Thought I'd Show Off My Project!

Just got my car running again. I've had this car since 06. It was originally a 4 cylinder car that I picked up from the junkyard with the intention of swapping a v8 in to. I've done that and then some
I've had it in various states throughout the years but this is how it sits as of now. Next mods are fender flares and bigger injectors. Usually the car doesn't sit so high, but with the wider wheels/tires I had to raise the suspension to insure no fender rubbing occured!




The mod list is long, but here are the basics: it's a built 408 with full maximum motorsports suspension, engine relocated 1" rearward, 275/40/17 up front, 295/35/17 out back, converted to 03 cobra steering rack, ford racing oil cooler, running megasquirt 3x with a modified ford explorer cam position sensor which I had to cut and re-weld in order to shorten it, ford explorer crank position sensor and trigger wheel welded on the harmonic balancer, coil near plug ignition using coils from a GM truck engine. This basically allows me to tune the timing and fuel on each cylinder individually. I just got the engine running again yesterday with the new ignition system, so there is still plenty of tuning to do.

My current road block is that I'm running 42lb/hr injectors which are hitting 104% duty cycle. Not gonna work, so I need to upgrade to 60lb/hr injectors asap before this thing hits the dyno. I'm going to crank up my fuel pressure to get me by for now but it's only a temporary band-aid.

Any questions, let me know!

Yeah, I have a stock hood for now with a rather large hole cut in it. It worked when I had the engine in the stock location, but now with the engine moved 1" back I'm going to have to trim it, plus with the coil packs on the valve covers, I'm not sure how I'm going to route the intake piping yet...I might have to trim the hood for the intake piping as well.

As for more details....the engine is a 69 351W block, custom cam, AFR 205 heads, TFS Box R intake, Scorpion 1.6 rockers, 42lb/hr injectors (too small!) Ford Racing valve covers which I modified so the coils could bolt on, Ford Racing aluminum flywheel, Tremec TKO 600(hasn't shifted nice in to third gear since new), Full MM suspension, including K member, tubular control arms front and rear, coil overs, adjustable rear sway bar, torque arm and panhard bar, MM manual brake conversion, 03/04 Cobra Front brakes, GT rear brakes(still no park brake ). The entire ignition system was donated, the only thing I paid for was the plug wires. Was a massive amount of work to wire everything in however.

I used to run this engine with Megasquirt 2 and I was using Ford EDIS for the ignition set up. I wasn't expecting a big difference going from batch fire/wasted spark to full sequential, but the difference in drivability, even with a very rough tune is amazing. I should be able to get a good improvement in fuel economy with sequential injection as well, though that obviously isn't what the car was built for! With the old set up, I was able to achieve about 26MPG on the highway, so that's the fuel economy number to beat.

pics won't really do much, but I basically just cut the shaft of the explorer CPS just underneath the cam gear shortened it to the appropriate length and tig welded it back together. Working great so far!

Yeah, I did think about increasing the pressure as you say. I'm running two external walboro 255's, so they could most likely handle the pressure increase. I though about bumping it up to 60psi from the current 40, however I'm still not convinced it will be enough fuel because 1)it was at 104.6% duty cycle 2)my timing is still very conservative at 26 degrees so it will require even more fuel once it has the proper ignition advance 3)I was only at ~75% throttle position during that pull according to the datalog and 4)my air fuel was still at 14.5ish despite all that.

With my air fuel being so far off and the duty cycle being a good 20% over what is acceptable, bigger injectors are probably the better way to approach the issue.

Yeah, my combo shouldn't be maxing out 42's by as much as it is. I think I will try turning the fuel pressure up temporarily just to see what happens.