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

hoopty5.0 said:

Mike you're a brave man. I couldn't expect to escape with my life intact if I'd have done that in the new oven here.

I had a hard enough time explaining a sun burn and possible broken rib today. She's still not happy with me, hahahah

Click to expand...

It's just like my rep here. Certain expectations afford certain liberties. If my wife never would expect that I'd try a bonehead stunt like that then there would be hell to pay for sure, but........
It's nothing that she wouldn't "expect" I'd try.

It didn't make it any less wrong, but it's not like I'm baking a turbo manifold every other day. I had the old oven in the garage for a year, and sold that b itch off when I got tired of sacrificing all that space on the off instance that I'd need it to bake Medusa.

Lets turn the page of the "What the Hell is wrong now" saga that is the Gila Monster story.

Got the car back together today, and it started immediately. It still needs alot of tuning as it surges until it gets into closed loop but nonetheless it starts.
All of the leaks it had before are gone save one. No,....that's wrong. I should modify that comment to say that all of the leaks it had before that were outwardly visible are gone save one.
The one that is visible is an oil leak running down the side of the engine from the cover plate. That could be a simple fix, or a major pain in the ass, as only time will tell as I attempt to stop the damn leak w/ that cover plate in place.

The new "twist" in today's update is based on how to tell if there is water in the oil. The typical remove the valve cover, or pull the dipstick isn't saying that there is, but run the engine for 5 seconds after its hot, and this starts happening:


My best guess is that this is water vapor, as it dissipates almost immediately after floating out of the filter and it doesn't smell like oil smoke to me. Matter of fact, the only smell I can detect is a slight oily-gassy smell, like the vapor is being pushed out by crankcase pressure but so far it hasn't stopped. (At last for the whole 5 more minutes the engine ran today) Besides, even the pic shows the "smoke" to be transparent as you'd expect to see from your tailpipe on a winter morning. This isn't "new" water becasue the new water is antifreeze. This has to be residual from before.

So, lets say that there is a little water in the oil, and it's getting cooked off and is making its way through the crankcase as vapor, and out the vent tube. It seems to me that it didn't do it before w/ the copper HG, but that's not to say that water didn't get in there the last day(s) before I committed to pulling the head when I was doing a leak down test, and water vapor was puffing out the exhaust ports. How long is this gonna last?
One way to know for sure is to drain the 8 qts out and replace it. One time I'll look at the oil on the dipstick, It looks perfect on the stick (as you would expect from oil w/ 15 minutes of run time on it) the next time I look at the oil, it seems cloudy.
I know that it's not coming out the tail pipe this time as the exhaust smells like gas, there's no visible vapor, and now that there is antifreeze in there, there would be a telltale scent of antifreeze if it was getting in there. The number 1 plug, which was the problem child the last time appears fine, but I havent pulled the other 5.

This just can not be another damn leaking HG issue or worse something wrong w/ the head/cylinder seal. I will have a freakin stroke if I have to pull the head, or worse the entire engine out of the car.

If this is standard blowby, then the engine has an issue. That completely baffles me because the compression test, and subsequent leak down test did not indicate that there was poor ring seal. I guess if I start the engine cold, water vapor in the form of condensation shouldn't show up until the engine gets to at least 180?.......ya think?

I gonna go buy a rope and through it over a branch in the back yard.

**Update to the update**

It's not water in the oil. Not when the top of the engine looks like this after running 5 minutes:


The plugs all looked ok save #2. It looked a little oily. I guess I'll redo the leak down test tomorrow and see what it says.

Catch 22.

Cometic wanted me to retorque the HG after the heat cycle despite the fact that it was a stocker. They said that as long as I had an aluminum head on a cast iron block, it was necessary to compensate for the different expansion rate of the two metals. I put the torque wrench on a couple of the outside studs, and was able to pull it before it clicked, so.......good advice.

The catch 22 part of that is that if #2 has something wrong, and it is the reason that I'm seeing what I think is water when it's really blowby because of a hurt ring, I'll be taking the whole thing apart anyway.

When there's something wrong you can bet that I'll talk to people to enlist their help in figuring out MY problem.

I talk to a lot of people.

Of course I posted my dilemma here.

I enlisted the advice of my trusted cyber homies on the other forum I frequent.

I called my old race engine machinist.

I talked to the piston manufacturer.

I spoke to my old X275 drag race buddy.

I started out by doing another leak down test on #2 since it was the only plug that didn't look normal.
7% leakage cold.

I marked the water level in the radiator last night and checked if it had went down this morning (a sure sign it was leaking if it had) but it was exactly where it was marked.

I drained out some oil to see if there was water trapped under the oil (oil sits on top of water, just ask the boys at BP) but there was none to be found.

After talking with the folks, it looks like I got a maybe weird ass phenom kinda deal going on here.

The race engine machinist told me that condensation puffing out of the breather was typical, and could take more than a few minutes to dissipate.
Additionally, he told me that after 10 minutes of idling that the engine was still far from being broken in, and that I could expect additional blow by until I drove the thing, and loaded the engine.

Makes sense to me.

The trusted cyber friends all confirmed that putting your thumb over the end of a -12 hose hooked to a valve cover on a running engine was gonna start to build pressure against it almost immediately.

The piston manufacturer confirmed that the oil rings in my set were not "low friction". Good to know, that I do not have an incorrect part in the engine.
He also wanted me to up the heat range of the current cold plug to a "closer to stock" heat range because of the aluminum head sucking some of the heat out of it as a by product. (Something that I had already taken care of by the time we spoke this afternoon) He, (along w/ everybody else) really couldn't say definitely why I have a fog bank coming out of the puke tank filter, but he advised that I change the oil just in case it was somehow congealed w/ water in some "This could only happen to Mike" kind of Bizarro, one-in-a-million instance.

My old X275 race buddy reminded me that "Fords suck, and that I should've built an LS".

The oil in the engine is a non detergent SAE30. Don't ask me why I used it, I just thought that you were supposed to use non detergent oil on a start up of a fresh engine. It feels really weird. When draining out the sample qt., I naturally got it all over my hands,...all slimy, and mega slippery, cloudy/green tea lookin junk.
It was like trying to wipe a much more slimy, and slippery silicone substance off. I tell ya, there is something suspect in that stuff. It's got a demon inside it. A Green slimer.

I drained that junk out. I exercised the demon oil out of the pan.

I took the opportunity to cut the filter open and ck it for metal, none to be found. This really doesn't mean much considering the black hole inducing, rare earth type assortment of heat tolerant mini-magnets I have all over the bottom of the inside of the pan. Like a black hole where not even light can escape from, no metal is safe from the pull of those mini magnets. I have a pic posted somewhere where one of them (the diameter of the tip of your little finger, and 1/8" thick is holding a 2.5 pound mallet). So,.....given that there are 4 or 5 of those things stuck to the bottom of the pan, the fact that my filter was clean might not give up the fact that 10lbs of metal shavings may be held by those little sunsabtches.

But I digress.

I replaced the weird slimy demon oil w/ 8 qts of standard crude SAE 30wt. as a 500 mile break-in oil. After that we convert to full synthetic multi vis.

I have attempted to seal the leaking side cover from outside by forcing black RTV in the nooks and crannies that it appeared to be coming from. This, after a liberal application of brake clean, and a brisk rub down w/ a clean cotton cloth that promptly turned the same color as my engine, and my engine, reverted back to its original finish: Dearborn Cast Iron Grey.:no:
Meh,......no matter, grey today,......it'll be orange again by tommorrow. And the orange color it takes on will NOT wipe off w/ brake clean.:tu:

I removed the rockers again and retorqued the head as per Cometics advice. I don't know why I did after the fact, nothing moved. I guess I just really love to adjust rockers.

Tomorrow, when ever I get back from the fiasco that is the Jefferson county DMV where my 17 year old will attempt the Alabama drivers exam, I'll fill it w/ real oil, re install the rockers, install the new, hotter plugs, and restart it.

We'll see.

It's still doing it. The number 2 plug is still oily. I have since changed my assessment of the "fog" coming out of the breather.

It's crankcase vapor/smoke.

Again, speaking w/ more people, one guy asked me about my injectors.

"What kind of injectors are you running?"

"smart fire 60 pounders. They're new, but re-manufactured"

"Are you sure that they are all firing properly?"

"Nope"

"Maybe you should swap injectors around, and see if #2 cleans up, and you start fouling a different cylinder"

Good advice.

I had heard after buying the set of Smartfire injectors, that they do not have a very good track record. The price at the time was the attraction. I think I paid about 200 for 6 60's if I recall correctly. New EV-1's were over 50 each. I let my cheap side prevail.
When you look at the #2 plug, the center insulator appears to not be firing. Now if the #2 injector is either clogged, or not firing itself, there'd be no combustion event for the plug to fire off, and it would get wet w/ oil. A cylinder that isn't firing isn't getting hot, and the rings in a cold cylinder let alot of blow by get past them.
The #6 plug continues to get all black and sooty like it's getting too much fuel. Despite the fact that the heat range of the plug is one step hotter, the plug looks exactly like it did when they were one step colder.
When you Google Smartfire injector reviews, they do get a bad rap. From sticking open, to not flowing anywhere near the rated capacity.

So,...as much as it pains me to throw money at this to try and solve the problem, and since I've rolled my HP aspirations back because of the stock HG, a 36-44 lb-hr injector is more than adequate for a 6 banger that makes 350-400 HP.
I ordered 8 44 lb/hr Accel injectors from Summit, because they were actually cheaper than 6 individually. Actually, the pack of 8 was 37.00 more expensive than the 6 individual injectors would've cost, but now I have two additional pieces that only cost 37.00 for both of them.

RacEoHolic330 said:

The few areas of my build where I went cheap and tried to save money are what ended up costing me more money in the long run. Sometimes it just doesn't pay to try and pinch pennies. Hopefully the injector swap clears up some issues for you.

Click to expand...

You'd think I'd know that, but clearly I still have lessons to learn.

95BlueStallion said:

Havent been on for a week or two, sucks to see you having problems. I was really hoping for a driving with no fenders, lights, bumpers or windshield video.

Click to expand...

Once I get the injectors installed I'm at a standstill for what else it could be. The advice of my old machinist is to put some time on the engine driving it.

( I still think it's gonna smoke regardless, I probably broke one of the weanie assed rings when I installed them.)

So, when it comes to driving it, You may well see that.

PS, you forgot doors. So it'd be no fenders, hood, lights, windshield, or doors.

Bullitt347 said:

I think you are overthinking the whole damn thing. If the engine is not even broken in yet you can chase your tail for days.............for nothing. Your old machinist friend is right. Drive the damn thing, let the rings seat and then see whats up.

Click to expand...

Oh I agree, it's a wonder I sleep at all. The change out on the injectors was going to happen anyway though (I didn't trust that they were working/working properly, especially after #6 keeps coming up so fat)

Another non-substance update:

The injectors came in on Thursday at like 5PM. It never fails, everytime I use Summit's online ordering as opposed to a live phone conversation w/ order entry, the online option nets me the slowest possible method to get the order shipped the 185 miles that I am away from Summit's Georgia warehouse.
Anyway, at 5 PM, eager to see if I did in fact have a faulty injector, I put those dudes in there. Keep in mind, I'm putting in 44 pounders, and removing 60's, Before I attempted a restart, I made the required fuel adjustments (There's a "wizard" in the tuning software that calculates that based on engine specifics)

I start it.

It dies.

I add more fuel.

I start it.

It dies.

I add more fuel.

This goes on for almost an hour. Finally, I get the thing to idle, after basically having to triple the fuel required to make that happen. Once it's Idling at 13.5-14.0 AFR I wait for the dreaded smoke to start pouring out of the puke tank breather. It takes about 3 minutes...... Smoke.
I'm not really surprised, I kinda was pulling straws w/ this solution. I'm down to the last possibility before I have to consider a worse case scenario, and that is simply to stop whacking out, and just drive the thing and give it a chance to break-in.

But, In order to consider that I needed to know if the rest of the drive train was working in the first place.

All this time, the transmission has been sitting in park, w/ all but a couple of qts missing from being full. I have no idea that it even works. This is a 4R70w that I completely rebuilt having never rebuilt one before. Despite that, It was pretty straight forward actually, and only slightly more complicated than a C4 (which I have rebuilt more than a few of) The main part of the trans goes w/o incident for the most part, as only the valvebody, and it's required case modification are where things start to get a little dicey. To make that happen requires a Transgo valvebody modification kit that uses an old school vacuum modulator that is actually installed inside the transmission, and replaces the electronic shift solenoid. Modifying the valvebody for the full manual conversion that allows a formerly computer controlled transmission to work with out one does require a few scary ass mods though. (you're drilling holes in the walls of the valvebody passages where there is no room to lean the drill over to do that w/o the bit potentially grinding off the top of the adjacent passages) The instructions on the valvebody mods are pretty complete, but there are still some "Hail Mary" decisions that you just have to say WTF, do it, and hope that you interpreted them correctly. You have to drill and tap the case top, and plumb a vacuum line out to the intake manifold, where because there is a turbo involved requires another goofy adapter that prevents boost from trashing a modulator diaphragm that is only supposed to see vacuum.

Now that you know what was involved, maybe you can share in the same concerns that I had before I pulled the thing out of park, and into reverse:

The tires start spinning backwards.

I step on the brake, pull the ratchet shifter into low, and release the brake:
And they now spin the other way.
I bump the shifter into second, the tires speed up, into high, and they again speed up.

Looks like I got three forward gears, and one reverse.

I can't test the OD and converter L/U until I get the thing at highway speed so that'll be a test postponed for a later date.

For today however,...I am the Obiwan Kenobe of 4 speed transmissions.

7991LXnSHO said:

And you accused me of being verbose and meandering! I do sympathize and wish you good luck anyway.

Click to expand...

You were drunk talkin' and you know it.

7991LXnSHO said:

This project must have driven you to drink or take heavy medications by now. Are you sure it was the car that had steam and smoke coming out of it and not your ears and nostrils?

Click to expand...

All I can say is that the urgency between this car, and the previous are night and day. Although my initial predictions were to have it running by spring of 15,the scope of all of the "is this s h*t gonna work" modifications have since changed my perception of reality.

I'm tired of messing w/ the engine. It runs, the trans works, the brakes work, it rolls. It's only natural to assume that it would probably be driveable.

If it wasn't missing the doors, the windshield, the front and rear lights, and a place to sit.

The seat thing is dealt with, I could bolt the driver side in in a minute. But those pesky few other items,.......those are a problem.

When I last attempted body work, I made a buck, and bought the necessary sheet metal to form 8 sections and use the buck as a guide to weld the sections together on.

The end result of that endeavor turned out miserably. I'll be like Nick, @95BlueStallion and stand it in a corner of my garage as a reminder of how NOT to do something.
It needs to be said that I am far from a bodyman, but if I had to pay one to do the stuff I want to do, that would require I take out a second mortgage.

( I'm not gonna do that)

So that leaves it to me to get it done.

Plan B was to use the stock rear bumper and come up with a way to blend it into the body. The problem w/ that is that it's aluminum, and the body is steel.

When I built the last car I ran into the same issue when it came time to blend the potmetal headlight buckets into the sheetmetal of the car. On that car I used a combination of bolts, and JB Weld to hold the dissimilar metals together.


That method lasted about a year before cracks started to show through


So this time around I ain't bonding anything on the body together w/ bolts and glue. (I have enough of that in the engine)

I decided to cut the ends off of the aluminum bumper, and I'll cap them. In essence, I'll have an effect similar to a baby LTD w/o the urethane end caps to worry about.
I came up w/ this hair-brained solution:
.

In the pic, the steel endcap isn't finished yet (I was, I was dying of thirst, and was tired of messing w/ it by the time I got this crap done)

Like the Mustang pictured above though I do one side at a time, and it seems that each side never matches the other. The driver side was first, and it was the "Beta". By the time I got over to the passenger side , I had figured out how to do it better.
(I'll probably end up cutting all of that junk back out on the driver side to better match the "new and improved" passenger side)



Just like this for instance. On the driver's side that center piece you see above was butt welded in. The quarter was already distressed as a result of me trying to fit Fox mustang tail lights in there, and by the time I started welding in patch panels to bring it to the finish level you see here, I warped the piss out of it.

( We will NOT be looking at that side)

One the passenger side, I learned my lesson, and got out a flanging tool, and flanged a 1/2 " perimeter around the patch. That flange served as a backer, and helped to keep the quarter in better shape. I still got it too hot, but the warpage is managable, unlike the driver's side. (Which now looks like the surface of the moon)



So what we're gonna do here is create a gap between the steel end caps and the alunimum bumper similar to the 1/8" gap the trunk has around the perimeter. That'll let me slide the bumper in and use the stock mounting system for that, while the end caps are permanently mounted to the body.



So then this is gonna be the approximate rear facade the tail lights will recess into. I'll just take a regular piece of sheet metal, and follow the crown of the trunk. I'll make a bottom piece that will sit approximately 1/8" off the bumper, and trace the crown onto that piece. Then I'll weld the two pieces together to hold the crown. I'll do the same thing at the top.

I'm gonna build a custom set of tail lights for the car, and recess them into the rear panel. I've been looking into sequencing led circuits, and I think that is how the tail lights will indicate a turn. The running lights/brake lights will either be more conventional socket type led lights, or a whole butt load of the individual 5mm leds like I'll use for the turn signal lights.
I just gotta buy a bunch of electronic doo dads, and start dinking around w/ that.