03DSGGT
SN95 Supporting Member
Well, its that time of year again. Time to tear into the car in search of more power, quicker E.T.s, and buttoning up loose ends. For those of you that may not remember, last spring the car dynoed at 350rwhp/348rwtq N/A. Im running the stock shortblock, TFS 38cc heads (10.3:1 C.R.) CMS stage 3 N/A cams, and the stock PI intake. I did not race last year due to not having the funds to replace my worn out slicks. The last time I raced, I had smaller MHS cams and 325rwhp/325rwtq. I ran 12.40s-12.50s on that setup with 60fts ranging in the high 1.5s down to 1.7s as the slicks were giving up the ghost.
So this past fall I ripped the interior out (once again) for a few reasons. For one, Im installing my Baseline Suspensions anti roll bar, and Im going to be welding in the plates to the floor, and I don't want any potential fire hazards. I also never got to prep and paint my Maximum Motorsports roll cage mounting plates. When I installed the roll bar a couple years ago, I was jamming on it to get it done for my buddys wedding, and a few of the details went overlooked, so with the carpet out, I can pull the mounting plates that go under the car out and paint them. Another thing that Im going to do is to scrape the sound deadener off of the floor boards. Id like to remove a little bit of weight, but Im not willing to give up A/C, stereo, etc. I don't want to ride in a tin can, so this will be some weight removed that's not too noticeable, and Im OK with the little bit of extra heat and sound from the deadener being gone:
Rear end out for better accessibility for mounting the anti roll bar:
Mocking up anti roll bar:
Inside anti roll bar plates bolted in. You can kinda see that I had to notch the plates to clear around my upper torque box plates that were previously installed. You can also see where Ive begun scraping the sound deadener off:
And the last thing interior wise that I wanted to do was to clean the seats. The car came with 03-04 Cobra seats when I bought it in '05. Ive always been careful with the seats, but owning the car for 10 years has generated some dirt. The seats looked fine, but I figured that I would clean them up anyways. I did some research and came across the Woolite method. Im glad I did, because I turned a couple white towels brown from cleaning the alcantara inserts. They look much better, and I also conditioned the leather parts of the seats as well:
Im going to make some aluminum tabs to fix the broken tabs on my rear seat headrest, and Im going to buy a Mustang cloth seat and adapt a passengers side manual seat track to work on the drivers side, so when I go to the track I can pull the heavy Cobra seats and throw the lighter manual seat in. I don't want to buy racing seats, and Im really not feeling the Kirkey aluminum seats. I want something that's lighter than a leather Cobra power seat, but is comfortable and cheap, and looks like it belongs in the car. Call me anal, but it is what it is..:tongue3:
So next up on the list is drag wheels. I used to have a set of big and little pro stars that I ran on the car. They were 15x3.5 and 15x8. I liked the look of them, but whenever I would switch from my Bullitts to the pro stars, I would swap front brakes as well, because I ran Bullitt front brakes with the Bullitt wheels, and would switch to my stock GT brakes that I modified the caliper braket to work with the pro stars. I only had to run a 1/4" spacer with the GT brakes and IMO it looked way better then running a big 1" spacer with the Bullitt brakes. But naturally, switching brakes got pretty old. So I bought a set of 17x4.5 Race Star front runner wheels and tires last winter. I found them online, they were bought and mounted, but never ran on the car, so I got a pretty good deal. Fast forward to yesterday, I ran up to Summit Racing, and bought the rear wheels and tires. I got 15x8 Race Stars with a set of M/T ET Drag slicks that are a 26x10-15 stiff wall. So Im hoping that the new slicks, anti roll bar, Team Z rear drag springs, and Strange 10 ways will get some work done at the track:
Drag wheels:
Bullitts for street duty:
SO far, Ive got a few of the loose ends part covered, I have some of the weight reduction covered, so all that's left is the more power part. Originally I pieced together a Bullitt swap for the car. I bought the bare manifold on ebay for a pretty good deal, so in my OCD nature, I found all of the pieces that were either new or NOS. I tracked down a mint throttle cable, NOS throttle body, NOS fuel rails, new alternator, NOS coolant tube, NOS thermostat hose and housing, NOS throttle braket, NOS cruise cable, and all of the corresponding swap parts. Well, right when I got my swap parts list complete, plans changed as they always do. After doing some research, it seems that the Edelbrock intake is pretty hit or miss intake for the 2 valve engines depending on the mods done to it. I was leery about using it because of the loss of low end that a lot of guys see on N/A motors. However, it seems that a few of the mod motor gurus know the right combo for the Eddy to shine based on the cam size and compression that the motor has. They claim that with the right sized cam, the Eddy will retain low end torque and have solid gains up top, and my Cushman Stage 3 cams are right in the sweet spot for the intake to work. So I bought an Eddy intake off of this forum, made up some brackets to make the stock fuel rails work, bought a 6061 elbow, and a new SVE 75mm throttle body. Im also going to run a 1" 4 hole tapered spacer under the elbow to help evenly feed the cylinders as was recommended in my research. Im also switching over to all 12 point stainless ARP hardware for the motor. I like the way that it looks, and since Im replacing the intake, Im going to do all of the bolts that mount the intake, and everything that bolts on to the intake. I will do the bolts in sections, because it will get really expensive to do it all at once:
Here are some pictures of the motor as it sits. I painted my Trick Flow valve covers Ford Racing blue last fall. Im really a fan of that look on the 4V cars, so I decided to do it on mine:
Bullitt intake with swap parts:
Eddy intake with swap parts:
Brackets that I made to adapt the stock fuel rails to the Eddy:
6061 elbow, throttle body and new T stat and housing:
90mm MAF and NOS fuel hose that goes from the hard line to the fuel rail, my stock one is getting crusty:
Carb spacer, ARP hardware, and all of the misc. plugs and fittings to run my vacuum lines:
So that's currently where Im at. My goals with this setup is to make 370-375 rwhp with the Eddy setup on the stock bottom end, and get as close to 11's as possible with the power and suspension mods. Im sure you have noticed in the pics the Teksid block, crank, rods and pistons. That is the next stage of my build that will happen in a year or two. I am going to build a .020" over Teksid, that crank is a stock cast piece out of a '97 GT that has been polished, and the rods are stock (I have a set of ARP 2000 bolts for them) out of the same '97 engine. The pistons are .020" over Sealed Power hyper pieces. Im going to build that motor to basically drop 70lbs off the front of the car, and those pistons along with decking the block will put my compression right around 11.75:1, which the cams and intake will love. With that setup I want to see how close to 400rwhp I can make with stock cast NPI internals and higher compression on a budget. The final build will be a big bore Teksid stroker, 12:1 compression, and some monster cams, but that will be way down the line:
Teksid block:
Polished NPI cast crank:
Cast NPI rods with ARP 2000 bolts, and .020" hyper pistons with stock NPI dish size:
Thanks for checking out the thread, and Ill keep it updated as I go!
So this past fall I ripped the interior out (once again) for a few reasons. For one, Im installing my Baseline Suspensions anti roll bar, and Im going to be welding in the plates to the floor, and I don't want any potential fire hazards. I also never got to prep and paint my Maximum Motorsports roll cage mounting plates. When I installed the roll bar a couple years ago, I was jamming on it to get it done for my buddys wedding, and a few of the details went overlooked, so with the carpet out, I can pull the mounting plates that go under the car out and paint them. Another thing that Im going to do is to scrape the sound deadener off of the floor boards. Id like to remove a little bit of weight, but Im not willing to give up A/C, stereo, etc. I don't want to ride in a tin can, so this will be some weight removed that's not too noticeable, and Im OK with the little bit of extra heat and sound from the deadener being gone:
Rear end out for better accessibility for mounting the anti roll bar:
Mocking up anti roll bar:
Inside anti roll bar plates bolted in. You can kinda see that I had to notch the plates to clear around my upper torque box plates that were previously installed. You can also see where Ive begun scraping the sound deadener off:
And the last thing interior wise that I wanted to do was to clean the seats. The car came with 03-04 Cobra seats when I bought it in '05. Ive always been careful with the seats, but owning the car for 10 years has generated some dirt. The seats looked fine, but I figured that I would clean them up anyways. I did some research and came across the Woolite method. Im glad I did, because I turned a couple white towels brown from cleaning the alcantara inserts. They look much better, and I also conditioned the leather parts of the seats as well:
Im going to make some aluminum tabs to fix the broken tabs on my rear seat headrest, and Im going to buy a Mustang cloth seat and adapt a passengers side manual seat track to work on the drivers side, so when I go to the track I can pull the heavy Cobra seats and throw the lighter manual seat in. I don't want to buy racing seats, and Im really not feeling the Kirkey aluminum seats. I want something that's lighter than a leather Cobra power seat, but is comfortable and cheap, and looks like it belongs in the car. Call me anal, but it is what it is..:tongue3:
So next up on the list is drag wheels. I used to have a set of big and little pro stars that I ran on the car. They were 15x3.5 and 15x8. I liked the look of them, but whenever I would switch from my Bullitts to the pro stars, I would swap front brakes as well, because I ran Bullitt front brakes with the Bullitt wheels, and would switch to my stock GT brakes that I modified the caliper braket to work with the pro stars. I only had to run a 1/4" spacer with the GT brakes and IMO it looked way better then running a big 1" spacer with the Bullitt brakes. But naturally, switching brakes got pretty old. So I bought a set of 17x4.5 Race Star front runner wheels and tires last winter. I found them online, they were bought and mounted, but never ran on the car, so I got a pretty good deal. Fast forward to yesterday, I ran up to Summit Racing, and bought the rear wheels and tires. I got 15x8 Race Stars with a set of M/T ET Drag slicks that are a 26x10-15 stiff wall. So Im hoping that the new slicks, anti roll bar, Team Z rear drag springs, and Strange 10 ways will get some work done at the track:
Drag wheels:
Bullitts for street duty:
SO far, Ive got a few of the loose ends part covered, I have some of the weight reduction covered, so all that's left is the more power part. Originally I pieced together a Bullitt swap for the car. I bought the bare manifold on ebay for a pretty good deal, so in my OCD nature, I found all of the pieces that were either new or NOS. I tracked down a mint throttle cable, NOS throttle body, NOS fuel rails, new alternator, NOS coolant tube, NOS thermostat hose and housing, NOS throttle braket, NOS cruise cable, and all of the corresponding swap parts. Well, right when I got my swap parts list complete, plans changed as they always do. After doing some research, it seems that the Edelbrock intake is pretty hit or miss intake for the 2 valve engines depending on the mods done to it. I was leery about using it because of the loss of low end that a lot of guys see on N/A motors. However, it seems that a few of the mod motor gurus know the right combo for the Eddy to shine based on the cam size and compression that the motor has. They claim that with the right sized cam, the Eddy will retain low end torque and have solid gains up top, and my Cushman Stage 3 cams are right in the sweet spot for the intake to work. So I bought an Eddy intake off of this forum, made up some brackets to make the stock fuel rails work, bought a 6061 elbow, and a new SVE 75mm throttle body. Im also going to run a 1" 4 hole tapered spacer under the elbow to help evenly feed the cylinders as was recommended in my research. Im also switching over to all 12 point stainless ARP hardware for the motor. I like the way that it looks, and since Im replacing the intake, Im going to do all of the bolts that mount the intake, and everything that bolts on to the intake. I will do the bolts in sections, because it will get really expensive to do it all at once:
Here are some pictures of the motor as it sits. I painted my Trick Flow valve covers Ford Racing blue last fall. Im really a fan of that look on the 4V cars, so I decided to do it on mine:
Bullitt intake with swap parts:
Eddy intake with swap parts:
Brackets that I made to adapt the stock fuel rails to the Eddy:
6061 elbow, throttle body and new T stat and housing:
90mm MAF and NOS fuel hose that goes from the hard line to the fuel rail, my stock one is getting crusty:
Carb spacer, ARP hardware, and all of the misc. plugs and fittings to run my vacuum lines:
So that's currently where Im at. My goals with this setup is to make 370-375 rwhp with the Eddy setup on the stock bottom end, and get as close to 11's as possible with the power and suspension mods. Im sure you have noticed in the pics the Teksid block, crank, rods and pistons. That is the next stage of my build that will happen in a year or two. I am going to build a .020" over Teksid, that crank is a stock cast piece out of a '97 GT that has been polished, and the rods are stock (I have a set of ARP 2000 bolts for them) out of the same '97 engine. The pistons are .020" over Sealed Power hyper pieces. Im going to build that motor to basically drop 70lbs off the front of the car, and those pistons along with decking the block will put my compression right around 11.75:1, which the cams and intake will love. With that setup I want to see how close to 400rwhp I can make with stock cast NPI internals and higher compression on a budget. The final build will be a big bore Teksid stroker, 12:1 compression, and some monster cams, but that will be way down the line:
Teksid block:
Polished NPI cast crank:
Cast NPI rods with ARP 2000 bolts, and .020" hyper pistons with stock NPI dish size:
Thanks for checking out the thread, and Ill keep it updated as I go!