Progress Thread Father Time: Dyno'd 970rwhp

85GTStangGuy said:

Are you missing the forwardmost hood bumpers (on the sides) or do you not need them with your particular hood?

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Sharp eye, as usual, Larry. I checked my tub o' junk and didn't find spares... but I have them somewhere. They put the rears in. Maybe they were pushing too much on the hood or it didn't close with them in? I'll get another set and see for myself.

Still look good after trimming? Dremel?

AeroCoupe said:

Man it's been years but I want to say I used a bench grinder to quickly remove the material from them and then used wet/dry sandpaper to finish them. I would not say the finish was like rubber pulled from a mold but most folks with the exception of 85GTStangGuy are not looking anyhow. My cars are by no means show cars.

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If it counts as a show car now, I don't know how long that'll last. Show car was never the goal. I wanna go fast and drive the car.

Edit (15SEP): I installed the hood bumpers, but as expected, this was not an oversight that they had been removed. I took them back out, too. They bow the hood a tad, causing its lines even higher off of the fender. It's a nice hood, but the lines don'tmatch the fenders perfectly. I could shave them down, but I'd really rather not. The hood seems very solid, and I don't think there's any functional benefit.

I’m getting Father Time ready for a dyno session sometime 9-12 October. I’m not going to lie, I’m a little nervous, because the goal is 1,100 rwhp and I fully intend to stop there, despite clear potential for more. I’ve already picked up Q16, and I’m going through the car beforehand with fresh plugs, a fresh wideband O2, and the Turbo-Guard MAXX in place of the small air filter.

I’m also bringing in Patrick Barnhill to handle the tuning. I’m tempted to do it myself, but there’s too much time and money tied up in this car to make the dyno the place where I prove a point, and Patrick has a lot more experience at this power level. I’d also very much like the thing to still be in one piece a few weeks later.

That matters a little more now because I can finally share that Kenneth Sean selected Father Time as one of his top/baddest Fox Bodies of 2026 for Foxtoberfest, with the car scheduled to be featured on stage and in an upcoming video. That is incredibly cool, and obviously I’d rather not show up after ventilating the block on the dyno.

At the same time, this car and everything else I’ve built has always been function over form. I didn’t build Father Time to sit around looking impressive for other people, and I’m not going to start treating it like a museum piece now. It’s time to get this done.

Et voilà!



Took advantage of the extra plug in the Behind Bars Race Cars sumped tank, and put together a nice clean fuel drain/recovery system. Seemed like something I needed to do, or install a separate fuel cell in the car, because 10gal of Q16 just cost me ~$300. So, when the dyno or track day is over, I can drain it and refill the tank with 93 without taking forever siphoning or spilling everywhere.

Edit:
Couple more things, tonight.

- Installed a fresh WBO2 (4.2 LSU, Bosch 1701)
- Pulled the street filter and put the Turbo Guard "Maxx" wire mesh turbo screen on. Filter would be a flow problem at full boost. It's a real pain to swap on my combo. Next time I pull the passenger fender, I need to reshape inlet pipe for more clearance around the turbo.
- Upped the wastegate spring from the Tial Red to Blue. That should make baseline pressure before the EBC ~13psi. In the past, the back pressure problem at higher boost was blowing the WG open because I didnt have enough spring in there. On Monday, I'll have the tools and springs to push spring pressure as high as 20psi if I run into that problem on kill.



Tomorrow, new plugs and oil. Sunday, fuel up, and load it on the trailer.

In the old days, 13 psi was already pushing 700 rwhp. If all goes well with the dyno, I'll leave that as my 93 octane street tune, and work on getting it to hook on normal roads.

Edit 10OCT26:
- New plugs... man that #4 was a bitch, and I had to replace a couple of wires whose terminal pulled apart. Plugs are gapped at .027-.028" Little tighter than normal, in anticiption of up to 30 psi.

Edit 11OCT26:
- Changed Oil. 5.5 qts of Mobil 1 0W-40 + 1.5 qts if 5W-40 because it's what Walmart had.
- Buttoned the front fender well back up
- Filled with Q16
- Set the baseline "race tune" & a baseline 93 octane tune based on previous dyno tunes with some tweaks to put injector data in the proper way no previous tuner did.
- Loaded the trailer

Everything is ready for tomorrow.

I am up and not sleeping, and this has been a Father Time day, from getting up to *attempting* to go to bed. So, I thought I'd put a couple of the day's Father Time activities in a post.

Prep & tomorrow's dyno:
I updated/edited my last post and covered all of the dyno-prep steps, today. The car is loaded on the trailer and ready for tomorrow. Dyno session start at 1200 hrs EST. I have until 1700. Hope to get a Q16 tune done, a 93 octane tune done.

Adjusted Goal:
I'm backing off of my previously stated ~1,100 rwhp goal. Mike Moran indicated that was a tall order for a 331, and that he'd had a 347 with a bigger cam & heads, and a more efficient twin turbo that didn't make that much... Think he said it cracked a thousand, though. That said, there's more that holds my optimism back. I'm really pushing those TFS 120-lbs injectors. Q16 needs about 5% more fuel that pure gasoline, but is also oxygenated and apparently extremely timing tolerant. I originally built to make 1k+ rwhp. I'll be happy there. Slightly disappointed below that, but in the end relieved as long as everything holds together and I don't blow a HG or worse.

Full Build:
It has been quite some time since I updated my comprehensive build sheet. I did so, today. I've never uploaded it before, probably because I'm not sure if I knew we could upload PDFs. See attached if interested in reading 6 pages of parts.

New pics:
Crawling around under the car today, I took a few pics that I didn't already have.


This is the one I specifically looked for a and didn't have, a good shot of the QTP cutout:


Even pulled out the bore scope during the oil change and snapped a couple of the internals. I haven't seen the rotating assembly since 2007-2008. Good to know everything's still in there ;-). This one shows off the ARP 3.5 bolts, Oliver Billet rods, and the CP pistons. I even caught a glimpse of that Ed Curtis cam. I actually pulled the scope out because I'm still getting ferrous fuzz on the magnetic drain plugs & wanted to take a look. Didn't see anything concerning, but not a huge fan of the metal in the oil. Maybe it just doesnt have enough mileage on it since the build. No idea without an odometer, but I'd imagine a few thousand. Soon to be a lot more. Sorry for the phone picture of a picture, but didn't feel like pulling the mem card from the borescope.

Bummer!
It did the above at 24psi. When I went to 28psi, it stayed right there at ~970rwhp. I found coolant afterwards below the thermostat housing and on the ground. Car was running without issue, and the oil I could see in the valve cover looked fine. Maybe I lifted a head/headgasket slightly. One things for sure, Turbo Backpressure was WORSE! I really thought the modern turbine was supposed to be an improvement over my GT42-76.

I also:
- Was on track to run out of injector, so upped the pressure to 50.
- Ran out of pump... fuel pressure was starting to fall off as boost increased, though AFR stayed safe.
- had a glitch with the e-boost 2 controller.. apparently the power wire is not well-crimped.
- a charge pipe popped open. I tightened it with all I had, and that let us get the 28psi run in there.

Getting through all of that with Father Time consumed all of my rental time. I did not get to the 93 octane pass. I did not get Black Jack on, and I did not get to 1k rwhp, let alone 1.1k. Guess I'll lick my wounds, figure out what to do and go after it again at some point.

Got a decent vid of one of the runs:

View: https://youtu.be/txLw0Z_20LU?si=CzfYkoF_QrWKHrQa

HotFox said:

Chris, your only off 12% of your goal with issues. Your still making 2.93hp/ci! Dyno's don't lie! If it makes you feel any better I was off by 15% making 1.39hp/ci on my build and that was with a fresh short block.

Use the dyno as a tunning tool and don't kick yourself to hard on the numbers. Things were clearer for me after 1 month of my dyno day.

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Yeah, man. Thanks. I'm not tore up about it or anything. It's one hell of a car. I'm still gonna keep processing on it. It's almost foxtoberfest time. So, now it's clean up, and address the coolant if it's still leaking. Swap the 93 octane back in. Crawl over the car and make sure everything held up after beating on it.