Finally got the engine done and some dyno figures so figured I'd share them and show some progress on the car.
The compression ended up being 10.53 and the best figures came in at 42* degrees timing. That surprised me a bit compared to what I ran on my other engine which also had MR heads and a Ford MR intake and BJ/BK carbs. It was very similar to this one but the cam is much more aggressive in this engine. Idle seemed to come in at about 900-950. It's a good thing it's a 4 speed with 3.89 gears. I'd like to change out to 4.11s but that will have to wait until I can add the Gear Vendors overdrive unit sometime in the next year or two.
Here's the dyno chart and figures. It was actually still climbing at 6000 but not by much, so running it farther was something I didn't want to do since I wasn't able to go with the 2.2 chevy journal size on the factory cross drilled steel crank. Still, with a bit of race gas and the timing at 42, it should go to 6500 pretty cleanly. For the street I'll drop it back to about 40* to stay on the safe side. I have the intake and distributor marked so it's just a matter of lining up the marks.
You can see the cam doesn't really come in till about 3500. The big drop in torque before that was likely due to having to tie the secondaries open on the dyno. You can see the engine was really rich till about 4000 where it could actually use the secondaries. I'll have to tune for that in the car.
Here's a couple shots of the Oregon Cams shaft support system that's on this engine.
I got it home and did some detailing on it and went to put an ATI Super Damper on it and of course the timing is off by 7 degrees, which is a known problem. So I ground the timing pointer to match TDC. Here's a couple shots of the engine and timing adjustment. The angle is off compared to how I'd be looking at it in the car, so it looks like the timing is off a bit.
I got the new Ram flywheel and Ram Power Grip HD clutch installed and the Lakewood bell put back on and got it put back in the car. After getting everything hooked back up I tried the clutch and the pedal feel is not as bad as I expected it to be. In fact it's about the same as the stock clutch in my '09 GT Mustang, which I always thought felt pretty stiff for a factory clutch. I'm used to it, so this one shouldn't be a problem for me. Everything worked real smooth.
When I did the car 12 years ago, I knew the factory MR heads were going to be a tight fit since they don't have the 16 bolt pattern. To help accommodate the heads, I took a rose bud torch head and a 4x4 block of hardwood and a BIG sledge and heated the factory R code shock tower braces cherry red and beat them back against the shock towers. They stuck out a ways from the factory and would have been tight even with the CJ exhaust pattern. It's a darn good thing I had the foresight to do this or they would NOT have fit. As it is now, they "nibble" at the braces, but I can live with that. You can see in these shots where the previous engine kept nibbling at them, but they fit!!
So I've been working pretty steadily the last couple weeks to get things back together. I'm pretty slow at this because I'm too darn picky about stuff on this car
I wouldn't normally have to have everything perfect, but I've had this thing since I was 15 and it's always been my dream car since I was a kid, so I tend to go overboard on everything. Here's some shots of the progress as I cleaned and installed everything. I repainted a few things because of the previously mentioned "affliction"...lol
I ditched the Flowmaster 40s that I had on it before because they droned REALLY bad in the car at about 2000-4000 rpm, right where you drive. You couldn't hardly hear anything....except car alarms going off when you drove by
I got a set of Borla Pro XS mufflers which are all stainless and will match my stainless exhaust pretty good. I did a lot of research and listened to a lot of sound samples to choose these. I also have a set of Borlas on my GT Mustang and I really like them, so I know they don't drone and have a really nice tone at any cruise speed but really open up when you get on the throttle without having that nasty rapping sound common with headers and glasspacks. I think that I'm going to like these on this car with the Hooker headers! The car definitely makes an impression on people when it fires up
I'm going to try something different with the tailpipes this time. I wasn't happy how they were before with the staggered shock set-up. It gets REALLY tight over the axle and you have to make some sharp bends.
I was also having a problem figuring out how to keep my original oil pressure sending unit and still add my Autometer mechanical gauge. There just wasn't enough room to add a T fitting without some cobbled connectors which I really didn't like.
And then I had a "DUH" moment. While laying under the car it struck me that the sideoiler galley plugs were the same size as the fitting I needed, so I just took the front one out and ran my braided line directly into the first port. Why I didn't think of that before I don't know
It left just enough room to clear the motor mount with about 1/2" to spare and worked out perfectly.
Tonight I got the front of the engine finished up, radiator, fan, hoses etc hooked up, so I'm ready to put water in it and finish the hookups on the engine and it should be ready to fire. I'm hoping to get it running this weekend. I'll post more when I do. I'm really anxious to get this thing back on the ground and see how it's going to sit and look with the new springs and wheels.
