So after having a blast with my T-bird since I swapped in the GT40ized 5.0 HO 5 years ago I've come to a bit of a crossroads. The V6 Mustang sitting at the house is only a tick (if that) slower than the T-bird. That won't do. To make sure that I can out distant it easily I've made plans for ludicrous speed!
[video=youtube;ygE01sOhzz0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygE01sOhzz0[/video]
I've bought a set of Edelbrock Performer 5.0 heads, ARP bolts, and FelPro gaskets. I've even painted them Ford blue to match the engine block and intake manifold. It's still going to be a sleeper when the hood is popped :D. Now I just need to get the car over to my friends shop (hopefully in two weeks) and commence the swap.
:burnout::headbang: Nice heads. I've been thinking about getting the E-street heads or Patriots.
LOL spaceballs! rick moranis' best movie, hands down.. sweetness on the heads, what are you doing for rockers?
I would skip the E-street heads and go with either the Performer (egr) or Performer RPM (non-egr) heads from Edelbrock. They only cost about $200 more than the E-streets but they are worth it. The E-streets have py springs that only work with flat tappet cams. By the time you buy a good set of springs you've spent the extra $200.
I'm going to run the FRPP 1.6 roller rockers that are on the GT40Ps right now.
I guess so but springs would not cost me that much.
Nice. I had those heads on my Carbd Stang. Ran well.
I will have those on my Cougar at some point. They are just sitting there.
So are my heads. I still haven't gotten the car over to my buddies shop yet. I'm having a garage built so right now I have no garage to work in as they tore my old one down. Apparently these heads were revised a couple of years ago so they should flow better than the ones built prior to about 2003. This is what Edelbrock says. They supposedly did this so they compared better to the AFR 165 heads.
Well... that sucks for me. Mine are older. Got them in about 2000.
They are still good heads, much better than any factory Ford head, even the GT40s.
One of these days I might put some power in my T-Bird.
Well I spent the last 5 hours tearing the engine down to just the heads. Tomorrow I'm pulling the heads and then spending a few hours cleaning the block deck. Then it's time for reassembly. I'll take a picture or two in the morning as it's too dark out right now. I know I took along time to get started on this but I had to wait till my new garage was done so I had some place to work ;).
Let see the pics!
Travis
Can't wait to see some pics, and see how big of a difference the heads make.
No pictures yet. I spent two hours cleaning the block deck with a razor blade and brake cleaner. The builder used Fel pro 1011-1 head gaskets when he built the engine so there wasn't much gasket stuff left to se off. I just sped till nothing accumulated on the razor. It was going nuts because I could see a faint outline of where the gaket was. After some searching it turns out that these gaskets leave a permanent inprint on the deck surface. I then cleaned the deck with brake cleaner, poped the new Fel Pro 1011-2 head gaskets on, and bolted down the heads. I used ARP bolts and coated the hell out of the lowers with ARP thread sealer. I also bolted the power steering pump and A/C compressor back on because they are in the way if you don't pull them out of the engine bay ;). I'm going to bolt the headers back on today. On Monday I'm going to set the rockers, bolt the intake back on, and fire it up. Hopefully I have no leakes or other problems :mullet:.
I'll take some pictures tonight. I would have last night but I had to go pick up my dad after he got in a car accident. He's fine and it wasn't his fault. Some kid in dady's brand new Malibu didn't notice that traffic had stopped in front of him. As he tried to avoid it he clipped my dad's car (which was stopped) at 30-40mph. The impact destroyed the driver side rear of his car and bent the back half of the frame. It looks like his 50,000 mile '98 Accord is a write off. At that mileage he could have driven the car for another 10 years....
Here are pictures of my progress so far. All I have left is to install the push rods and rockers, adjust the rockers, bolt on the passenger side accessories, bolt on the lower intake, reconnect the electrical connectors, install the upper intake, install the plugs, and change the oil. So yeah not much:hick:. Oh and you can pull the intake with the distributor in place pretty easily. I'll be pulling it out to put the intake back however.
Looks great!!!
Looks great. Like the fender protection, I hate wrenching over nice sheetmetal.
Hope it runs like a raped ape! Looks great!
Looking good so far
It runs! I should have taken more pictures of the process but I just got so wrapped up in working on the car that I forgot to take pictures of the rest of the "build". I had a bit of a scare when I fired it up last night because it was smoking out the exhaust pipes really bad and it looked like burning coolant. It was buring coolant. What happened was that when I removed the GT40Ps a bunch of coolant overflowed from the block into the exhaust when I removed the last lower head bolt:hick:. I ended up sticking the bolt back in and getting a funnel to route the coolant to the pan I had under the engine, but not before about a half a gallon got into the exhaust. It took about 20 minutes to blow the coolant that got in the exhaust out. After that no more smoke and both the oil and coolant are fine. I haven't really beat on the car yet as I'm still "breaking it in" but it will lay rubber from a 20 mph roll now :burnout:. It feels noticeably stronger, especially in the upper RPM ranges where the GT40Ps started to fall off.
I take some pics after I redetail the engine bay. I chipped the heck out of the A/C lines and some of the brackets working on the engine so they need to be cleaned and detailed again. It looks just like it did with the GT40Ps, so no one will be the wiser that it has some nice flowing aluminum heads;).
(http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee79/daminc/facebook_like_button.jpg)
Congrats !!! I'm proud for you. I'm really interested in the horsepower numbers. Were your "P" heads ported or have they had any work done to them? Reason I ask is, I had mine ported and the whole 9 yards, and I'd be interested in knowing how they do compared to aluminum heads. I just talked to my friend who runs the local Vocational auto classes, and he said I could use his dyno soon. I can't wait for that. Gotta do a fine tune on the old girl.
Good work man! I can't believe how clean your engine bay is!
Great work! I'm glad your scare didn't turn out to be anything major.
My GT40Ps were stock except for the exhaust valves and springs. The exhaust valves were replaced with ones that were taller and didn't use valve rotators so they worked with non stock springs. Other than that stock as cast. The car is noticeably stronger with the new heads. Like I said it will spin the tires from a 20 mph roll.
I got some pictures of the engine. The bay needs some detailing attention but you can see how well the paint hides the heads. The casual observer would be hard pressed to tell that the car has Edelbrock Performer heads, which is how I like it ;).
I kept watching it yesterday but no more smoke came out. The engine oil and coolant levels didn't change so it's fine. I really didn't want to have to pull it apart again.
Your bay continues to amaze. Even your spark plug wires are clean and arranged perfectly!
Maybe more like spin the tires. I'm not sure if it left any rubber but the wheels were spinning :hick:. Unfortunately living in a highly congested urban area I don't have an area that I can safely film, uh, "activities" in. I'll have to take a trip out to the boonies ;).
The pictures make it look better than it really is right now. The plug wires are dirty and there are chips all over the A/C lines and front accessories.
So I finally took the T-bird out to some back roads tonight and beat on it. This thing is much stronger than I thought. If you hammer it at 65 mph it gets to 90+mph in a hurry and barks the tires on the down shift:D. It pulls so hard that it locks the seat belt retractors when you down shift to passing gear. It just seems to pull and pull with no end to the power band. The GT40Ps on the car used to feel like they started to lose power above 4500 rpm. The Edelbrocks power up to at least 5500 rpm, where the cam stops making steam. The car now has high rpm power with no lost power in the low and mid ranges. It accelerates so fast and smooth that you don't know how fast you're going unless you look at the speedometer. I really need to get back to the track....
I haven't launched it from a stop yet. I'm pretty sure the converter will flash to stall speed and incinerate the tires. No need to waste rubber ;).
Nicely done! and one could still eat off of your engine too, that is unfair sir!
Now the engine bay has been cleaned up. It looks much better in person. With the GT40P headers there is more room to get the plugs out than there was with the GT40P heads. I had to use a box end wrench on a spark plug socket to remove plugs with the GT40Ps but now I can get at the plugs with a socket and ratchet.
There may be no need, but it sure is fun.
Looks great.
Still a 14 second car :evilgrin:
Good looking engine bay. Those heads should be a lot of fun!
Probably, especially since I suck at driving :hick:.
With the GT40Ps I was running 95mph in the quarter with a 14.6 et and a 2.2+ 60 foot, most Mustang guys are running about 100mph. Since my car weighs about 500lbs more than a Mustang that seems about right, mph wise. If I could have cut a decent 60 foot the car would have run a low 14. With the Edelbrocks most mustang guys are running 105-107 and high 12's to low 13's. I'm going to try to get to the track in the next month or so. I figure the car should run about 100 mph, good enough for 13s but since again I suck at driving it will have a 2.2+ 60 foot and probably run a 14.2 or some other py number. I can't really run sticky tires since the car still has a 7.5" rear differential. Over the winter I'm going to build up the XR7 8.8" rear I have in the garage so I can run drag radials and push the 3700lb fatty (3560 without me in the car) through the quarter in the 13s.
The T-bird is now noticeably faster than the Mustang, which for now makes me happy;).