1966 Mustang Fastback Restomod: Aiming for endurance

Yes it's been a while since I last posted but only because plenty has been happening - both in life generally and with the car.

The quick summary on the car is that by attending a few race events and longer tours, i have found some weak points that need fixing. And this all stems from the power output im getting that puts pressure on everything else.

In my case it is not the driveline thankfully, but primarily my brakes and cooling system.

Oh and I got the chance to upgrade my stock block to a Ford Motorsport version (for a good price), so i did that too. Photos below.

Now the final catalyst to do these upgrades was a session at Sandown where my brakes simply disappeared after 2 laps. And thats scary at about 250kmph turning into corner 1.

So firstly the new block. I got the standard bore version to use my existing pistons and just refreshed the rings and bearings. I also hand reamed the lifter bores again for my bigger 0.937 bushed lifters. Here is how it arrived and it's a stout piece.

And now to bush the lifter bores.

Finally I bore dial-gauge measured the mains and they were spot on.

From this point I did a test fit of all spinning parts (for bearing clearances) before sending the block off for machining to match my piston size and I also went for roller cam bearings.... why? Because my stock cam bearings were always trashed when doing an inspection. But i do have 700+ lbs pressure over the nose of the cam slamming into them...

Anyway, with the engine out i fixed a bunch of others things too. First up I added bearings and fully rollerised my under-dash pedal assembly. This took out a small amount of slop in the pedal axle rod and stiffened it up generally.

Next I had to modify the sides of the sump to clear each wider 4-bolt main cap and also the rear of the sump seeing the new rear mains are much thicker and give only a small slot to allow bearing oil drain to the sump. See the photo below.

This meant precise mocking up of the rear sump face to clear everything and also follow the main cap gasket contour.

I ran a strip of 2mm thick aluminium along the cap gasket face to imitate a seal and then welded my sump "half moon" opening to sit on this.

Ah and just add a drama, I found my rear mainseal leaked like a sieve... which turned out to be that the two piece seals come oversize by default and now need to be filed back to size..wtf! Why doesn't the packaging mention this? When I did check fitment, each half protruded 60 thou above the cap/block faces, which warped them on assembly and so leaked. They now protrude 10 thou each on assembly and now no problems.

Once assembled, i thought it wise to run the motor for 20 mins or so on a stand to ensure all was in order and leak free. Which it was.

You can see i used the cars fuel system/pumps for this so there were wires and lines all over the place. But better to find issues here than with the motor in the car....

And now the brakes.... I swapped out the old 280mm solid rotor with a hanbrake lever combined within the single pot caliper, for 315mm vented rotors, 4 pot Wilwood calipers and the separate handbrake sitting in the rotor hat. I grabbed a McDonald Bros unit for this and could not be happier. Here is a unit below: