This section is about my departed that I lost in Hurricane Katrina and the engine build I did for it. When I acquired it in 1999, it was already equipped with the obligatory K&N, headers, pulleys, 3.73s, shift kit, H-Pipe, a chip, and some Flowmasters. The car was fast enough driving around town, but something wasn't right. The car was fairly loud, but not nearly as loud as I wanted it. I had a Flowtech Warlock cat-back system that I had intended to put on my T-Bird, but never did. I was seduced by Flowtech's advertising about how loud they were supposed to be. I had never tried their products before, although I had a friend with a 305 Monte SS with Flowtech's Terminator mufflers. Honestly, they sounded like popping popcorn when he drove by, lacking a smooth, even tone. But hey, that was a clapped-out 305 Monte, and I had a fire-breathing 302. Besides, these were two different products. Anyway, one Saturday I decided to jack up my car and bolt on the Warlocks. And did they suck. When capped, they were way too quiet, much quieter than the 3-chamber Flowmasters originally on the car. However, when uncorked, they were cop-attractingly loud. I could drown out a jet engine. Needless to say, they lasted less than a month before I swapped them for some non-delta Flow 40 series Flowmasters. Much better. The Mustang was my daily driver up until I acquired the truck. I always wanted to take it to the strip and run some numbers just to see what it she'd do, but I also didn't want to hammer it into submission and be forced to ride the bus to work. At the time, the car was approaching 150k miles, and I was seriously considering getting some Trick Flow heads or at least a new intake manifold. Then, it happened. During Fourth of July weekend of 2001, it was well over 90 degrees, and I got stuck in massive traffic congestion and absolutely could not move anywhere, and also couldn't park the car. Although it's equipped with a 3-core radiator, the needle on the temp gauge slowly started inching skyward. To complicate matters, the traffic was moving just enough to not let me stop the car in the middle of the street. I turned the heater on to try to cool the car down, but that increased the temperature inside the car to what was already an unbearable heat, so I turned it off. I must have been in that traffic for three hours when I was finally able to make it to the highway, but by then, the gauge was already brushing the red area. I pulled over to the shoulder area of the freeway for about a half-hour, which brought the gauge down about one-fourth. However, as soon as I started driving, it went back up, but I was close to home, so I just drove it all the way there. By the time I got home, the gauge was still right at the red, but it wasn't maxed out. The next day, I went for a drive to make sure that nothing was wrong, but unfortunately, the dreaded white smoke was present. However, it 1/5
only smoked when the engine got warm, or when I went over 3500 rpm. I drove it in this condition until it got so bad that I had lots of coolant in the oil. To this day, I don't know if it was just the head gasket, or a cracked head. Since I was caught off guard by having to rebuild my engine, I wasn't able to get exotic items like a 347 or aluminum heads. Instead I just concentrated on making the block and bottom end as strong as possible. My Current mod list: New Summit Racing Block TRW L2488 forged pistons Ported E7TEs with dual springs March Pulleys 3.73 Gears Trick Flow intake manifold ARP bolts 2500 stall converter A O Dominator Jr. from PA&TC Headers High-Volume oil pump E303 Cam Steeda 1.6 Rockers Blue silicone hoses New: Fan, motor mounts, injectors, lifters, water pump, everything else. 2/5
was pre-katrina The car as it The above and below are what I came home to in late 2005. 3/5
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