Wrench turning rules!









Summary of progress:

1. Bent / rusty BBK headers persuaded to bolt up to heads

2. Stock valve covers clear rockers except for the baffle under the fill tube

3. Oil dipstick was right over a spark plug hole and was creatively deformed until the resulting situation shown above occurred

4. Carburetor manifold put on for laughs

The stock pushrods are too short because the base circle on my cam has been lowered to accomodate the new grind, so I took a feeler gage set, stacked up a bunch of feelers, calculated the gap, divided by 1.7 (the ratio of the rocker lever amplification) and added to 6.272 (stock pushrod length) to come up with a required rocker length of 6.3496. Mr. Cam Guy said that the hydraulic lifters can depress inward .060in. , so I reasoned that a 6.400in. pushrod should work. And wham, a trick flow 6.400 set of hardened pushrods was on ebay.... hopefully they will show up before next weekend.

Tomorrow the motor is going in the car unless something gets in the way.

 

Those shorties will only work the way you mounted your 302, right? Using a grannys kit would have them way too high up is what Im asking... right?

Also, get the right carb tuned in and you could be making around 400 to the flywheels if your intake is a 6500 rpm runner length one, at least according to a certain carcraft magazine article on a stock cam.

But then again, what cam are you running? I see some high hp numbers in the future...

 

The granny kit is unacceptable.

 

Well I must say that's a clean looking engine. I look forward to a in car vid that'll make me dance!

 

Beautiful work. Love that engine.

Are you going to coat the headers? If so, what are you going to use?

 

Thanks. I'm torn between paying off credit card debt that tends to accumulate when in college or going all out on the car. I'm two months away from having 1/3rd the income that I now have, so I'm vying for option one. But it sure is nice having some spare money to throw away on a project like this.

Well I got the motor in today. The short story is that it's a pain in the *** to install because of how low and far back it is, and because it has a real cross member under it. The engine must be installed with the transmission on it because there is no room to slide it forward off the tranny because of the cross member. The valve covers like to trade paint with the firewall and the oil pan rides over the cross member before the hump settles over it. It's no worse than working on a SHO V6 or Integra B16, both engines that never need to be removed in my experience, so hopefully it's an omen to the future dependability of this unit. Clutch jobs can be done RX7 style though: remove the drive shaft, remove the tranny, change clutch, and be done before lunch.

Here are the pics:

 

The chassis ride height looks to be about the same as it was before when it held up the supercharged rotary, so hopefully I can finish this thing off at no more than 2600lbs with around the same 50/50 weight balance.





Why mount a ford 302 like this? There is probably no rational reason to go this far with this engine unless one likes a challenge and / or has something against GM. The LS1 just drops in with no fuss, no oil pan mods, no firewall mods, but damn if the parts aren't expensive on those engines. For a fabricating peasant like me this engine was the best choice, and my circle of redneck friends have parts for the 302 literally hanging off the walls.

I'm totally happy with how this has turned out so far, seems like a dream really, like it is not real. But it is! Best case scenario is two weeks from now I can start it up. Let's get ready to rumble.

 

The way you got it mounted in there it looks pretty small, or rather the engine bay cavernous.

I'm also of the school of thought of building with your friends, cheap/free parts and free help is a really, really good thing to have.

BTW, is that carb intake only to keep dirt out of your heads? something tells me you might wire it up to get some instant gratification and go tear ***... heh heh heh.

But yeah, just how much hood clearance did you gain doing a limbo engine mounting job anyway? Grant seems to like to mount them kinda high....

 

I didn't have to change my springs at all with my Ford conversion fomr when it had the NA 13B. I also ended up with a 49/51 f/r balance and I didn't cut the firewall... With no weight reduction other than the stock aluminum hood (and the addition of the AutoPower 6 point cage) teh total weight was 2720 lbs. I'd bet the cage helped bump it up at least a hundred lbs from what it would have been without it.

 

Wow that's great, thanks for the info.

I've got good news and bad news about the project.

Good news is my calculation for pushrod length was right on; my TFS 6.400in. pushrods showed up yesterday and I installed them this evening after work. There is a nice little bit of lash in the assembled valve train when at TDC; the rockers can be pushed toward the pushrod side against the spring loaded hydraulic lifter mechanisms just ever so slightly, as would be expected from a functional hydraulic lifter valve train.

The bad news: four of sixteen lifters are stuck in their former positions from the old crown vic cam / pushrods / heads / rockers. I'm not sure how to drain the oil from the hydraulic chambers but they're soaking in lacquer thinner to dissolve any old dirt / oil deposits. This engine had a bit of it when I first tore it down; must have been owned by a female before I got it.

Another tidbit of unexpected misfortune is that the stock Mustang H pipe with the 4 cats will not work as is. I'll need to remove the front two cats and weld in mandrel bent pipe in their place. If I were to use the stock H pipe, the left front cat would be about an inch away from my fuel lines. Heat shield or no heat shield, there is NO WAY I'm building a car with a 2000 degree heat zone an inch away from pure hydrocarbons, no matter how much metal is filling that inch space.

So anyhow, it's been an educational few days since I got the motor in. This project is starting to become a lot of fun!

 

A couple more pics for entertainment value since there isn't too much action in this forum right now:

View of the heads when the rockers are being worked on:




Modified fuel rail to accomodate AN feed line and get rid of stock Mustang hose routing to the wrong side of the engine bay:



The stock wiring harness will be a challenge because my manifold and valve covers get in the way. It needs to go behind the lower intake manifold so it can plug into the injector harness.

By the way, the 4 stuck lifters were freed with the soaking in lacquer thinner, pressing against an acorn nut and 2x6 in a vise, and some more dousing with thinner on the bleed holes while under pressure.

 

You need to win an award for that.

 

Here is what I settled on for routing the wiring harness to the manifold harness, etc: best location I could find was low and behind the engine in the firewall depression:




Looks like this is about how it will all sit when finished:




A normal FC strut tower bar will end up in front of and above the oil fill tube, for reference. I'm planning on using one as a way to secure my fuel lines.

 

Looks really really awesome. Im really really jealous.

 

Thanks! So far I'm below my $4k budget; all the little stuff like larger injectors, fuel pump, throttle body, intake, etc. will push it above that, but that's what more internships are for.

 

what if you got a hollow strut bar and used it as a fuel "line" instead of a secure point. . . that would be slick.

 

Lol, I thought most of them were hollow already; It's definately a unique idea.

Here are some pics of the battle to wire / plumb the motor. The fuel lines:





My original placement of the 1/8 NPT - 4AN 45 degree fitting wouln't work with a -6 version, which was determined to be needed due to the very constrictive size of -4 hose ends. So the fuel rail block got reworked.

View of the rats nest (not to be confused with the ones atop stock Mazda rotary engines):



Here are the lower radiator supports with padding installed (weatherstripping wrapped in electrical tape ):





I originally thought that I could start this thing up two weekends after dropping it in the car, and now I'm not so sure. There is a lot of time spent grappling with all the little details and the unseen problems that spring up.

 

Very nice. I noticed the stock power steering pump, are you adding power steering?

 

I originally planned to not have power steering, but the stock Mustang alternator bracket convinced me to run the p/s pump. It would be impossible to run the serpentine belt around the water pump and crank pulley without something on the other side of the engine from the alternator, and I reasoned it would be easier adapting P/S to the car than a non-standard (CARB illegal) alternator bracket. Don't laugh, kalifornia is like the FAA: if it wasn't OEM or CARB certified, it won't fly, no matter how ineffective it would be at altering the stock emissions controls.

Good news: stock Mustang radiator hoses fit but the lower one needed to be cut short and flipped around. I needed some dish soap and a lot of force to get the hoses onto the radiator because it seems to have larger inlets / outlets than the stock unit.



Seems the stock fan shroud might fit with a little trimming. There is quite an array of 5.0 parts: Mustang, Thunderbird, and Crown Vic hoses, pipes, brackets, etc. I'm running an HO intake from a Mustang with an inlet pipe from a Thunderbird (longer with a nice bend at the end to fit a future air box). The Mustang P/S pump bracket needs an intermediate bracket to be able to bolt to the driver side head, while the Crown Vic / T bird bracket goes right on, and is the one I ended up choosing. And there are NO 5.0 mustangs in the local junk yard, only T birds! But I guess I have my own junked mustang for parts, which I bought from a friend, and it supplied the ECU and engine harness.

More pics:












I failed to complete the engine installation in two weeks like I wanted to, but I'm down to hooking up the ECU, finalizing the heater hose routing, modifying the clutch fan to space it back a couple inches, and a lot of other small details.

 

Looks good though,attention to detail is now showing. I also had to use dish soap on my rad hoses. The heater hose routing shouldnt be much of a problem. Is is automatic or standard? I havnt followed your build too closely,but re using your stock Mazda oil cooler sure helps keep temps in check during a hot summer. I was able to idle in 95 degree heat with a stock OEM 3 row mazda radiator and oil cooler using a LT-1. Build is coming along nicely...hopefully now the last items seem minor and youll have it runnng soon.

 

Hmmmmm, I still have that old OEM oil cooler and might have room for one of those sandwich style hose adapters that go between the filter and block.

I'll be using a T5 manual. My punch list is down to wiring, heater hoses, fan belt, and giving the car a bath.

 

If you can find room for it do it. Its cheap insurance. Looking at all the money you spent so far 100.00 for adaptors and AN hose,sandwich adaptor is nothing. I used the racing beat adaptors on the oil cooler which converts it to -10 AN fittings. I then bought some aeroquip -10 pushlock hose (great stuff) and made the lines to fit. Summit has the best price on aeroquip hose. I believe I bought a 15 foot piece for 55 to 60 bucks. The adaptors are around 10 bucks each. After the oil cooler install I checked my oil and water temps while the car idled with the hood closed on a 95 degree day in the direct sun the temps never went above 200 which is good for a LT-1. Besides if you have a monster oil cooler you can run lower viscosity oil and still maintain good film strenght...thats free horsepower!

 

Strut bar seems to fit OK:

 

man, that is such a wicked install. . . i love it everytime i get to see new pictures of the engine installed.

 

I like it too,think he really did a nice job. I'd like to see 2 things though. One Id like to see it running and Two I'd like to see someone closer to me in NC doing this.