On Saturday I got the subframe connectors fabbed up, welded, painted, and mounted in the car. I've done better welds, but I've also done worse, and none of them have fallen apart yet.
I also ran the VIN and found out it was a nothing special, four cylinder car. Looks like advertised weight with a V8 is around 2700 lbs for this year. I'm thinking the way the car sits now, I'm pretty close to that. It's lacking a rear interior, but does have a 4pt roll bar, a 9" with 50lbs worth of wheels / tires on each side in the rear, but the fronts are REALLY light. I did remove the front sway bar, power steering, all the A/C equipment, and cast iron intakes and manifolds. I don't normally put cars on scales, but I think I will with this one.
Next up is to clean my garage again, and start on the tranny lines, remounting the tranny cooler, and fixing the LF wheel dragging problem. Oh yeah, I still have to remount the passenger's seat.
I got the seats all back together (this is all last weekend) as they both bolted into the frame ties. I also traced the wheel dragging to the LF brake caliper. At the end of the day I ordered new calipers, pads, and flex lines for both sides. All this stuff looked original, and although the pads had good thickness, they looked like they were dried up and could have fallen apart at any time. As it sits there are no calipers / hoses on the car, so I still have to reassemble all that.
My headers are finally here too, so I believe I have all the pieces of the puzzle, and now I just need to figure out how to put it all back together. I'm thinking another month or so to reassemble, and then some time screwing around to get the exhaust and alignment done.
So I get the new calipers, pads, and hoses... but the hoses are too small for the calipers and too big for the brake lines. Hmmmmm. So I take them back to the store and the '82 Mustang is showing a 12mm male end on the caliper side and 7/16 end on the brake line. Unfortunately my calipers, as well as the ones from Autozone, take a 14mm fitting and my car's brake lines are 3/8" and all items appear as they came from the factory.
Now what? I left the store with no hoses because those guys aren't much help. Nice, but unless it's in the computer, they're stuck. I drove across the street to O'Reilly to find the exact same problem. I went home and ALL the auto parts chains show the same one online. Go up or down one year and it's a different part number, but with the same result of not fitting. So I spent a good hour and a half putting in all different years, and models of Ford stuff to finally arrive at a 1986 Mustang with a 2.3 that has the same specs that I have. Of course they don't stock them, but the Autozone got two of them in for me without having to pay for them just to make sure they are the correct ones. I went there tonight and it turns out they are correct... I was surprised this was such a hassle, but all's well that ends well.
Saturday after breakfast (do I start a lot of these posts this way?) 32V and I got to work again. I took to the brakes and he to the painting of the headers. The headers were in bare metal so he prepped them for paint with some 500grit and wax and grease remover. Then we hung them outside off a ladder for paint. 32V did the honors with some VHT silver. There's a whole can on these things and they turned out nice. Apparently it takes a whole week to fully cure, which is fine cuz it will be longer than that before they get warm again.
I started to reassemble the front brake assemblies. After getting the driver's side completely on the car, I realized that the rotor was rubbing on both the inside of the caliper AND the outside brake pad on the lower edge... How can this be you may aks? Well, at some point the front rotors were upgraded to the newer '94-95, 5 bolt hub assemblies. And although they are a direct bolt on, they're a little too big and both the caliper and outer pad need to be modified slightly. So after some noticeable grinding, I'm happy to announce that everything is spinning freely again, with all new parts in place.
So last weekend I put the C4 up on my bench with the intention of putting the new aluminum tranny pan on and getting the new bell housing installed. Instead, I learned my fancy new aluminum pan won't fit because it's too thick and hits my trans brake solenoid AND my shifter detent spring inside the transmisstion... Ugh. So I went back to Summit with it and purchased a new stamped steel pan that has a couple quarts extra capacity. Then during the week I went to put it on and guess what?, it doesn't fit either. Same problem. Hmmm... It was a lot closer than the thick aluminum pan, so I "massaged" it with a cloth hammer, filed out a couple mounting holes, and was able to get it back together.
Fast forward to yesterday. 32V came over in the morning after some other running around, and we were able to get the new bell housing installed, but not without a trip to the local hardware store for socket head screws.
After lunch I went to install the new torque converter, with hopes to put the motor / trans assembly together again. It was not to be. The new torque converter had mounts that were too small. Basically I needed an 11.4" bolt mounting diameter, but what I had was 10.5". According to the notes in TCI's book, the converter I bought should have had the right size, but since there's no parts that seem to be working for me on this project, it was wrong.
I could get into more stupid details about how many teeth on the flywheel, transmission dipstick locations, bolt circles, and pilot sizes, but I won't bore you with that C4 Ford idiocy. This morning I went down to Summit AGAIN, returned the wrong converter, and purchased what I believe will be the right converter. I'll let you know sometime this week...
Oh yeah, somehow I forgot... 24 or 26 splines. Can you imagine they called all these C4s???? I'm pretty sure the next vehicle I purchase will be stock when I start modifying it, so I don't have to go through all this hassle. Maybe a Lincoln...
Unfortunately, the torque converter with the notes saying it would fit, wasn't in inventory so I couldn't check it there and they had to ship it to me. So either way, I wasn't going to know until I was home.
Basement Paul wrote:Oh yeah, somehow I forgot... 24 or 26 splines. Can you imagine they called all these C4s???? I'm pretty sure the next vehicle I purchase will be stock when I start modifying it, so I don't have to go through all this hassle. Maybe a Lincoln...
If you can imagine, I went back to Summit again today for another converter. My theory was incorrect, and the one I purchased to fit a trans with the dipstick in the pan was a bad idea. Turns out, C4's with the dipstick in the pan have a longer shaft that goes into the pump, thus making the converter stick out too far and hitting the flexplate too soon. Ugh.
SOoooo.... basically to get what I needed, a torque converter that would fit an 11.5" bolt circle, 164 teeth, dipstick in the case, small pilot hole, and 26 splines input, I was screwed. This is a combination that does NOT exist from the factory. Jeezus this is getting ridiculous. So what I really needed was a flexplate with dual bolt patterns, 11.5" bolt circle AND 10.5" bolt circle. BUT WAIT!!!! It's not that simple. What you need to know now, is if you have a one or two piece rear main seal, an internally balanced flexplate, one with 28oz external balance, or one with 50oz external balance. Are you sh*tting me???
After another hour plus on the computer after lunch learning more information about the 351 Cleveland, I learned that all Cleveland's are two piece rear main, and all small block Fords up to 1982 came stock with a 28oz external balanced flexplate. I also learned that the Cleveland takes the same flexplate as all SBF's even though they're normally not listed that way.
So another trip to Summit like I said earlier. By some MIRACLE, in the bargain discount closeout pile, was the very flexplate I printed off to purchase. Retail was $137, I paid $30. It's an SFI approved SBF, 164 tooth, multi pattern, 2 piece rear main, C4 flexplate. Hooray for good luck!
Then I purchased another TCI 10", 3000+ stall converter with a 10.5" bolt circle, for a tranny with the dipstick in the case, small pilot hole, and 26 splines, that should work with my stuff. The guys at Summit were probably thinking I was nuts when they asked me if everything was OK as I was measuring all sorts of stuff on the counter before I left. I started to explain to one of the guys there what was up, and he started to glaze over so I stopped and just told him it was too much information to even get more involved with. Another guy told me to just put a 'Glide in it and call it a day. Probably would have been easier.
Now, hopefully at some point tomorrow, I'll be able to mate this stuff together with some success. If it doesn't work out, I'm inviting everyone over for a bon fire tomorrow night.
So today finally brought some success to the transmission debacle. I installed the new flexplate with no issues, then had to drill out the mounting holes to 1/2" to accommodate the 7/16" studs in the torque converter. With the motor resting on the floor and the crank pulley stabilizing it on the leg of the engine hoist, I was able to put the trans on a 2x6 and wiggle it into position. With the studs already in the torque converter, that added to the confusion slightly while trying to line everything up, but it wasn't too hard. I did use bolts to help me pull the motor and trans together on the dowel pins, but it required close to no effort. All the measurements looked good before I put it together, so I'm pretty confident all is well.
I do have to steal some socket head cap screws from work as the hex head bolts are almost impossible to tighten with the thick aluminum bell housing. What I have on there is temporary and not really tight, just enough to keep it together. I also need to acquire a flexplate turning tool so I can install all my torque converter nuts. Right now I have none of them on there, but the studs are all sticking through, so it's not going anywhere.
My goal with the long weekend coming up, is to have the motor installed, on the cross member, and the headers and starter on. This might sound easy but there are still a lot of question marks with the 1/4" spacers that were in there and the new aftermarket cross member.
BP, I had to laugh a little about the "transmission debacle" only because it's USUALLY ME telling these stories!!!! I went thru a similar Chinese fire drill with the dragster. First it was a shitty design INCORRECTLY piloting the flexplate - I had to make an eccentric bushing and install it a certain way to use what I had - unfortunately for me I didn't discover this until my motor was all together. I later rebored the crank hole to keep from using the eccentric bushing long term. Then the starter wouldn't fit - at first I blamed my motor plate (I made) until I dug up the adapter plate that came with my kit - my motor plate was used in place of their's to keep the converter "stock" - I blamed myself until I checked theirs - nope I copied it EXACT - theirs was OFF and now MINE was. I fixed it and gave them a courtesy call to let them know - they basically told me I didn't know shit - I told them yeah whatever, I have all the drawings right here what number do you want to talk about...odd silence. Strangely enough a year later they changed their "right" design to look like my "wrong" one. Yeah fuckers - I was the clueless one. Next the starter didn't engage the flex plate enough - they told me to machine my starter down.....ah I think not - how about just getting me the right flex plate. They ended up rewelding the starter gear to match my "one off" set up and CHARGED me for their fuckup. Bastards! I could have easily welded this, but I needed it SFI so I had to pay them to fix THEIR fuckup. After all this crap they had the balls to ask me to return the incorrect adapters they sent me to try and fix their f'd-up design, "I'm like Yeah I'll get right on that." That was 5-6 years ago - I'm still trying to find some time to get that all packaged up for them. Honest mistakes are one thing - trying to blame the customer when you KNOW it's your fault, well that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish! Good times - bottom line Paul, I FEEL your pain!!!!! ha ha ha
Seriously though - holy smokes - you're tearing this thing UP! You're making me feel like a slacker!!!!!
