Build Thread My C I P (continuous Improvement Program) Thread

I figured I'd start one of these to try to keep me motivated in this car, and see if I can get any suggestions on paths to take, or help spot any screw-ups I'm doing.

My plans for this car have changed in the last year and half: I moved back home after my mom passed, sold my place (not having a mortgage again is nice), and bought a '12 GT to drive every day. That means the fox can go from the "multi-purpose" role of dd/show/cruiser/racer to mostly just a 40/60 split of the last two. Still intend to drive this thing to work on nice days, but I'll have much less emphasis on creature comforts (not that there were many in the first place, it is an almost 25 year old car after all). I also want to do this in stages, more for the sake of sanity and getting used to things before diving into them than budget concerns.

So here's what I'm starting with, most of you know this car already, but it's nice to have reference:




Specs:
'89 GT
2001 Explorer 302 (GT40P)
TFS Stage 1 cam
TFS spring kit
TFS Street intake
T5 conversion (was an aod car till i blew up 4th gear)
4.10 geared rear
Misc. bolt ons (shorty headers, 2.5" exhaust, 3g conversion to name the big ones)

Heres the pile of stuff waiting to go on, some of which (heads) I've had a while:

In the "new" pile is:
TFS Twisted Wedge Heads (I had these on before the explorer motor and crashed the valves, just got em fixed and milled to a 58cc chamber a couple weeks ago)
Fel-Pro 1011-2 head and 1250-S3 intake gaskets
T5 rebuild kit which i'm not going to use now
FRPP Steel Flywheel
McLeod Super StreetPro 10-spline clutch (being exchanged right now for a 26-Spline)
FRPP Carbon 8.8 rebuild kit
TFS diff cover
Accufab 70mm t/b and egr spacer

Continued in next post

So the plan this winter was to rebuild the T5 I have, go thru the rear, change to the wedge heads, and throw some dr's at this thing. Well, plans change, and if you saw my post in the tech forum you'll know why, but basically what i thought was a regular production Mustang T5, isn't. It needs an input shaft, and I cant find it anywhere (10-spline, 28-tooth, whose barely legible stampings I cant find in any reference). Since this makes me 100% uncertain on the history and origin of this trans, I started searching the local craigslist and came across this:

Its a 1st-gen tremec tko, came with a cast bellhousing, pro-5.0 shifter, new(er) clutch fork, throwout bearing, FRPP aluminum driveshaft with 31-spline yoke, and a lightly used spec stage 3 clutch. As I am NOT a fan of spec's (had a stage 1 when I first swapped the AOD for the T5), I opted to send the McLeod I got for the T5 back for an exchange for a 26-spline version, and I'll put the spec back on cl once i get everything buttoned back up.

The rest of the plan, at least so far, stays the same. I'm fixing some leaky or worn stuff as I go; the rear main seal is dripping a bit, the timing cover is nasty as hell, valve covers and lower intake are both stained green from a heater hose that exploded at the track a couple years ago, etc.

I started tearing the motor down last weekend, and got as far as getting the upper intake off before this happened:

Yep, my old nemesis, damn heater hose pulled the barb off the heater core. Barely had any force behind it either. Apparently this car does NOT like heater hoses, so therefore I'm going make life easier on myself, and just put a reducer in the hole for the hardline in the intake, slap the ECT sensor in it, and bypass the core. I rarely take this thing out when it's cold anyway, so no big deal, plus it will help clean things up.

Got back cracking on it this morning, and here's where it stands as of about 30 minutes ago:





It really does amaze me how nasty this bay is, so I'm thinking I'll get as much stuff out of it as I can, scrub it clean, and throw a couple cans of paint at it to at least make it presentable.

graters for life man. theres three of us on the local boards with white fox gt's, and we all kept the graters. someone has a pic of em all side by side going down the highway, might have to find it.

i usually just take a pair of pliers and just spin them on the barb to break them loose, but then i usually also try to reuse them if they're newer and still in good shape. apparently not this time. the one that blew up on me btw was only a couple months old when it went.

so i got my timing cover off last night, and noticed a bit too much slack in my tfs billet timing chain. i've got another shopping list building at summit, glad i didnt hit submit yet. going to add a cloyes set to the order. today im going to start cleaning the bay up for a bit of paint work.

thanks man, hopefully it will last this time, seems like sometimes this car is cursed. the last time i had these heads on this car i had just rebuilt the stock clock, and i had it running for all of a month before the sn95 seat track i swapped in shorted out, and almost set the whole car on fire. got laid off not too long after that (before i could fix it), so then it sat for about 6 months, and then about a month after i got it running again, the cam bolt backed out and carnage ensued. yeah, that was a fun period in time.

so anyway, i'm looking at timing sets, and i'm debating between two cloyes sets.
one is a full billet set that the cloyes catalog says is for 62-84 engines:
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/clo-9-3535x9/overview/
the other has a cast iron cam sprocket that says its for 72-01 blocks:
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/clo-9-3138/overview/

i'd rather go with the billet cam sprocket, and the only fit difference i see is one calls out for the fuel eccentric, which with being efi with an electric pump, not using it anyway. just want to make sure theres nothing else funky going on there before i go ahead and order. fwiw, summit doesnt list a year difference between them for the h.0.'s, just cloyes.

well, made some more progress tonight after procrastinating all day yesterday (what else are 5-day weekends good for? hopefully i can actually get some stuff done on this next one).

started removing stuff from the drivers side of the bay, p/s pump, battery tray, washer reservoir, wiper motor, etc. if i didnt already know how much of a pita it is, i would take the booster out too, but i may just settle for the master cylinder. fluid is getting nasty in there anyway, so at least i'll have a good excuse to change it.





heres how much slop i have in the timing chain



and just cause i can, this is the work area



i was kinda amazed this fit like this, both cars are pretty close to the garage door, but that leaves plenty of room to walk around between them and the bench/toolbox. could not have done this at my old place, my last truck barely fit in there if i touched its nose to the back wall. here, well, my dad used to put our 16' runabout and the grand marquis in here when i was a kid. my stepdad started insulating and sheetrocking it after i moved out, at least up to the loft (open rafters), and that little heater keeps it warm enough out there to work in a t-shirt (another improvement over my place). in fact, the only advantage my old place had was lighting.

last couple days worth of progress

finally got this sucker out, i've never had an easy-out actually WORK

this what happens when your wiring harness start smoldering and almost catches on fire
View attachment 422003



cruise control stuff removed, should clean things up a bit.

and other than a scrub down with some simple green and some dawn, this is how she sits now:


now i gotta figure out how to get the gunk off the frame rails/sway bar mounts. car was undercoated years ago by the previous owner, so i know thats not helping there. i'll probably just spray from the rails down flat black.

car was also repainted back in '07, and it looks like instead of using the old formula for oxford white, they used the new one. the duplicolor stuff only covers the old one (which is a tiny bit "creamier"), so i went and got the gas door scanned and custom mixed into spray cans, hopefully it matches better. also hoping i can find some white primer to put on first so i can get enough out of the cans to do the bottom of the hood, at least the burned-up corner anyway.

i know its been awhile since i updated this, but really, how exciting is watching paint dry? i have been making slow (and cold, this 4 degree crap can go back to canada) progress though.

my weapons of choice in painting the bay:

after a bit of reassembly


tonight i started working on the motor, got the rear main seal out (pita), put a sleeve on the crank (just in case), and installed a new fel-pro seal.

the tool for the sleeve also works well for the seal itself
got as far as cleaning up and installing the index plate before stopping for the night



i have a parts-store brand pilot bearing to put in, its been sitting in the trunk of the coyote for two weeks and wont turn by hand now, so i guess i'll try to find a ford one, and ill pull the old gnarly one tomorrow.

hopefully i'll also remember tomorrow that i already got a new transfer cable for my old camera, and get some better pics than the phone can do (even though the camera is about 8MP lower than the phone, its just sooo much easier to get a steady pic thats not yellow looking).

supposed to warm up this weekend, so im hoping i can either get the tko in (provided i can find a good pilot bearing locally and can get a second pair of hands to lift it) or get the top end mocked up to order some pushrods.

so i FINALLY got my old camera able to transfer pics (and they look waaaay better to my eye, not nearly as yellow as the phone somehow goes), and made some actual car progress too after running some errands after work (which, btw, going in an hour early at 5am on a friday just to get an hour of overtime that everyone else in the shop cheats into an extra 15 minutes the rest of the week SUCKS!!!!).

im going to try a little trick on the tko if i can. i put a 4.10 gear in the car back when it was still an aod, and when i swapped the t5 in, i also swapped in a black 6-tooth speedo drive gear instead of the 7-tooth to avoid the pitfalls of the white 23-tooth driven gear. the tko comes with a 7-tooth gear standard (and thats all thats available for it too), but it uses a bigger center bore, no splines, and no clip like the t5 gear. so i bought BOTH a t5 6-tooth drive gear and a plan-b 23-tooth driven gear, hoping i can stick the driven gear in a lathe at work and just bore it out. got as far as getting the tailhousing off before the lock ring holding the speedo gear on kicked my ass, as a regular snap ring plier wont grab it. have the proper tool on order, but it wont be here till next week, so installing the trans will have to wait till at least next week.


after that bit of failure, i decided to pull the old, gnarled-up pilot bearing, which (eventually) came out in pieces.



there was one more little chunk of inner race that came out with that, but no rollers, so i'm assuming this is why the trans wanted to grind going into first on a roll, and would just randomly grind going into other gears as well (mostly 4th, but it was kinda random). it also chewed up the input shaft of the t5 that i cant find anywhere, so moral of the story is avoid the cheap autozone pilot bearing. oreilly and napa both carry different boxings (federal-mogul and house brand respectively) of the proper timken bearing, and you can tell the difference:


after that, i switched to the front of the motor and swapped the timing set, new cloyes on left, old tfs on the right


i was kind of suprised to see how different they were, the tfs uses a bronze thrust bearing which the cloyes does not, the tfs sprocket it also just a tad lighter, and the "web" machined finish is also better, but there was too much deflection in the chain (the tfs set was on the old motor that blew up). after a little fun with a stone out of a dremel bit set to deburr the thrust surface-


this is were i stopped for the night, installed dot-to-dot this time, i degreed the cam in when i originally put this explorer motor together and it checked within 1 degree with the tfs set installed straight up so hopefully cloyes did theyre homework here.



tomorrow ill convert a couple old lifters to solid, and measure for pushrods and check ptv clearance. hopefully i can get most of the top end on over the weekend between beers and bbq (supposed to be in the 50's, and i haven't fired up the grill since at least october, not gonna waste the opportunity).

got some more work done today. started by getting valvetrain measured up, i have all the old parts from the original 302 so i converted a couple old lifters to solid. then i setup my adjustable pushrod to the same length as my old tfs pushrods as a starting point. these are etched as being 6.7", but my calipers showed 6.718-6.720, so i'm assuming that they are marked for a gauge standard. anyway, first time thru at the length gave me a .020" witness on intake, .040" on exhaust. put and extra .050" in the pushrod, and ended with the pattern below (that side of the car is up against the wall, kinda hard to get a good pic)

both marks are approximately .030" wide now, so im going to order some 6.750 rods, just dont know if i should stick with the $100 tfs, or $140 comps. i had comps in the gt40's, and they look the same as the tfs and the specs are the same, so i'm guessing whoever makes the comps (if they dont make them in house) also does the tfs. neither will ship till monday, so i have some time.

while i had the adjuster and solids made up, i also double checked my ptv clearance. somehow i lubed up the wrong chamber and my clay ended up sticking to the head instead off the piston, oops.



slicing thru the thinnest section where the intake valve went:


still about .100" thick at the thinnest point, minimum should be .080", so should be good to go. exhaust side was close to 1/4", so not at all worried about it.

and here's how it sits now


tomorrow i'll work on getting the lower intake stripped, cleaned, and repainted, then deburr the new lrs timing cover i have and get that painted too. hopefully can get the clutch and bellhousing on while all thats drying, and might try to throw a couple old, unbent pushrods in so i can see what i'm going to have to do put the stock valve covers over these heads.

so heres where i started with the intake today:

just a little bit (okay, alot) nasty. thats about three years worth of crap on the thing, and you can see what the blown up heater hose did to it.

after a scrub down with some easy-off (big tip: dont use this stuff if you DONT plan on painting/coating whatever aluminum piece youre working on, makes it almost black), another scrub with some dawn/scotchbrite, 2 trips through the dishwasher, detailing with some brake cleaner, and then 3 coats of duplicolor ceramic primer and 4 coats of aluminum color coat, i'm left with this:

also cleaned up/painted a new timing cover and t-stat housing to match

debating on if i want to clear over these pieces, it would help with keeping them clean, but i dont know if it will yellow or not.

in between coats, i played around with the mcleod clutch


and installed on the new frpp billet flywheel (after fighting with one of the dowels for a while)

so heres another big tip: check parts fit BEFORE you go modifying or painting them. what happens when you dont? well, how about this:



the cheap murray (oreilly's) t-stat housing is BIGGER than the face of the intake, and puts the hole for the heater bypass OUTSIDE the casting. im not positive, but i think that will leak pretty good, right? yeah, thats what i thought. total waste of time and money that thing was. guess i'll have to take another trip to napa tomorrow, see if they have a better one. the az one looks exactly like this one online, so thats out. and of course i emptied that trash can this morning and i'm pretty sure the old original housing was in it, so yay.

back to a positive note, and some actual progress instead of a step back.

new pintle caps and orings installed (btw, this is the first time that i've been able to get all 8 in one stop, usually have to go to three or four stores to get them all)


and the whole lower assembly on, with 1250s3 gaskets, arp stainless hardware, new act and ect sensors, and no more heater hardline.


gotta take care of some dog chores tomorrow, so dunno how much i'll be able to get done, hopefully can remember to pick up some loctite for the cam bolt (really dont want to forget that again, i know how catastrophic that can be), and then get the timing cover on. new pushrods should be here tomorrow, and the tool to get that lock ring of the trans should be here thursday, so HOPEFULLY this weekend i can make as much, or more, progress as i did last weekend.