My turn - winter upgrades

I dunno, maybe $40? It's real leather and I got to have the stitching the color I wanted, so it was worth it. In the time it would've taken me to figure out how to make one myself, I could've spent the same time and made much more than $40, so it was worth buying to me

That honeycomb turned out to be more of a pain in the ass than I thought. The Dremel buffs ****ING SUCK and come loose after about, oh, 20 seconds of spinning. Nice lot of good that does me, how the hell am I supposed to get anywhere? Time to look for some tiny buffs to go onto my drill and hope that works

Scott - I keep doing this because people like you keep doing what you do!

You see the pits on the non-volute side of my blower pic? Think of the same thing on the flat part of the honeycomb. The volute came out perfect, though. What luck huh? I just ordered some Dremel tapered sanding rolls and all the usuals (and some dremel-sized buffing wheels, which are a new one on me) to get this kinda job done, I wanted to do it without having to wait for them but what can I do. My local stores didn't have them this weekend and I'd rather not drive all over the city for nothing

The sides of it came out nice, but I still can't buff them with the Dremel buffs. Those things are totally worthless. The parts that are rough still are the flat pieces you see when looking at the blower straight on when installed. Some are ok, some aren't. Hopefully the new stuff I bought will work like they seem they will

My stall converter has finally arrived but the transmission is...MISSING

How the **** you misplace a transmission pallet is beyond me. It better not mess up my plans for the weekend install

Just a lil' update. I'll have pics of the install day probably, just for fun. THEN I will put the interior all together w/the new stuff!

What'd you use to get the vertical face (as it's installed) of the honeycomb? The rear portions of them, that is.

I did a friend's Vortech over winter and it had nearly NO pitting at all. My A-trim had none as well. This one, the volute is smooth but the other half sucks. Grrr.

The chrome intake is as good as the day I took it home I didn't ask if they'd do those parts but I'm sure they would. They're only metal after all. They would probably have to be taken apart to get the insides away, not sure how easy that is. They polish so easily and nicely (every time, too, Ford used some nice metals with those!) that I didn't even bother to ask or care to even wonder about it. The intake was/is the centerpiece of the engine, I needed it completely perfect.

Best bet would be to ask whichever chrome shop you're going to go with. Some will do what others won't, for various reasons. I found one guy who wouldn't do aluminum (even when I had already polished it) - he just did steel

Ok, the car's running and the S-trim is installed. Transmission has been located (that still cracks me up) and delivered, and tomorrow is the swap Next week = tune!

WTF... I hope my car gives me a boner. That'd be nice.

Update on the transmission

Saturday was our intended install day. Sunday was a free day to finish up whatever we needed (in retrospect: lol). My builder and I agreed on whatever it took to make it a all-in-one install. Didn't end up that way by a longshot

The first problem was the harness plug on the 4R, no instructions as to wire what and to where. Couldn't reach the builder all weekend so it had to sit until we found (today) the pinout schematic for the stock plug. Those were for my neutral safety switch and backup lamps. Gotta have both of those! Also the gear lever was incorrect in both position and style. Had to overnight from Ford the proper 4R gear lever along with an MLPS which the builder didn't know I would've needed. Upon asking him about it it became obvious, but DAMN I wish that would've been taken care of or told to me in advance.

Anyway we let it sit Sunday because we had no news to work with, so the trans. cooler was installed and I degreased and cleaned the entire undercarriage and all the lower suspension and bottom end of the engine that I could reach. I was tempted to take my exhaust, some chassis parts and lower suspension stuff to the powdercoater while we were waiting to get back to the install, but surprisignly I was able to leave it alone and just get it real clean.

And finally today we bolted it all up to trial fit everything, and it was a success. The wiring is done, the harnesses are run, the blowby vac tube is installed, the cooler is finished, and all we need to do is rubber-plug the 4R, put in a new dipstick tube, and put on the MLPS and harness. Then of course the driveshaft and exhaust, say a prayer, and test it all out.

The parts on order will be here tomorrow and we should have it running by the early evening provided we don't run into any more stupid problems.

Let me tell ya, the 4R swap into a Fox body is not exactly easy. There are *NO* tech articles out there, the automatic gurus weren't sure of too much about it (it's a rare swap, so it's to be expected), and even my builder wasn't sure of a few things! That's a bad omen if I ever heard one, LOL. But I owe the success of it so far to my buddy who has been able to figure out all the wiring craziness, make the harnesses, and so on. He also figured out we'd need the MLPS before anyone said anything Without that I definitely wouldn't have gotten this far He's the one who lent me his lift for the rear disc job, as thanked in 50&SF. Gotta love friends with lifts!

This is going to be baaaaaaaaaad once it's all said and done

Naturally as we know the correct shift lever should come from a 99+ 4R, the one ordered from Ford was not the correct style. Son of a...

Yesterday was not a total waste though, I ran all the valve body wiring into the interior and hooked them up, put in the new DIN panel while I was at it and put all the carpeting back together. While that was happening my friend got going on and finished making a harness to connect the MLPS to my AOD's old electronics, now the PCM will know where things are. Oh, and the biggest deal of all is I put the new dipstick tube in

I think it was a couple days ago when I was wishing I just went with a straight-up build AOD or a 5-speed swap. Either way it would've been done by now and nowhere near as many headaches.

Pics coming as soon as I get 'em off his camera.