Mustang Sally Restoration: The 306ci rebuilt SBF and NEW T5z gets installed in the car

 Today was a big day! I arrived in California yesterday. After grabbing some In-N-Out right by the LAX airport, we made the trek up to the High Desert to my small hometown of Tehachapi.

We got started around 8am this morning. Yes, it was cold. The day started out at about 36F and luckily it warmed up to 50F. 

I made sure to bundle up for installing an engine outside on the driveway in late Fall in T-town. :)

Here's a mid install progress shot. We took our time inching the engine/trans into place.

Engine install selfie right here to prove I was here! haha

It took us 2 hours from start to finish to get the engine on the engine mounts and the Trans cross member on. 

Once we got the engine and trans in, we began the process of getting everything hooked up and installed. Here is the X pipe going in...

Dad ran into a bunch of brittle, 1994 made plastic vacuum line pieces. Luckily he has R/C air plane fuel line to fix broken sections. 

This little smog equipment pipe gave us some trouble. We ended up having to remove the trans cross member because that smog pipe needed to be above the cross member. 

Here we are at the end of Day 1. It took us 2 hours to get the engine and trans in, another 6 hours to get to this point. The dang smog equipment gave us more fits where we lost some time. But, that's why we planned to take as much as 3-4 days to get it all together. We're hoping to get it all assembled and fire it up for the first start tomorrow. Stay tuned...

Mustang Sally Restoration: X-pipe refinish, Shifter and Aluminum Rad

 A few more items this week before Thanksgiving. 

The BBK off-road X pipe was cleaned up and repainted. Looking good!

The aluminum radiator got cleaned up and will get a polish along with a cleaned up and shiny radiator fan and shroud assembly.

The T5z came with a factory short shifter. The main purpose was to seal off the trans for shipping. Dad's tried-and-true billet Hurst short shifter will be installed after its in the car. This will be where the trans fluid will be poured in. Much easier to fill it up from this spot.

The speedo was also cleaned up and installed.

Mustang Sally Restoration: 306ci 5.0 mated to the T-5z Close Ratio Trans

 Progress continues and things are getting pretty serious. The longblock is complete and the accessories are installed, water and oil pump, clutch, bellhousing and the brand new T-5z close ratio 5 speed manual transmission.

The engine and trans are looking great!!! The T5z is brand new from Moderndriveline.com! 

Here it is after getting the oil pan, filter and water pump, and lower intake manifold installed. Note the repainted shorty equal length headers. It looks great and ready to rock!

The brand new McLeod clutch and resurfaced steel flywheel are in and ready for the bellhousing next...

Fresh NGK spark plugs with some anti-seize and torqued down to 18 ft-lbs.

The plan is to meet up at the Tehachapi Hechtspeed Garage to get this bad boy into the 1994 Mustang engine bay. Can't wait!!! More pics and vids to come.

See Hecht Speed YouTube channel!!!

Mustang Sally Restoration: AFR165 Heads installed, Longblock is assembled!!!

 Tonight the longblock was assembled boys and girls! Here are some beauty shots to enjoy! 

ProForm 1.6 roller rockers getting installed!

Top view of the AFR165 heads and ProForm rockers.

Here's a pic with stock, but freshly painted valve covers.

Pops says it has the old valve cover gaskets on it for extra height clearance and that it will probably need a second one once the lifters pump up with oil. 

Next up is oil pump and oil pan tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Mustang Sally Restoration: Camshaft Installe and Piston-to-Valve Clearance

 Next up, the camshaft installation.

Be extremely liberal with the engine lube!

Close up pic of the timing gear and crank keyway.

Here he's checking camshaft endplay.

The piece de resistance, the AFR165 58cc, CARB E.O. equipped aluminum cylinder heads getting their first test fit!!! Along with the blue anodized 1.6 roller rockers. This should give the XE264HR camshaft ((.512" lift) a total of about .540" lift. This is a sneak peek here, I can't wait to see the fully assembled longblock on the engine stand.

The Ford Racing HD roller lifters are installed. They've been sitting in an oil bath for 3 days. 

Here's a look at the head gasket along with some putty to check valve-to-piston clearance. He measured about .193" intake and .220" exhaust. Plenty!! 

Everything is checking out just right with clearances! Piston to valve, valve cover to rocker, pushrod length. We are go for final assembly!

Mustang Sally Restoration: Short assembled!!!

 Big hassle averted! After the last blog, pops followed up with Reynolds Machine and here is the result: The machine shop did not pay attention to the number stamped on the factory rods. But, simply moving the left side piston-rod combo to the right and vice versa solves the issue. Apparently this is a standard process for machine shops to not care about the rod stamped #, but to set up 4 piston-rod combos one way and 4 the other way. This way the chamfered side of the rod faces the radius on the crank journal. So, as long as the piston to bore clearance stays the same and balance is the same, they are fine to be assembled like this. So, as you can see, dad wrote new numbers for the 8 cylinders.

It looks amazing! haha

Here is the 1-4 side...

...and here is 5-8...

Thanks to friend Corey, he took the specs and calculated an estimate of 9.8:1 compression ratio. The stock 5.0L from the 1994 Mustang GT came with 9.0:1 compression. 

A reminder on the set up now, we have AFR165 58cc heads (Head chamber volume), 0.030" overbored pistons (4.030"), stock stroke of 3.00", stock deck height 8.2" and piston height, 0.006" below deck height that dad measured, measured head gasket thickness of .039" and valve notch volume of 3cc. This is a nice increase in compression that will help response and power and will go well with the purpose of this car, which is street driving and the occasional drag strip runs. 

Mustang Sally Restoration: Gapping rings and Machine Shop woopsie!

 Making good progress. Yesterday pops sent a few pics of his ring gap process.

I just love the freshly machined metal. Here is a ring being checked for gap. Here's the results he went for:

0.023" Top ring

0.025" Second ring

0.037 Oil rings (out of the box)

He says these gaps should be good for anything you throw at it, drag, road course, turbo or super charger or Nitrous.

Here pops uses his Dremel to grind the end of the rings to get the desired gap and then deburring and polishing with 320 grit sandpaper.

He says "It's tedious but if the gaps are too tight, then when they get up to temperature they can expand so much that the ends of the ring butt up against each other and can damage rings or break piston ring lands".

After gapping all the rings, they were bagged up in 8 sets and marked with the piston # so the combos stay together.

So, pops was installing, or attempting to install some piston/rod assemblies onto the crank today. Here he is plastigauging the bearing clearance for the rod bearing journals. He quickly found out that the wrong rods were assembled to the wrong pistons because when he put the first set together on the crank, they were not oriented right and were not able to move without making contact. :( So, he'll be calling Reynolds Machine tomorrow and find out what's going on. 

Mustang Sally Restoration: Block painted and Plastigauging the crank and bearing clearance

 Progress continues on the Sally 302 engine rebuild. The block has been painted black.

The brass freeze plugs are also installed.

Using a front and rear bearing only, Pops uses a dial indicator to check crank runout. It measured about 0.0002", amazing for 271,000 miles of wear and tear.

Here's the plastigauge strip laid down on the crank. 

The plastigauge kit comes with 2 sets of gauge material. The green material is in the range of 0.001" - 0.003" bearing clearance gap. The red set is from 0.002" to 0.006". Inspection results look like about .0035-.0037" range. The high-volume oil pump will fill that gap nicely.

Here's 2 inspections of a red strip. Looking like its between the 0.003" and 0.004" range. This is a really cool technique. It's very simple and manual process that provides very precise measurement information.

Here's an underside view of the 302 block for reference. I was asking dad how the crank gets supplied with oil. The crank journal webs have oil passage drilled into them. You can see the 2 holes in the middle and top side of the bearing journals.

Here's a close up view looking at the side. The one small hole in the crank journal area goes up to the cam bearing journal to provide oil to the cam bearings.

Mustang Sally Restoration: Parts back from the Machine Shop!!!

Big shout out to Reynolds Machine in Bakersfield, California for the relatively quick turnaround on all the machine work and balancing. Pops picked up the parts today and sent along some photos as he inspects what he's got.

First up is the bored (0.030" over), torque plate honed and decked. It was cleaned and magnafluxed as well and checked out just fine. Gotta love freshly milled iron! Looks great!

Next up is the factory 5.0L crankshaft. The bearing journals were polished and it was machined in a couple spots to balance it with the rotating assembly. The plan is to use factory sized crank main bearings.

The factory rods were assembled to the Summit Racing 0.030" overbore pistons. The bottom of the rods were machined down to remove weight as part of the balancing.

Another view of the factory rod and Summit Racing hypereutectic piston.

This photo of the underside of the pistons shows the machined areas for balancing. Every piston except the #2 piston had at least one balance spot machined and some have 2 like this one on the right.

Here is the cleaned up block with machinist notes to "Bore, Hone, Deck"

The McLeod clutch was mated to the re-surfaced flywheel and balanced. You can see the weight welded on and the blue markings to ensure they are reassembled where they were balanced to ensure smooth operation.

Here is the kit for all new cam plug oil gallery plugs and freeze plugs.

The block will be painted before re-assembly.