'68 Mustang Coupe Drag Car

[mbrunson427]

I haven't updated this in quite some time..... feels like we've been making positive progress recently. The engine received a new set of tunnelport heads, these were hand ported by my uncle and look to flow very well. 390cfm on the intake side, 237 on the exhaust. I'll update again when we have this thing on the dyno.

The downtime has allowed me to make some modifications to the car and to take care of some maintenance. I shipped the brakes off to TBM this week to have serviced. Funkhouser Racecars makes Cal-trac lower brackets that relocate the shocks, I got those installed and made some frame mounting points. I have Viking double adjustable shocks on the way to replace the Calvert gas shocks. I'm kicking around the idea of installing a rear anti roll bar, but that's only if we're dealt even more downtime.

Also, the car got to be the feature of my nephews 1st birthday party. Being up on the lift, the car lent itself as a banner hanger for the party 

[jayb]

Car looks great. 390 cfm out of tunnel port heads is really good!

[mbrunson427]

Thanks Jay. The short turn is where 80% of the flow is gained on that head. Bob wore himself out getting the head flowed. I think he had the head on and off the flow bench 100 times making very slight changes to the short turn, afraid of going too far. I'm excited to see how it pans out on the dyno.

[mike7570]

Any dyno numbers?

[mbrunson427]

Any dyno numbers?

Mike, as the saying goes "if it wasn't for bad luck I would have none at all". The heads were ported and showed great flow numbers, we were very thrilled to get the engine going. Our friend John digitized the ports and CNC'd the rest of the ports. WELL, out of 8 holes, 1 of them got into a water jacket. That deflated us quite a bit. We didn't want to send another head out there and potentially ruin another very expensive tunnelport head.

There's more to this story that I hope we can share soon. But we're working on a resolution. In the meantime the car is parked at my house and I'm continuing to pick away at things that I can make nicer.

[mike7570]

Ouch, I feel your pain. When I had a shop working on the BBM lifter bores for my new trick DLC coated shell lifters they hit a thin spot and broke into the water passage. The solution was to sleeve the lifter bores with bronze bushings which required cutting farther into thin area. It was after installation we found the lifters were misidentified and would not fit the bores. Trying to get new lifters after Covid was impossible and I finally found a solution with a Chrysler lifter. That hiccup took 17 months to sort out.

[Heo]

Mike, If you get hold of some that have a Castolin metalspray equipment
they can fix that
https://www.castolin.com/products-finder?filters=field_product_type,Flame+Spray+Equipment

[Tunnelwedge]

Thanks guys!

Yes coming out real nice. What’s with the motor mounts they are kinda funky lookin. Whatever happened to the motor getting dynoed with the different intakes

The motor mounts came with the car. They are solid fairly lightweight fabricated mounts. I just tossed the bolt through them and placed them there for now so they don't get lost. Engine had some trouble on the dyno. We ordered new pistons and rings for it, waiting on those to come in and we'll try over again. One step forward two steps back.

The car looks spectacular.
Those engine mounts look like they will lift the engine up some. The stock mounts are lower. I have a Z's crossmember in my 68. It replaces the stock crossmember and ties the lower control arm eccentric bolt into the crossmember. I has locks for the eccentric bolt also. It also gave me the clearance I needed for my Canton T oil pan and screen. I did not get the jack pad. It does not clear the Canton on a 427. I have the Arning/Shelby drop as well and drive around with -2* of camber and love it. My car is more a road/off road tow car. Your car looks like a wheelie machine, but it may still help.

https://opentrackerracing.com/shop/mustang-streetcompetition-cross-member-fits-hi-po-boss-302-shelby-gt350gt500-1967-1970/

[mbrunson427]

Thanks, I'll look into this! A jack pad under there would be nice.

[mbrunson427]

New shocks and leaf spring sliders are complete now. I'm starting to run low on miscellaneous to-do's. I might install my dummy block and mount up the trans so I can handle trans cooler stuff next.

[Tunnelwedge]

With the new Vikings the piston looks like it is pretty much all the way down at ride height.
Compared to the Calvert shock which show the piston about halfway in the tube .
I don't see that you would have much if any travel.
Is there something I'm not seeing?

[mbrunson427]

The downward travel of the suspension is very limited. I still have about 1" of adjustment on the lower brackets that I can lower the body of the shock down and extend the shock out if necessary. I was going to wait until the engine and trans are in the car to see how all this stuff shakes out.

With the Calvert bars, when launched the rear end will separate from the body. So 80% of the shock movement is extension.

[mbrunson427]

Also, in the above pictures, the suspension was in full droop with the calvert shocks on it. I only set the shocks up to have about 1" or 1-1/2" of shock showing at ride height.

[mbrunson427]

It's been a bit since I've put much effort into the race car. I decided a few weeks ago to complete an engine. I had been waiting on our new head castings to come out and put on this short block, but made the choice to put a normal set of edelbrocks on it and will switch them out when our castings are here.

Here's some of the progress as of recent.
-Engine is together, waiting on a torque converter now, then I can drop it in.
-Rear leaf sliders are installed
-trans brake is figured out