Old School 5.0 Very cool stuff from the early days of the movement

DAJ352

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Mar 12, 2019
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Gainesville, FL
Thought I'd share some of the recent interesting post from my Facebook pg.

Roush 25th Anniversary Mustang
351ci Twin Turbo

By Mark Kovalsky - June 17, 2014
One of the last things I worked on before leaving Roush was a 5.8L Twin-Turbo 1988 Mustang. Ford’s then SVO (Special Vehicle Operations) group commissioned the car. They had learned about Chevrolet’s plans to introduce the Corvette ZR-1. Rumors put the price of the new Corvette variant at about $60,000. It was rumored to be one of the fastest production cars of its time. SVO wanted to sell this Mustang for $30,000, and have it fast enough to outrun the ‘Vette. This ZR-1 killer was also going to be the 25th Anniversary Special.
The teardown revealed six teeth missing from second gear. I had someone in the car with me who verified I didn’t miss the gear. The T-5 just couldn’t handle the torque.

We built the car in a very short period. To save time, the engine wasn’t dynoed, but 375 hp/390 lb-ft is a conservative rating. All that grunt was shoved into the car with a T-5 transmission. The production plan was to use a T-56, but there wasn’t one available for another year or so.

The T-5 wasn’t up to the task. One time I did a WOT from a standing start. At 5,000 rpm I sidestepped the clutch, scurried up first, grabbed second, dumped the clutch, and started to floor it again.

I made it about halfway down when there was a loud BANG and I had no power going to the wheels. I coasted about a half-mile right back into the shop. The trans locked up as I was coasting through the doorway. The teardown revealed six teeth missing from second gear. I had someone in the car with me who verified I didn’t miss the gear. The T-5 just couldn’t handle the torque.

If this was the car that was going to mark the Mustang’s silver anniversary, it was going to do it in a blur. It ran a low 12-second quarter-mile, and it couldn’t hook up until just before the 2-3 shift. I put the first 2,000 miles on the car developing the tune. By the time I was done, the doors didn’t fit right. The chassis had twisted. The Fox body, even with all of SVO’s chassis stiffeners, wasn’t up to handling that much power. I believe that’s why this car never made it to production.

During the development process Jack Roush asked to drive the car. After his drive, he came to my desk and asked me if I was crazy enough to ride with him in the pouring rain. I asked if I really had a choice. He said “no”.

Because 25 years have passed, I believe the statute of limitations has expired, so I can tell you the next part: We were driving the 25th Anniversary Special in a rain that was so hard I often couldn’t see the end of the hood. Jack took me for a ride on an expressway demonstrating an engine miss at 100 mph. I told him if he got me back alive I knew how to fix that. He did, and I fixed it.
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Rick Smith -
"This was our attempt to get in to the EFI manifold business largely at the urging of Chris Kaufmann. We were still stuck on the carburetor kick from working with our BigBlock Ford customers. This was right around 1989. It was inspired by Dave Lyall from Roush. He was working with Norman Gray and had shown us the manifold they made by cutting apart a truck EFI upper and lower for Stormin Norman’s inaugural 5.0 shootout in Columbus Oh in 1990.
We bought cores from a Ford core supplier. We set up a plywood fixture on our craftsman table saw with an oil mister and a carbide blade. Like everything else we did, we had to put a bigger motor on the saw! we cut a pie shaped section out of the runners in such a way that when we put the two pieces back together the crosssection lined up reasonably well. Then we cut off the stock plenum. We cast the Trick flow plenum and the Twin 50 to 100mm air adapter seen forward in the airstream to the throttle body. We then cut the EGR tubing and re-welded it to relocate the EGR to the rear of the plenum. We welded inside and out and went through a WP24 Tig torch about every 3rd manifold from the tight space and the heat concentration on the torch body.
On the base we cut out the dividing wall between #1 and #5 runners and kicked out the bottom of #5 as close to the distributor as we could get. We arrived at these modifications from observing the great disparity in static airflow on or SF600 bench.
We benched it all up , took them to the powder coater and lost our ASS at $1300 ea.!"

#OldSchool #TrickFlow
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BBK Octopus

Maybe the rarest of the bunch, the Octopus represented some out of the box (or maybe escaped from the asylum) thinking. Consisting of a two separate box style intakes stacked on top of one another, the crazy part was the series of tubes connecting what really amounted to two separate intakes on the same engine. The tubes contained RPM activated flapper valves which acted to close the tubes at high RPM, thus reducing the plenum volume by something like a third. In other words, the Octopus was possibly the first aftermarket variable geometry intake manifold for any brand.

It seemed to work well enough in testing, helping to catapult an LX hatch test car down into the 12 second bracket in the quarter, but for whatever reason, it never took off. We don't know how many were made, but we do know that weave never seen one in person

Write-up from www.wildaboutcarsonline.com
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Roush stage 3 Three Piece dual-plane Intake manifold developed by Jack. His goal was to sell the manifold through Ford Racing. Ford wasn't particularly interested as they had already made the decision to replace the aging 5.0-liter V8 with an overhead cam 4.6-liter V8. Having invested nearly $500,000 in its design, Jack began looking at ways to get a return on his investment. In a series of meetings, it was determined to put together a "kit of parts" that Ford dealers could install on a Mustang GT. But as luck would have it, the dealers passed on the idea. As a result, Roush opened up several installment centers throughout the nation to assemble the components
Kit came with a Cobra computer, 24lb. injectors, carbon fiber hood, smaller belt pulley (crankshaft), intake, fuel rails, hoses, coolant tube, all the small parts for a complete OEM quality install, and a notebook binder with detailed instructions.
Around 100 made. 18 of which were put on 1995 roush stage 3 mustangs
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TFS Horseshoe -
The name needs no explanation, but the intake itself might. Designed from the ground up to be a better compromise at a true street/strip intake than the previous truck based unit, the twin independent throttle bodies were a nightmare to tune properly as the Ford EEC IV couldnt properly process dual TPS signals, which reduced setting the idle to an exercise in futility. Like its predecessor, only a handful made it out the door before the hammer fell.

Richard W Smith Jr -
"That was one of the most desirable parts we ever made. The balance tube under logo was intended to transfer pressure across the dual plenums. When we ran it with a DFI (digital fuel injection, John Meany) it worked really well. The welded Ford truck bases had the 1 and 5 runner divide wall switched to clean up the atrocious dog leg both of those runners. PRI actually took a picture of a red version and photoshopped out logo and put it on the cover of an EFI issue. We would have gladly granted permission.
I used an epoxy paint on the first couple parts. I painted on our transporter ( converted school bus) with just a dusk mask on. It was cold and I remember having a space heater in the bus. I went outside to get something and when I can back in I couldn’t believe how intense the fumes were I went home for the evening and proceeded to cough of chunks of nasty sputum that tasted like that paint for 6 mos. pretty careless on my part. It amazing the bus didn’t blow up!
Trick Flow paid its bills and never went bankrupt. We did suffer from undercapitalization and a structured business plan. In an effort to right both of those short comings, I sought out investment from at least a dozen companies with the goal of gaining our own production matching capabilities. I approached Summit Racing with the Twisted Wedge concept to secure a PO that I could use in the same fashion as collateral to accomplish that capability. Over the months of negotiations, my brother left the company out of his frustration. Summit would not issue a PO. , but rather had an “all or nothing” attitude towards the Twisted Wedge design. None of the other potential investors even gave a serious consideration to my proposal. That’s when I agreed to sell to Summit. "
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Mark Harwell KFC Fox Body Ford Mustang
306ci - Mexican block with Scat crank, Eagle 5.400 Chevy rods, Dart iron heads, Cartech sheet metal intake, Bassani Xhaust twin turbo header system with 2 Turbonetics 66mm turbos & 2 racegates, Cartech air to air intercooler, DFI fuel injection, 83lbs Deka injectors, Trans King C4 transmission and Cartech stage 3 fuel system.
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Toby Gant 79 Mustang
Stock 87 5.0 ShortBlock, J302 Heads, Ultradyne Cam, Custom Fabbed Truck Based Intake By Toby & Pete Incaudo, Twin 60mm Throttle Bodies, Dual NOS Foggers 125hp Single Stage, Stock 19lb INJ's, Stock 87 EEC-IV, & MSD-6al.

C4 Trans

Toby -
We went 9.90's pretty consistent. We were the 3rd to go in the 9's. Norman, Wolf, us. But alot of guys did really soon after also.
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I owned a hand built ported truck lower with fabbed dual TB intake for years. People said it was an old Trickflow intake but looking at the pics i don't think so.
 
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