ecotec swap

Very nice build. Do a video when she's running.

thanks. there will for sure be videos, we have go pro mounts around the dyno, and ill be putting one in the car lol

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its ready to fire. brakes and clutch are bled (although the clutch seems to lose pressure overnight, a couple pumps and its fine), everything is full of fluid. had a bit of time to i tossed an old deck in it tonight, sounds craptastic with 4x6 speakers all around. hood is back on, although i cant close it. did some trimming of the structure and its so close, i can actually get it to latch if i force it, but its on the valve cover. still not sure what im gonna do, dont really want a z28 cowl, but anything else is gonna look goofy cause its so far forward.   doing a bulge would work too. just dont know.

Put one of these in the hood where the valve cover hits

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Nothing wrong with a cam cover sticking through a hood.   My 4g63T swapped Rx7
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phlip wrote:

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its ready to fire. brakes and clutch are bled (although the clutch seems to lose pressure overnight, a couple pumps and its fine), everything is full of fluid. had a bit of time to i tossed an old deck in it tonight, sounds craptastic with 4x6 speakers all around. hood is back on, although i cant close it. did some trimming of the structure and its so close, i can actually get it to latch if i force it, but its on the valve cover. still not sure what im gonna do, dont really want a z28 cowl, but anything else is gonna look goofy cause its so far forward.   doing a bulge would work too. just dont know.

Put one of these in the hood where the valve cover hits

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I have one of these in fiberglass that I did not use if you are interested...

yea i dont mind that scoop, it could work. i started thinking about how close the turbo is to the hood and how much itll bake the paint. with that in mind i decided to go with something a little larger, even though i dont really want it. i ended up ordering a scoop from a 79-82 mustang. itll get the job done, and i think itll suit the car. its in transit right now, should have it next week.

havent gotten it running yet. having some issues with the computer, the tuner is working with microtech directly to get it sorted. the ecotec is a custom application for them, so this isnt really anything unexpected. being they are in australia, it takes a bit to get an answer. hope to have it running soon though. in the mean time i got my rear valance mounted on the car, so once the scoop is on the hood both can get painted at the same time.

didnt have a lot of time today, but we got it running. just got the fuel trimmed enough so itll fire and run. my wideband is giving me issues, and the alternator isnt charging, but it runs. gonna have to get those few things sorted before i can run it much more.

so turns out the alternator is dead. no biggie, ill grab another one tomorrow. still managed to run it for a while, got the idle sorted for the most part.

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got the alternator swapped out this week, fixed the problem. i started fitting my hood scoop tonight

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i decided to mount the scoop backwards to make it an extractor hood. it did look kinda cool the other way, but a little too aggressive to go with the rest of the car. i need to do some fitting to make it match the curvature of the hood, and invert the curve at the front of the scoop so it matches the front of the hood.

i started with contouring the scoop to fit the hood today. ended up taking more material out than i wanted, and ill have some glassing to do. then i cut the front edge of so i can reverse the curve to match the front edge of the hood. more glassing to do lol. hoping tomorrow ill have it all put back together and ready for some filler and body work next week. id like to get it and the rear valance in paint soon.

also got my new battery. went with an Xs power s925. its a small agm battery, still plenty of cranking amps though. used these in quite a few cars. also put in one of the battery trays my shop is starting to produce.
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the battery holders are built to fit specific batteries and are not universal. right now we have them to fit popular xs power and optima batteries, as well as some stinger audio batteries and braile lithium batteries.

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earlier in this thread i had info on the obx fuel rail that is marketed for the lsj and doesnt fit. i did make it fit, but the end result is i ended up with leaks around the o-rings. after an evening of frustration i ended up ripping the thing off and throwing it at the wall. ended up with the modified 03-05 l61 rail back on it. i went away from it because of firewall clearance, i just ended up hammer modding the firewall a bit, was my only real option.

ive been picking away at the car this week when ive had time. ive been helping with some fiberglass work for a friends widebody fc rx7, so havent had a ton of time. sorted out a couple engine related things, had to change the idle air control motor. got some idle tuning dialed in a little better so itll at least start and run. did some more work on my scoop as well.

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ive got it all fiberglassed back together now with the correct curve on the front. being the mustang hood is flat and my hood has a decent curve to it i had to trim the bottom edge till it decently, then glass the bottom edge back together. after that i taped the hood up and put a coat of duraglass (fiberglass reinforced body filler) on the bottom edge and bolted it together. that created a perfect fit to the hood. just need to body work the front edge and itll be ready to paint.

more exciting news, if all goes well itll be on the dyno sometime on saturday

well tuning didnt happen last weekend. the downside of having your own project car in the shop you work at is that when you try to work on it, you end up having to do actual work. oh well.

it hit the dyyno today, and things didnt go quite as planned. i started having some strange electrical gremlins after just a few pulls. water/meth controller would shut off mid pull,after sorting that out the fuel pump was giving issues. got that sorted and started losing the crank sensor signal right around 6000rpm. im going to have to go through my wiring harness, i have a couple ideas of things im going to change. still a little unsure on the signal drop out, i have a slight bit of runout in the crank trigger wheel, but i doubt its enough to do anything.

the first pull was the only clean one we got. slobber rich (mid 10 afr), 15 degrees timing, 8 lbs of boost and 7200rpm. 310 whp 245 lb/ft. i think thats a decent start

here is a short clip

That engine sounds bad ass! Nice video.

thanks. there is more to come as soon as i sort my issues out

i think ive got the problems sorted out. i had a list of things i wanted to change, started measuring resistance in ground circuits and found anywhere from 30-120 ohms between the battery and various things like the ecm, meth controller, wideband controller, etc. the end result was the ground battery cable, a 6" long piece of 4ga wire that was brand new off a roll i had in the shop. standing resistance was 14 ohms, when the key was turned on it had around 40-60 ohms. changed it out with some other wire and everything seems better. i also added a battery to engine ground (even though the chassis to engine ground cable should have been enough), grounded the ecm and meth controller direct to the battery, and separated the grounds on the coils.

im confident i have solved the problem, but i wont know till its strapped down on the dyno again.

had the car back on the dyno today, lets just say its making me work for it. all of the grounding issues proved to be fixed, the car made multiple clean pulls to 6800rpm on 8psi, making 310-315whp. we tried to push the rpm up a little to 7500 and thats when we started running into issues. above 6800 the power started to flatten out and we had some slight misfiring, nothing aggressive, just sort of like it was hitting a soft touch rev limiter. after a fresh set of plugs and some small changes with no luck, we added 2 more pound of boost and it started happening at 6500 rpm, 2 more psi and end it was happening at 6000 rpm, putting to boost back at 8psi and it was back to happening above 6800 rpm. our best educated guess is valve springs, the engine has bates 94lb springs in it, thats what was available when i built the motor, now 9 or 10 years ago. i figure the years of mostly sitting with the occasional short rip up and down the street have weakened them. combined that with the higher lift cams, its just causing valve float. so we worked on drivability tuning and called it done for now at 325hp at 8psi.

right now im waiting for another master cylinder to get here before i can drive it. im changing bore sizes so i can actually stop the car. that being said, it didnt stop me from some shenanigins in the parking lot. i figured id burn the 15 year old tires off a little bit, however to my surprise, upon swapping feet it dead hooked, squatted and took off. i really didnt expect the car to hook that hard, im sure the trans wont like too much of that lol.

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ive got the undertail on the car now, still waiting on the hood scoop to be painted. been fighting with the manual brakes, tried another master cylinder without a whole lot of luck. (for more details see this [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] ). ive just decided to bite the bullet and do my big brake swap now seeing as all i needed was front caliper brackets. i got those mostly machined up today, still need some finishing work. i also got the spindles and caliper powder coated. here is a small peak

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Nice... Is that a decal or did you make a stencil and used paint?

thats all powder coat. its a pile of work, a lot of times in and out of the oven to make it work properly.

Looking good! PM sent.

brakes are ready to go on the car. i spent last night and most of today assembling calipers, bolting the rotors/hats/hubs together, repacking wheel bearings, finishing the machining on the caliper brackets, and putting it all together.

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ignore the grade 5 hardware, its getting replaced (try finding grade 8 stuff on a long weekend). planning to toss it on tomorrow evening, see if i can get this thing to stop

I can no longer view the pictures on the 1st two pages of your thread, perhaps the administrators can look into that.
What throw out bearing did you use?

i think its cause im hosting on photos on facebook. ill look into it.

im using an 05-12 ford mustang gt hydraulic release bearing. its very similar to a gm t56 unit except it has more available throw.

got the front brakes on the car today, everything went smoothly there. the back turned into a nightmare. first the threads pulled out of the caliper bolt hole in the trailing arm, so i need to get a thread insert kit tomorrow to fix it. continued on, tossed the new rotor on and tried to mount the caliper and its hitting everything. had to grind the backing plate bolt hole tabs off to get the caliper to bolt on, but now the caliper is hitting the side of the inside of the rotor. after a bunch more hair pulling i figured out i have the wrong rotors. turns out r1 concepts sent me base model 83-86 944 rotors instead of the 86 944 turbo rotors i had ordered. problem is i bought this stuff in the beginning of september, so im stuck with them now. hopefully i can find some decent rotors local.