Hey Alan, nothing like an empty room, eh?   I haven't advertised the web site yet, so there's not a lot of people looking at it.  Hopefully when my book is ready to ship and I start pointing people to this web site to buy it, more people will sign up on the forum.  I guess we will see.  I had a new member from Germany sign up a couple of days ago; I figured this was his post!

I made more good progress on the car this week, but I'm still about a week behind where I want to be with my schedule.  This means that next weekend instead of starting my sheet metal intake, I'll need to spend at least a day finishing up getting all the body panels fitted on the car, and then probably another day making the swing out sidebars on the roll cage, adding seat belt tabs, welding on the trailer hitch, and in general finishing up the roll cage and chassis work.  I might be able to cut that time down somewhat if I can get some things done in the evenings this week; we will see.

After my last update Mario428 commented that the donut exhaust pipe that I was going to use to make a sharp bend in the #8 header tube could cause a power loss as compared to lengthening the primary pipe and using the normal radius bends.  I did a little research on this and found that there is indeed a consensus in some circles that this is true.  But I wasn't 100% convinced, and decided that this would be an interesting thing to test on the dyno.  Monday night last week I did the machine shop demo for my son's Boy Scout troop, which the kids loved but which didn't leave me any extra time to work on the car.  So Tuesday night I broke free for a couple of hours and fabricated my #8 tube out of the standard J-bends I'd been using to build the headers.  I split the #8 primary tube into two halves, with a coupler in the middle, so I could remove the new section of pipe.  Wednesday my exhaust donuts arrived from the Chassis Shop, but I was tied up with family stuff so I couldn't get back to the shop until Thursday night.  But on Thursday I managed to get the sharper, correct length primary pipe completed.  Here's a photo of the left side header with this pipe in place on number 8:



During the week I'd been talking to Steve and Jerry, trying to get a time arranged when we could all get together and thrash on the body assembly of the car.  I'd been hoping for Saturday night, because I still had the right side header to get completed, and I figured it would be easier to get that done without the front fenders on the car.  Saturday night would have left me Friday night and all day Saturday to get the right side header completed.  But scheduling conflicts intervened, and it turned out that Saturday morning through the early afternoon were the best times for Steve and Jerry.  So on Friday night I got right out to the shop and started on the right side.  Saturday morning I was back out to the shop early, by 7:30, and by the time Steve and Jerry arrived at 9:00 I was done with two of the primary tubes.  After going over what we wanted to get accomplished, we decided that I would just keep going on the right side header, and Jerry and Steve would start by getting the new doors hung on the car.

The new doors were purchased from Mustangs Unlimited, and although they were new, they were made in Taiwan or China, so we figured there might be some installation issues.  Sure enough, Steve found that the bolts weren't tapped for the right size holes for the hinges!  Seemed like they were 10mm or something, so Steve drilled and tapped them to the correct size, and then swapped the latching mechanism into the new doors so we could still close and latch them for alignment purposes.  Jerry worked on grinding some of the welds on the rear quarters where the rear fiberglass parts were to be installed, and then helped Steve hang the doors after the latches had been installed and the hinge holed redrilled and tapped.  By 11:00 they were finished with the door installation, but I was still working on the last header tube, so Jerry and Steve started on the rear end fiberglass.  Around noon my wife came home with lunch, so we took a short break to eat before getting back to work.

By 1:00 I finally had the right side header finished.  On this side I needed to run three of the four tubes outside the frame rail, otherwise there would have been no room to drop the starter with the headers on the car.  One of the tubes is a little too close to the tire when the steering wheel is at full lock, and I don't like that, but I think it will be OK; here's a photo:



At that point I pitched in to help Jerry and Steve with the back side fiberglass.  I noticed right away that the fiberglass components for this car were nowhere near as good as the ones I'd received from Crites for my Galaxie, despite the fact that these parts had been about twice as expensive.  First thing that Jerry and Steve pointed out was that the fiberglass taillight panel was warped by a good inch, and had to be bent into place in order to fit against the back of the car.  Jerry and Steve had gone ahead anyway at my direction, but after installation we noticed one spot on the panel where the stress of bending the panel had caused the gelcoat to crack.  More bodywork.

We also saw poor fit issues with the end caps that bolt onto the back of the rear fenders, and the trunk lid, which we needed to shave on the forward edge to get it to fit properly.  After screwing around with this for quite a while, we decided to leave it and get to work on the front clip, because Steve and Jerry had to leave around 2:30.  (Jerry was going to pick up his new car, a Ford Fiesta.  He was giddy about the 40 miles per gallon!  In an attempt to bring him back to reality, Steve asked how much it would tow.  Jerry was not amused.  Those guys are a riot.)

Several weeks back I had already installed the front clip on the car, and knew from that experience what a pain in the neck it was going to be.  Compounding the problem was the fact that now the inner fenders were gone, so there was nothing to bolt the front fenders to except for the tabs I'd welded on the front roll cage extension bars.  We put the fenders on anyway, and had trouble getting them to even align at the back of the fenders where they met the door.  I finally realized that I had one of the captive nuts that was supposed to go on the fender on the chassis bracket instead, and this was keeping the fenders from sliding forward to their proper position.  After we fixed that, we were able to get the fenders put on and at least aligned with the front of the doors.  Sighting down the body lines, it looked nice and straight with the body line on the doors, so at least there was hope.

Just before Jerry and Steve had to leave they helped me put the hood on the hinges, so the three major front end components were mounted.  After the guys left I took a break in the house to visit with my kids for a while, then was back out to the shop on Saturday night.  I spent the evening working on getting the rear fiberglass fit to be as good as possible.  It was a semi-hopeless task, and I can see that there will be a lot of added Duraglass to a few sections of the fiberglass, because no matter what there was no way I was going to be able to adjust the panels to fit properly.  The area right at the back of the car, where the trunk panel had to line up with the end caps, was particularly bad.  But it looked familiar somehow; I went back to my computer to look at some photos of 69 Shelbys that I'd saved off the internet, and sure enough, at least one of them had the same alignment issue!  The telltale sign of aftermarket fiberglass parts.

In any case, after doing the best that I could with the rear end fiberglass, I decided I wanted to see what the rear end of the car would look like with the taillights and bumper installed.  I had to hang the old bumper in place, which was kind of ugly, but I did have new taillight lenses and frames.  After I put them on I snapped the following photo:



I've always really liked the 68-70 Shelby taillights.  Staring at the back of the car was a pretty good motivational tool, and I went in on Saturday night feeling like I was making some progress.

Sunday morning I was back out at the shop again, this time to work on the front end.  I could see that the front left fender needed some more alignment work back at the door, so I took it off and replaced it a few times, trying to work it into the correct position.  Finally I realized that the problem was the door, not the fender.  The door gap along the rocker panel was 3/8" at the back of the door, and about zero at the front of the door.  I loosened the hinges and pried to door up to even the gap.  Next fit of the front left fender looked much better, and after a few more tries loosening and tightening the mounting bolts while adjusting the fender I finally had an acceptable fit.

I spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon on Sunday getting the front end of the car more put together.  Most of this work focused on the headlight buckets, which were a huge pain in the butt to get fitted with the hardware for the headlights, and bolted correctly into the front fenders so that they fit properly and were aligned with the fenders.  I also worked on installing the fender bolts into the tabs I'd welded onto the roll cage extension bars, and repositioned the front crossbar of the radiator mount a little to line up with the fenders better.  I had to call it a day at 3:00 PM because I had other commitments, but I was finished with the front end work up to the front bumper.  Here's a couple of photos of the car as it is now:





Despite this progress, I still have a good eight hours of work to do on the front end fiberglass.  I need to build brackets for the bumper, plus add the small fiberglass panel underneath, and then add tabs to mount the grille and front marker lights.  I also have to add brackets for the hood pins, and cut the hood for the hood pin installation.  Hopefully I can get this done during my free evenings this week, so that I can spend a day next weekend on the rest of the roll cage work, and then start the sheet metal intake next Sunday.  We will see what happens; I'll post another update next weekend.

Heat; I've noticed that with less initial timing, idle heat is higher.  On my 445, 10 degrees is hotter than 12. (195 @ 10, 180 @ 12) in addition I can get a smoother idle at 10.  Is 12 to much?

Air Fuel ratio;  Is there a relation ship between optimum timing, carb tuning and the resulting A/F ratio?  If I've tuned my carbs for the best idle and A/F, will adjusting the timing have an affect on the A/F and how much.

Twelve degrees of initial is not too much in my opinion, and I've run as much as 20 myself.  More timing will generally make the engine run a little cooler, at least to a point, so that is no surprise.

I think your A/F will be affected by timing, since the timing will affect when and how completely the mixture burns.  There is an optimum timing point for any engine, and once you think you've got it dialed in, that's when you should be jetting to get the proper A/F.  Small changes in timing probably won't have a noticeable effect on A/F, though, so if you are talking about going from 10 to 12, I doubt you'll see much of a difference.

Hope that helps - Jay

PS - spellchecker is now enabled!

Thanks for the comments, Mario.  So, you are saying that by using the very tight radius of the donut bends that this will restrict the exhaust, and have a more negative effect on the power output than one extra long primary tube?  I guess I hadn't really thought of that as an issue; radius of the donut tube bend is about 1 1/2", and radius of the normal J-bends I'm using is 3", and I figured as long as the pipe was smooth I'd be OK either way.  Where would I find more information on this?

By the way, I use Pipemax when calculating lengths for headers and intake manifolds, but based on the dyno testing using my Hilborn setup it doesn't translate perfectly in the real world.  Pipemax predicted a 17" runner length would be optimal for my Hilborn setup on the big SOHC at 7000 RPM, and 20" turned out to be what the engine wanted.  It also gives conflicting results on exhaust system lengths; for example, on this set of headers, Pipemax says that the OD of the first primary tube should be 2.275", but that for optimum exhaust gas flow the pipe should be 2.1".   So, my opinion of Pipemax is that its a good tool that will get you in the ballpark, but it is no substitute for empirical testing.  You probably knew that 

These photos are hosted by Photobucket, as described in the Forum Information and Rules post:

This week I cleaned up a lot of small projects on the car, and by late in the day Sunday the car was looking more complete than ever. My driveshaft had arrived from Mark Williams this week, but before I put it in and started on the rear end work, I wanted to finish up in the interior. Wednesday night I got a few hours in the shop and was able to get the plates welded to the floor for the seat mounts, and also spent a few minutes getting the shifter mounted to the floor. On Friday night I installed the Lokar gas pedal, and then unbolted the Wilwood brake pedal assembly and the steering column from the cross bar and pulled the bar out of the car, so that I could finish welding and reinforcing the brake pedal mount.

On Saturday morning I had a few more hours out in the shop, and worked on the the welding and reinforcements for the cross bar. After finishing with that I made up a cardboard template for the hole I needed to cut in the firewall so that the master cylinders could bolt to the Wilwood brake pedal assembly. Then I repositioned the cross bar between the two front roll cage uprights, bolted the brake pedal mount to the hole in the firewall to make sure it was aligned correctly, and welded the dash bar into position.

Next I bolted the master cylinders on the brake pedal assembly, and tried to fit the assembly into position under the dash. Unfortunately the master cylinders wouldn't quite fit through the hole in the firewall, so I had to do some additional trimming to the firewall. This was a contortionists nightmare; I couldn't easily get at the hole from the engine side or under the dash side to trim it, but finally using a small cutoff wheel on a die grinder I was able to trim the opening where it was needed. Finally I got the pedal assembly and the master cylinders mounted, and took off the tape from the master cylinders where the reservoirs were mounted , and installed the reservoirs. The photo below shows the master cylinders; there is a pretty nice clear area between the master cylinders and the back of the engine:



My alternative to this setup would have been to retain the stock pedal and use some kind of a double pivot linkage arrangement to relocate the master cylinder up and out to clear the engine. I thought that this would be a lot of work, hence my selection of the Wilwood pedal and master cylinder assembly, but as it turned out getting the Wilwood pedal installed was a lot of work too. Hindsight being 20/20, I think I would have given more thought to the double pivot linkage scheme before settling on the Wilwood pedal, but one thing for sure is that if I had gone that route, I might still have limited access to the back left side of the engine with the valve cover off, and of course with the Wilwood master cylinders being completely behind the engine, that is not an issue with this setup.

The last thing I did on Saturday before heading out to watch my daughter's basketball tournament was to put the seat tracks on the passenger side seat, and bolt the seats and the shifter into the car. With both pedals, both seats, the steering wheel and the shifter installed, it was starting to look like a real car! Of course, it all has to come apart again for cleaning and painting before final assembly, but having the interior essentially all put together except for the dash (which I plan to custom fabricate later) gave a good sense of progress.

I had another basketball game to attend on Sunday afternoon, so I set my alarm for 7:30 and was out in the shop with a hot cup of coffee by 8:00. I was looking forward to getting to work on the rear end. After cleaning up under the car so I had a clear area to work, I positioned three floor jacks under the rear end to allow precise positioning, including in the rotational axis, and jacked up the rear end so that the tires were where I wanted them in the wheelwells. Next I unboxed the Mark Williams driveshaft and installed it; it fit perfectly. Finally I checked the angles of the yoke coming out of the Gear Vendors unit and the rear end yoke, and pumped up the center floor jack until the angles were the same. Back out from under the car, I pushed the rear end back and forth a couple times until the tires were spaced the same distance from the wheelwells, and now I finally had the rear end aligned properly under the car. I made sure that the ladder bar brackets were square on the axle housing, and tacked them into place in several spots. Here's a couple of photos of the car at this point:





Next I decided to tackle the rear coil over shock installation. I've had the shocks for this car since I purchased the S&W back half kit in 2005, so it took me a while to find all the brackets that came with them, and figure out how they were supposed to weld to the rear end. After I got this figured out it became clear that I needed to get the back brace tacked in place on the axle housing before I could weld on the lower shock mounts. I trimmed the four link brackets in back of the axle housing to allow the back brace to be installed, then tacked it into place. Then I modified the lower shock mount brackets to fit in place over the back brace, and assembled the shocks and brackets, hanging them in place from the top shock mounts that had been welded into the back half kit at S&W. Making sure they were aligned vertically, I tacked the lower shock mounts in position. Photo below:



After the shocks were installed I started looking at installing the rear end locating device. The S&W kit had come with a panhard rod, but I had purchased a Watts linkage kit from Speedway to try to get better location than the panhard rod could provide. The Watts linkage had come with bars that were about 20" long. With a panhard rod, the longer the rod, the better the suspension geometry. I knew that the same would be the case with a Watts linkage setup, but really didn't know how narrow I could make the mounting points. The width of my back half frame rails was only 24", so I was going to have to cut the bars down in length to about 12" in order to fit the frame rails. I decided to do a quick CAD drawing to confirm that shortening up the bars would still allow me the suspension travel I needed. I figured I needed 3" of up travel and 5" of down travel from the static position of the rear suspension to make sure there was no binding during normal suspension operation. The drawing below is the CAD drawing I made up to check this:



The drawing showed that in the range of suspension travel of interest, there was no issue with binding, and the Watts link should locate the rear end side to side effectively. I cut the bars down to the length I needed, which turned out to be 10 1/2", and then rethreaded the cut ends for the rod ends that needed to screw in there.

I was about ready to head off to the basketball game, but before I did, I laid out the Watts linkage and the other rear suspension piece that needed to be installed, the rear sway bar, shown in the photo below:



Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), my daughter's basketball game was a bust; the other team failed to show. So, we were back at home by 3:15, giving me a couple more hours to work on the car before I had to call it a day. After a bunch of measuring, cutting, fitting, and trial welding and re-welding, I finally got the Watts linkage installed with the bars parallel; photo below:



The rear sway bar doesn't look like its going to be a big deal to get installed, so I think I can probably get that done during the week this week. Then the rear suspension has to be disassembled and all the suspension brackets have to be finish welded to the axle housing and the frame. I also need to get the aluminum wheel tubs installed once the axle housing and tires and wheels are out of the way. Next weekend I won't have a lot of time to work on the car, but hopefully I can at least get those things taken care of. After that I can start the headers and the aluminum oil pan that will be required for the car, and finally get all the body panels on the car, essentially completing the chassis work. It looks like I should be able to get this done by the end of March (crossing my fingers ;-))

This week was another fairly productive week on the new car, although I didn't get done as much as I wanted to. I had been planning to get the driveshaft angles set and get the rear end components mounted and tacked into place this weekend, but on Monday when I ordered the driveshaft I decided that I'd rather have the driveshaft on hand and installed before I finalized the rear end configuration. So, instead I decided to move ahead with finishing up the chassis work at the front of the car, and then look at getting some tubing installed to tie the subframes together.

It turned out that the work on the front of the car took longer than I thought. One of the things I wanted to do at the front was to drop a tube down from the front roll cage extension tube to the factory frame rail, in order to support the frame where the front suspension load would be. As I was looking at this on Friday night, it became clear that the header pipes had to come straight through this area, and if I didn't put the tube in the correct spot it would interfere with the headers. So, before I could even start thinking about positioning the tube I had to know where the header pipes would be.

As a result, I spent Friday night and early Saturday morning fabbing up the first several inches of primary pipes and the header flange for each side. I was hoping to have at least six inches of straight pipe coming out of the head ports before turning the pipes towards the back of the car, but it appeared that this might be optimistic, based on the location of the exhaust ports and the stock frame rail. No way to tell for sure without actually mocking it up, though. On the heads I'm using the ports exit the casting at a 15 degree angle, so the pipes have to be welded onto the header flanges at this angle to keep the exhaust coming out of the port in a straight line. I dug out some 2 1/8" exhaust pipe for this task, because I was planning on using 2 1/8" to 2 1/4" to 2 3/8" stepped headers, just like what I had previously used for my Galaxie. This would allow me to re-use the collectors from those headers; since this car is getting the 585" SOHC from the Galaxie, I'm going to put my 510" engine back in the Gal, and I have a different set of headers for that engine.

On the topic of the Galaxie, I got an interesting call from my friend Joel this week (aka Captain Stabbin', also aka the Trunk Monkey). Joel suggested that I get the Galaxie ready for Drag Week in 2011 also. He offered to donate an 800 HP capable manual transmission and clutch setup so that the Galaxie would be a stick car, and he could drive the Galaxie this year, while I drove the Shelby clone. That's a pretty interesting idea that I'm still considering; it would be fun to have two cammer cars at Drag Week! Of course, I have a perfectly good C-4 and driveline for the Galaxie, and the car was already set up for that, so I wondered why Joel wanted to swap in the manual. He responded that he really didn't want to drive a car with "that oily, greasy, smelly fluid coupling behind the engine" LOL! But I'm not sure I'd want to run somebody else's transmission in the car, to say nothing of having two cars in the same class, and the extra expense of fielding two cars at Drag Week. I'm still thinking about this; no decision is required right away, and we will see how things play out this year. But it sure would be fun to have both cars at the event.

Back at the header flanges, I cut some 6" sections of the 2 1/8" tubing, cut off at a 15 degree angle, and welded the tubes into my header flanges. After getting done with this on Saturday morning, I installed one of the flanges on the driver's side to see how it would fit. Unfortunately, as I had expected, the six inch head pipes were not going to fit; at the back the flange wouldn't even bolt into place on the engine. Here's a photo:



It looked like if I cut the pipes down to 5" the flange might at least bolt onto the engine, and give me an idea of where the pipes came past the frame rail. Also from this mock up it appeared that the spot weld flange at the edge of the frame rail was going to be in the way of the primary pipes. As result I decided to cut this flange off the frame rail, and weld up the seam. After getting this done I cut an inch off all the driver's side primary pipes and was able to get the header flange mounted on the engine.



Sorry for the poor photo quality. With the pipes on the engine, I was able to determine where I had to put frame tube so that it would not interfere with the header pipes. I also took a mandrel bent section of 2 1/8" exhaust pipe and using this as a gauge, determined where I would have to cut the primary pipes off in order to get them past the frame rails. It looked like the straight section of pipe would be anywhere from 3 1/2" to 4" depending on the pipe's location. Not as long as I was hoping, but at least livable, and certainly a lot longer than the pipes would have been had I opted to go with a Boss 429 style engine compartment.

Shortly after this a couple friends of mine stopped over to ask some SOHC questions; one of them is in the business, and has a customer who would like to put an SOHC in a Cobra replica, so he wanted to take some measurements off one of the engines I have on an engine stand to see what kind of fitment issues he would be dealing with. While talking we were looking at the front end of my Shelby clone, and they suggested that I use some of the 1 1/4" chrome moly tubing I had on hand to triangulate the front roll cage extension. They suggested going from the junction welded at the front of the stock frame rail, up to the upper strut mount, and then back down to the stock frame rail at the firewall. I could still run my bar from the middle of the front roll cage extension down to the stock frame rail to support the suspension mounting point and engine mount area, but the other bars would triangulate the whole setup.

I really liked this idea. After my friends left I started working on this, but quickly came to the realization that this triangulation bar would cause a couple problems. One would be that it would limit my ability to remove the engine's valve covers, especially if I used studs to mount them. The second, and more serious issue was that by putting in a bar that ran down to the stock frame rail at the firewall, I would seriously limit the room for the headers to go through this area. The room on the driver's side was already limited by the steering linkage, and I figured I could only fit a couple of the header tubes through there as it was. Installing the bar meant that at least three of the tubes, and maybe all four, would have to wrap underneath the stock frame rail. This would lead to ground clearance issues that I didn't want to contend with, so after kicking it around a little I went back to my original plan, which was the bar down to the stock frame rail, a short support bar up to the upper strut mount, and a triangulation bar at the front of the roll cage extension tube, similar to what I'd seen on certain aftermarket roll cage kits.

By the end of the night Saturday I had the bars cut and tacked in on the driver's side. Sunday I spent most of the day on the equivalent passenger side tasks. Here's a couple of photos of the front of the car with these modifications:





I also got my new front wheels this week, and had the front tires mounted; Sunday afternoon I swapped them onto the car. Here's a photo:



I think those wheels look pretty good. I was really waffling between these Centerlines and Weld Wheels, and I liked the Weld's because they look good too and are probably a little lighter. However, the Welds were double the price of the Centerlines, and they are also not available in a 5 inch or 6 inch width. I didn't want to go with a really narrow rim in the front, because I don't like the way the cars handle with the 3 1/2" wide wheels, plus I've had some bad experiences with road hazards and the narrow wheels (pothole + 3 1/2" wheel = blown tire and bent rim). I've also seen this at Drag Week, in 2005 when one of the guys in my class hit a pothole and blew a tire. So I settled on the Centerlines because they were available in a 5" rim width.

Next I spent some time trial-installing the front seat in the interior, because I wanted to determine how I was going to mount it. I was thinking about installing the subframe connection bars so that they came through the floor behind the front seats, but I didn't want to do this without knowing first where the seats would be installed, in case there was some interference there. After I got the driver's side seat installed, I finally got a chance to sit in my new car. The seating position was good, and mounting the seat farther back from stock gave me plenty of leg room, which is sometimes a problem in early Mustangs. Here's a picture of the admittedly incomplete interior:



Finally, the last hour out in the shop today I spent the time laying under the car, and figuring out where I was going to run the tubes to connect the subframes, and also how I was going to make up the transmission mount. Based on the seat position I figured I'd be better off running the tubes completely under the car until I got right up to the rear subframe, and then just notch the floor a little and bend the pipe to come through and weld to the back half crossmember. I also figured out that I could notch the factory unit body crossmember that the transmission mount attaches to so that the header collector could come through up near the floor of the car, for maximum ground clearance, and then reinforce the notch to maintain the required strength for the mount.

At the beginning of the week I had been hoping that I would be able to get the subframe connections and transmission mount completed this weekend, in addition to the front end work, but obviously this will have to wait for next weekend. It is pretty obvious at this point that there is no way I'll be done with the chassis work by the end of this month as I was originally hoping, and with certain family commitments in March, it is probably realistic to assume that the chassis work won't be completed until the end of March. Hopefully this will still leave me enough time to get the car painted by mid-May, and on the road by the beginning of July. We will see...