Fox T-Bird/Cougar Forums  

Opinions?

Well, Layla's broken and I'm broke. Hopefully I can pull things together and keep my house. The problem is the machine shop that did the valve-job on her head nicked a valve guide allowing boost to enter and blow the valve seal off. Putting the seal back on did nothing as it would blow right back off under initial boost. This in turn spit out the rear main and caused havoc with the oiling and dual-PCV system. So here's the plan, I'm getting out of the used TBird parts. Completely. It's a royal pain in my rear and I actually lose money doing it. Well, the local junkyard has 2 87 TC's and a Merkur and they want $600 for a complete motor. I might be able to get them to swap me a motor for my used inventory. I can then put the 100% stock motor with a fresh HG into Layla. I'll probably go for the Merkur's because I already took the head off and it looks pretty nice in there. So I'll have a stock motor, including head. The only thing I can't decide is slap my IHI back on, try to salvage the Merk's T3 (needs a center section), or just use the SC50 and deal with it. Matt's TC runs pretty strong with the SC50 and his is all stock, so I may try it. I will of course keep the CAI, 3" single dump pipe, 255HP BBK, Kirban AFPR, and new 35# injectors on the car. Probably stick with the new dizzy, Dyna-Mod TFI and the MSD coil/Taylor wire set-up too. The decision is, is if I DO stick with the SC50, do I run my gutted upper/ported lower/ported E6 or all stock stuff? I just want the car to run so I can make a pass this year and if worse comes to worse and I have to move, I won't have to tow the thing. I'll keep my rebuilt engine and just go through it and do the big valve/roller head later when I can afford it. Opinions?