Progress Photos 2019 - Part 1

As promised, photos. This time with minimum words...…. Apologies if any photos are repeats.
First up, my fuses residing in the glove box. They swivel out for access (on a chopped up nylon cutting board) and rotate back in to hide away nicely.

And now the instrument cluster as you view it from the driver seat. It nicely fits inside the radius of the steering wheel. No swinging your head left to right to "look around your hands" to see the outer gauges like you need to do on the standard early Mustang gauge cluster.

This next photo shows a custom crank scraper i built to peel oil off the rods/crank. It seems to work nicely and gives about a 3mm gap to all rotating parts. The extra angled strip you can see that I've added directs windage/oil down the side of the sump and simply "away" from the crank. The sump uses windage in the shallow middle section to drive oil to the rear via those angled baffles, while perforated/vented plates (not shown) that cover each end of the sump keep oil down near the pickups. The pickups themselves are slots cut into the bottom of pickup tubes at each end of the sump. You can the curved front pickup tube below. The natural angle of the engine in the engine bay means oil accumulates at the rear of the "humps" in the sump - so this is where the two pickups are, You can also see some plates that i've added (that sit about an inch above the pickup tubes that (in theory) stop oil rising back up to the crank on acceleration. This combo works a treat now, no oil starvation evident at all, no matter how the car is flung around.

To reduce noise I used these standard silencer cones but modified them to make sure they stayed centred in the 3" pipes.

Ah! Now some relatively recent photos of the car coming together. It's looking ok.

Now the photos below show an annoying problem i found that was tricky to diagnose and fix. The front of the motor had an oil leak.....

If you look closely at the photo below, you may notice that the upper part (the upper lip) on the camshaft seal (which with the motor in this photo sitting upside-down, is in fact the bottom of the bottom hole), is damaged.

Why? Because the whole front cover was mounting itself about 3mm too low on the front of the block. This "crimped up" the cam and crank seals along their top edge, plus causing a gap for each at their bottom edge. Oil just..... well.... leaked out and got flung about by the spinning crank & external cam drive. It was only a dribble leak, but very annoying. The fix was simple enough. Elongate each bolt mounting hole in the timing cover downwards by 3mm, clean everything up, then use new cam-drive and harmonic balancer seals to "center" the front timing cover before tightening up the bolts to bolt it back in place in the correct position. Not a drop of oil leaks now - much better. 

Oh - and I have built a cold air intake now to draw air in thru the '67 hood scoops. See an "in progress" photo below. That little inner frame now contains the foam air filters. The outer edges of the box you see below and top of the filter frame (not yet built in this photo) seal against the underside of the hood so air can only enter via the hood scoops, then flow around the front and sides of the inner "filter frame", then pass through the filters to enter the central area where the 8 trumpets sit.

Below was a brake fix (an upgrade) I made by swapping out the old 6" diameter single diaphragm booster for an 8" twin diaphragm unit. The mechanical roller cam just didn't have enough vacuum for the 6" diaphragm in stop/start traffic for my liking. I also changed the pedal to pushrod ratio to better balance the entire setup. Brakes work much better now.

And now for the 4-Link setup.....

Only after the chassis got its "gold star pass" on the chassis torsion test did my vehicle engineer say... "just make it a 4-Link". So I did and here are the photos of the results.

In the photos above and below, the RRS rear torque arm is still attached to the nose of the diff. This was removed before final installation to clean things up and give a bunch of room back in the driveshaft tunnel.
Oh - and the teeny weeny rear disks you see here will be replaced with much bigger units...… These just came with the floating hub kit. I didn't realise they would be so small at the time.

Once the chassis and diff "link mounts" were tacked in and mocked up to ensure I had lots of adjustment options, I bolstered the frame-rail mounting points to spread load over a much larger area of the chassis. The photos speak for themselves I hope. All steel plate and 35mm right-angle was 3mm thick.

I can't tell you the difference the 4-link has made over the 3 link as I simply didn't get to drive it enough to be able to compare. All I know is the new 4-Link works just fine and the car seems to hook up ok. Well - depending on your right foot that is, as the engine simply overwhelmes street tyres if you give it some stick (as you can imagine).

Also, here is how I made the lower control arms on the front suspension adjustable...… See below.
Years ago I cut off the inner ends of the original control arms and welded in two lock nuts to give me thread for screwing in a heim-joint. But I always worried in the back of my mind that I never had enough thread. So rather than hack into these, I bought two new after-market control lower arms and modified them. As you can see I used some spare chrome-moly tube I had left over from the 4 links, and welded these in. So now - no matter how far you screw in the heim joints - they only engage more and more thread. Much more comforting.

Boxing these arms makes them much much stronger too.

Now for the front valence...…
As you can see, I have welded the stone-tray and valence together into a single unit and this includes a cols air scoop for the lower half of the radiator and engine oil cooler. But as you can see, the fit to the front fenders was initially awful. The photos below this miss-alignment and then resultant fix for each side. First the Australian passenger side.

And now the drivers side. Had to fix some big gaps here!

As I write this I am just mounting the front bumper with its custom mounts after cutting/shutting the bumper to tuck it in, in a much more flush manner.
More photos to come as well, seeing I am about to get the car thru engineering tests and rego'.
Stay tuned.

Upholstery, Gauges, Roofliner, Brakes, Handbrake - a total grab-bag!

Ok - first up, I have a few requests for info on my rear "lap sash" seat belts. That's great but I can't seem to reply to any of these as the addresses come up "unknown".
Bottom line.... no one makes them so I fabricated them myself. Try sending to 520bbfmustang@gmail.com and hopefully your address comes thru for a reply... I haven't tested that address yet, but my profile says I have it..... I will supply another address if that ends up a dud.
The blog entries pretty much sum up the seat belt anchor point "build" though, but I may have some more photos to share if you email again.

Secondly, the current status as of May 2019 is that I am at the very last stumbling block to get this car registered. And you wont believe what it is.... my wipers weren't wiping faster than the 42 wipes per minute that is the rule. Wtf! I did not know that rule existed, but that is all fixed now and I just need time to get the car back to the engineer/tester.

Apart from that, the following text has been sitting around for nearly a year, not being published only as I can't find the time to load up photos (plus I forgot my login for 6 months - oops). So here is that text - i'd forgotten some of these frustrations....

To get the car registered I need to complete the interior (console and dash) to be able to install the windscreen. So it is a bit like playing tetris - I need the wiring loom secured before I mount the gauges/switches, then I dummy them in their panels before pulling them all out again to trim them in leather, and I have to do all this before trimming the dash, and the dash has to go in before the front windscreen can finally go in because I can't get to the front set of dash securing screws with the windscreen installed - and on it goes.......

But thankfully I have been able to start the car and drive short distances. Problem areas that these excursions have uncovered so far (that I have subsequently fixed) have been:

• Fuel pump overheating (that I suspect was due to an insufficient Earth connection) into a dead short. Thank god I ran two pumps otherwise I was stranded.
• Not installing fuses on every possible device that has a direct 12v power supply (eg - from the relay to the above EFI pumps!)
• Dry Sump return lines "internally delaminating" such that the inner liner collapsed (blocking flow) yet from the outside the pipes looks fine. 
• Coolant leaks (just an annoying weep) from my custom front-dress on the engine (eg, from between the alloy timing cover (that runs the belt drive) to the custom coolant inlet pipe flanges.
• Leaky "engine block to sump" gasket caused from the heavily modified original wet-sump (resulting in a slightly warped sump flange) to block mating surface - despite locking the sump down during welding.
• Leaky (brand new) AN fittings due to less than optimal manufacture. Very annoying this one.
• An Autometer fuel pressure gauge having issues such that when you try to put the gauge light on (yes, by simply supplying 12v on the white wire along with the rest of the gauges) it stops working and therefore falsely triggers my custom built failsafe engine shut off feature (eg, to avoid a damaging "lean out" from a drop in fuel pressure). This was really painful until it finally failed outright.
• And these are just the items I can immediately remember while writing this.

What I have now been able to do is get the car to the Engineer for its first inspection and this has uncovered a few more items that need fixing.

First issue is that I need more clearance between any steering components and extractors. I thought it was 10mm, so gave 12mm, but the rule is 15mm "static" (engine off) and 10mm "dynamic" (engine on and any torque twisting). The extra 3mm meant I had to adjust all pipes on one side - a very painful and tedious fix. Lesson? I have now given 20mm clearance just to be sure, but should have done this from the start....
I was never happy with the brakes and this was "found out". Basically the car would pull up, but I could not "lock up" the wheels. It was kinda like having ABS - but none was fitted! So just not good enough.
The fix was to talk to some specialist braking shops, and in the end I slightly changed the pedal travel to master cylinder pushrod ratio, but I think the biggest change came from swapping out the default 6" brake booster for an 8" diameter dual vacuum unit. Remember, this is an under-dash unit so space is very limited!
It may sound trite, but compared to before this change I nearly went thru the windscreen when I hit the brakes on the first test. It locks up now!

Now I know that all the above is a real grab-bag of issues that anyone building a car from scratch may encounter... I will make sure to include mostly photos in the next update. As I reckon text is just plain boring. As a tease, the car now has a full 4-Link rear suspension setup to show you amongst other little upgrades.

Sorry for the delay in updates for those following this build. It is indeed still underway! And so close to done it is driving me nuts.

Revised Exhaust, Fuel Supply, and yes..... First Test Run.

It's been too long since an update, with delays cause by work and family commitments, but over the Xmas break I got a reasonable block of time to do some needed "grunt work" that I'd been dreading for a while now.
In order to pass registration tests, I needed "adequate" room between the whole drive-train and the body of the car. This means not only clearance within the engine bay, but also for exhaust pipes under the floor pans, then for exhausts to clear the rear coil-overs, clear around the custom fuel tank, etc.  Most importantly the fuel supply lines need to be protected from exhaust heat, blown universal joints (eg, via tail-shaft loops), and so on. This all gets tricky with a 3-Link rear suspension setup and full (twin) 3" exhaust tubing.
Basically I needed to remove any possibility I could think of that an inspector could use to defect the car.

The single biggest change was to build up a new set of headers in stainless steel. My original set in mandrel bent mild steel "should" pass inspection - but I was right on the limit of the minimum 10mm gap required. And this must include when the engine rocks each way on its mounts under full acceleration/deceleration..
The trouble is, it is subjective as to how much deflection there may be in a set of engine mounts.....
So by making a new set of headers that have heaps more room, there should not be a problem (and I always wanted a stainless set anyway).
Even better is that if you simply buy a bunch of stainless mandrel bends, it ends up about half the price of a similar "build your own set of headers" kit. In my case $220 (AUD) got all the bends I needed (which was a mixed bag 4 x 45 degree, 4 x 90 degree, and 2 x 180 degree bends - all at the tightest radius offered). So $220, plus a day and a half of my own labour on top, got me the custom set I needed. here are the results:
This first photo kind of shows how I crossed pipes over to try and get them similar lengths.

And now the almost finished set. I was still yet to weld on flanges for a V-clamp connection to the rest of the exhaust system and weld in the O2 bungs.

As for my fuel rails, when I last had the motor at the dyno, I had run lots of braided hose and AN-8 "T" fittings to firstly divide my 1/2" high pressure fuels supply from the tank as it reach the middle of the engine valley, and then each of these ends divided again to supply fuel to the rails from each end. My thinking being that this would minimise any pressure drop to the "far" injector if I only supplied the rails from one end. Well my (way more experienced than me) dyno man said I'd over-thought it and over-complicated it. The rails themselves have heaps of volume each to counteract this risk. My "complicated" setup worked fine of course, but just wasn't needed and took up room. So I simplified things and now just split the 1/2" supply line once (via a single "T" junction at the firewall) and these two free ends now run straight into the back of each fuel rail.
This photo (and the next one with the engine back in the car) shows the rails have been cleaned up. This first one is also a good photo of the engine rocker stud girdle setup, dry sump reserve tank, etc too.

Then it came time to give it a test run on the street in prep' for its final inspection. It gets a rigorous cornering and braking test I'm told, so I do need to bed the brakes in, make sure all the undercarriage/suspension bolts are torqued up, no leaks appear, etc, etc. I went over everything several times and still found a loose dry sump pressure inlet line after its first outing! Doing this build solo risks such things.........
So how did it go?
OMG, "awesome and scary fast" is how my dad and son describe it. Not unsafe at all, I only jabbed it to just over half throttle for a moment. It was nicely predictable and didn't throw itself radically sideways (just a slight rear drift out to the left as it launched  - easily corrected by a small steering tweak).
But saying traction is marginal with the power on tap - would be an understatement. Some suspension tuning would help a bit with this no doubt, but the power/torque available right off idle is amazing. Well we are talking serious cubes here but I'm pleasantly satisfied for now. Putting some decent timing into it since the dyno run seems have made it heaps more responsive.
And the music from the motor? That was indeed special as I had left the windshield off for the test drive (it stays off until my dash gets trimmed/covered). So the unblocked induction roar from 8.5 litres of the 8-Stack injection trumpets up front, plus the exhaust note out back was the best thing I'd heard in a while.
Here are a few photos of how it looks right now after this first run.

I can see from the picture above that my front valence is yet to be finished too.

This will include an integrated air inlet/scoop for cooling. It will be an all steel unit.

The photo above is another shot of how far back the big block is. There is plenty of engine bay daylight from the radiator to the heads.

So what's next?.... Well, dare I say it - "minor stuff"! I only need to get the interior trimmed (at least the dash) so I can put the windscreen in. Then for a roadworthy I need side and rear-view mirrors, plus run the cabling to hook up the handbrake to the rear disks. Oh, and probably the last thing is to put a windscreen washer bottle somewhere (accessible).

I will be putting in a cold-air box with integrated filters as well. This will draw cool air in though the hood scoops. This and other finishing pieces can wait for the next post.

Goodness me, light at the end of the tunnel 😊

More Inerior, Engine Clearances and Modified Intake

This is another short update seeing it's been a long time since my last post - and I've received a few prods to create another post. There has been progress, but slowed due to work commitments, family commitments, and of course Winter here in southern Australia.

So the updates are.................
I am very close to competing my interior (dash, gauge cluster, console) and just need to build up some door trim panels. Here are the photos for this:

I formed the sides of the console first out of cardboard from a reasonably solid box and ran this between the front seats, handbrake, and up to the front face of the dash. Each side was unique based on all the mod's done to the transmission tunnel and I could then cut the template a perfect fit to the dash and get the right length I wanted at the rear.



Shown above is a test fit (one of many!). I ended up cutting a bigger hole for the gear stick of course and also included a small raised plate for the shifter boot to stretch around and snap snugly into place.

So above you can see a bit more detail of the instrumentation and console layout. Things to note are:

• I have warning lights for "high and low' readings on all gauges.
• Just under the Tacho you may notice an oil pressure and handbrake warning light.
• The oil pressure warning light cuts the ignition to save the motor.
• While I have a "Car Alarm/Central Locking system - I don't use a key to start the engine.
• I have a finger print reader as my key so my teenage kids (or anyone else) cannot start the car.
• You cannot bypass the finger print reader without re-wiring just about the whole vehicle :-)
• My fuses are all mounted to the underside of the lid of the console storage box for easy access.
• There are more stealth secrets I won't reveal. No surprises there.
• I am trimming the front-face and underside of the dash in matching leather from the seats, while the top of the dash, the cover over the gauges, and the top panels of the console will all be in black leather (stops glare).

This means the beige/camel leather colouring of the seats sweeps around you at seat level (including the door trims), while the top third of the door trim, the dash top and gauge cluster are in black. The black leather also connects to and sweeps down in an uninterrupted manner along the top of the console. I'm imagining it will look ok. I have the leather already - so it better!

The above photo shows the car as it was a few months back. It is starting to come together nicely. You can see i'm part way thru fabricating my custom front valence and integrated scoop. I have a fair bit of the interior trim installed as well. The seat headrests will be one of the last items going in and the one-piece roof-liner is nearly ready after I installed a 12" LED light bar at the top the rear window as my 3rd brake light. It works a treat.

My door glass is actually in now, but the front wind-screen must wait for my dash to be trimmed in leather before it is installed.

Now for the interesting stuff. My vehicle engineer suggested that I get a bit of extra clearance around the back edge of one valve cover - as I was right on the 10mm minimum limit. See below.....

Yep that is close and could be a problem when the engine shifts when torqued up under load. I could bring the motor forward a bit, but that then takes room I have underneath between the extractors and power steering. I was in a corner and needed to modify things. Now to get at that support to make more room, it would have been a pain to work around the motor... so out the engine came again to do the job right. I get it out of the car on my own in half a day. And scalloping for the extra room required was the easy bit in the end, as I also took the opportunity to adjust the induction seeing I always felt each trumpet could rob air from another. The photo above give you the idea. I therefore did the following:

The above "construction" is a jig I made up so I could fabricate a set of short length, 45 degree bends as induction runners that would bring my trumpets into an upright position. These bends can't be too long otherwise I will run out of room under the hood - and I don't want to break the smooth lines of the current hood by having some great scoop cut into, and sticking out of it. 

What I did was use my CAD/CAM drawing from my intakes and simply used the flat face of the intake that mounts the trumpets as my template. I then had 5mm flat strips of stainless plate laser cut to specification. I only needed 4 plates - 2 each side to sandwich the 45 degree mandrel bends (2.25" stainless tube) I got from the local exhaust shop. The materials were cheap, but it took longer for me to build that dam jig and cut the bends to length, than to weld up (and clean up) the actual runners! 

But the results were worth it - see below.

Will look sweet in the engine bay now (not that looked bad before).

The longer runner will probably help engine performance, and as you can see everything lines up nicely in this last photo. I also have a great foundation now for my cold-air induction box that will use the hood scoops to draw in outside air, then pass that air thru a set of flat filters, which then enters the plenum that houses all the trumpets.

Ok then - until next post. See ya.