320 horse model T 4-banger!?

Holy smokes! I would agree with Kirk Wright, the creator of this monster, Henry Ford would "Shit his pants" if he saw what they were doing with this engine! These things made about 20 horsepower in stock form!

Here's the
write up on it.

Holley Carb Baselining/Tuning

It's been a while since I've been asked a carburetor-related question, but this one came up this week so I figured I'd do a little writeup. This is how I baseline a Holley 4150 Double Pumper carburetor. I'm not going to go into great detail, there are many sites and books do that, but by following these steps, you should get the car running fairly well with a double pumper Holley and then you can take it from there.

Before you get started, I recommend that you buy a new set of spark plugs (or two) a Holley Jet Assortment kit, a set of reusable bowl gaskets (so you don't have to replace gaskets every time you change jets) and once it's baselined, an accelerator pump cam assortment and a few power valves in various sizes will come in handy! That stuff will set you back about $100, but once your carb is dialed in, replace the two sets of jets you used, along with the pump cam and power valve, and you can resell the rest as complete kits!

Road & Track Supercar Shootout

This month's Road & Track has an awesome 0-200 supercar shootout and they were kind enough to post the article on their site. Sweet!

Here's a video of the overall shootout, and here's an in-car view as driver Steve Millen pilots the Hennessey Twin Turbo Viper down the 15,500 foot runway. It looks like a hairy ride!

SBFTech.com

Hey gang, sorry for the week off, I got shipped to Oklahoma for work unexpectedly.

Here's a site I love to lurk on when I get the chance: http://sbftech.com/. There are a bunch of no-nonsense blue oval freaks on there that really know their stuff! Want to know if a 5.4" rod is better for your 347" stroker than a 5.315" rod? This is the site for you!

When I was blueprinting the bottom end of the 347 for my 79 Pace car, I had some very specific questions, and there were guys there that knew the answers right away.

Jay Allen from Camshaft Innovations is their resident cam expert and will custom grind you a cam based on the entire combination of your car and what you expect to get out of it, not just look at one or two aspects of your motor and give you a generic cam. I didn't realize it until I'd been lurking on the board for a while, but Jay is the guy that designed a cam for me a few years ago. I had never spoken with him directly, but he and Kelly Cansler (my cylinder head guy) spend a lot of time talking on the phone with one another discussing camshafts and head flow and port design and all that good stuff. At the time, I had a Honda S2000, and I wanted to build a 5-liter Ford derivative that would have the similar rev characteristics and horsepower per liter! (Roughly 125hp/liter or well over 600hp in a naturally aspirated 5.0 that would rev to 8500rpms!) To me, that sounded like a tall order, but Jay didn't bat an eye and a few weeks later we had the part in-hand that would do it. (With the right supporting cast, of course.)

Unfortunately, the car that engine was slated for came back to me from the body shop in a bunch of boxes. The outfit that was painting it for me fell on some hard times and got evicted from their shop. Many small parts were lost in their move, and the box containing every nut and bolt needed to reassemble the car got rained in and all of the hardware was completely ruined! So anyway, that turned it into a little more of a project than I had time to tackle, so it got put on indefinite hold. :-/ Once my kiddos get a little older, I'll pick it up again. It'll be a fun jigsaw puzzle to solve, and you still don't see too many 600+ hp naturally aspirated 5-liter cars, so it'll still be cool (to me anyway!) :D

Missing at High RPMs

I was reading a tech post on Austin Area Stangs where a guy had just installed a 6psi blower kit on 95 Mustang GT, and it was pulling hard until 5000 rpms, but then it fell on its face and acted like it was missing. I had a very similar issue on the 1990 Eagle Talon Tsi AWD I had back in the day. If I would run around at the stock 8psi of boost, it ran great, but if I would turn it up even a pound or two, it would fall on its face around 4500rpms.

I nearly pulled my hair out over that one! I was checking sensor voltages, looking for codes, checking boost and fuel pressures, reading plugs etc. and everything I checked was coming up fine. I spent hours scouring the web and reading through the archives of the old Talon Digest mailing list. (an incredibly invaluable resource for DSM owners that went the way of the dinosaur about six or seven years ago.) I was looking into high-dollar boost controllers and fuel-cut defencers, etc. I had just about exhausted every high-tech diagnostic trick I could think of, and then I remembered a piece of advice my friend/automotive mentor Dan Finn gave me when I was 17 or so. He said, "Scotty, it's gotta have air, fuel and spark. It's as simple as that." Now I know that sounds basic and obvious, but breaking it down to those basics made the reason for my elusive miss become suddenly apparent. I had air, I had fuel, must be spark... A $60 set of Magnacore wires and some NGK plugs, and I was pulling 14psi all day long! I spent DAYS hunting that down and it just needed a tune up!

I guess where I'm going with this is before you mod any vehicle, take care of the basics first. Give it a good complete tune up, brake job, check your tires, change your fluids, etc. before you go adding a bunch of speed parts (especially nitrous or boost!) Also, when you get stumped trying to track down a problem, go back to the basics... Does it have fuel? Does it have air? Does it have spark? Answer those basic questions first before you start tearing it apart!

Inspirational Video

If I ever need inspiration to drag myself out to the garage, or ever feel myself get stuck in a rut, I just crank up the speakers, fire up this video, and feel the blues just melt away!



It's Jimmy White from Circle City Hot Rods in his Hemi Coupe. In my book, Jimmy is one of the most talented builders out there today! When this video first hit the net a couple of years ago, Jimmy was building a wicked, low 27 pickup (Some pics and story of the build from the HAMB's 'Bass' here). Every piece on it is a work of art! It instantly became my favorite hot rod and gave me lots of good ideas for the Hemi roadster pickup I've been collecting parts for for years.

Anyway, a few months ago, I was cruising through the LoneStar Roundup and this beautiful Model A caught my eye... perfect mirror-like black paint, loads of chrome, vintage blue vented Plexiglas windows, etc. It was perfect! I looped around the front of the car and looked up and that's when I saw the Circle City banner flying above it. I wasn't the least bit surprised. Jimmy and crew had done it again! It was called the Murrell Coupe and it just may have passed up his 27 as my favorite! :D Here's a video of it pulling into the show. Awesome!

I can't wait to see what they bring next year!

Cooler thermostats

Pretty much every hop-up guide for every car out there lists switching to a cooler thermostat as one of the first mods you should do to increase performance. The reasoning behind it is that engine will run cooler, and the cooler the engine the more power it will make. This is true to a certain extent, but it's not as simple as that. In modern cars I think it's a bad idea to run a cooler thermostat without doing a little homework first.

First of all, most new cars have a much more sophisticated method for regulating heat than they did back in the day when engine temperature was solely controlled by the thermostat and and engine-turned fan. Most modern cars are cooled by electric fans regulated by a thermostatically controlled switch, or by the engine's management computer (or quite often both.) In a switched system, the fans will only come on when the coolant reaches a certain preset temperature, so even if you open the thermostat earlier, there will be no fan-driven airflow to cool the hot coolant in the radiator until it gets hot enough to trigger the fan (well over 200 degrees usually.) So in effect, your cooler t-stat is doing nothing unless you add an adjustable switch to bring the engagement point down. In computer controlled system, there is a "fan on" and "fan off" setting, where the "fan on" setting may be 210 degrees, meaning that the computer will turn the fan on when it sees 210 degrees and then turn it off again when it sees it drop back below say, 190. In this type of system, you would have to have to reprogram your vehicle's computer to lower that range or again, it would have no effect. Auto manufacturers spend a lot of time getting the balance just right on that, so you will have to as well. If you set it too low (too close to the t-stat opening point) your fan will be on constantly, which can be annoying and it takes away some margin of control(more on that later.)

Secondly, modern engines are designed to run optimally at a pre-set temperature. Most cars will have basically a "warm-up" mode where it runs a certain tune until it reaches a pre-determined operating temperature, and then it switches to another tune (fuel tables) or will switch from "open-loop" mode (running on a pre-defined set of parameters) to a "closed loop" mode (taking real-time feedback from o2 sensors, etc. and using that info to adjust the tune). (Here's a great article by Mike Wesley that goes into more detail on this specifically on the EEC-IV Ford computer.) If you do not allow the engine to reach the temperature required to make that switch, you will never leave that "warm-up" mode and your car will not run efficiently. One of the nice things about modern EFI setups is their adaptability. You can make all sorts of mods, and they will adapt (to a certain extent) to keep the desired A/F ratio even though you have increased the airflow into your engine. If your car never reaches the closed-loop (adaptive) mode and relies on the pre-programmed fuel tables, your A/F could be way off and you nullify your gains unless you've reprogrammed your ECU. Additionally, without the engine running optimally, you will get worse fuel economy. The engine's emission systems are designed to operate at those pre-set temps, so your car will potentially put out a lot more emissions at lower temps, which will make it much harder to pass a smog test. Some folks don't care too much about emissions (yet) but for them, this problem will manifest itself by giving the car that "fat" or "rich" smell that stings the eyes a little bit. That's no good either. I had a 454SS pickup that I was told had a 160 degree t-stat when I bought it. It was sluggish, the exhaust smell was terrible and the truck got around 8MPG. Luckily, a month or two later, the thermostat stuck on me and the truck started to overheat. I swapped in a stock t-stat (195, IIRC) and it ran like a different truck! It smelled better, ran more smoothly and got almost 10MPG! (I know that still sucks, but that's almost a 25% gain!)

Earlier I mentioned control. The thermostat, fans and radiator work in conjunction to keep your coolant in a certain temperature range. If you lower your thermostat (so it's basically always open at normal running temps) and always have your fan on, the only thing controlling your temperature is the efficiency of your radiator. If it's a hot day, or you're climbing a lot of hills with the A/C on in summertime, additional demands are placed on your cooling system. The open t-stat might start letting the water flow through the system so fast that the radiator does not get a chance to cool it down below 160 degrees and so "hot" coolant starts getting re-introduced into the engine where more heat is added. This creates a heat-soak situation and the system will lose its ability to control the temperature. A stock higher-rated t-stat combined with a longer-range window of fan operation (computer controlled) will hold the coolant in the radiator longer and cool more efficiently. I had this happen on my 83 Mustang GT, and later again on a 95 Mustang GTS that came with a 160 degree t-stat. Both times the problem was solved by switching to a warmer t-stat.

So will a cooler thermostat make more power? Maybe. If done correctly and tweaked to match your combo, sure, but it's not a simple "plug-and-play" operation anymore!

The Plastic Spoon

updated to link to the web archive version:

One of my favorite sites on the web to lurk is Corner Carvers. The CC users are a bunch of non-nonsense hardcore racers. They can be somewhat abrasive (the page motto is "Suck it!") but as long as you follow the rules and most importantly, use the "search button" before asking a question, you'll be fine. Corner Carvers has a wealth of information about track-proven chassis and suspension setups for every manner of vehicle.

I was perusing the site a while back looking for suspension ideas for a fox body mustang I had just aquired, and stumbled across a wiki article entitled "The Plastic Spoon" written by Wes (aka "Wangstang.") I had just hit the mother load! The Plastic Spoon (whose name implies its contents are cheap, functional and commonly available, as opposed to 'silver spoon' money-is-no-object items) is a step-by-step guide to build a world-class handling and braking fox body mustang relatively inexpensively using mixed-and-matched components from different vendors. Each piece is looked at with an "what's the best bang for the buck here" approach, so the final product should perform with the best of them, for much less! It also has a clear upgrade path for when you (or your budget) get more serious and you want to take it to the next level.

I used many of the Plastic Spoon's suggestions when building my '79 Pace Car. The car still isn't running, so unfortunately, I can't report on its performance, but by using the guide for a reference all of the parts seem to play nicely together. (There were many changes in the geometry of various suspension parts over the years, so if you just throw things together haphazardly, there's a good chance it won't fit without customization or spending more money on the correct parts to make it work.) It all bolted on effortlessly and the wheel/tire clearances and ride height look great!

The only downside is that the 'Fork is a little outdated. Many of the links no longer work, however, in most cases he was kind enough to list a part number, so looking them up on the web will be easy enough.

Thanks Wes!!

Edit: Looks like the link moved, not sure if this is the permanent home, but here's the link

Vintage Drag Racing Videos

I love the Internet! It lets us see stuff that before might have ended up in a dusty box somewhere or in the five cent bin at a garage sale. Several great vintage drag racing videos have surfaced lately, here are a few:

Island Dragway, 1962.



Pacific Raceways, 1963

1963 Drag Racing Nationals in Indianapolis

Here's a great one featuring some early front-engine dragsters (AKA "diggers" or "slingshots")

Great stuff! Keep posting them people!

Fox mustang 5-lug conversion and brake upgrades

Anyone that knows me knows that I've owned at least one Mustang at any given time since I was 15 years old. I lurk around on numerous mustang-related message boards and a series of related questions comes up time and time again...

How to I convert my 4-lug fox to 5-lug?

How to add rear disk brakes to my fox?

How do I upgrade my fox to 13" cobra brakes?

Probably the most straightforward way to accomplish all of the above is to buy Ford's complete M2300K kit. It is entirely complete, so you don't have to chase down any odds-n-ends or do any guesswork on your combination. However, these kits are getting pretty scarce, and the price has gone up 50% in the last 5 years!

Here's a really nice photo gallery of an M2300K install on an 86 (complete with ABS!)

Baer Brakes is also making a complete 4-wheel upgrade package that's been dubbed the "M2300K Killer" (Baer part #1263005.) Here's a great writeup on that package from MustangUpgrades.net. However, it too retails for North of $2400.

A lot of you guys are probably like me, and like to do it yourself to save a little money, or just upgrade a few parts at a time as time and money allow. If you are, here is the most authoritative site on Mustang brakes and parts interchange I've seen. It goes into great depth about which parts you'll need to adapt just about any year Ford brakes to your mustang! He also manufactures and sells 3-port to 2-port master cylinder adapter kits that allow you to run the four wheel disk brake M/C setup with your stock prop valve and brake lines, as well as stocks the hard-to-find adapter fittings you'll need to run the various brakes with your stock fox lines.

If you're just looking for a 5-lug conversion, but want to do it as inexpensively as possible, it's recently become much easier! You could piece everything you needed together out of a junkyard and parts house, but now e-tailers like Latemodel Restoration Supply will sell you everything you need in a kit. It still costs a bit more ($400), but again, it will be complete and take out any guesswork.

LS-1 V8 Rx-7 FD

This is only the 4th post in my blog, but I'll bet you're already detecting a theme... I love engine swaps! LS1s are the swappers favorite these day's due to their low cost, high availability, light weight, small size and huge power potential.

One car that makes a perfect platform for an engine swap is the FD RX-7 (1993-1995 in the US). They are perfectly balanced (50/50) front to rear, lightweight, have a low center of gravity and make 275 hp in stock form. Sounds pretty good as is, so why swap in an LS1 you ask? There are quite a few good reasons actually:

1) Maintenance. The FD has an incredibly elaborate sequential twin turbo system that is controlled by an extremely complex series of vacuum connections, hoses, valves, clamps and solenoids. They are all tightly packaged in an extremely high heat environment between the intake manifold and the turbochargers. Needless to say they don't last long there, and as the cars age a bit, owners are frequently trying to find out why they are losing boost or their car is dead. It requires a major teardown to access and is fairly expensive to replace it all.

2) Torque. The turbo rotary doesn't have a whole lot of bottom end (dyno chart.) The strong low-end and broad, flat torque curve of the V8 would give the car instant throttle response and would accelerate much faster than the peaky rotary.

3) Cost - The LS1 swap could be completed for about what it would cost to upgrade the stock turbocharger, intercooler, exhaust and fuel system, but you wouldn't have the problems normally associated with those upgrades (turbo lag, noise and constantly dickering with fuel enrichment on a piggyback tuner.)

4) Performance - Every aspect of the RX-7's performance is improved, even with a stock LS1. Believe it or not, the LS1 weighs about the same (or less) than the rotary, turbos, manifold and the supporting accessories, so the stellar RX7 handling and braking characteristics are unchanged! Folks are seeing low 12s with stock LS1s, 11s with the usual bolt-ons!

As far as engine swaps go, they say this one is pretty easy and is becoming more common. There are numerous people on sites like http://www.v8rx7forum.com/ that have done the swap and can answer and build questions you may have. If this interests you at all, go spend some time over there, it'll make you a believer! Companies like Hinson Supercars will sell you everything you need to make the swap a bolt-in, or they will do the turn-key swap for you. They have some very impressive cars on their site! Here's a video of their shop car (pictured above) running an 8.22!

When I win the lottery and can spend all of my free time (outside of my family time) playing in the huge, well-equipped shop of my dreams, I will build one of these for sure!

Rotary valve engines

About twelve years ago, I read an interesting article about a typical V8 that had been retrofitted to run using rotary valves instead of the usual poppet valve and camshaft arrangement found in just about all internal combustion engines. If memory serves, the engine was able to rev to around 15000 rpms, make much more power and run much more compression than it had in its previous configuration. It sounded great but then they kind of dropped out of the picture.

Fast forward about a decade... A year or two ago, that article came up in conversation with some friends and so I started looking up rotary valves again and stumbled across the site of Coates International Ltd. At the time, they appeared to be doing a bunch of R&D and had patented a very slick looking rotary valve setup, the Coates Spherical Rotary Valve Engine" (CSRV). I visited the site again today, and was delighted to see that they have received 10 million dollars in funding and have recieved many orders for their complete CSRV engines.

To summarize the benefits of the CSRV, here is an excerpt from their site:

The CSRV engine design eliminates the use of poppet valves, springs, rockers, camshafts, pushrods, etc. In fact, the CSRV system removes most moving parts from a standard industrial 855 CID engine, including the engine oil from the top part of the engine, replacing all these parts with only two moving sphere shafts, twelve floating seals and carriers that require no oil, no servicing or adjustment, producing higher volumetric efficiency, allowing higher compression ratios to be utilized. This results in an engine possessing higher thermal efficiency, lower emissions, and higher M.P.G.s.

In a video interview with CEO George Coates posted on their site, he states that the engines will have close to twice the volumetric efficiency of a conventional poppet-valve motor, be able to run much more compression, make more power, have almost no emissions and never need an oil change. He said once they have the orders filled for the entire engines, they will look into developing retrofit kits for popular V8s.

I'm excited about the possibilities!

Supercharged V6 Mr2

Brad Bedell was one of the first people I "met" on the Internet probably close to a decade ago. At the time, he had the fastest MR2 in the country, running in the bottom of the 11s. It was for sale, and I wanted to buy it! We traded numerous e-mails and gave the better part of a car payment to Ma Bell getting it all setup. I had the 300 mile road trip planned, the money lined up, and a truck, trailer and co-pilot ready to go... then I get the phone call... "Hey man, bad news. I took the car out for a farewell drive, and now it's got a funny noise coming from the bottom end."

DOH! Anyway, that worked out for the best for both of us. I unexpectedly moved to California for work shortly thereafter and really didn't need a high-strung hotrod to battle the 405 in, and the next month, his car was on the cover of Turbo magazine so he got almost twice the money he was asking for it, even hurt!

Anyway, a couple of years ago, he built another MR2 that I would have really liked to have called my own! This time however, he opted against the peaky "little engine, big turbo" combo and went straight for the flat-curved torque of a supercharged V6!!

Here are his build pictures.

Shortly after completing the car, he entered it in Sport Compact Car's Ultimate Street Car Challenge... and won! Here's his write-up on it. It is a gruelling test where cars compete head-to-head in braking, acceleration, handling, power, comfort, MPG and more!

Brad continues to build bad-ass cars, and you'll see more on here for sure. Keep up the good work Brad!

Hemi Sprite

This is one of the more memorable cars I've stumbled across on the web in the past, an Internet legend if you will. It's Dave Marian's 1959 Sprite with a 478 Hemi. The following pretty much sums up why I think it's so cool:

"The rear wheels are 17x9.5 ZR1 corvette wheels, the fronts are the same wheels but they had to be narrowed to avoid hitting the valve covers at full lock."

More photos and build information can be seen at the
Hemi Sprite page hosted by the
North Texas Austin Healy Club.