Hello all. I haven't posted in a while, but I have been busy. I have been setting up a little machine shop in my workshop in addition to working on little things on the "Cammer Saleen" lol.
I was working with Jay in order to "try" something to make the Saleen OEM tachometer work on the dash cluster. Many years ago, when I read an article of someone who put a 427 SOHC in a 2005 Mustang GT, the article said that the only thing that they could not figure out (as the owner wanted it to look as stock as possible) was the Tach! The shop he was working with ended up just mounting one of those large aftermarket tach's on the dashboard. A few years ago, I was trying to figure out if I could make it work. I did months of reading on Forums and internet "chat" and figured out that the Saleen dash gauges are looking for a 5V square wave signal, where as the MSD ignition box gave off a 12 volt square wave. I reached out to a colleague at the University in the engineering department and he drafted me up a little electrical diagram to convert 12V square wave to 5V square wave. Jay was kind enough to assist me with the part and after it arrived, I ........... put it in my end table. Unfortunately, there was a ton of other things going on with the car that took precedence. Fast forward about 4 years, and my interest was re-ignited. After a little more light reading, I realized that the modern mustangs get their tach signal from a reluctor wheel inside the crank case-using a Crank Position sensor. Luckily, as I was a bit anal retentive, I did not remove anything from the original engine wiring harness. Not only that, but all the unused plugs were nicely marked with tags!
I reached back out to Jay looking to see if he had heard of a Ford specific (?) reluctor wheel that I could mount outside the engine (perhaps on a pulley or the dampner). I had seen crank triggers (eg. MSD), but they did not seem to have the correct amount of teeth-(to me at least) and there really wasnt much info if they would work with a stock crank trigger. Luckily Jay knew exactly what I was talking about and agreed to make me one that he produces. The custom crank spacer had to be machined down to account for this new addition as well.
Now for the fun part..... Got the reluctor wheel mounted between the crank dampner and the pulley. Made the trip up to home depot to get a section of angle iron that I could make a mounting bracket out of (was using angle iron as it was thick and rigid and was not going to wobble or flex and allow the sensor to hit the reluctor). After a few hours of cardboard templates, angle grinding, drilling, angle grinding some more and cleaning.... I mounted the make shift bracket on the back of the lower alternator arm. Then, using a shop light from above, I got the OEM crank sensor mounted through an appropriately sized hole in the bracket and adjusted so I could just see a sliver of light between the end of the sensor and a tooth on the reluctor wheel. I would be surprised if a piece of paper would fit in between.... but there was space, so no interference..... and with the bracket made of angle iron, I could not budge it a bit.
Fired the car up and OH YEAH! Dash cluster tachometer is working!
Second story.....
Now that the car runs well after the "Car Fix" tune. I have been taking it out just to get some miles on it. 90 degree days and the engine never gets to 200 degrees!
The last time I took it out, I started to hear what sounded like..... and I will take this from someone who had the same issue on their Z06 corvette I read about on a forum.... someone sharpening an ice skate. This noise only happened at 4th gear and about and from what I was experiencing, more so when I was holding speed steady. If I was in 1st, 2nd or 3rd.... no noise. Also, if I pushed the clutch in when and put it in neutral the noise would disappear. This led me to believe that it was not the rear end.
OK so what could it be? I did realize on the way home that the car- and engine have less than 100 miles on it total! So not even really close to being broken in.
I also realized that the clutch and transmission were still smooth as butter.... hmmm ....better do some more reading.
What I have come up with is that I am using a McLeod RST twin disc clutch. From everything I read about them, they are AWESOME clutches.... Light pedal, tons of grip...... but super noisy! I also read that a properly broken in clutch takes 500 miles of normal driving. There were a few Youtube videos of Clutch reviews which I heard the same noise, so not super worried.