FE Power Forums > The Road to Drag Week 2011

August 21, 2011 - The Road to Drag Week 2011

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jayb:
After last weekend's debacle on the dyno I was really undecided on how to proceed for Drag Week this year.  Monday morning I woke up pretty convinced that there was no way I was going to solve the problems with the 585" engine to make it to Drag Week, unless I solved the issue with the cooling system.  I was about ready to line up the engine at the dyno at R&R for further testing, but Ron the dyno operator was out of town this past week, and couldn't get the engine on until Monday or Tuesday this coming week.  I figured if I could get it sealed up, I could get the engine dynoed at R&R, and then stuff it in my Galaxie in the same configuration as it was in 2009, and go back to Drag Week with the Galaxie.  But my longer term plans for the Galaxie were to install the 510" SOHC and run it like that, as about a ten flat car.  So, I was also giving some consideration to leaving the 585" inch engine on the dyno for further work on the sheet metal intake, and installing the 510" engine in the Galaxie instead.

This second approach got kind of a boost when I talked to the technical guys at Superflow on Monday afternoon.  I was leaning towards the explanation that the dyno was not registering the power correctly because the absorber was worn out, and not transferring the power from the engine to the torque link efficiently.  Superflow burst my bubble on that one though, because they said if the absorber starts wearing out, it also starts having trouble braking the engine at the start of the pull.  I was having no issues at all in that regard, so the tech guy told me it was very likely not the absorber.  I spent about 45 minutes on the phone with him, going over all the details I was seeing.  In the end, he said it didn't sound like there was anything wrong with the dyno that was obvious, and while it could be a dyno problem, in 90% of cases like mine its an issue with the engine.  After hanging up, I thought I didn't want to go back to Drag Week with the same combination as I had in 2009, if the engine was down 150 horsepower!  So after work on Monday night I pulled out the 510" short block, which had been hiding inside a garbage bag in my shop, to see what it would take to put it together for use in the Galaxie.

I have all the pieces I need for this engine, and I had thoughts of swapping the good heads and cams from my 585" engine onto the 510" short block, but after a close examination of the short block I wasn't sure I wanted to proceed that way.  The short block was definitely usable as is, but there was noticeable wear on the pistons and bores, and looking at the bearings they probably needed to be replaced.  I would much rather replace the pistons and bore this engine another .010" or so before putting it all together for the Galaxie.  Obviously I wasn't going to have time to do that before Drag Week.  I checked piston to valve clearance to see if this engine would take the bigger cams, and collected all the parts together that I needed for assembling this engine to make sure I wasn't missing anything, but I really wasn't too excited about putting it together and running 10s in the Galaxie with it at Drag Week.

Late Monday night I started thinking about just going with the Ford GT, and running in Daily Driver like I did in 2006.  Since the Daily Driver class ends with a bracket race on Friday night, and as a stick car with street tires the GT isn't consistent,  I was figuring that I didn't have much of a shot at winning the class again.  But at least I'd get to go to the event; people who haven't been to Drag Week don't realize how much fun it is just to participate, and that going just to have fun is a big draw all by itself.  

Tuesday morning I came to my senses ;D  I'd spent the last nine months working on the Shelby clone, and I decided I'd better do everything I could to make it to the event with that car.  This felt like the right decision, although its a gamble.  I'm far behind schedule, and I may not be able to get the car done in time.  I also am gambling that I can seal the water leak in the engine after the engine is installed.  And the one thing I'm not too excited about is cutting up the repro 69 Shelby hood so that the injector stacks will fit through.  Despite all that, Tuesday morning I made the firm decision to try to get the Shelby clone ready for the event at all costs.  

Tuesday night after work I started working  on the dash again; I needed to get all the dash panels fabricated and mounted, and welding on the mounting tabs under the dash was tedious and time consuming work.  I worked on this Tuesday through Thursday nights, and by the end of the night Thursday I had this work completed.  I designed the dash so that the passenger side panel would come off with three dzus fasteners, and behind the panel was a large flat panel extending from the dash to the firewall, where I could mount the EFI unit, the dataloggers, the main fusebox, and all the other electronics required by the car.  I also decided to powder coat the dash semi-gloss black, rather than leave it in its natural aluminum state.  I powder coated the dash panels on Thursday night, and installed the instruments in the driver's side panel; here's a photo:



Friday night I got started on another big weekend thrash.  My pal Joel came over and spent about five hours with me on Friday night, working on getting the doors assembled while I worked on the wiring in the trunk.  I was still missing some parts for the driver's side door, so the work on the doors isn't done yet, but at least they open and close with the handles now, have locks in them, etc.  Also all the taillight wiring is finished at this point, and by the end of the evening I was able to see the sequential turn signals operating correctly.  

Saturday morning I was out to the shop early to start taking the engine off the dyno.  The plan for the day was to get the engine and trans installed in the car, and then drop the oil pan off the engine for some modifications.  Earlier in the week I'd been thinking about my conversation with the guy from Superflow, and wondering again why the engine was making so much less power, if in fact it really was.  The only thing different was the oil pan.  When I had designed the oil pan I'd been kind of conservative with the dimensions, to make sure it would fit OK with the Fatman Fab front crossmember and rack.  The result was that about half of the oil pan was right up against the windage tray in the engine, and I thought that if the engine was making the same power as last year, but was losing a bunch due to the pan design, then the engine was fighting itself internally and maybe that's where all the power was going.  Seemed a little thin given the large amount of power loss, but Joe Craine's post on last week's blog made it clear that some big power increases could be had by keeping the oil away from the crank, and this pan certainly wasn't going to do a great job at that.  So, I was going to install the engine and trans, make some precise measurements from the existing pan to the crossmember and the steering rack, and then add volume to the pan wherever I could, to try to keep more of the oil away from the crank, plus add a little pan capacity.  

Around 10:00 my pal Steve (F570rd) came over to give me a hand.  Between the two of us we got the engine off the dyno and around to be assembled near the car by around noon.  I was hoping for a smooth assembly of the engine to the transmission, but as usual things did not quite go according to plan.  After getting the block plate and flexplate installed on the engine, Steve test fit the converter and found that when slid all the way into the pilot hole in the crank the feet on the converter wouldn't bottom against the flexplate.  We went out for lunch to think about this a little; when we came back, I chucked the converter up in the lathe and turned down the snout a little further, so that the feet would fit all the way to the flexplate.  Next, though, we installed the converter on the trans and bolted the trans to the engine, and found that the converter was about 1/2" back from the flexplate when it was all the way back in the transmission.  The trans is an ATI powerglide (oops, I mean its a C-2 :D), and if I pulled the converter all the way forward to the flexplate it appeared like it would disengage from the front pump in the transmission.  Steve called his transmission expert, who said that there should be 1/8" to 3/16" of freeplay in the converter.  So, I needed to make some "feet" to fit between the converter and the flexplate, to allow the proper amount of play in the converter.

We decided to save that job for later; it would be no problem to put those feet in place when the engine and trans were installed.  We installed the starter and tested it to make sure it engaged the ATI flexplate properly, and then installed the Gear Vendor's overdrive extension housing and overdrive unit.  

Installing the engine and transmission turned out to be more difficult than I thought it would be, despite all the room in the Mustang's modified engine compartment.  I was hoping to be able to leave the hood on the car for the installation, but we ran out of space for that, so the hood had to come off.  We also had to take off the front bumper and the fiberglass bumper fascia to provide the necessary room to slide the engine and trans into place.  Then, as we got the package settled into place it wouldn't fit down onto the mounts.  The first thing we saw was that the oil pan was hitting on the steering rack!  So much for my "conservative" measurements for the oil pan; it was going to need to come off for some modifications in any case.

To alleviate this problem we had to drop the K member and rack.  This was something of a struggle, but after a half hour or so it came down.  The engine settled down onto the mounts again, but the holes still wouldn't line up.  This caused considerable head scratching on my part, since I had dummied an engine and trans into the car for the chassis work; why did that engine fit on the mounts, and this one wouldn't?  Go figure.  In any case, after an hour and half of grinding on the mounts, using various alignment devices to stretch the rubber in the mounts, and pointing the ends of the motor mount bolts, we finally got the mounts bolted in.  Here's a picture of the engine installed in the car:



It was early evening before we finally got done, and Steve took off.  I could not have gotten the engine installed on Saturday without him; his help was above and beyond what I had asked him for.  In addition, he worked the entire day without the benefit of fully krausened adult beverages, so he was obviously operating under duress during this difficult installation.  Thanks Steve!

Later on Saturday evening I got the oil pan pulled off the engine.  I had made some measurements on the pan when the engine had been sitting in the car, but before the crossmember and rack were dropped, and despite the interference in the pan there were some big areas where I could add volume to the pan, and distance between the crank and the bottom of the pan.  Late Saturday night I came up with a plan for the pan modifications, and cut the pan up to allow for the mods.  Here's a picture of the pan off the engine, before modifications:



I made a few of the required pieces on Saturday night, then called it a day around midnight.  Sunday morning at 8:30 I was back in the shop, with hopes of finishing the modifications to the oil pan by noon.  Fat chance, though.  By 11:30 I had the key components of the modified pan mocked up; here's a picture of the pan with the new aluminum panels tacked in place.  I have clamped the oil pan rail to a couple of rigid steel bars in order to keep the pan from warping during the welding process:



After I had this tacked up, I decided to reinstall it on the engine as it was and check the fit, with the crossmember and steering rack reinstalled.  Unfortunately the pan wouldn't fit into place with the crossmember and rack dropped down, so I had to disconnect the driver's side strut to get the suspension low enough to install the new pan.  Then, after bolting it in place, I had to get the suspension reinstalled to check all the clearances.  This wasn't easy either, but after I finally got everything into place, I only found one minor area of interference, and was able to make a very minor mod to the pan to address this issue.  Then, back it all came apart again, so the pan could come off and I could finish it up.  

About 2:00 my pal JC showed up to help, and started working on some of the other things that needed to get done for the car.  When Steve and I had installed the engine we had found that the bracket holding the vacuum pump to the engine would hit one of the frame tubes on the front end, so we had removed it.  JC got working on a solution for this problem, and after an hour or so came up with a minor modification to the bracket that allowed it to fit with plenty of clearance.  After that he worked on test fitting the radiator into place and fabricating the lower radiator mounts, and finally later this evening he got the tabs fabricated and welded onto the front end tubing to mount the coil packs.

While he was doing all this, I was welding on the oil pan, and fabricating more of the oil pan pieces that were required.  The shape, especially on the passenger side, was very complex in order to clear the steering rack while still allowing the maximum volume of pan beneath the crank.  The design I'd come up with featured a deep sump at the very rear of the pan, in addition to the sump at the front; I planned to connect the sumps together with some -12 AN line, so that the oil in the back sump could travel to the front sump if required.  Just as a guess, the new pan design probably close to doubled the overall oil capacity of the pan.  A photo of the new pan, completed and ready for installation, is shown below:



This coming week I intend to reinstall the pan and front suspension on Monday night, and then get the torque converter feet machined and installed on Tuesday night.  Hopefully driveshaft, shifter, and the remainder of the radiator mounts can get done on Wednesday, with the help of my friend BradFORD, who has offered to come over and give me a hand Wednesday night.  Also the remainder of my door parts should be here middle of next week, so hopefully the doors can be finished up this week also.  By the weekend, I should have mostly wiring left to do, and that doesn't seem like such a daunting task now that the engine is in the car.  

There are still a lot of unknowns on this project, but I'm optimistic I can have it ready for Drag Week, which starts three weeks from today.  But I am still waiting for the correct front wheel from Centerline; this was promised last week, but has not yet arrived.  Also, there are still some fuel lines and brake lines to run, headers and exhaust system to install, etc.  Lots to do, and not much time.  We will see what happens...

plovett:
Jay,  I really think you've made the right decision.   I think you'll be disappointed in any half measures.    Go for it all.   If you don't make it then so be it.  I realize that's easy for me to say since you're the one breaking your back getting it done, but I still feel that way.

You're also making me realize I have no excuse for not getting my Cougar roadworthy and actually driving it.   Thanks, Man!   ;D

paulie

cammerfe:
I've just propped my chin on my fist to keep from being open-mouthed at the extent of your efforts. I agree with your conclusions as to the way to proceed.

On a slightly different note, is there a reason for NOT using a dry-sump? Much more room around the pan, and greater control of windage. And it would also obviate the necessity for your vacuum pump, as well as adding capacity. What's not to like?

KS

jayb:
Ken, I think a dry sump would be a big improvement for this engine, and if it wasn't for the late date I'd be investigating that now.  I already thought about that earlier in the week, but no way I'm going to have time to fit a dry sump in place before the event.  I think I'll put it on the plan for next year...

cdmbill2:
Jay, I'd give a X2 on the dry sump, or even an external wet sump/vacuum like the Peterson set-up I run. My pan is a fornt sump "T" style Canton road race pan with a windage scren I added, but in the bck the screen practically lays on the pan bottom, not ideal but it clears the steering linkage and the brace that crosses over form the lower control arm mounts.

The big benefit is no distributor oil pump drive issues, full scraper and screen, but less plumbing.

I think you've done incredible work to date and we look forward to seeing the new car. I think you'll be more than competive even with the 510. I'm glad I won't be in Modified N/A.

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