While waiting for the aluminum to arrive, I decided I would splice in the CDI wiring harness. The power and ground connections were pretty simple and went fairly quickly. As previously mentioned I need 4 seperate coil outputs for this whole DIS system to work. Obviously the stock computer had 1 coil output which was easy to find. The remaining 3 coil outputs on the AEM are positioned in pin locations which on the stock computer are listed as N/C (no connection). Therefore I needed to open the EFI harness connector so I could move some pins around. I ended up removing 3 pins which were originally used for A/C and moved them into the 3 remaining coil pin outputs on the AEM. Now I have all 4 coil outputs in the EFI connector pointed to the correct pins on the AEM. Next I cut all 4 wires and soldered them to the 4 input wires of the CDI harness. I then removed the original coil wire and coil connector (it would be REALLY hard to turn back now). As for the CDI outputs I will leave those alone until I finish the coil mount. I will mount the CDI box somewhere under the dash near the injector driver box (havent picked a final position just yet).

After the aluminum arrived I began my mount design. It arrived as a large 12" x 12" plate of 3/8" thick 6061 T6 alloy (which will look perfect when I get it anodized black to match the car). First I will have to cut it down to size to fit all 4 coils. This works out roughly to about 3-1/2" x 9" and leaves room between coils for cooling purposes. The basic layout will look similair to the Electromotive coil packs I mentioned a long time ago: rectangular aluminum mount with coils directly on the surface and wiring hidden underneath. I will also drill a hole in each corner to mount it to the car through rubber feet. The reason for this is because I'm leaning more towards putting it on the firewall. Mainly because I dont like the look of the coils in the front (very cluttered in my opinion).

Now, as for the coil inputs, they are located on the bottom of the coil. I will need to drill holes in the plate to pass the wiring through. At first I was a little worried about how I would make the connection and keep it waterproof. Luckily each coil comes with its own rubber insulator (which resembles a weatherpack connector) for a watertight seal. I will just have to do some milling to remove material in the plate to keep the insulator compressed and the coil flat.

Because I accidentally deleted the pics off of my camera I dont have anything to show what Im talking about. Im 100% sure I will eventually be tearing it apart to anodize the aluminum plate so when I do that I will update this section with the photos.

Like I said in my last update: Updates to the website have been horrible! I finally was married last month (May 13th) so now I'll have a little more time to spend messing with the car. FYI - Wedding planning is a huge PITA.

Anyway, down to business. So when I came back from my honeymoon the first thing I did was try to tackle the whole DIS thing. I spoke with Henry at AEM tech support about the new AEM twin-fire CDI (Capacitive Discharge Ignition) box and how it interacts with ignition coils. I was confused on whether or not I would need ignitors in my setup. He insists with the new ignition box and some 2 connection, 2 post coils, like GM DIS coils, that I should be fine. The reason for these coils is first because the AEM only has 4 coil outputs, which pretty much requires a waste spark ignition setup right there, and also because these coils do not have ignitors built-in. In general, he said coils with 3 or more connections usually have built-in ignitors and are more advanced, like the single coil per cylinder LS2 coils. Below is a picture of the GM DIS coils:



So, I bought the 4-channel AEM twin-fire box from Summit and 4 GM DIS coils from Jegs. The AEM cost about $300 and the coils another $120. They arrived a few days ago and I immediately dove into the manual to figure out wiring and firing order. Following the standard 5.0 HO motor firing order of 1-3-7-2-6-5-4-8 and the AEM twin-fire (+540V) wiring instructions, I end up with the following coil pairs:
Coil 1: Fires 1,6
Coil 2: Fires 3,5
Coil 3: Fires 7,4
Coil 4: Fires 2,8
Remember, because its waste spark, when the EMS says to fire cylinder 1, coil 1 is triggered which fires both cylinder 1 and 6. Because cylinder 6 is on its exhaust stroke it doesn't matter that the spark made it to that cylinder, hence the waste of a spark. Below is a pic of the AEM twin-fire after I cut the power wiring to length to prepare it for mounting:



So now that I have my pairs I decided to test fit the coils and plug wires to find a place to mount them. Since each coil has a cylinder it services on each side of the engine, I need to keep all 4 coils together in the middle. Intuitively this means either keeping the same stock length spark plug wires running to where the distribitor USED to be, or flipping the wires lengths and moving them to the rear of the block. Until I build the mount for the coils this can be decided on later. As a side note - I personally dont like how bulky the 4 coils look together but since I would still like to keep using the Livewires I purchased a while back that will be the plan for now. For now I don't want to get involved with custom length wires. That can be done later if need be.

I ordered some aluminum off of eBay so I can start on the mounting. As soon as it comes in, I will start some fabbing! More on this later.

Updates to the website have been horrible and I apologize in advance. I'm getting married in a few weeks and thats kept me very tied up on the weekends. No big deal, its not like I'm in a hurry to drive my car or anything right? Err.....

OK enough excuses. On to the update! One of the most important things I still needed at the time was the weld wire and the modified spacer. Takash was pretty busy with the beginning of the racing season so it took a while to get the spacer back. No big deal though as I had plenty of welding to take care of. I bought more wire a few weeks back and finished up the welding. The muffler hangers were somewhat problematic because for some reason the welds weren't holding like they did on the piping. I was grinding them down the same and even experimented with changing the heat settings to try and get it right. Eventually it worked, but to be sure I fastened a self-tapping screw through the hanger and into the muffler. As it turns out that worked great for mocking up the position of the muffler under the car. Below are some pics of all the final horrible welds I produced:




After I finished my horrible welding job I picked up the spacer which I had milled down by 3/8". I bolted it to the upper intake and then set the assembly on the lower intake. Just to be sure I closed the hood a few times, and sure enough it fits perfectly (so far)! Now something I didn't even think of was how this would effect the fasteners on the lower intake. Well as my luck would have it (and if you haven't figured out how bad my luck is by now try re-reading the last 3 pages) I can't fit a tool on all the nuts because of the now added height of the studs. The fuel injector rails cause a clearance problem from the side and the upper plenum causes a clearance above the stud/nut. I'm not sure how I can get around this. My other option (and yes I've been down this road before) is to buy a hood with greater clearance but that is an expensive path to travel. This is going to take more thought, and just like the other 10 things I've put off, I decided I will deal with this one later. To be continued...

Even though I couldn't tighten all the nuts, I wasn't going to let that keep me from routing the intake piping from the intercooler. Before I had the spacer milled I knew I would have problems with alignment of all the piping pieces. One of the hoses I purchased last month was a hump hose which aides in connecting pipe ends that don't quite line up exactly. After some grinding was done on the sheet metal where the original air filter mounts were located I placed the piping and used the new clamps and checked for clearance. Everything looks good except for two small areas which may or may not be a problem. The first is the clearance between the EGT sensor and the piping (see below):



You can see how the wiring just barely touches the bottom of the pipe. This is one place I will have to watch over time. The other place is between the Tial 50mm BOV and the hood. For this I may be OK with rotating it on its mount such that the valley of the BOV head is parrallel to the inner surface of the hood. I can close the hood but I'm afraid when the engine moves while running it may wear slightly. For now here is what the intake and intake piping look like (note the addition of the downpipes from the last update and the oil lines, which I mention below):



After I was done with the piping and welding I decided to finish up the oil system. As you may recall I purchased a few components a while back to build my own oil cooling kit. I already have the thermostated sandwich adapter mounted on the block, I just needed to run the lines and mount the cooler. Along with the cooler came 4 plastic zip-ties made for mounting the cooler to a radiator. In my case because I have no room between radiator and intercooler I decided to just mount it to the intercooler. This is NOT my preferred location but I really have no other place to mount it. I even considered mounting it in a sideways position out of the airflow, hiding under the fender, but even there it just doesn't fit. After getting it all lined up properly I then ran the oil lines from the sandwich adapter to the cooler. I then ran the feed lines for the turbo's off of the oil pressure sender adapter sent to me by Cartech. The pictures below show the oil system finally put together:



I decided since I had everything put together that I would prime the oil system and check for leaks. The only other thing to mount was the oil filter. And as luck would have it (again) I ran into a snag. Because the sandwich adapter is in the stock oil filter location it pushes the oil filter out another 2 inches. This causes a clearance issue between the filter and the sway bar (See below):



I have a few options to fix this one but it seems the cheapest and fastest way is to just get a shorter filter. I will have to check and see if the newer mustangs use the same thread size, because I know they do use a shorter filter.

First a small update about whats happened in the last few weeks.

I ordered a few things from Summit: the MSD crank trigger assembly, some 15 guage 3" exhaust pipe pieces (2 straight 4' lengths and 2 U-shape bends, the exhaust ball flange collectors, the K&N air filters (P/N#: Xtreme RX-4990) for the turbos, and some weatherpack connectors to cleanup the EFI wiring harness. I also picked up a few things off ebay: some plate aluminum for fabbing up an alternator mount, and some 3" silicone hose and CT clamps to finish the intercooler piping.

Once the clamps and hose came in, I tried to install them (cause I figured it would be easy) but I ran into a problem making them work. As it turns out, thanks to the additional height of the Box-R series intake opening, there is a misalignment of the two pipes that connect throttle body to intercooler output. As if that wasn't enough, when I finally got everything to fit, I tried closing the hood for the evening and found out the hood was resting on the piping, to the point I couldnt close it! Well, I knew I was going to have issues with the hood but I didnt think it would be this bad. So, I decided I would just mill down the Trick Flow adapter plate that sits between the upper and lower intake. I dropped it off at Takash Racecraft Monday and asked them to remove 3/8" off the top. We'll see what happens when it comes back. More on that later.

Moving on! I also tried mocking up the MSD crank trigger. For some reason the bolts that come with it are too short, so I had to go out and buy some new ones (with washers just in case I need to shim). I decided I will make the trigger mount also part of the alternator mount. As I may or may not have mentioned before, I have to mount the alternator down low out of the way of the Tial wastegates and related exhaust tubing to get it to fit. No one makes a kit for a setup like mine so hence the need to fab something up. All this will have to wait though since the new PA-Performance alternator is on backorder. I purchased it because of its small case size and high amp, 1 wire output. Again, more on this later, as for now here is a pic of the crank trigger finally mounted up (I'll most likely take it apart once I know the engine is working, so I can have it reanodized to a nice black finish). FYI - I also ordered up a race crank pulley set from UPR, which you can see is bolted to the dampner. The reason for this is to make sure I don't over spin the alternator past its 17,000 RPM limit:



Now, for the main point of the update: I decided to try my hand at welding. A few months back my dad was cleaning out his tractor barn and decided he didnt need his welder anymore. Its a MIG from Tractor Supply Co. that will do steel/iron or aluminum and has the Argon/CO2 regulator included. Luckily the wire he was using doesnt require any shielding gas, as this wire has a flux core. Anyway, I needed to weld the ball flange collectors to the turbo downpipes so I could start mocking up the exhaust piping. So, I ground down the edges of the aluminized pipe, made a few alignment checks, and then started welding. All in all, I think a one-handed blind man could weld better than me. Granted this was my first time ever, but as long as the welds hold I dont care what it looks like. Especially since they are hidden under the maze of exhaust tubing anyway.

I was told by a few friends that the flux core weld wire is not the best for finished welds and that I should have it redone. Thier thinking is that the flux weld wire is good for tacking things up temporarily. My thinking is, as long as it doesnt fall apart driving down I-4 I dont give a crap. At this point I just want to make sure the engine is running properly, and maybe after the first 500 miles I'll go back and take it all apart and have it rewelded by a professional. But for now, its good enough for me (I just know these words will come back to haunt me).

After the downpipes were welded I installed them on the turbos. The passenger side downpipe refuses to fit with the new ball flange addition which means Im going to have to remove the headers (uuughhhh!!!!) to get the downpipe in. Regardless of that slowdown, I started measuring and cutting pieces for the driver side exhaust. Its a very tedious job to constantly get under the car, lines things up, mark them, cut them, check again, cut if need be, and finally weld. It took me all day Sunday just to get something that went back far enough to where the mufflers should be and then I ran out of weld wire. I will try to get some more soon and start in again sometime this week.

Below are some photos of the one side I finished. Because I took my sweet time taking pictures of the welds (these pics were taken one month after I finished) and because I forgot to coat them with my ceramic spray, now they're all rusty. Go ahead and laugh. I know I did:



I also included a pic of the passenger side downpipe bolted up to the turbo:

I actually had that feeling of accomplishment today. I got a bunch of stuff done and the engine bay looks great (well almost).

First thing I did was install the headers. And, yeah it was a pain in the ass. The passenger side went in OK. Except, like a moron, I forgot to cover the strut tower and scratched the paint up. The high temp coating feels like sandpaper and will mess up a paint job pretty fast. It also messes up skin too. And because I couldnt wear gloves because of the tight spaces and working with the 12-point ARP header bolts my hands now look like I took a grinder to them.

Next I was able to line up the turbo to the headers and mark where to drill the holes in the sheet metal of the engine bay. Each turbo needs 3 holes: 1 for the compressor intake (big enough to attach an air filter), 1 for the oil drain hose (big enough not to let the hose contact the metal and wear a hole), and 1 for the turbo compressor discharge (big enough to connect the turbo to intercooler piping with silicone coupler and CT clamps). And of course --- like a moron, I drilled the first and biggest hole incorrectly and scratched the paint up (Hey - it just wouldn't be authentic Kenny if something wasnt messed up). I also wiped up the metal shavings after drilling and didnt realize I was scratching the paint as I wiped.

Anyway, below is a pic of the driver side header and turbo installed (everything is wet because it had just started to rain). You will also notice the intercooler in place but not lined up or bolted yet:



The driver side header was another sad story. Before I could even get close to lining up the bolts I had clearance issues between the front of the disc brake proportioning valve and the number 7 cylinder piping. It's very tight back there because of the steering shaft, master brake cylinder, proportioning valve, and header runners. Of course now it needs room for a downpipe, which complicates things. So I drilled new holes for the prop valve which would push it back about 2 inches from its original mounting. I didnt want to remove the brake lines which would certainly speed things up and simplify things but made it difficult in that I had to bend all 5 hard lines at once into the new position. So after that was taken care of, I was able to bolt in the driver side header. Below is a pic of the driver side header and turbo installed:



Just as a side note: One thing that annoys me ever since buying the Cartech turbo headers is the piping width near the bolt holes. Whoever bent and welded the piping either didnt think or forgot that someone would have to put bolts in the holes. The problem I'm talking about causes the bolt heads to scrape the side of the piping when inserting them into the holes or trying to tighten them down. Well because of this problem, coupled with the 12-point bolts they sent, it is impossible (on some of the bolts) to get a wrench around the entire bolt head. Therefore I can't tighten down the bolt, I can only get it finger tight. With the exception of removing the headers and rewelding them, the only other solution I see is to replace them with 6-point ARP bolts, because at least then I'll be able to get an open-end wrench on one side of the head. I have 3 on the passengar side and 2 on the driver side which I CAN'T tighten. Im gonna have to handle this soon since Im getting close to the first startup.

Next I was able to route the piping which was OK and test fit the intercooler. In order to get the intercooler to fit I had to remove the front bumper support. That wasnt enough so I had to cut off the metal mounts which held the front bumper support (theres no going back now). This kind of pissed me off because now if I want to use my fog lights I will have to fab up a bracket since they USED to be attached to the bumper support. Below is a side shot of the intercooler mounted:



I also had to trim the back of the air scoop at the bottom of the front bumper. It was so long that it was hitting the face of the intercooler and I didnt was to risk bending the fins while mounting it back up or driving. The moron thing happened again here too when I scratched the paint on the scoop while cutting with my not so trusty sawzall. Its not noticeable though unless your up close. I had to use shims on both sides of the intercooler mounts to push it out from the radiator support. In a way this is better because the bumper now rests on the top of the intercooler where it used to sit on the bumper support. The only drawback to the whole thing is how low it hangs from beneath the bumper. If I wanted, I could have cut out portions of the bumper cover behind the headlights, which would have allowed me to raise the intercooler another inch or so, but I didn't want to ruin the structural integrity of the bumper since there isnt a support anymore. I will just have to be careful when driving near bumps or steep inclines. Below are a few pics of the bumper cover installed over the intercooler:



For more pics of the intercooler install click here.

Anyway - Im very happy with the progress Im making. Hopefully next weekend I'll have the exhaust mocked up so I can take it to Tim Takash for welding.

NOTE: The next day I realized I didnt get all the metal shavings from drilling the holes and had nice little rust spots all over the fender and bumper, along with the ones I missed in the engine bay ---- this made me VERY angry. Looks like its off to the paint booth (again).

Its been a few weeks since I updated anything so here goes.

After getting the engine in the car back in January, I was able to start focusing on other smaller things like ordering miscellaneous parts and doing some paint touch-up. The misc. parts Im talking about are PCV, PCV grommet, AN fittings, zip ties, grommets, wire sheathing, etc... The paint touch-up Im refering to involves removing bolts and painting the heads to match the car. A bunch of the bolts in the engine bay were rusted or covered in grease, so basically the ones that are visible with the hood open I removed and painted (i.e. IAC bolts, wiper motor mounting bolts, throttle body bolts, throttle linkage, etc...) you get the idea.

I also had to go back to the EFI harness and modify things (which was kind of a pain since I thought I was done). I moved the connector for the water temp sensor (you may recall there were clearance issues with the fuel rail), added the EGT wiring, and as a result of that had to move the 5V and ground splices around. I would also like to change out those huge ugly connectors which sit behind the upper intake manifold with something smaller and more weatherproof. Summit and Jegs both have some which I might purchase, but its not high on the priority list.

Today I picked up my headers from Tim Takash of Takash Race Craft. He welded the EGT bungs to my headers for me for $30. Not only does he have a shop that seems to have every fabrication tool imaginable but he also seems to be a great guy. I was more than happy to pick them up because that means theres nothing stopping me from mounting them to the engine block to mock up the turbos for intercooler installation. I also picked up a can of black ceramic high temp paint from Advance for the area around the EGT bungs since some of the high temp coating was ground off to allow for welding.

I also reconnected the manual steering shaft to the steering wheel assembly (the portion inside the car) since I removed it when I changed the K-member out. It pisses me off that it had rusted so badly, especially considering how expensive it was. My tip for anyone planning on buying Flaming River products is to spray some high temp clear laquer on them before installing to avoid the rust. I wish I had done this before I installed mine, which will never again look as nice.

OK, before I get to the good news let me explain how I was able to get the K-member in the car.

After frustrating myself on Friday night, I went online and did a few quick searches to see what others have done to get thier locking lug nuts off. A few guys had great success with the Craftsman Bolt-Out Nut and Bolt remover. I decided to try it out for myself and picked up a Bolt-Out impact set (they make one set for hand tools and one for impact wrenches) that night. The next morning I tried them out and had all 4 lug locks out in under 15 minutes. I was thrilled the lug locks came out, but at the same time really annowed how easy it is to remove them (with the right tools that is...). So, given the hassle that these things caused me, in my opinion, it is almost useless to use locking lug nuts, because any thief would have no problem buying the same remover set I did and stealing your wheels. The only benefit I can see is that it would slow the theft process down. Below is a pic of the useless broken locking nuts:

Pics will go here later.

Now -- On to the good news. With the wheels out of the way, I was able to get the k-member in the car on Saturday afternoon! The installation was pretty simple (with air tools) and straight forward. The only thing that really slowed me down was removing the bolts from the A-arms (they were really frozen on there) and getting the springs in. I am a little concerned about the springs because they seem to be compressed way more than before. This was confirmed when I removed the jacks, as the car is higher than before. I will look into it later after I finish the engine install, for now here are some pics from the k-member installation:



For more pics of the K-member install click here.

Sunday morning with the brand new k-member in place, I finally had nothing stopping me from dropping in the motor. I had a few issues with the flywheel/pressure plate which I had to fix (I damaged a few bolt holes with too much torque) and the transmission mount was giving me problems fitting to the car (I ran over something a long time ago which slightly bent the support). My friend Mark and my brother-in-law-to-be Tony both helped me mate the engine and tranny, then we hung it from the crane and put it in. We ran into a small problem with the Energy Suspension polyurethane motor mounts and had to grind the tabs off to fit the k-member mounting holes (I forgot to mock up the mounts to the k-member beforehand). Other than that it was easy ;) Below are a few pics from the install:



For more pics of the engine install click here.

After the engine and tranny were bolted in, I went to work installing the fuel system. I began by installing the fuel pressure regulator on the rear facing side of the passengar strut tower and trimmed the stainless steel lines to fit. Next I put the fuel injectors and rails in place and thats when I noticed a minor snag. The coolant temp sensor protrudes so high that the fuel rail prevents plugging in the wiring harness. It should work fine if I move it to the other side, but I will have to rewire the main injector harness for it to work. I also mocked up the fuel feed and it looks like I will have to trim down the lines coming from the Y-block to the back of the fuel rail.

It was really late by then and it started raining a bit, so I decided to rap it up for the night. No big deal bcause now I have plenty to do when I get home from work for the next few nights (just small things really).

OK, I'll start with the good news. I scored a great deal on eBay from Autofab Race Cars on a QA1 brand tubular K-member. Its made of tubular thick wall steel which makes it far lighter than the factory stamped steel. QA1 advertizes this part as being 28 pounds lighter than stock (which is a pretty big chunk for a single part).



It greatly improves exhaust and oil pan clearance, not to mention it improves suspension geometry with a more aggresive stance. The best part is I only paid $230 shipped (and they sent me a free t-shirt -- Gotta love all these new work shirts Ive been getting). Search for user "chassis_warehouse" on eBay if your interested in picking on up.

Now for the bad news. I lost the key for my locking lug nuts. Yes I know, Im an idiot. I suspect I threw it out on accident with some old rusty bolts from the inital disassembly of the car. So I called tech support at www.AFSwheels.com for some help. Unfortuneatly back when I bought the locking lugs they didnt keep track of customer key sets. Plus I have the older syle and they dont sell it anymore anyway. So I bought a locking lug nut remover set off eBay for about $40 shipped. That was a waste of money. It only succeeded in rounding off the key tabs. So next I drilled the top of the lug off. Why? I have no idea. It was late, I was angry and tired, and I needed to get my aggressions out.

Anyway, because I cant take the wheels off, I cant change the k-member which means I cant put the new engine in. I was hoping to do it this weekend but until I get this lug thing figured out Im going nowhere fast.

I "archived" (so to speak) the older log entries because the page was getting too long. To read older entries go to page 3 by clicking here.