I came home today and found the correct Cometic head gaskets had been delivered! Yeah! So I wasted no time throwing 'em on. It was pretty late by the time I called it quits and wasnt able to finish putting the lower intake manifold on, but at least all the valves are adjusted and the covers installed (forgot to take pics after the covers were on).



This past weekend I worked a bit more on wiring, since I couldnt do anything with the engine. I finished the wiring for the AEM injector driver box and installed it (below).



Also mounted the AEM EMS and wideband UEGO along with related engine harness wiring (below).



Also finished running the wiring for the electric water pump and the radiator fans. With that I also ran everything for the battery relocation and moved all the starter wiring. That also involved wiring up the Aeromotive fuel pump. Overall -- What a pain in the a$$! If I had known it would take this long I would have at least waited to get the engine in the car and running before attempting it all at one time! What sucks is the dash and accessory harnesses are taking longer than expected and I ended up cutting a few wires on accident. And of course rather than fix them right when it happened I waited and now Im not sure what they are for.... Check out the pic below to see the under dash wiring nightmare.




More pics of the wiring in the photos section.

OK -- I have always been the type of person that double checks things that I'm unfamiliar about (you would think head gaskets would be one of 'em). Well, in all the excitement of ordering the AFR heads and the ARP head studs from Brother Performance Warehouse (www.brothersperformance.com) back in June I never double checked the head gaskets that they sent. Well, as luck would have it (and Im a very unlucky person) I decided to double check them yesterday and found out they sent me gaskets with the wrong bore. The head gaskets they sent are Cometic #C5511-040 which are for 302-351w production blocks with a bore of 4.030" and a compressed thickness of 0.040" (that is the stock thickness). I called Cometic to verify the bore and sure enough, since I have a block which is boared to 4.030" Im supposed to be using a gasket of 4.080" bore. If I used the ones I have installed now the metal gaskets would create hot spots in the combustion chamber which would cause pre-ignition resulting in detonation. Not to mention Im assuming it would severly decrease the lifespan of the gaskets.

Now -- what really sucks is that I installed the heads a few months ago including all the valvetrain components along with lower intake manifold. So yesterday I spent a few hours tearing it down. Below are a few pics:



More pics of the teardown are in the photos section.

I called Anthony at Brothers yesterday and he seemed OK with letting me send back the old ones. He said they would need to inspect the set I have now to give me store credit. The correct Cometic head gasket is part #: C5513-040. Brothers didnt have it in stock so I ended up calling Bill at RPM Machine in Utah (www.rpmmachine.com). It should be here next week sometime.

A few days ago I was reading through the documention that came with the AFR 185's and saw something that I didnt catch my first time through. The rocker studs that come with the heads from the factory are suitable for all stud mount rocker arms -- EXCEPT the Comp Cams Pro Magnum Rocker Arms. Guess which type of rocker arms I own?! You guessed it - the Pro Magnums!! So while I sat to wallow in my self pity I began recalling how difficult it was to install the rockers arms. The problem I had was the studs didnt seem to have near enough threads which had me worrying if and when they would break. After reading a little further I found out that I need to order a longer stud from AFR to keep the valvetrain geometry correct. I immediately called AFR and 1 week and $50 later I had the new ones in hand. Below is a picture of one of the new studs (left) next to the old one (right).



You can clearly see the difference in length. Plus what you may not see is the new studs have a wider base just below the hex shaped portion which make it easier to adjust the guideplates by limiting the amount of play. This makes it much easier to adjust the valves (in my opinion).

As I write this Im contemplating starting a whole new page just on the distributorless dilema. The topic of going distributorless can get very confusing, especially given all the many different combinations of ignitions setups there are. Therefore I will try to keep it simple, as I am still trying to understand it myself and learning new information all the time. Here is what Ive learned so far (please keep in mind, that while I KNOW there are other alternatives, I am trying to stay focused on a setup specific to my own car with a few constraints; keep the AEM for sole ignition control and keep it inexpensive while still looking good):

A distributorless ignition requires a few specific pieces to operate. The first thing is a crank trigger wheel and pickup. Simply put, the wheel is just a round metal plate with devices on it that indicate the location of the crank as its rotating in the block. The pickup reads the teeth and sends that information to the ignition controller. There are alot of different wheels out there, all with a varying number of teeth. Im going to try and keep it simple and talk about two that I've read about. The first one is a custom piece by Mike Sitar (http://www.toohighpsi.com/), who unfortunately doesnt make them anymore.



It involves a magnetic pickup mounted on the timing cover which generates a signal when a tooth passes the end of it. I've heard pros and cons for this setup but it seems to work very well for a few of the Mustang guys on the AEM forums (http://forum.aempower.com/bbs/login.php). The second one is the MSD "flying magnet" setup.



With this system the magnets are embedded into the wheel so when they pass the pickup, it triggers a pulse. Personally I'm leaning more towards the MSD setup but its very pricey. Not to mention its red. I'd have to have the anondizing stripped and redone in black to make it look pretty in the engine bay :)

Now turn your attention topside. With the distributor gone there is nothing now turning the oil pump. Therefore the next part which is essential to operation is the cam plug. This item serves the main purpose of keeping the oil pump shaft connected to the rotation of the camshaft which in turn rotates the oil pump to obviously provide oil pressure. As an added bonus the MSD part I bought provides an additional signal to the computer to indicate position of camshaft relative to the crank. I knew I would need this part without a doubt so it was the first one in the system that I bought (below).



Now that the old way of providing engine position has been removed and replaced with the electronic version its time to look at the way it provides spark to the plugs. This is the part that is the most confusing to me. Because Im using the AEM I need to figure out how to sync up the cam plug and crank trigger events to fire the plugs. This shouldn't be too bad because I can always call AEM's tech line. My concern is what to fire them with. Before the AEM the stock setup used a single coil which fired 8 times for every 1 complete engine cycle. (EDIT: Dont forget -- the camshaft which drives the distributor turns once for every 8 spark firing events, the crankshaft turns twice because of the timing chain crank gear being half the size of the cam gear! Turning the crank over once is not a complete cycle!) Now that the coil and distributor are gone I need a replacement coil to supply the voltage. As I see it, there are two options for my setup; either coil packs with ignition drivers OR coil-on-plug. An example of coil packs is a wasted spark configuration, like the Electromotive coil packs (which would only work with my setup if I wired in coil drivers ahead of the coil packs):



An example of the coil-on-plug setup is on '96-'98 Cobra 4.6L engines and uses two coil packs (which technically aren't full output coils like the ones above, they are more like mini step-up coils) with four posts on each pack that fire another mini-coil inside the spark plug wire - like these performance parts from Performance Distributors:



Now - See how this could get kind of confusing for a first timer? I've yet to figure out which one to go with. And currently I'm waiting for some advice from a few people online on the best route to go. Hopefully I'll know in the next few months or so as Im getting very close to firing the engine for the first time.

Before scarfing down the Thanksgiving turkey dinner I decided to finish up a few small details which would allow me to mockup the tranny. The week prior to this I decided to mount the clutch components, however I was missing one very important part - the shifter fork. Luckily it came in the day before today and I was able to throw it on. See below:





I did run into a problem with the stock bellhousing to engine block bolts being too short. I was able to find some tough Grade 8 bolts from the local Ace Hardware ( 7/16" x 2.5" ) for a total of about $3 which fit perfectly and are a lot stronger than stock.

More pics of the full assembly in the photos section.

A few weeks ago I was having a conversation with one of my buddies about the turbo oil lines. I mentioned that my turbo is oil cooled and he suggested I check out an oil cooler. I figured it's cheap insurance, plus he tends to know more about turbos than I do so I decided- what the heck. I originally looked into the Maximum Motorsports kit (www.maximummotorsports.com) (see pic below) but for $599 I was reasonably sure I could do my own cheaper.



I started looking around online and did a little research into the different components. First thing, and in my opinion most important, is a thermostat to prevent the oil from being overcooled. Yes - the oil can become overcooled which can cause a bunch of problems in a street car. If you dont believe me, do a google search. In a fulltime race car a thermostat isnt needed since engine loads keep temps high causing a thermostat to stay open all the time, which is basically pointless.

The next thing you need is an adapter and fittings which relocate the oil filter mount and provide a pressurized line to the actual cooling unit. In my case I was able to find a combination thermostat/filter adapter called a sandwich adapter from Earl's Performance Plumbing (www.holley.com) which mounts directly to the engine block.



Its made from a solid block of aluminum and inside sits the thermostat with -10 AN ports on the outside which feed/return the cooling unit. The cooling lines are reuseable, stainless steel, teflon lined -10 AN line with 90 degree reuseable swivel fittings. The last piece is the oil cooler. I was able to find a highly efficient, aluminum 25 row, plate type cooler with a core size of approx 14 inches wide by 8 inches tall which is also from Earl's.



What did all these parts cost me?

1 x Earl's Sandwich Adapter - 502ERL - $84

1 x Earl's 25 Row Oil Cooler - 82510ERL - $195

4 x Summit 90 Degree -10 AN reuseable swivel fittings - 220087B - $64

1 x Aeroquip -10 AN SS 6 ft. line - (free, left over from fuel install)
Grand total of $351.75.
Understand that I havent actually installed the cooler yet since the radiator isnt in, so I may need the adapters to help in mounting the cooler to the radiator support. If thats the case the adapters cost $30, which is still far below the price of other kits available.

More pics of the oil cooler are in the photos section.

The next thing I needed to accomplish was the turbo oil returns which drained into the oil pan. The turbos were shipped with 1/2" threaded hose barbs which required drilling the pan and threading the barbs in. Unfortunately I ran into a large problem. The threads were protruding too far into the pan and were hitting the support girdle, causing them to loosen. Well, long story short and a few 1/2" ground down nuts later, I was able to reinstall the pan without the oil drain barbs hitting anything.

Moved the older log entries because the page was getting too long. To read older entries go to page 4 by clicking here.