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

rdharper02 said:

Short answer on the rust: your a bad influence and I'm just that lucky.
Long answer: I jumped on a car (like a fat kid on a newly found chocolate bar) after missing several others. Even after picking out bubbles under the paint, the floors looked good from underneath. Heck the rust under the heater core is just deep surface. It even survived the "screwdriver test". Driver's side, well not so much (it now has screwdriver size "cooling holes"). Oh, and your a bad influence.

I've actually wanted one since around the time you had the red car. Just want a bit of a sleeper, so this one is not going to see any of the exterior treatment your working toward.

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I know the feeling. The red car started out as the worst example of a trashed 4 cylinder notch that existed at the time. I wanted one so badly I paid huge money (2k) for a car that literally needed every piece of weather stripping replaced because it was dry rotted to the point of disintegration, had a really bad paint job, the interior looked like a pack of dogs had a sex party inside,and was sporting a salvage title on top of that.

But what can I say, you want something badly enough you become blind to the "little things".

I must be getting old.

I know I'm getting old.

I had BIG plans today. Finally had the adj pushrod, the "right" ratio rockers, and the whole day in front of me.

I started out by trying to finally nail down, once and for all the stinkin' pushrod length.
Every V8 I've ever had, the short end of the rocker was lower than the long end. On this stupid 6 banger, in order to get the roller tip anywhere near the center, required that I adjust it so high, that the rocker was almost level across the top.
Starting the thing through a lift cycle w/ it set like that caused the poly lock to collide w/ the rear of the rocker slot. If I dropped the rear of the rocker, that didn't happen, but the tip started so far off the center of the valve, it was a bad thing.

I called Crower. (Again)

I told dude about my set up, and he offered the option of changing out the trunions w/ one that was offset either .050, or .090. That wasn't gonna work for me, although it would move the whole rocker that much closer to the valve, it would also increase the likelihood that that fat assed pushrod was gonna collide with the back of the rocker.

There had to be another option.

I asked dude if there was some other 1.7 ratio rocker that was longer from the stud to the valve w/o having to press out 12 trunions. He thought about it,......and said let him ck into it, and he'd call me back.

15 mins later I get a call.

He says by general concensus at Crowers' tech department, they all advised me to send back the 1.73 ford rocker, and get a 1.75 BBC rocker. That ratio would increase the long end .060 w/o moving the small end closer to the stud.

I told dude I already tried a 1.75 I6 chevy rocker and it was too long, he says that this isn't that rocker.

Okie Doke. I'll send yet another set of rockers back, and exchange them for something else.

Again.

So that took up the first hour of my day.

The valve cover. The one that I said was "kinda" finished, that nobody called me on, still was lacking something for me to be totally happy w/it.

It needed a little something else.

I come back in get on the computer, di ck around here for about an hour, all while looking at small aluminum letters online.

( I was thinking I was gonna spell out CROSSFLOW down the middle.)

But stupid little aluminum letters cost about 12.00 a pop. It wasn't bothering me that bad to have a bare valve cover that I needed to spend another 100.00 just so I could bling it up.

I resigned myself to having a boring valve cover, and went back downstairs, and started rummaging through some of the mountain of new stuff to put on the car. I decided to install the rear brakes, and attempt to fab up a tunnel mounted E brake handle to actuate them.

I get the driver side mounted, when... (because I was laying on my back, and my view angle allowed me to see it) I saw the solution to my boring valve cover.

There, in the corner of the old six banger junk was the stock, stamped steel valve cover. On top of that valve cover was the script: POWER BY FORD w/ the traditional blue oval at the end.

I get out the cut off wheel, a block of wood, some black paint, some clear paint and a sanding block, and cut, grind, beat, flatten, sand and paint that piece of steel.

Then of course I glue it to the valve cover.


Now it looks done to me.

But, no sooner did I get that done, and UPS shows up w/ another damn box.

What's in the box I wonder, and I cut it open to find the Taylor plug wires I ordered for the goofy assed 6 tower coil pack that goes w/ the EDIS-6 ignition that I'm running. I open the wires to see if they are cut to fit or already made, so I can determine where I might locate that stupid clunky thing.

They're already cut to length. I only got about a foot on the shortest wire.

Now I gotta find somewhere to put the thing that is close enough to allow for that short assed wire.

What started out as a relatively spacious engine compartment is cramping up in a hurry. The turbo and the exhaust manifold (Medusa), take up the entire passenger side, and the induction has the fuel rail on top, a water pump, and a dual oil filtration system under it, so I got no choice.

I had to put it on top of my pretty valve cover.


The ugly assed thing sits on four 1/4 " pedestals, and is through bolted to the top. I hate it, but I didn't see an alternative.

I amble back inside, get back on the computer, di ck around here again, fall asleep for 15 minutes, and go back outside.

I open the box that has my Lokar trans dipstick tube in it.

Why did I think I needed a 36" long dipstick tube?

I don't know why either, (must've just finished my last crack vial) but I'm determined to NOT send this thing back. It's just like a piece of braided line anyway. I Modify, I overcome, I adapt.

I cut it down to 24", It now fits.

Also inside that box is my 42.5" long F-250 accelerator cable. All I have to do is make the bracket

Fit's like a glovie.

You cant see it, ( and you're not going to either) but I needed a piece of metal the right thickness to slide the molded on retainer on the acc cable to. The only thing I could find that was the right thickness was an extra 18" steel ruler from an old broken combination square I had laying around.
So my bracket has little tick marks indicating that it is exactly 1.750 long to the bottom of the bracket.

I mounted the water pump permanently, and used the Hondabond that I'm gonna use to try and seal my copper head gasket with, to hold the WP gaskets in place.
I wanted to see how this junk works before I use it on a 275.00 piece of copper.

All I can say is, Once you bed the gasket,............it better be where you want it.

The Post office dude dropped off the box that has my A/C pieces parts in it, I figured I'd mock up all of the lines so I could go have the ends crimped on at my crimpin' dude store.

They send female parts,......I need male parts.

Female junk,.................always thinkin' I need an "inny" when I need an "outtie"

In reality, (upon reflection) I guess I did get a lot done considering. Between piddling, surfing, and dinking I guess/

jsw81 said:

this thread is very entertaining
you should be a car magazine writer or something
really have a great way with words

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Thanks, I mighta heard that once or twice.

It's what you gotta do when the subject matter is a I6 in a Fairmont, when posting to a 5.0 fox Mustang forum.

Major setback!!!

The fans come in today. For those paying attention, I had an interference issue when the single 16" was mounted to a 1" alum shroud.
I knew that I'd be able to direct mount the fan against the core, but that left a significant amount of un-cooled space just sitting on the core.
So I bought two 8" auxiliary cooling fans and stacked them on the open side.

Just for Sh its, and grins, I decide to tie all three together, and hook them to a spare battery that I had laying around just to see if they would do a good job.

This is where I wish I could take that decision back.

No sooner did I plug in the other end of the socket that was direct wired to the battery when the negative pressure drop that came as an immediate result of all three mini tornadoes pulled the garage man door against it stop.

I feel a "whoomp"! as the door pulls tight against it's gasket. My ears pop, and I'm although I wasn't immediately aware of it at the time, I'm being pushed away from the position I was kneeling in. The cat had been doing that "lick paw, wash face, repeat" thing, and was sitting directly in front of the car when I plugged them in.

Her eyes got about the size of quarters as she felt the pressure drop at the same instant I did, and she was now being pulled towards the radiator. Being on pavement, there was little for her to grab onto for traction against the suction, so she just screeched across the pavement. In a last ditch effort, she managed to snag the leg of my work bench, but only managed to get one little
pinky claw hold.
The fans are now running at full speed now, and the cat, still doing her damnedest to hang on, is now horizontal,..and is starting to flap like a flag, all while howling bloody hell. I'm now acutely aware that there is like a mini-black hole thing going on here, and the fans are starting to warp time.

I remember thinking to myself, but even my thoughts were in slow motion as I struggled to make sense of what was happenning. "MMUUUSST.....GGGETT....TOOO....WIIIRES!" I thought, but by now, the same force that's making the cat flap, is pushing me back, making it impossible to move.

The cat's one single pinky claw fails, and she flies across the garage, and slams against the radiator, hitting it w/ a solid thud. The area that was now blocked by the cat's body now goes into mega suck, and starts pulling clumps of hair off the cat, and is blowing that junk all over the engine, and throughout the garage. Now the noise coming out of the cat is only eclipsed by the amount of hair that's getting sucked through the radiator.

Fortunately, before the rest of the universe got sucked into my garage, the battery tipped off of the cement block and severed the connection to the fans, and they stopped. The cat, now half naked books off through the cat door, with clumps of hair still following her as she bee lines for safety.

She left a giant impression of a cat's body smack dab in the middle of my brand new radiator.

This pic was taken before all that junk happened.


.

Here's a picture of the cat, Too embarrassed to show her naked side.

95BlueStallion said:

You still alive, brother?

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I am. Been on VaCay.

I did open the box that has the new 1.75 Crower BBC rockers inside, and mocked up one of the valves today.

I do believe that I have finally found the right rocker.

I have some work to catch up on however, and I'll have to do all of that before I can return my focus to that though.