couldn't figure it out, so we partially disassembled the old engine, and noticed that they should have been pushed all the way in, not just tapped onto the surface as we had them before. Mission Accomplished. After setting the timing to 12 degrees BTDC, we did some minor tuning, and made a few shakedown test drives. 8/8