Pulled the rest of the firewall out tonight.
Before.
Kind of before, but after some modification to get the motor out.
After.
This was followed by some rust discovery work with the abrasive disc on my grind. Not bad but there are some pieces that will need to be replaced. The car was red at one time.
After much hemming and hawing about suspension options - from custom 52" track width Mustang II, to an S10 blazer frame grafting job, I decided to just go with a Mustang II front end. It has a 55.5" track width which will push my wheels outboard by 1.75" per side. This something I can live with as cost climbs pretty rapidly when I start looking at custom bits.
And I ordered a soda blaster to make things easy on myself.
Picked up my front end this evening. Turns out the guy selling it runs a mustang junkyard. Seems to be in pretty good shape, but the first thing Mindy asked was, "How much did you pay for this rusty piece of poop?"
She has no vision.
But I paid $200 for it which is a deal. It has a power steering rack and one other key element that I was not aware of, but very pleased to discover. The length from inner frame rail to inner frame rail on the M II front end is 24" and that also happens to be the exact length of the inner frame rails on the Volvo! Color me stoked.
Yes, it needs a little love, new bushings, brakes, coilovers and so on, but it still beats a $1600 setup from Heidts.
I got 55 pounds of love today.
This thing is freaking heavy. I thought that the D17 crank was a handful, but it's got nothing on this 383 crank.
Pulled some of the Mustang II front end apart just now. After I removed the calipers, I was wailing on the rotors with my BFH (big friggin' hammer) and they would not budge. Who would have thought that the wheel bearings were inside the rotors and the spindle nuts had to come off first. Damn domestics. Makin' things complicated.
I decided to spend a little time working on the steering rack and some general organization. Aside from one tie rod end being a bit stiff, everything cleaned up really nice. I even ground down all the factory casting marks because I'm like that.
Before:
After.
And then I organized all my go-fast parts.
Did some more work today since the shipping company doesn't work on Saturdays and I couldn't go get my motor. I starting looking at the car and realized I needed to get the hood off and the glass out. So I did. And without breaking it!
After that was done, I pulled out the headliner and cleaned up all the mouse turds and shredded foam. Lord knows when that little bastard was in there, but I'm sure he contributed to aroma that the car had. No pics, but take my word for it, it's out.
Hmm.....still lots of daylight left and energy to burn.
I had a half a can of aircraft stripper left so I sloshed some on the passenger fender well. That poop burns kiddies. I have a couple scars on my arms from it and it's not something I care to repeat.
Slosh, slosh.
You can see the spot that I worked at with a chisel before putting the stripper on. Well, the stripper didn't make it much easier. This took me a good 2.5 hours. I still have the other side to do. Thank God I'm going to cut the rear fenders out when I tub it otherwise I'd only be a quarter of the way done.
Undercoating FTL.
Oh, I also degreased the passenger front spindle and lower A-arm. No pics of that though.
Motor = sourced.
My buddy has 4-bolt 350 from an '88 Chevy that we will use as the foundation for the build. Best of all it's going to cost me an engine hoist to get it from him. He wanted to give to me, but I don't roll like that.
Transmission = bought.
Just bought a WC T5 off a guy in Ohio on Ebay. Comes with a brand-new Centerforce DFX 6-puck sprung clutch, a new Hayes FW, a Hurst shifter and a couple other goodies. Scored for $750+shipping. Not bad at all. Hell, the clutch alone is worth that.
Tron gets the door prize for showing me those Diamond wheels. I'm just waiting on them to call me back and I'm going to order a set 15x10s for the rear and a set of 15x8s for the front, both in 4-inch back spacing. The pro/challenger series d-windows in chrome.
I just check-booked the heads this morning. Couldn't help it. After running down the cost of valves, valve springs, getting new seats cut, hot tank, fly cut, lifters and then all the work I would have needed to do on the ports, and I still had iron heads, it became more economical to just get a set of aluminum roller rocker heads with all that already done from Skip White. 2.02/1.6 valves with 210 runners and 64cc chambers all for just under $700 for the pair + shipping. He's shipping them out today. Wee!!!!
I also picked up a couple goodies yesterday. Spare bellhousing, a set of cast Chevy ramhorn manis for Donovan and an air cleaner for me. I'm not sure if it needs a taller filter yet or not. We'll see once it gets in the bay. But I threw some stuff on the plastic block just because I wanted to see it.
The motor is a greasy mess but I don't care. It's also a 2-bolt main, which is also OK because I'm not building a motor that is going to top 500 hp. If I was, I would have to change a lot more than just the block. Not on this build.
My daughter and I worked on the block a little bit tonight. Main thing we did was get it out of the truck and on the engine stand. This was followed by removing the AC bracket, crank pulley and damper, soaking everything in PB blaster and attempting to remove the PS pump and bracket. Turns out I need a bigass puller for that which I will pick up tomorrow.
For those that were wondering, this is why I am not re-building the stock motor. Size
does matter.
Then we unpacked my other goodies. WC T5 tranny with a B&M shifter....
Centerforce DFX 6-puck sprung clutch.....
.....plus the new FW, tranny mount, and another bellhousing:
That's that for now. We'll be taking the heads off tomorrow night and possibly pulling the rotating assembly. We'll see how much time I have after work.
And for some motivation, a jet truck and Grave Digger that ran the strip right before the final round of IHRA Nationals on Sunday. What a fun day! Frickin' Grave Digger ran a low 9-second pass, unbelievable!! And everyone likes jet trucks. Stick that in your global warming.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 850DegreesF  You're like the young upstart champion right now! In the first bout in the ring, you came out swinging & scored a vicious knockout! Holy s**t! You came on here strong as all hell! I will most certainly be watching this one! Man, dude! |
Well, I've got a few more rounds to go and as far as being young, well, it's all in my head!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tick That thing is going to be sick. Really interested to see how the rustang x-member works out. |
Should work out nicely, I just need to get the motor prepped for the machine shop and the front end will be next on the to-do list.
Work work work. Most of the motor is torn down. I bought my pulley jaws and attempted to get the PS pulley off after work yesterday.
Hmm......something seems to be stuck...
Although I run my garage like the Amish and shun air tools, I don't mind using a power tool every once in a while.
Bitch, you're coming off! Had to break out the BFH and a cold chisel as well but managed to remove it without scarring up the arbor too much.
Moving right along.
As soon as pulled the VC bolts out there was an awful smell, and I had a feeling what I was going to find. Change your fracking oil kiddies or this can happen. I would imagine this takes about 3 years of just topping off the crankcase but my God.
I hate people who don't take care of their cars.
Anywho, pulled the heads off and the pistons looked like **** of course.
Nothing too surprising there. Time to flip it over and work on the rotating assembly. I think it got motion sickness or dizzy or something because it puked on the engine diaper.
More coke anyone?
Then all the pistons magically fell out on to the floor. Oh wait. That only happens when you pay someone else to do the work for you. Not in my garage.
Surprisingly enough all of the rod bearings looked good and so did the crank journals. It's not really relevant since I'm replacing the crank, but it is nice to see despite the poor maintenance on the motor.
Back to the top and down the bores. Everything looks good still, no scoring or pitting. They are getting bored .030 over anyway, but again nice to see. Pulled the timing cover and timing gear and chain of as well. The cam seems to be stuck probably because of the lifters, but I'll worry about that tomorrow.
And that's it for yesterday's bout. Three of the flex plate bolts are rounded off so I will have cut those off tomorrow otherwise the crank would be out of the block already as well. Today is another day.
Much better. The shop didn't take out the front cam buttons but 95% of the sludge is gone. Looks almost like a new motor.
Time to get to work though. I chamfered out the oil return holes in the back of the block to help the oil get back down into the pan where it should be so it can cool, get filtered and then come back upstairs and do it's business.
After that I dressed the head surface with some 120 grit sandpaper....
....and got out my grinder and took off all the rough casting edges that were all over the block. This is just an example on the oil filter housing.
I still need to get one freeze plug out of the top of the block. It's bent my 1/4" extension so I drilled it out and will hit it with PB Blaster over the next couple days to get it ready for extraction. Once my rod balancer gets here I'll balance my rods (still need to buy a scale too), and take the rods and pistons to shop to get the pins pushed in, the block bored out, dipped again, cam bearing and press in freeze plugs installed and that will make it ready to completely assemble!
