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We had a 68 when we were coming up with white interior. I wish we had it back. Of course, we also had a forest green 66 Lincoln with suicide doors I really wish I had it back.
Finally the floor is done, and I can move onto the next chapter. That was a long detour! Everything is welded in, seam sealed and painted. The only problem I ran into was the paint had way more green in it for some reason than it was supposed to. Underneath was just undercoated after epoxy sealer since the rest of the car is all undercoated. Either way Im happy with it for now and can fix that later. Now just have to put the tank back in and get back to the rest of the items on the swap to do list.
You're gonna want to run tailpipes. Dumping under a wagon body makes it into a huge ECHO-O-O chamber.
Ya it would be down right obnoxious probably! Even with tail pipes dumped out the quarters behind the back tires with the BBF previously it could get pretty droney. Dumps are only short term until the fuel system was all packaged. I might even swap mufflers yet as I’m not a huge fan of these Thrush chambered muffs on there now. The oem trunk drop made it a pain to run tails with the 3 link before, so this time it should be easier/nicer. If I do swap muffs, I will probably run the same magnaflows as I ran on the last nbs swap I did. The only difference was this truck had an x-pipe. Stock / rebuilt Lq9 with TSP stg 3 low lift.
It should sound a bunch better than the 428 did previously. Heres a clip with the aforementioned tail pipe config. Always hated the way these FE’s have that sort of boat sound to the exhaust, unless they are a little more radical built that is.
Those Thrush chambered mufflers are Flowmaster copies, which I think contribute more to the boat sound than the 428 itself.
That 428 sounds like it has a bit of cam within.....
BTW the truck sounds less cammy than the 428; better in my opinion. Plus I like the truck exhaust way better. Use an X-PIPE.....
Finally the floor is done, and I can move onto the next chapter. That was a long detour! Everything is welded in, seam sealed and painted. The only problem I ran into was the paint had way more green in it for some reason than it was supposed to. Underneath was just undercoated after epoxy sealer since the rest of the car is all undercoated. Either way Im happy with it for now and can fix that later. Now just have to put the tank back in and get back to the rest of the items on the swap to do list.
Those Thrush chambered mufflers are Flowmaster copies, which I think contribute more to the boat sound than the 428 itself.
That 428 sounds like it has a bit of cam within.....
BTW the truck sounds less cammy than the 428; better in my opinion. Plus I like the truck exhaust way better. Use an X-PIPE.....
Ya the 428 had a comp single pattern (270H) in it. It fit the bill for that little bit of hot rod idle, but thats really where the excitement ended lol. If I get similar sound results with the wagon as the truck I will be a happy camper. I might just roll with the h-pipe for a little bit since it’s already done, but I agree with the x-pipe too.
Hard to believe it’s been two and half months, but progress has been a little slower than I was hoping for with work being busy. Its getting to the point where its just a bunch of small things left before first fire up. With any luck the car will be running by grad for my oldest in June hopefully.
After my last update I finished up wiring the fuel pump. Power runs through a bulkhead in the new trunk floor, then behind the rear interior panels, along the channel in the rockers (underneath the door sills / edge of the carpet). It has enough space that the wire is loomed all the way to the fuse box and is hidden, yet easy to access. The fairlane tank sending unit is also tied in now (single wire vs two wire, tank grounded). Up front I am still debating on whether to keep the ford starter solenoid, or delete since its not really needed with the LS starter. The ford external voltage regulator has been deleted, and wiring redone for the drivers side alt position (opposite of the ford fe). I also picked up a DR44G alt for the car, then tied back in cabin power and the cluster voltage dummy light from the harness pig tail where the external regulator once was. Last thing I need to do is wire the fan (sn95 mustang fan from my new fairlane donor car).
I reconnected one of the 3 speed column shifter linkage arms to run the gears. I was able to rework the arm enough where it will sweep through all the gears but 1rst unfortunately. This is basically the same way I ran the C6 prior as well. I will likely run this way for a while until I upgrade the column to something better with tilt and proper column shifter. Im growing less fond of the floor shifter idea since the car looks so original inside. Trans cooler lines are also done. I just bent up a section of 3/8 stainless tubing lines with two bolt hole flanges that runs along the pan gasket flange. Its clean and simple and out of harms way. Originally I was thinking PTFE hose, but was worried about heat from the collector compromising the lines. There is short rubber sections on either end to connect to the trans & external cooler.
Power steering is done now as well. I still have the oem truck pump with sexier pulley lol, and conversion AN fittings with elbows to -6 PTFE hos. I ran the lines inside thermal sleeve due to header proximity. I may also remove the drivers header to build a heat shield for the steering gear also to help it live. Lastly I have a simple 3/8 tubing loop to the front of the rad support as a cooler for the return line.
Next up radiator. I abandoned ship on the aluminum rad for now and put the stock big block ford version in. I chopped up a mix of hoses to add the steam port tie to the upper, then built the lower hose from 1.5” tubing with 90 rubber hose ends. Eventually when I get a different aluminum rad, it will be a split cross flow with the inlet / outlet on the same side (pass side) to line up the hoses nicer.
Cold air intake is under construction. I searched for an oem alternative but didnt find anything I like, much less fit half decent. Tubing was a 4” stainless U-J that I cut up with a 90 & 30 degree bend between the t.b to the MAF (should have went speed density in hind sight). Im still in the process of finishing the air box enclosure, but will run large conical filter that will have a lid. Air will be fed from the rad support as well as hole through the bottom of the inner fender area. I gave up on the x link idea to run a gen 4 dbw t.b. and picked up an ICT adapter and put the factory LQ9 t.b. back on.
Next steps are properly mounting the trans dipstick (TCI meant for sbc bell bolt hole that doesnt exist on the LS). Next fill all the driveline fluids, prime & figure out an oil pressure gauge for start up, then either obd2 port bootleg display for elcheapo on board monitoring, or maybe something like the autometer 7000 invision digital gauge display once funds make sense. Again Im struggling to make radical changes to the interior, so hard to say for sure what the heck I will do lol. Speaking of funds, the Fairlane made an unplanned return to the garage as I lost my storage and it began to spiral from there. I picked up a 94 mustang for a donor car. Long story short the two will make a love child and undergo a body swap. The wheel base will be a mix of stretch at the k-member / shock tower area and possibly in the rear seat area as well. The donor was a V6 5spd, but the sixer will obviously get the boot. It will receive my spare LM7 I have, and ideally a single turbo and hopefully have just a fun budget / grassroots style street car. Eventually once I get far enough in, I will do a build thread on here as well. For now here is some pics of random progress.
Made a bit of progress on the air box. Built the lid, and installed nut certs on the box after it was welded up and smoothed. The close out on the inside will have to be a bolted in piece, as its damn near impossible to roll it into place with the shape of the inner fender and rad support. I will pick up some nicer looking button heads for fasteners. The box had to rotate and tuck slightly from where I test fit, so I need to lengthen the 4” tube, which is fine so I will gain some pipe diameter back downstream of the maf. I just set in place the callout on the box lid, not sure if I will actually put that on yet.
Big update: My oldest graduated this weekend, and one of his requests was to have the car running so he could take it for the ceremony and dinner. It was a hell of a thrash and we ran into a number of issues, but we got it finished. A few of the things that bit us during this process in no particular order were: We did some reading about knock off valve springs and premature failures which gave me a bit of a fright, so I ordered and installed another set of BTR LS6 springs. My TSP kit was from amazon, so the cam is legit, but the springs just came in ziploc bags. That should have been a red flag back then. I picked up a Proform LS valve spring tool which was super slick to make the swap easy and quick, way less painful than my single spring tool. The ford brake booster split in half while we were bleeding brakes. The thought of this happening while he or any of the other kids were in the car was terrifying to me, so we picked up an entire new master cylinder / 8” booster / prop valve set for peace of mind. The only down side is the new combo comes out much further than the ford stuff, so it will be tougher to pull the drivers side header in the future if needed. The heater core was leaking bad, followed by the small side press in heater connection on the water pump outlet. I removed both press in outlets and tapped them to run -10AN fittings, but the large side (1/2” npt) fitting decided to eat its own threads once I tried to install it, wrecking the fitting, and the new threads in the pump in the process. I bit the bullet and installed a new pump and just ran a bypass hose for now until we a new heater core. Next problem was on me, I obviously didn’t read the instructions or pay attention to installing the vette fuel regulator and installed it backwards. Surprisingly it fired up and ran for a while, but things went south quickly. Luckily my friend had another walbro 255 / vette fpr for his chevelle, so we swapped the pump and reg in his driveway as it stranded the boy in town on the first outing. I think it hurt my pump once fuel pressure got sporadic so its just sitting on the bench for now to test and verify if its still ok. The 4 corner steam port tubing is leaking at the front side tee, so that needs to get replace which luckily isn't a big deal. I also picked up a cheap obd2 display to read live data on some of the important gauge data, but it works like you think a cheap amazon device would. Interestingly enough it works with my 22 F150, but not the car. The boy just ended up running with my scanner plugged in so he could keep an eye on vitals. So far so good though, and everything seems happy. The drone is horrible with the thrush mufflers and dumps like previously pointed out lol, so tail pipes and magnaflows in the new future. The only other issue we have found so far is at stops signs, or lights the car wants to get up on the convertor and push a little bit, but not enough that its a safety issue. If I get back to the tuner in the near future, I will have him take a look, then maybe recurve the maf for the cold air intake so I know its reading at its best. I was unable to find an air horn to mount on the front side of the maf / filter assembly which I think will improve air flow, but for the life of me I can find an off the shelf part to bolt onto the maf. K&N, and a few others offered this as part of the kits for the trucks, but I cant find and individual part number. My brother in law just picked up a new 3D printer, so we may try to scratch build one if he can build a file. As usual, heres a few pictures of where it sits now.
Man, that turned out RIGHT! Just a nice clean install, keeping to the basics. I bet it's a blast to drive!
Hey Thanks! It was a cool project to do, and turned out how pretty much how I envisioned (just more expensive than I thought lol). It is certainly way more fun than the 428 was, and is just awesome to cruise on the highway now with the overdrive and lock up.
02-04-2024, 07:28 PM
