Type 65 Coupe Build

Almost half a year!

2010-05-17T11:54:00.003-04:00

We gotta get moving on this project. This is what we did last Thursday.

Where we left off:

We want to work on the rear axle. The rough plan is to cut off unused metal, blast, paint, and service the diff. The first step was to unbutton it from the rear of the car:

Work proceeds on making the heads nice and naked. Once they're fully empty of valve components, then we'll send them to the shop to get the stuck bolts undone:

We also need to order some longer bolts for the mission critical suspension elements. We can't have short bolts endangering lives at the track. Here's an example too-short bolt:

Where the pistons have been sleeping:

The worst wear on the crank. I dunno if this is bad or not. The bearings seemed ok compared to this:

2009-12-27T13:16:00.000-05:00

Ok, finally got the pics from Ben. Not a lot, unfortunately. This session involved installing the rear end into the 3-link rear suspension. Here's a shot of roughly the parts involved:

The big bracket in the upper right is referred to as the banana bracket. Its other half is roughly in the center of the shot. These two parts clamp around the right side of the axle and play a part in locating the axle relative to the body, particularly providing anti-squat. The bulk of the work involved deburring the inside of the bolt holes, without which they simply couldn't bolt the banana bracket around the axle. It seriously look over an hour to line things up and drill out the crappy flash. A similar complaint can be lodged against all the spacers. When it comes to accurately placing anything, the kit uses spacers around a joint, like so:

Notice how neither spacer is quite cut flush, with the skinny one just not looking like it belongs on any serious build. Kit cars... Ben and Marc are gonna take the remaining spacers and grind them a little nicer at work.

After all that cutting and drilling was over, lining up the axle with the frame and bolting stuff on wasn't so bad. After I did some research on it, they ended up not swapping the caliper mounting plates, which one place online had recommended as a way to gain some leeway with running the brake lines. So this is a completely default setup:

Note the leftover brackets from the Mustang's stock 4-link mounting setup. A better side shot from FFR:

From the back:

Note how the banana bracket is clamped just to the right of the diff.

I guess I should take some time to explain why the 3-link suspension is an upgrade. The factory Mustang rear suspension is a 4-link system:

When the body rolls or the axle pivots about the diff, the links will push or pull hard on their bushings, thanks to their triangulated arrangement. Despite Ford's using soft rubber bushings, the forces on them can still cause them to bind up, locking out suspension travel at that point. Furthermore, because of the softness, the axle can wander side to side under the body, which defeats the point of triangulating the 4 links in the first place! Even so, the base option in the FFR kit is to keep the 4-link setup.

The 3-link suspension upgrade kit tosses all that stuff out in favor of a different system. 2 trailing arm links are used along with a panhard bar. The benefits of the kit:
- the panhard bar lowers the roll center of the car, which on a stock Mustang is high for track use.
- a lot of Heim joints are used instead of rubber bushings, which leads to less slop in the suspension
- everything is adjustable, which is highly desirable on a track car that needs to be tuned

Just for reference, the parts again:

And how the suspension is set up:

The blue lines are the 2 trailing arms. The red lines are the coilovers. These do most of the work in locating and suspending the rear axle (or rather, the body over the axle). The yellow lines are the banana bracket and a pivoting link to the body, acting as an upper control arm. As you can see, that limits the pinion angle (how much the diff can pitch up and down about the axle). We're using it in the <400hp setting. The >400hp setting is intended to give the most anti-squat to have the best hookup at the dragstrip.
The green lines are the ends of the panhard bar. On the right, the panhard bar is attached to the suspension, swiveling about the endpoint formed by the control arm and the coilover. On the left, however, the panhard bar is attached to the frame of the car, indicated by the pink lines. Thanks to the bad side shot posted above, it's easy to mistakenly see the panhard bar as rigidly connected to the other coilover, but it isn't. If it were, then it'd just be a really shitty sway bar.

Anyways, the left end of the panhard bar is fixed to the body, and the bar swivels up and down as the axle moves up and down relative to the body. Because the bar is long, the motion at the middle of the bar approximates a vertical line. This means the axle will also stay approximately centered to the body as it bounces up and down. You advanced math nerds will observe that if the suspension is stiff and doesn't travel much, then the approximation is very good. Panhard bars are a pretty good solution for solid axle race cars, and it's what the Spec Factory Five Roadster cars use. I sperged on this part mostly to dispell the idea that if it has a solid axle, then it necessarily cannot be made to handle well. You can have a spergin good time by reading more on the Mustang suspension here: http://www.miracerros.com/mustang/t_suspension.htm

initial foray into rear suspension, transmission

2009-11-02T17:31:00.002-05:00

Ok, we got back to work on it. This Sunday, we worked from 3 to 8pm, which was probably the biggest block of time we've had on the project for a while.

We haven't had much visual progress in the garage:

There's a workbench in the back, more clean shelving, and more of the aluminum paneling has been taken off, but pretty much the same deal with the car itself.

We got the modified brake pedal back from the shop. The modification shifts the fulcrum higher up, so the foot's braking force is multiplied to deal with manual brakes.

We did get the both sides' front suspension mocked up:

Now that everything is mocked to our satisfaction, we decided to clean and spray the adapter brackets and spindles with caliper paint. First spray down with caliper cleaner:

Then tape off and paint. The finished product:

It's a bit thin in places and overrun in some spots, but everything is covered, so these are done.

Once they're fully dry we'll plop them back into place in the front and torque everything down.

Marc and I decided to check out the tranny, mostly just to see if it's in good shape. We have a transmission rebuild book on hand, and it includes a section specifically for the T-5, which is a huge help. Still Marc got excited and plunged ahead on disassembly. Here's the tranny up on the workbench:

The book prescribed the order of disassembly as:
- shifter
- shift tower
- extension housing (the part that runs out to the drive shaft)
- top cover

Thanks to incredibly well applied RTV sealant, we tried to get away with taking off just the top cover, but it didn't budge with the extension housing in place. In the end we had to do it by the book anyways, and really grunted getting the shifter tower (which is an aftermarket part, with very little lip to pry with) off. Once we had that open, we realized that we needed a punch to get a pin to drop out before we could get the rest of the disassembly done. Oops. A punch goes on the shopping list.

Here's the driver's side of the tranny:

Circled are 3 sensors that go into the tranny. Does anyone know what these are? From googling a bit, my best guesses are (from left to right): neutral safety switch, backup light switch, mechanical speed sensor.

Here's what we pulled out of the rightmost hole:

Spritzed off the grime with some Kroil and got this part number: E3AF-9E731-AB. That last digit might be a 8 or E. This one I'm pretty sure is the speed sensor, especially given that it's a worm gear mated to another plastic gear within. Searches against those part numbers turn up Ranger but not Mustang speed sensors, though. Maybe it's a replacement?

It was broken, and I don't think I put enough force on it to break it while removing it. It seems like it could still function with the break:

We also started mocking up the rear suspension. Even though we are accustomed to lack of documentation, the lack of detail we have for the rear suspension is bordering on grotesque. There's a few factors working against us here.
- CG got the upgraded 3-link kit from Factory 5. This is apparently less popular than either retaining the Mustang rear suspension or going to the full IRS kit. So online help is hard to find
- Breeze Automotive, one of the vendors we've been working with closely for parts, recommended that we modify the rear setup by mounting the brake calipers forward instead of behind the rotors. No one on the internet seems to have documented this.
- the manual doesn't even have enough pictures to hint at what we're supposed to be doing. Here's a doozy, one of the instructions reads: "after drilling the hole..." Except there was no previous mention of any hole to be drilled.

The going is slow, especially when what we have to work with is loosely packed parts:

Here's where we're at:

There's again adapter brackets that bolt onto the factory suspension mount points. The driver and passenger side brackets are different, by nature of how the panhard bar works. After some messing around, we figured out which holes needed to be widened, and where spacers needed to be used.

This is a close up of one side's mounting plate. Remember that the rear of the diff is facing us, so it's as though we're looking from behind the car.

The Cobra brake kit provides additional stabilization for the mouting plate. It uses a brace that held in place by a U-bar. The U-bar just happens to loop around the quad shock mounting bracket. A view from the side:

I've rotated the brace downwards a bit, so you can see the back of it.

Here's where things go off the beaten path. Breeze recommended that we swap these mounting plates left to right. This way the calipers can be mounted to those two big holes at the rear of the plate, except in their new placement, they'd be at the front.

The problem is, we'd also need to install the brace rotated about 180 deg, too. But if we try to do that:

The U-bar will run into the quad shock bracket. So we have a slight dilemma. Pros and cons of doing the modified caliper fitment:

Pros:
- better polar moment, more rice cred.
- the brake lines FFR gave us barely fit going by their instructions. We'll have way more leeway installing them with the brakes up front.

Cons:
- will either have to cut off the quad shock brackets. We probably don't need them for the 3-link suspension setup, but we have to make sure.
- or will have to give up the Cobra plate brace. Does anyone know what these even do? I imagine they cope with side forces from the bigger brakes, but who knows if that's an issue with the Type 65.
- less documetation to help us.

So that's the end of today's work. It was very productive and easier to work with more organization. I'm really looking forward to having all 4 wheels on the frame, so we can roll the project onto a trailer to have things like the differential serviced on the car, instead of having to drop off the 300lb rear axle with somebody.

In-car Intercom Search

2009-10-12T23:14:00.003-04:00

I teach High Performance Driving (HDP) for a local car club. Part of the instruction process involves taking students out for rides in the instructor's car. This allows the instructor to teach from the driver's seat - demonstrating how to drive a certain line, how to take a certain corner, etc. It's also helpful for beginning students to get a sense of how they will be able to drive if they continue coming to events and learning.

An intercom system is essential when instructing. When hopping from student car to student car the only viable alternative is a motorcycle intercom. I hate them - I've tried a couple and the wires always break, the volume control stops working, the microphones fail, etc. But for the moment I don't see a viable alternative.

For the Type65 car, I really want to install an in-dash rally-car style intercom. Since multiple people will be in the pax seat I need a microphone/ear-piece component similar to a motorcycle intercom that can be easily slid into and out of a helmet. PTT controls are OK, but I'd prefer voice-activated mics (again, like found in a motorcycle intercom). What I don't want is thin wires that break easily, or cheap electronics that fail regularly.

So far I've not found something that does not require permanent helmet mounting. If anybody knows of a system more suited to the needs I've outlined, please contact me.

front suspension test fit

2009-09-20T18:09:00.000-04:00

Got back to work on the coupe this Thursday. The two things we accomplished were a basic test fit of the front suspension and marking up more aluminum body panels.

First, the chassis code that Factory Five put on the frame:

F5R1000420CP

Marc got started on putting together the front suspension. The coupe (and the roadster, I believe) convert the Mustang's MacPherson set up into a double A-arm suspension. They normally provide just the new upper A arm, but you can also option a tubular lower arm to replace the donor part from the Mustang. CG opted to order that option.

2 things to note with using this part:
- the sweet F5 logo cut into the corner of the arm
- to save money, F5R designed the arm to be symmetrical, so it can be used as a left or right arm. It seems that the original Mustang piece has different length pivot shafts, with the rear shaft being slightly longer. To compensate for the gap, you need to place washers:

Note how F5R doesn't give you much clearance for the bolt. As is typical with the sparse documentation, we don't have info on whether loctite is needed and where. But I'm sure we'll figure the details out later.

Marc also assembled the front coil-over. It wasn't 100% obvious how to do it, but you had to remove a snap ring in the spring hat and place the bump stop into it and then replace the snap ring. Otherwise the hat wouldn't retain the bump stop. I think this is because CG got the upgraded Konis and the documentation is for whatever the base strut is. In the end everything fits only one way, but it sure is disconcerting that Lego toys have better instructions than for a kit car.

With the upper and lower control arms attached to the frame, we had to attach the spindle via an adapter bracket. The original Mustang spindle's geometry is for the MacP suspension, so the bracket is simply to sit the spindle more or less upright with the new geometry. The bracket has 2 pairs of holes, 1 pair for 87-93 spindles, and 1 pair for 94-04 spindles. Even though CG's is a 90 car, his spindles wouldn't work using those bolting locations. I suggested that maybe it's because he got the spindles as part of his upgrading to 95 Cobra R brakes. Here's a pic of the stamp codes on the spindle:

Anyone know where I can look up what this part is from? We just want to confirm it's a 94-04 spindle.

The finished front suspension assembly:

- there's nut missing for one of the bolts attaching the spindle bracket to the spindle. Thanks to our wonderful lack of organization, we haven't found it yet.
- the coilover is mounted with the threads up, for whatever reason. It seems like it'd be harder to adjust height this way, but the manual did specify this way
- the beige thing at the bottom of the coilover is the bump stop.

Another shot:

- note the adjustments available on the top control arm.
- the top of the strut is missing spacers to fully locate it in its mount. The kit provided a bag of different sized spacers that we assume are for this job, but there's no documentation on it.
- moving right along on the no documentation express, the spindle is mounted backwards here. We saw another picture in a totally different part of the assembly that shows the steering rack mounted facing forward, not backwards like in this pic, which is the only implicit instruction thereof. Thanks to the symmetry of everything, either spindle would fit.

Fortunately, this is just a test fit / learning process, and we'll assemble everything and torque to spec once we have clarifications on what we don't know.

Back to marking up the aluminum. Nothing surprising here. It consisted of me marking up hole locations for the rivets. Everything on the internet says to take all the panels off, mark, drill, and then fit back onto the body, and finish drilling from the holes into the frame. The warning being that without fitting all the panels on together, you'll start propagating fitment errors from one panel to the next. The kit gives you enough screws to hold everything in place. In these next 2 shots, I've unscrewed all of them off the footwell areas:

As you can tell from the holes, the panelwork needs to be installed before you start wiring stuff to and from the engine.

One thing that remains entirely unclear to me is how to install the seats. Following the install order in the manual, the seats should be installed long after the floor panel has been riveted in place. But once that is done, it'll be very hard to locate the steel beneath the panel.

Here's what I've done to mark up the floor panel, on the driver's side:

And here's the frame under the driver's seat:

I suppose I could mark more rivets for the bottom half of the X to make it more easy to locate that mounting plate, but still, everything is too vague in the manual. to complicate everything, CG got the upgraded racing seats, which have slightly different hardware.

The car as it sits now:

pretty much the only changes are the front suspension mocked up on the right, and the aluminum panels off or dangling on the car. The shelf in the back is the first step toward some organization and better access to all the parts we need.

One more thing --
http://mustangtek.com/FordDateDecoding.html
The inspector would probably want receipts for the engine and to confirm the year on it. The MA law would require us to run year-specific emissions equipment and possibly fuel injection systems, which is pretty depressing and something we don't want to think about now.

diff adventures, panel work begins

2009-08-06T21:46:00.001-04:00

Marc and Ben decided to crack open the diff to see if it needed servicing.

Check out Ben's high school robotic team jumpsuit.

After popping off some C-clips, you can draw out the half shafts.

Then you unbolt each side's bearing cap. One is undone here:

The crown gear is stock and looks is great shape.

You can see the clutch discs of the LSD toward the bottom.

With the shafts out and the caps off, you can pull out the diff. Little oopsie on letting the outer race of the bearing fall off.

This wad of gum looking and feeling thing was sitting in the axle housing, just past where the diff sat.

What the hell could it be?

We brought out the diff and sat it up. Is that ok on the bearing?

Gotta keep things organized so we can remember how to put it back together.

You can seen the pinion gear in the murky bottom of the diff housing.

So after extracting all that, we realized we had screwed up a bit, as far as complete disassembly of the diff goes. The pinion gear is held through the outside of the diff housing by a big nut, which we couldn't get off with nothing holding the pinion gear in place. We put everything back together only to realize how hard holding the rear axle still was while cranking on the bolt. We'll try again later with an impact wrench. Are there other good ways to do it once the axle is free of the car?

Next post details the other work we did.

We're finally getting into the kit car phase, where all the fiddly parts come out and we take on the challenge of putting together a car from scratch. With the old car out of the way, there's a real buzz hanging in the air. It's like Christmas opening up all the new parts boxes.

Recap of the car. This vantage point is nice. Maybe I'll bring my GoPro out next time and set it up to take time lapse video.

Placing the rear trunk panel. Here's where the kit-carness really sets in. The tolerances on these panels is good, but not perfect. I'll bet it's not much better in factory cars. The only difference is that the workers have tons of experience placing and fitting things just the right way. And that they're not placing things straight onto a space frame.

The trunk consists of 4 pieces: the floor, the rear, and the 2 walls. The kit comes from the factory with every panel in place, to help you memorize their relative placement.

All the writing has been done by us. The matching arrows are annotated with O/U. O being the panel that sits [b]over[/b], and U being the panel or lip that sits [b]under[/b]. The concentric rings you see on the trunk floor panel are from huge suction cups Factory Five uses to move these panels around.

A sample of my incredible markup work. This is the passenger side trunk side wall.

The panels and spaceframe have been designed with each other in mind, so where possible the edge of a panel is folded to sit on a square bar. In other places, you have to mark lines for the bar. Here you can see that fitment can get quite sloppy. I'm using a small x over a line that is to be disregarded. The lines to the left are from where we thought a bar would be flush with the panel, but actually ended up angling away. The small o's are where we'll drill and rivet. The kit comes with enough rivets for one every 3". And I think that's fence post style, so if there's a span of 6" that needs to be riveted, we can use 3 rivets. Just in case that's not the case, I'm trying to be conservative and save a rivet here or there. I only got the 2 trunk side panels done.

As you can see, we're not taking the utmost care with the panels and marking. At the end of the day, this is a track car, so if the rivets are 1/16" off the center line or not aesthetically evenly spaced, that's not the end of the world. We'll do our best to clean off the aluminum after we're done marking up the panels. But most of it is supposed to be covered by the provided carpet. For looks CG suggested just clearcoating the trunk panels and leaving off the carpet.

Here's where I let yall down again. I was in a hurry to leave, and didn't take pictures of tons of neat parts. We were reconciling the packing list box by box, just to make sure the factory gave us everything we needed.

Radiator, fan, belts, stuff:

Lighting, plastic covers, etc.:

Shifter handle and boot:

The two bolts on the shifter handle line up vertically when bolted to the shifter, so the whole thing is angled extremely forward when in the car. This is because the engine and trans sit much closer toward the middle of the car.

Back on track!

2009-07-30T00:16:00.001-04:00

Time to dust off the project:

To recap, the Mustang was gone as of a month ago. This is the space left behind:

One thing we wanted to set up right away was better lighting. We set up 2 4' racks of 3 bulbs each.

hey guys wirenuts are ok for automotive projects, right?

Inspired by LloydDobler's project, I used a ziptie to prevent the electric cord from sliding out the hole.

Done. It's a bit crude and roughshod, but it's bright as hell.

Now we had to reorient the frame from the center spot to be under the light.

After some clearing out all the cruft piled aruond it, and huffing and puffing, we rotated the frame and reset the jackstands under the frame.

todos:
- set up work bench
- send engine off to get worked on
- put new diff gears into diff
- install rear end

Wiring harnesses: out!

2009-04-06T01:40:00.003-04:00

After getting rejected for the Fiesta Movement, I was all bummed out. The cure was to work on the car yeahhhhhhhh.
With the weather warming up in New England, it's much more pleasant to work in the garage. Pics from last time:

The engine on its stand. It's upside down.

The oil pan off and the bottom end exposed. The oil pan gasket is pretty ratty.

The valve covers and the intake manifold. I'm not exactly clear on the terminology, but the other piece was attached to the

throttle body, while this one is the one that directs air to the 8 cylinders.

The heads and waterpump.

Marc mentioned that these look almost new, which sort of blunted his desire for a crate engine :)

Unfortunately, 2 of the bolts holding on an exhaust header snapped off. There's enough material that they seem to be poking

above the plane of the head. We'll have to be careful in getting them out.

The exhaust header is quite light. Maybe 4 or 5 lbs.

LOL PUSHRODS

The transmission looks tiny when the bellhousing is off. We're thinking of tearing it down and rebuilding it ourselves.

Bellhousing and clutch and pressure plate. I'm missing a pic of the flywheel.

The damned starter.

Spark plugs and engine mounts.

The rusty driveshaft. We need to find a shop to shorten it per the assembly instructions.

And this session.

CG and Marc got the quad shocks unhooked in the back.

They also got off one front spindle, as a proof of concept. The other one should come off, but we didn't have enough time for it.

I finally manned up and crawled under the dash console to see what was left to do with the wiring harness. The floor of the Mustang was littered with loose parts and the racing seat brackets, and it wasn't that flat to begin with. Working down there was the epitomy of uncomfortable. After taking 10 minutes working with my forearms through holes in the dash (the only way they'd fit) to unhook a connector, I decided to investigate taking the dash off. That was the definitely the right approach:
1) unscrew the 4 torx screws that hold on the gauge cluster. We pulled the unhooked tach cable through from the firewall, but I assume you could unplug it from the back of the cluster as well.
2) unclip the 3 tabs that hold on the windshield defrost vent. Lift it off.
3) unscrew the 5 torx screws that were previously covered by the vent.

At this point a stock Foxbody's dash should be clear to remove. In our case, CG had an aftermarket tach that was threaded through a heat vent, and aftermarket oil/water temp gauge cluster mounted where the radio would be. The cage wasn't a problem because the cage builder did a really tidy job of cutting holes in just the right place to make the dash easy to take out and put back. I was able to follow the wires leading from the tach and detach them from their splicing into the harness. That got the tach clear. For the gauge cluster (I forgot a pic for this), the oil pressure gauge used a metal line that I managed to unbolt, but I couldn't figure out how to detach the oil temp and water temp lines. So Marc helped me push those lines (which terminated in temperature plug sensors) through the firewall. The cluster is still on the dash, which we hauled out wholesale. I have a theory on how to take it off. Will do next time.

With the dash out, it was trivial to cut zipties and unhook remaining connectors. And by trivial, I mean a bastard. I cut my finger on something in the process. The passenger side half of the harness has the big ECU plug on it. But the firewall hole is conveniently large enough to push it out. IIRC, there were 2 connectors from this half to the driver side. The driver's side is the bulk of the harness. There's tons and tons of unusued connectors in this car, which I assume can be trimmed off. The fusebox and airbag processer also hooks up to this side, so no way is it going through the firewall. Instead, we pulled everything from the engine bay into the interior. Everything came loose and we boxed it up.

Sorry, I didn't have the patience to take more pics of the thing all spread apart and ugly looking. The whole mess probably weighs about 20 lbs. I will strongly lobby for sending the entire set off to be trimmed by a professional. In fact, I'll look on the Cobra forums now to see who the guy is.

And now the dash is virtually gutted. The plugs you need at the bottom are all to the rear wiring harness. Which will be a snap to take out.

The empty engine bay.

Todo:
- remove fuel lines. CG will work on this on his own when he has time
- take off driver side spindle
- take off front lower control arms. The kit comes with tubular LCAs, but might as well take them off for completeness.
- remove aftermarket gauges from dash console.

Notes to self:
- need to put fuseblock back on mount. Just in case. 4 torx screws on driver side floor
- 5 long torx screws for dash are on floor
- 4 brass torx for gauge cluster on floor
- I handed CG the electric fan manual switch and neutral safety switch. Need to find those.
- there were 2 plugs into the airbag processor
- there were 3 or 4 plugs between the front wiring harness and the rear. Should label them

2009-03-13T15:57:00.002-04:00

Pulled the motor out today!

But first, we still needed to free the front springs. After over an hour of unsuccessful attempts last time, Marc decided the only way we were gonna get the spring compressor into the front springs would be to get the struts out of the way.

And those were on pretty tight, so we had to bust out the torch:

With that, the nuts broke easily, and we finally got enough vertical space to put the compressor rod on. Even so, we could only grab a couple coils, so it wasn't enough to compress the springs. Since we already had the lower control arm jacked up for safety, Marc said it screw it and started lowering the control arm. It was risky but we were standing as far out of the way as possible. Fortunately, the springs unloaded and fell out.

We recovered all the bits for the Maximum Motorsports camber plates setup. CG'll be able to thrown that on CL for a small sum.

Then we got down to the big ticket item. Ben brought the company engine hoist over, which was a good money saver for the project. We fumbled around looking for the mounts on the engine block for the hoist. This was pure winging it, and fortunately, it worked out -- the 5.0 has threaded holes on the front and back of the block. On the front you have to unmount the power steering pump, and on the rear, I think it was just free holes. Even so, they were so close to the firewall it took me like 10 minutes to get one side off, my elbow slightly hyperextended the whole time. So we ended up with 2 chains on the front and one in the back.

Raise that sucker up:

Minor wrinkle was a pair of grounding wires on another rear bolt, even less accessible. After confirming the engine and tranny were in fact clear of all other wires, I unbolted it and we were ready to take it out.

We tilted the nose up to get the tranny out of its tunnel.

The 8-ton hoist didn't have as much vertical range as we needed, so we had to lower the front jackstands under the car to dip the radiator support so we could get the oil pan over it.

Not pictured is the engine and tranny sitting on two race tires (we haven't figured out how to put the engine on the generic engine stand). It leaned to the side about 20 degrees and puked out about a quart of coolant. What a mess.

And finally, the empty engine bay:

Note to self: where are the endlink bolts for the steering rack?

pics from last Thursday

2009-02-16T16:42:00.003-05:00

Don't have much to add that CG didn't already say. But here are some pics from this awesome sessions. I am fueled to press on by visions of tearing around cones at an autocross with the finished product.

The intake manifold off and set aside. No one step on the throttle body!

Engine bay now. All the wires are off and we plugged up the block.

A shot down into the engine bay. You can see the troublesome steering shaft in the very middle of the picture, to the right of the trouble light.

Front sway bar. Note: we're missing a nylock bolt for the top of one of the endlinks. The bolts to the sway bar mounts are also really rusted and rounded.

Steering rack. You shoulda seen how bad the power steering fluid is.

The Foxbody front suspension is the devil. We have yet to get the springs off. At least we have the right tool now.

The rear springs, howewer, are down and out.

You can see the quad shock finally unhooked in the center of the picture there. The rear is coming apart fast.

Back in the shop again...

2009-02-14T16:11:00.002-05:00

Winter in New England means snow, cold, bad roads, bad drivers (ok that's a constant), cold, and snow. And did I mention cold? The garage has been freezing cold all winter, and it's been difficult to get enthusiastic about working on the car. Whacking your knuckles on hard metal is painful, with code hands it's far worse. Whine, whine, whine...

So finally on Feb 12 we got together to work on the car. We're still tearing down the Mustang, and in November it felt like we had 8 things 40% done. After wrapping up Thursday night we're a whole lot further down the road and it feels like we're finally making some progress.

The wiring harness is nearly completely disconnected from all things in the engine compartment. The intake manifold is off the engine in preparation for removing the engine. The hard lines are off the power steering pump, and the rack is out of the car. The front and rear sway bars are removed. The rear springs are out of the car. The quad shocks are disconnected. Most of the panhard bar is disassembled in place. The rear end is almost out of the car. We need to disconnect the driveshaft and a few remaining pieces of the panhard bar and then the rear will be separate.

Looking at the current status, it would seem after one more good session like this we'll be able to remove the engine fro the car and get it on a stand for inspection and possible tear-down. Once the rear-end is out I can start cleaning it up and getting it ready for paint. I'm personally looking forward to getting on to the actual build of the new car, and will be happy when we can get the Mustang chassis out of the garge and sold.

So all-in-all, a great night working in the garage. The 4 of us got a mountain of work done in less than 5 hours, and it was a lot of fun to get my head out of the office and computers and into the shop.

11/2 update

2008-11-03T01:12:00.002-05:00

11/2 update:

For his bday, CG got the gift of a whole day of working on the car in the garage.

Picking up right where we left off, I tackled pulling apart brake booster and master cylinder. It took a while to unravel this intricate puzzle, but I finally managed. I unbolted the MC's union fittings into the distribution block, so that the brake booster and MC were free. After that, I was able to wiggle them out of the car. With some difficulty, I was able to unbolt the MC from the booster. Unfortunately, I totally destroyed one of the bolts. Need to get a replacement.

The instructions for making manual braking are to fit the brake pushrod directly into the master cylinder piston. Problem is, with the Cobra brake kit, the huge pushrod seems to have a much huger diameter than the piston into the MC. Will need to follow up with FFR to see what's up. Maybe we can buy a pushrod from them.

I sawed the distribution block's brake lines free of the body and recover it as well. The instructions are vague but I think we won't need these lines and will be fitting on parts from the kit.MC and distribution block socked away for now.

Next job for me was starting on the engine wiring harnesses. This was a real pain. Plastics were really brittle, many connectors had their latches on the blind side or hidden, and fasteners were rusted. Still a custom harness from FFR is $475, so this would save a lot of money.

I tackled the driver's side harness first. It seems to have more of the wires powering non-motor devices and distributes the +12v source from the battery mounted in the hatch. Lots of the looms wormed into fender undersides and had to be rooted out.

While I was down there unscrewing the horn and pulling out headlight wires, I found a piece of clag (tire debris) wedged high up into the fender edge. All over the engine bay were chunks and strings of clag. Truly a well worn race car.

All of the left harness was unraveled and labeled. The only thing left attached on the left harness network is 2 plugs into the alternator. I was wearing thin and snapped the latch off of the sensor plug. I think the alternator might have to be loosened or removed to get clearance to pull it off. Any 5.0 guys know?

CG and Marc were working on the suspension, panhard setup, and exhaust. It was an ugly ground war against rust and tack welded nuts. They managed to get the sway bar and one rear strut off. Oh, and the X-pipe. Very clean and quite a sculpture after 10 years on the car.

We also got the radiator, fan, and air filter out.

Next:
- loosen rear diff and axle to unload left rear suspension
- plasma cut through some of the quad shock assembly (I dunno what happened back there but I think we ran out of alternatives). Fortunately CG got the upgraded suspension parts so we won't need to reuse that stuff.
- disassemble rest of suspension
- proceed with wiring harness extraction. I need to get all the motor wiring off, and then work from the dash to the back of the car.
- steering rack
- rear diff off
- engine out (maybe with an optional test crank that we keep putting off)

Some wisdoms I gained from doing the wiring harness work. I dunno if it's applicable just to 5.0s or more Fords.
- the lightbulb wiring plugs unlock by twisting counterclockwise, except for the main lights. They have a collar that twists to unlock. Move that out of the way and then there's a latch that comes off with the plug. Once unlocked you can pull them straight out.
- when working with the lights, hands go in through the gaps in front of the radiator bracket.
- remove the light wire looms through the central hole in the radiator bracket that the main wiring loom passes through. All the plugs even with the bulbs on them will be able to snake through. I recommend taping up the bulbs for that extra sense of protection.
- the airbag sensor needs to be pulled out through the same front gap where your hands fit. By god it is a tight fit but it'll work. You might have to unhook the main headlight plug to get clearance. The ABS sensor's loom has a plug further up the harness. To get it out, unplug there and pull that part of the loom through the hole following the sensor's exit.
- the airbag sensor looks like a little transformer mounted under the top of the radiator bracket, but with 2 wires leading to it.
- when disassembling stuff, get into the assembly line frame of mind. Each part should have one clear (if not easy) way of getting installed. If it isn't going to go out one way, keep looking for the correct way. Order matters in that some parts get installed later and can 'lock in' earlier parts.

update 10/19

2008-10-20T13:39:00.002-04:00

click on the thumbnails for big.

We finally gave up and drilled out the stuck nut on the strut brace. That might net us $50 from a Foxbody enthusiast. We originally wanted to get it out to be able to oil the cylinders and test if the engine would rotate. But we decided it didn't need to be done now since the test was quick and we'd have plenty of time to rebuild it or source a new engine later.

Ben from Terrafugia disassembling the steering column. It mostly went ok, but the instructions said we could pull the spline shaft free from the steering rack. This wasn't the case for us, so we undid the next U-joint towards the steering rack and pull everything up to that half of the U-joint through the firewall. Note for the FFR manual: there could be a lot of loose single wires that the steering column mounts could snag on, so make sure you have clearance before you try to tug it out. We still have to remove the sleeve around the steel column shaft, as the kit doesn't need it. Oh, and the U-joint half needs to go with the steering rack, not here. Just to stick to the instructions.

Steering wheel and column out of the car. Note CG's aftermarket tach and shift light. His speedo cable broke, so we'll have to buy one as a donor part for the kit.

The ECU. This was hell to get out because it was packed between the rollcage and the fender wall. It was a slow process of unsnapping plugs and unbolting the ground. This thing better still be working, dammit.

Shot of the opened up Mustang. When we first tried to do either the ECU or steering column, we found the tight bucket seats to be a huge pain to work around, so we unbolted those and took the doors off. Oh, and also removed those roll cage foam pads, since the zip ties ends kept stabbing us as we got in and out.

The Mustang is nice and boxy, so perfect to storing stuff on.

the racing seats with their covers removed. Not sure what the plan with these is. The kit came with some seats and harnesses of their own.

Steering column and brake pedal washers. We were halfway done with removing the brake booster and master cylinder and decided to call it a day. But we at least unhooked the brake pedal from the brake booster pushrod. The instructions emphasized remembering the order of washers and clips mating the pushrod to the pin on the brake pedal, so I drew a diagram and ziptied them in order.

Misc crap sitting on the intake manifold.

It was a good 3 hour session. We were pretty on target time budget-wise with the donor part removal steps, but didn't account for taking out the seats and doors.

Next steps, roughly in order:
- bleed out brake fluid before removing MC and brake booster (I don't think the instructions reminded us to do it)
- remove brakes
- remove brake booster and MC
- remove steering rack
- extract wiring harness (will be a royal pain in the ass)
- rear end, suspension elements, e-brake
- headers, engine and tranny

Delivery Day

2008-10-14T23:37:00.001-04:00

On Tuesday 14-October we took delivery of the Factory Five kit. This was a really fun day, as I traveled to the Factory Five factory in Wareham, MA with a UHaul to pick up the kit.

The Factory Five World HQ is located in a somewhat non-descript facility at the end of the road in an industrial park. I was pretty sure I had arrived when I hit the cul-de-sac and the pavement was full of skid marks. This transporter pretty much gave it away too:

The showroom has really stunning examples of the various models sold by Factory Five. I was particularly excited to see the Type 65 Coupe close up. I’ve seen one running example of this car on the street (for about a minute as the guy motored away), and I’ve seen the Factory Five DVD. But it wasn’t until Tuesday that I actually put hands-on the car itself:

There was also an excellent example of the GTM Supercar. I’m very interested in building one of these some day. We’ll have to see how the Coupe build goes first, but the GTM is an amazing car.

I met with Jason Lavigne, who gave me a tour of the facility. It’s a very cool place – a combination of straightforward and sophisticated, industrial and high tech. Everybody there is fired up about cars and racing and downright friendly. Judging from all the build blogs out there Factory Five must be one of the most photographed factories in the country. Nobody seemed to mind as I snapped pictures during the tour.

Stack of main tubes for coupes:

Vehicle chassis on rotating frame:

Roadster bodies stacked up:

Aluminum panels ready for use. These are pre-shaped, with cut-outs, and ready to go:

Coupe dashboard panels:

Coupe doors under construction:

After touring the facility and meeting people at Factory Five it was finally time to meet the kit. It sounds corny, but seeing this sign attached to the body of my kit was really exciting:

Next it was time to load the kit into the truck. Here’s the stack of boxes on board:

Here is kit, on a rolling frame, ready to go on the truck:

When you pick up the kit the body is on the frame, and several of the aluminum panels are on the frame. The windshield and rear glass are taped onto the body. In order to load the car the guys removed the windscreen and rear glass, and then guided a boom into the cockpit. This allowed them to raise up the car by the roll hoop and put it in the truck.

Once I got the kit loaded, I headed back to the showroom to take some technical photos of the front suspension. As I looked around, Dave Smith (President and founder of Factory Five) wandered over and introduced himself. This led to a great discussion of chassis setup, car philosophy, etc. He showed me the Roush Coupe, which can be seen on the Factory Five web site photo gallery. Dave is a committed racer and passionate about cars, and really seems to enjoy his job. Meeting him was totally by chance and was pretty neat.

With the truck loaded up I stopped a nearby Lowes and bought some tie down straps to secure the chassis for the ride home. Then I headed for home to unload.

Meng and Marc came over to help unload the car. The photos we took of the off-loading process did not come out, which is unfortunate. Sufficient to say, however, you really want 4 (or maybe even 6) people to help out with the unloading process. The 3 of us struggled a bit, but ultimately we got the body off the chassis, the chassis into the garage and on stands, the boxes into the garage, and the body propped up on wood outside in the driveway.

Craftsman Tools

2008-10-03T02:33:00.000-04:00

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had picked up some more tools for this build. I used some gift cards and bought a Sears Craftsman 260 piece mechanics tool set. It came with a "free" 3 drawer plastic tool box that I originally thought would be useless. Instead I was pleasantly surprised. Each of the 3 drawers is fully removable from the box, and holds the sockets and drivers for 1/4", 3/8", and 1/2" sized ratchets respectively. The size of each socket is molded into the drawer which makes finding the right size easy. Best of all, you can carry the drawer to the work site easily, which makes locating the right size socket while in an inconvenient location (like under the car) much simpler.

I've always been a fan of Sears tools, and this set continues to keep me a fan. Now I just need a couple cabinets and a few more air tools and the shop will be well equipped.

Fun tearing down...

2008-10-03T02:17:00.000-04:00

The team is starting to come together now as the delivery date for the kit draws near. Meng and Marc came out tonight to look over the car and assess things. We've decided to continue with tear-down, and eventually focus on getting the engine to turn over. Assuming it's a bad starter or other external gremlin, if we can get the motor to spin freely then any issues can probably be fixed while the engine is out of the car and on the stand.

So we dug into the tear-down. The car is up on stands and the hood has been removed, the chassis brace is all but off (and would be completely off if not for a stripped bolt - I need to run to Sears for a nut-breaking tool). The biggest accomplishment of the evening was getting the fuel cell out of the car. The car has a FuelSafe cell which fit in the existing mounting points (using customized straps provided by FuelSafe) and uses the existing filler neck. The cell is heavy - probably 10-12 gallons of old gasoline in it. We supported it with floor jacks, removed the straps, removed the filler, and carefully lowered the cell to the floor. The cell is now outside the garage waiting to be drained.

With the fuel cell out of the car we can now turn our attention to removing the Panhard bar, which in turn will give us access to the rear end, which we need for new car. Once the Panhard bar is out of the car we can also get access to the exhaust system, all of which needs to be removed.

All the various nuts, bolts, and pieces that have been removed are boxed or bagged, ready to go onto the new car or be sold for another project. We'll have several good pieces to sell soon: Panhard bar, chassis brace, heavy duty caster/camber plates, etc.

It felt really good to pick up some tools and do some work. Even though it's just tear-down, which by nature is a dirty, messy process it was still fun.

getting ready...

2008-09-24T15:24:00.000-04:00

So I am sweating about the old Mustang's engine not being able to start. My friend Anthony filled my head with dire prognostications about seized up motors, bad piston rings, etc. I really hope it's something innocuous like a bad starter. Nevertheless, tonight I will pull spark plugs, have a look around, and put in some Mystery Oil to get the engine at least a little prelubricated in preparation for being started.

We plan to work this Thursday. If things go our way we'll remove and drain the fuel cell (and fuel system), and hopefully get the starter pulled out for testing.

In the meantime garage/shop preparation continues. I stopped by Sears today and used a couple of gift cards (that I got from work last year) to pick up another set of tools, basically for free. IMHO, tool shopping at Sears should be regulated like controlled substances - it's totally addictive.

a sweet cornucopia of 5.0 motor reference material

2008-09-21T22:09:00.001-04:00

http://www.veryuseful.com/mustang/tech/engine/

the old Mustang doesn't start

2008-09-21T20:36:00.000-04:00

there's decent evidence it's just a bad starter, but we'll have to thoroughly inspect things to figure out what's up. Hopefully next time we'll be able to take off the starter and see if it runs on its own, and if there's any problems at the flywheel.

the donor car - preparing to dismantle

2008-09-20T09:51:00.000-04:00

The donor car is my 1990-body 5-liter Ford Mustang. I've had this car for a number of years and am fairly happy with how it turned out. I'll post a more complete write-up about this car later.

Here are some pictures of the donor car - looking a bit sad after almost 3 years sitting in the garage. The observant reader will note that CG has a significant amount of cleaning to do in the garage before the build gets underway in earnest.

The above shows the the donor car where it sat in October 2005. I had just finished the driving season with a multi-day event at NHIS with the BMW Club. It was always the plan to get the car out for the next season, but I got busy with the rest of my life and never had a chance to get behind the wheel.

Front view of the car. The headlights are taped over to avoid dropping glass and sharp pieces on the track if I ever hit anything (and I did once - look carefully at the driver's side and you might notice that part of the headlight cover is missing). Also note that air intake at the bottom of the car, and 2 ducts located just below the bumper - those push cool air to the brakes. If you've ever driven a 3,000 pound racecar you know how hot brakes can get.

Above is a view from outside the passenger window. You can see the aluminum race seats and 6 point harnesses. Note that the interior has been largely removed, and the doors gutted out. You can also see that gauges are installed where the heater controls used to be. A large tachometer with shift light is above the gagues. You can also see some of the roll cage and get a sense of how the safety systems were put together.

Here's a view of the driver's seat. Note the highly sophisticated and uber-chic tape job over the fabric. Basically the fabric wore through here. New seat covers turned out to be seriously expensive, hence the hack job with the racer tape. You can also see a little more of the roll cage, and yes those are lawn chair in the back seat.

what we're building...

2008-09-20T02:32:00.000-04:00

Order information for the Type 65:

Coupe Base Kit
Powder coat chassis
Body cut-outs @ factory
Tubular front lower control arms
3-Link rear suspension
302 headers
Ultra Lite electric gauges
Competition aluminum seats
14" leather-wrapped steering wheel
Upgraded Koni coil-overs

The 3-link rear suspension:

Modified frame
Axle mounts
Panhard bar
Rear coil-over shock absorber kit
Control arms

The 3-link rear is what is specified for the Factory Five Challenge Car.

The Type 65 coupe tips the scales at around 2,200 pounds. This is a full 1,100 pounds lighter than the donor racecar, and will have substantially better suspension and handling.

the rough schedule

2008-09-19T16:35:00.001-04:00

With steady work contributions starting this week, we should be done with the build toward the end of the year. FFR estimates 300 man-hours on the build. And we're going to conservatively estimate it at 400 hours. Often with more than 1 person working at once. As for all the work of painting it (which is not part of the build), we'll decide how nicely we want the paint job to come out when we get there. Tired and beat == 30-foot paint job. Still excited == 10-foot paint job. CG has decided on a British Racing Green shade for the car. And not to stripe it, at least not initially.

So tentatively, we'll shoot for 12/25 (or, you know, before people take vacation) as the day when we drop off the car for paint and clear-coat. It's still possible that we'll attempt to paint it ourselves.

Perhaps the biggest unknown right now is a mod that CG really wants -- an in-cockpit adjustable brake proportioning valve. Based on the location of the master cylinder, it shouldn't be impossible to set up, but there would be no help or references. At least not for on a Type 65 Coupe.

team meet on 9/19

2008-09-19T16:35:00.000-04:00

So everyone got together at Phoenix Landing to meet each other. Previously it was all friend-of-a-friend email exchanges, but finally we all got to chill face to face.

It was really cool learning what the Terrafugia guys do at work, and it sounds like a natural fun project for them to be working on the car. They have much needed experience with body prep work, welding, and hard brake line work.

We're gonna get started on firing up the engine and hopefully beginning teardown on the Mustang (which I'll leave CG to describe in detail).

Some info on the Type 65 Coupe

2008-09-18T15:21:00.000-04:00

Factory Five's page on their replica kit.

And the wikipedia page on the original.
I guess it's got a nice slice of history that Dan Gurney and Bob Bondurant took it to a GT class win in the 1964 Le Mans.

Jay Leno driving the infamous long lost 6th coupe.

Factory Five pickup date...

2008-09-18T12:29:00.000-04:00

We've been given a date of 2008-10-11 to pickup the Factory Five Type 65 Daytona Coupe kit from the factory. The plan is to rent a y'all haul, take delivery at the factory in Wareham, and then hopefully have an unloading party at the garage.