Build Thread 1978 Mercury Cyclone. The pig is in the pen.

5.0Droptop said:

You miss the cobra?

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not even one little bit.

( fckin me too body style........, I had to take a no-doze every time I looked at it to keep from nodding off)

Man!

Not since my last disaster garage pic has my garage gotten so full of junk. Only this time, the "junk" is new. Just got all of the stuff for the heads
and the list for that is=
Comp BBC Beehive valve springs 1.8oo installed height 1.464 diameter, 160# closed/420# open.
Comp Chrome moly retainers. 10 degree locks.
Comp spring cups.
Trick flow SBC 1.5" SS Exhaust valves.
Scorpion BBC 1.880 SS Exhaust valves (used as intakes)
Crane Cams 3/8 pushrod guideplate kit for BBF/Cleveland.
Comp 1.73 BBF/Cleveland roller rockers.
( that arrived this week)

The intake and its components for the custom build also arrived:
1 70mm natural finish TB
7' mild steel 16 ga wall 1.75 OD tubing used as intake ports ( I had to buy 7' to get raw, non-alumanized mild steel)
7' mild steel 14 ga wall 2.25 OD tubing used as plenum material. (see above)
6 mild steel injector bungs.
6 self contained aluminum injector housings (look at these)

Unfortunately, I gotta do away with the bottoms as they wont work w/ my mild steel intake port. But it should be fairly easy to fab up a collar to weld to the steel bung that will allow me to bolt the top to. Since the injectors will be splayed in relation to the port, these will work great. Each injector will have its' own supply line emanating from a central distribution hub.

I've already started cutting the 6 port plates that will bolt to the head. they are 80% done as of this writing.

All of the Rock Auto stuff came in to complete the rear. The rear calipers look great. Everything is so clean, all I have to do is mask some stuff, and spray them. I will not be painting them red,...thinking Silver, w/ black painted rotors, that I'll take to a brake lathe and have just the contact area of the pad "surfaced off".

I spent about an hour on the phone w/ a timing chain supplier (several suppliers actually). I think I've found the guy that can supply me w/ a master link at the very least. Hopefully, he can get me a whole 56 link chain to replace the 58 link piece that a SBF comes with.

Potentially, I have a couple of days to spend messing w/ the stuff I've detailed above. The head has to be ported, but that'll happen after I get the intake built so I'll have a port to scribe a matching line to. So it looks like I'll throw the rear together, and cover that dude up, and start building my F/I intake manifold.

84Ttop said:

Someone (me) could have made you a trick fuel rail one piece aluminum machined for all the injectors... Just saying . I think a 3' long injector rail would be bit¢hin!

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You'll just have to see what I'm talkin about. The way I was thinking the injectors are not straight in a row. They will be clocked at about the 1 o-clock as you look down on them, and laid back radically. I don't think a standard bar fuel rail would work. ( and it would only be 2' long BTW)

But,.....if it can be done, and I can stand them up more inline it would sure save me a buttload...those injector bungs cost 40.00 ea. and I only have a couple of weeks before I can't return them.

84Ttop said:

When injector rail is only like 16$ a foot it is a heck of a lot cheaper to have a single rail! You sure it is 3 or maybe 4 feet long? Lol

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Kiss bunions,....It's only 2' long. This isn't a diesel out of some Freightliner.

@84Ttop we do need to talk about this though,...I am in control of where those injectors end up,..you wanna tell me how much you'd build this TWO FOOT LONG fuel rail would cost me?

stangboy said:

I wish I could just be a fly on the wall in your garage while you do your fabricating magic. Some of the ideas you come up with are amazing!

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No you wouldn't.......I'd smash you.

stangboy said:

I thought about that. That's why I said the wall and not your work bench. lol

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Or i'd just spray you w/ brake clean while lighting the stream w/ a match.

Not to sound totally un-appreciative, thanks for the compliment. I don't think I do anything special though.
Troy Trepanier, Chip Foose,...That body guy on Car fix,....they are the ones that are amazing.

Noobz347 said:

With their budgets, I could be amazing too! Juss' Sayin'.

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I was watching that new show Car fix. IDK the guys name (one of the Co-Hosts) but he took a 71 Camaro, and re-imagined the rear in steel. When he was done,..it looked like it was built that way. He used no filler, and the edges and lines were perfect,.....THAT is what I'd like to be able to do,...not the crafty "migwelded from behind, and ground down" method I used on the red car.

Check this sh it out.

Everybody here knows I had a billet roller custom ground for this thing.And as an afterthought, I started shopping for a timing chain.

Say this in your best female monotone voice like : "The white zone is for loading and unloading only."

"For a 250 inline six, the only timing chain available is a weak assed cast iron stocker, w/ a chicken dik sized dowel pin notorious for bending and shearing off".

Huh, No shi t? And all that is with stock spring pressure, on the stock hydraulic, barely a bump there camshaft.

What are my cam specs again?.....Hmmmm lets see .529 intake, 559 exhaust. About .150 higher than stock.
The ramps are now roller ramps, instead of the kiddie roller coaster hiccups they used to be.

Cam mfg recommended 420 lbs open pressure, and 160 lbs on the seat, on the springs, about 2.5 times what the stocker was ever subjected to.

And all I got is this stock, dehydrated white dog dooger of a timing chain to rely on?

So I overcome, I improvise, I adapt.

Research tells me that there is a guy out there that was able to modify the same timing chain the rest of you bellybuttons use for his 250, by turning down the nose of the cam, drilling the front journal for the SBF cam dowel, flipping the crank gear 180 degrees around,.....ohh and removing a link from the SBF 58 link chain, and putting that b itch back together w/ a master link.

Ohh kayyy.......I can do all that.

Except for one small thing.

The cam has went through it's heat treating process......it's now supposed to be harder than Kryptonite.

I'm told by a machinist on the Six forums to forget drilling the cam now for the SBF dowel, forget turning down the nose of the cam,..the heat treated 8620 steel should have a rockwell hardness equivalent to a bearing race. He further went on to recommend that I modify the SBF cam gear to fit the cam, and use a hardened dowel pin ( a hardened chicken's dik dowel pin nontheless)instead of the failure prone stocker that would typically be used.

I ask the guy, how to test whether of not something has been hardened, so I know what to use for the dowel pin.....he tells me to try and file it. If it's truly hardened, The file won't do s hit to the dowel.

So,....let me look at this cam, and look at the dowel pin hole. What tha?......there are burrs around the dowel pin hole. Let me see if I can file them down, despite the fact that the cam is now like Kryptonite.

That sh it filed down like mild steel.

Hmm.....that wasn't supposed to happen.

Let me get my drill, and see if the front journal is any different. I stood the cam on end.

** Cliff note**1/8" HSS drill bit in a hand drill with only the modest amount of pressure drilled for a (count with me now)1,.2,.3,.4,.5 STOP!

The fuc kin drill bit would've went to China if I pushed even slightly harder.

So,...I got this cam see. Supposed to be hard as diamonds that you can actually file, and drill by hand.
On one hand, that's great,..I can modify the thing to accept the SBF gear.
On the other,...I thought I wasn't supposed to be able to.
If I had any expectation that the bit was gonna drill the steel, I would've put it somewhere else, instead of right where the SBF dowel is supposed to go, now I'll have to deal with whether or not I haven't started a hole in the wrong position when I take the damn thing to my machinist for all this junk.

Ohh and BTW,....I'm fixin' to have a progressSPLOSION on the car,..so I figured I'd drag the thread out of the back 40.

jrichker said:

The lobes and bearing surfaces may be the only part that actually got hardened. Induction hardening is the process used to localize hardening of steel alloys. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_hardening for a better explanation than I could give you.

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My cam grinder just replied to my inquiry regarding that very subject. He did confirm that they do induction hardening on the lobe, and journal surfaces only and achieve a rockwell hardness of 60-62, while the area I need to machine is actually half of that. So,..all things considered...I'm golden.