Fuzion's Engine bay & H/C/I Progress Thread

My exhaust setup is very similar to yours. Ford Racing shortie headers an off road H and a bassani catback. Im really thinking about switching the H for a Dr. Gas Xpipe.

Update

I know it has been a while since I posted up any progress. Basically everything has been a huge hassle recently. In the last couple weeks I had to fix one of the water pump bolts that had broken off while I was uninstalling the timing cover when everything was disassembled. The water pump bolt was corroded and rusty I tried everything to get it out but nothing worked. I broke 3 of the reverse screw drill bits and even tried heat. Nothing was getting the bolt out. I ended up having to drill it out and used a helicoil to rethread. To my surprise after fixing the hole I realized that the timing cover would no longer line up with any of the other bolt holes because the new hole I drilled was not perfectly centered. I ended up having to make all the other holes on the timing cover a little bit bigger in order to compensate the difference. I finally got that to bolt up properly with the water pump and all of my accessories.

Two nights ago I began fighting with the pilot bearing. I went to advanced auto to get a pilot bearing puller. They gave me the type with the two teeth that you screw out with a wrench... all that thing did was destroy the pilot bearing. After multiple attempts I ended up breaking one of the teeth of the tool and pilot bearing hadn’t even moved. The next day a friend used a similar tool with much bigger teeth and a slide hammer. That finally got it out. So pilot bearing was replaced, flywheel and clutch and t5 are all now bolted to the engine.

I also drilled the hole on the trick flow valve cover for the oil fill kit which btw looks very good.

Basically everything that could go wrong so far has gone wrong. But I am still not giving up. Hopefully everything will be back in the car tonight and running by next weekend.

Thanks for reading.

1991notchbackLX said:

I believe that's called working on a car, haha. Best of luck with everything. It'll all be worth it the first time you stab the gas and kick the rear end out sideways.

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lol, this is why i hate shows like horsepower tv and trucks... everything on those shows just slide right into place. they guys are never sweating or anything.

1990Coupe said:

Dude you should have come on here! What i did to remove my pilot bearing was pack the hole with grease, then used a wooden dowel that was the same size as the hole in the center which i just packed with grease, stuck it in there and whacked it a few times with a hammer. Literally took 2 mins to get out.

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lol, yea after struggling on it, i came on here to see if anybody else has been having the same issues and i read somebody doing that method. everybody was like yea its the best easiyest way possible. i wanted to shoot myself.

50sleeper said:

Aaaaah so true. I always roll my eyes when I see them do a project car.

Great thread, keep up the good work.

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yea all that plus they are always so clean. you should see how dirty i get while working on my car. it is impossible for me to stay relatively clean. no matter what i am doing. i could be changing the air freshner in the car i would have oil all over me.

Got the Engine back in the car this weekend. here are some updated pictures.











Found these 3 bolts in the pile of old stock rockers and lifter. Anybody have any idea what they are for? they look like the belong inside the engine somewhere since they are so clean and shiny.

66sprint6 said:

Dunno bout the bolts but congrats on the progress!!! I gotta tear mine back apart due to the motor tickin real bad. After doin every test i can think of im pretty sure its in the bottom end. Oh well...on to the next round of mods. Lemme know how yours runs!!!
Matt

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thanks, i got the upper intake on last night so i really hope its running by this weekend. sorry to hear you are having issues with the bottom end. You might as well toss the old 302, get a dart block 347 and some turbos. I know you want to...

Well after 10 months of it being down, I finally got to drive the Fox yesterday. It felt incredible.

Friday night we were determined to fire her up to see where we were at and get an idea of how much more work had to be done. When we first primed the fuel lines, the #1 injector sprayed gas everywhere. Luckily it was the only injector that we can get to without removing the upper intake. So we loosened up the fuel rail got the injector out, checked to see if it was cracked or anything, it all checked out fine. We replaced the O-ring with one of the stock injectors and were all set. She fired right up with open headers it almost shook the entire garage to the ground. We shut it off after a couple of seconds and put it away for the night.

On Saturday afternoon, I finished installing my autometer gauges, water, oil and volts to make sure we knew what was going on when we were running it. I gave up looking for the proper relay I needed to get my mkviii fan installed so instead of dealing with all the electrical stuff we decided to go ahead and reinstall the fan and clutch. The mishimoto radiator went in with the stock fan shroud bolted up just like stock. It all looks very nice. After all that was installed we started filling up the system with coolant… to find that the thermostat housing was leaking coolant. That had to be cleaned up and reinstalled. O/r H-pipe was installed and bolted up to the bassani cat-back. We finished up all that work at around 8 at night, we ran the car to get all the coolant bubbles out it ran for about 20 min and it never got over 180 degrees standing still in the garage. The car idled fine but it was running really rough. We were wondering if the cam was really that crazy. We checked the sparkplug wires and found that cylinder #7 was loose. After that it was still shacking really badly. Timing was set to 15* but it didn’t help the shacking. We thought that the ecu had to be reset so that it could relearn itself bc we were running out of gas and had to shut it off. So we disconnected the battery and let it rest.

Sunday morning, we picked up more gas and got it running again. It fired right up and we decided we wanted to take it for a test drive. Once on the street the car had no power and was missing pretty very bad. We pulled over to check the distributor and wires again… they were all fine. Back in the garage we took the wires off and plugs to check them. None of the plugs were broken or cracked but 5, 6, and 8 were covered in gas. We hooked up a compression tester to cylinder 5 first it read 0. Next Cylinder 6… 0, cylinder 7… 170psi and cylinder 8… 0. We were amazed. We thought that it was running so rich that the cylinder got washed out. So we got oil and squirted it in each hurt cylinder and still had no results.

We took the upper intake and the valve cover off thinking a rocker might have fallen off or broken something. They all looked perfect, but had to be readjusted. I’m guessing that we adjusted them incorrectly and so tight that it wasn’t allowing the valves to close all of the way. We readjusted them and checked the compression again and bingo 170psi compression in each cylinder. After putting it all back together it fired right up and ran and revved smoothly.

On the Street it felt like a brand new car. It pulls a lot harder then the previous stock headed bolt on set up I had. It revs very fast and sounds incredible. The first initial pull set me and friend back and surprised both of us with just a little bit of tire slip. We weren’t expecting that big of an improvement. The car pulls really hard and just screams at higher rpms. Today I’m planning on getting the fenders, hood, and front bumper cover back on to really start enjoying it. Pictures and videos are on their way.

Here are a couple vids.
Walkaround

TFS Kit walkaround - Car Videos on StreetFire

TFS Kit Initial start up - Car Videos on StreetFire

Thanks for the compliments. hopefuly i can go back out and get the fenders hood and front bumper on wed.