John in KC - Roadster Build Thread

9/1

3.5 hrs - cubby carpet, 12v & usb, rear fusebox, painted passenger seat brackets

Decided to use contact cement and speaker box carpet for the cubby wall. Cut the carpet to fit prior to install and brushed on the contact cement. Then installed the FFR supplied trunk floor carpet.

Before:
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After:
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Installed a USB charging port, as well as a 12v socket and the little fuse panel to feed them, as well as any other items that may need power in the future. (No plans to install a stereo, but who knows?)
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9/2

3 hrs - modify handbrake bracket, cover hole, mount passenger seat, give rides!!

I'm not using the standard e-brake lever or assembly (can't with the Gordon Levy Wilwoods that fit in 15" wheels), so am going to patch over the hole. The bracket intrudes into the space a bit, so I made a cut and moved it just enough to be able to put a panel of aluminum flush over the hole. I'm wary of removing it completely, so this way I can reverse the mod and bend it back to it's original position if needed. I can always cut it off from underneath later.

Before:
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Move bracket:
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After:
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No, it's not a work of art, but once covered with insulation and carpet I don't think it will ever be noticed unless looked for. (Quick reminder that it's a driver's car, not a show car... ;) )

I also mounted the passenger seat and gave rides. It's so fun to share the experience with others! Had lots of fun riding around the neighborhood. There's a large area yet to be developed with nice long streets that dead end with zero traffic. Great place for some shakedown runs. And fun runs. Which are kind of the same thing...
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9/4

Alignment!

A friend of mine owns a local shop that does all sorts of cool stuff, so I took it to him to get a full alignment. Took about 2 hours, but well worth it. The tech was super thorough, triple checked every adjustment, road tested it (me driving of course), went back and did some fine tuning...turned out great and definitely an improvement over my eyeball method.

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I was worried that I hadn't cut the UCA sleeve enough to get the caster I wanted, but turns out I was running about 11 degrees so he actually had to dial it back a bit. Got it set to 8 degrees for my power steering. Happy there's plenty of adjustment available there.

9/7

4 hrs - swap/adjust pedals, lengthen upper radiator hose, loom battery wiring in engine bay and secure, measure driveline angle

On my first couple of go cart drives I noticed that I didn't care for the pedal setup. The gas pedal is too close to the inner footwell and the holes in the metal pedals catch the tread on my tennis shoes so I couldn't slide my feet on or off the pedals at all and had to intentionally 'lift' them up to switch pedals. Very clunky and you'd be surprised how a split second to do that when trying to transition to braking can be pretty nerve-wracking...even at moderate speeds. So I ordered a set of pedals from Forte and replaced my Breeze pedal with one of those, also moving it slightly away from the inner wall. I also put a rubber cover on the Wilwood brake pedal as I didn't really want to move it closer to the clutch. MUCH better. The gas and brake are still closer together than I would prefer, but I no longer feel panic at not being able to get on the pedal I want when I want.

I also modified the mounting bracket to raise the pedal by about 1/2".

Breeze pedal:
Attachment 205597

AC pedal installed as accelerator, and rubber cover on brake:
Attachment 205598

I have another AC pedal I can try on the brake or as the clutch if I want to experiment. I actually like the clutch pedal the way it is, I don't mind it being 'grabby' on my shoe as my shoe never needs to move from it unless cruising. I can see why some people modify the inner wall to give more space. Another 1" of clearance would be nice, especially once carpeted. Worth a thought to do now instead of later. I think it's livable...but certainly not ideal.

I noticed that I wasn't able to completely top off my cooling system as the radiator cap wasn't the highest point. The easy way to fix that was to use a longer upper radiator hose to elevate the filler cap area. (I used the metal Breeze unit and 90 degree bend instead of the FFR supplied parts because I didn't care for having a plastic filler housing.) In retrospect it would have been best to cut down the 90 degree elbow about an inch or so, but I think this solution works. I've since fit the body and it seems to clear the hood, so I'll leave it for now.

Before:
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After:
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I also took some measurements of the driveline and determined that I needed to lift the trans tail up a bit more than the 3/4" the spacers provided. I won't go into it in detail here, but will in a later post. I was able to determine that the transmission angle measured on the top shifter plate was the same as measured at the engine crank pulley (at least on my engine).

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9/9

3 hrs - misc aluminum, caulk footboxes, prep for first body fitment

Nothing very interesting today. Went through the box of misc aluminum and put on various pieces. Epoxied L-bracket to driver aluminum and riveted to frame (probably not necessary but wanted a solid connection to keep that panel from wobbling). Used rope caulk in footbox seams. I put painters tape on the frame to protect from body contact for first fitment. Don't want to put seals on yet as I know there will be numerous adjustments needed...just want to get an idea where they are needed before putting on the seals.

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9/19

Dyno day! Curious about how much power this engine puts to the wheels. It came from Forte with 368hp on the engine dyno. I was thinking about 300 at the wheel, which was my target for this build...and I'm sure it would be except for the restrictive exhaust. I put on the Gas N Touring pipes (which I love), but they really kill top end power.

Ran it on the dyno and got up to 250rwhp at ~4500 rpm then it flat lined. At first we thought maybe the air cleaner was too small or timing was off. Removed the air cleaner and checked everything. The engine was running great, AFRs good, the engine sounded good...but definitely down on power. During the course of conversation I told Justin (of Justune here in KC) that my sidepipe exhaust had a 2" perforated tube as the only outlet and he was certain that was the issue. I basically have a dual 2" exhaust, which is fine up to about 300 flywheel hp, but it just wasn't going to flow enough to get more than that. You can also tell from the graph that it was on track to hit 300hp up until 4500 rpm where it choked out. The wheel hp is consistently about 10-15% below the engine dyno power curve I got from Forte until 4500 rpm. My conclusion is the touring pipes chop off the top 35-50 hp at the very top of the rev range where the restriction really limits airflow.

I would like to put the standard Gas N pipes with 2.5" tubes on at some point and see how much that bumps the power, but it's still a super quick car that sounds great so I probably won't mess with it right now. I know what I need to do if I decide I must have the extra power. I just need to decide if the increased noise is worth it. I've heard of guys losing 100hp using a 'quiet' exhaust on these cars, so I'm not shocked...just a bit disappointed. With a sidepipe setup you really can't have significant power without a lot of noise...

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[Edit 2025]: I think I found another factor to the limited top end power. Yes, the exhaust isn't the most open, but I don't think it accounts for a 50hp loss. I was reading about the Sniper EFI at efisystempro.com and came across a paragraph talking about fuel fittings. Now I made sure to use the proper size fuel pump, upgraded hanger, fuel lines, filters, etc, but when I connected the fuel line to the Sniper unit I used a close 90 degree fitting without any consideration as to what that does to fuel flow. Basically, never use them as they create problems and the moment I thought about it, what I had done became glaringly obvious. I now suspect I was depriving the engine of fuel once it got to the 300hp mark. I ordered 'full flow' 90 degree fitting that I suspect will make a big difference when the engine is requiring a larger amount of fuel at high revs. I don't have a plan to go dyno it anytime soon, but will eventually to see if my hypothesis is correct. Here they are:

Original 90 degree fitting (it's like the fuel was hitting a wall!):
Attachment 214914

New fitting:
Attachment 214915

I'm sure this will have nothing but positive effects on the fueling system. I never noticed an issue on the street, but suspect this will be a noticeable difference in giving me the top end power I would have never known I was missing except it showed up at the dyno.

I had someone PM me about the fuel regulator requesting additional pics. Here is the best one I have. It came mounted this way from Mike Forte and I asked him if it was ok to leave it like this or if it needed to be moved. He said this would be fine so I cut the fuel hoses to fit this configuration. I like the simplicity of it and the fact that there are fewer hoses and connections to leak. My only concern is if the engine vibrations will loosen the connections over time. I may go back and use some Permatex seal and lock compound on the threads (not the mating flange) to help with that.
Attachment 207735

Just don't leave that gauge on there permanently, they tend to fail in time and can squirt gas in places you don't want to be squirting gas like on the headers.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mike.Bray

Just don't leave that gauge on there permanently, they tend to fail in time and can squirt gas in places you don't want to be squirting gas like on the headers.

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That's what I've heard. I plan to remove it once I start putting miles on it. Already have the plug to replace it in the workbench drawer. ;)

Well, quite a bit has happened since December 2024. The project sat for about 4 months with no progress, but after that I was able to get the body fitted (that took about 3 tries and lots of tweaks), the door/trunk/hood panels trimmed to function (with some help from a local expert), door/hood/trunk hinges and latches on, body cutouts massaged to clearance rollbars and exhaust, lights installed & connected, rear view mirror & side view mirror installed (I might go back and post some pics on that process at some point), windshield installed, fuel cap installed, seatbelts in and final install of sidepipes with hangers. In all probably about 30 hours of work to get roadworthy since my last update. So here it is...ready for the road.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOjlObLHh74

I have since installed the quick jacks. There is a whole list of relatively minor things I still want to do, but looking forward to putting miles on and letting the ecu do some learning. I've been delving into the Sniper 2 efi program and feel confident making any tuning adjustments needed.

I think I found out why the engine was down on power at the dyno last year. I had a close 90 degree fitting between the fuel line and sniper inlet. I'm betting that once it got to trying to flow more than 300 hp of fuel it just couldn't. Replaced the fitting with a 'full flow' radiused 90 and look forward to some road tuning. Here is a pic of the fitting in question:

Attachment 215023

I took so much time and effort making sure the fuel system was adequate and then slapped that fitting on at the very end. Hah. Oh well. Won't make that mistake again.

I'm going to finish the interior when the body comes off for paint, hopefully later on this year. It's so fun to finally have something resembling a real car to drive. And there really is no feeling like knowing you assembled it yourself. Pretty darn cool.

Congrats, buddy! Looking great!

Greg

Thanks, Greg!

Changed the oil for the first time today. Ordered some Blueprint Break In oil as the engine is still so new. It was run on the dyno at Blueprint, then again at Forte's after he changed the configuration, added the Sniper 2, correct oil pan, distributor, etc. (I was able to dig up the datalogs of the dyno runs at Forte's, which was pretty cool.) I've put some miles on it go karting, but thought why not change the oil and filter? Can't hurt anything and there is probably some fuel dilution with the new rings seating, etc.

Oil looked good and only smelled a bit like gas (actually less than I was expecting). There was some metal 'dust' on the drain pan magnet, but nothing crazy. Pretty normal for a new engine, I believe.

Attachment 215074

I also took the opportunity to install the oil filter adapter plate, solely for the purpose of placing my oil temp sensor. Here is the part and number in case someone is wondering which one fits a 302 block. I have the gauge in the dash but hadn't connected it to the sensor yet. Got that installed:

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That went smoothly. No leaks and I can now see what my oil temp is doing. Filled up with the BP oil:

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Cut open my oil filter to see if there was anything interesting. Not really. Thumbed through the filter pleats but nothing to see.

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Some junk in the outer housing, but nothing alarming. All good news and everything went according to plan. I've learned to treasure such moments...

That sammich adaptor looks familiar! Nice job, buddy!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gbranham

That sammich adaptor looks familiar! Nice job, buddy!

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Did I get that idea from you? It's very possible. I've read so many build threads to get ideas they all blur together!

Fabricated a ground for the gas tank. Already grounded the fill cap, but saw this done on another build and thought it wouldn't be a bad idea. I'm sure the tank is grounded some other way, but just making sure. Can never have too many grounding points.

Attachment 215396

I also adjusted the rear shocks from the softest to second from softest setting. I've found the rear end to be a bit bouncy just driving around the neighborhood and think this will settle it down a bit. Will see how it does. I'll probably end up installing the rear sway bar at some point, but wanted to see how it behaves with just the shocks and springs as they come from the factory. I prefer a car to oversteer rather than push, but want to see how the car acts before I start making major changes.

Looking good! Now that I've logged 350 miles, I think Im going to put my rear sway bar back on, to see how it feels. I initially built the car with it installed, but removed it months ago, because I got hung up in the fact that I have IRS, and the rear sway bar somewhat negates that. I'm sure I'm wrong.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gbranham

Looking good! Now that I've logged 350 miles, I think Im going to put my rear sway bar back on, to see how it feels. I initially built the car with it installed, but removed it months ago, because I got hung up in the fact that I have IRS, and the rear sway bar somewhat negates that. I'm sure I'm wrong.

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Almost every car with IRS also has a sway bar. That way one corner doesn’t have to deal with a huge dynamic load all by itself. The lighter the car the less need there is for such assistance, but I think it’s still beneficial. The corners are still largely independent, it doesn’t negate the benefit of the independent suspension setup...but does modify how it works. With such a unique vehicle I think it’s smart to try different setups to see what best fits your preference and driving style.

6/28 & 29

Installed wheel well liner splash panels, sealed trunk seams and gaps with rubberized rope caulk, then scuffed, cleaned, masked and coated the aluminum panels with 3 coats Rustoleum bed liner and two coats rubberized undercoating. It's amazing how much finishing off the wheel wells makes it feel like a proper car. Masking took forever, and there were a couple of runs, but overall I'm happy with the outcome. I was impressed with the spray on truck bed liner, but have to make sure to go with light coats as it will run in a second. Seems to be a very durable coating and should be easy to clean.

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Also swapped out the BP-10 Wilwood front pads for some BP-20 to get a bit more initial bite in the braking. Will see how that goes.

I'm running the BP-20 pads and they seem fine to me. Certainly better than the BP-10s.

JMD: I know this is a year after your June 6th 2024 post about modifying the faces of the polyurethane bushings, but I'm including a picture of your modification which I also did on my Mk4. I wanted to point out the burr on the steel sleeve (probably sized to length with a cut-off saw and have very rough faces). I'm including your original picture to show the burr that's on the face of the steel sleeve. What's crucial is that the surface of the face of the sleeve is sufficiently flat and smooth so that it will seal up against the frame bracket so that grease doesn't leak between the bracket and the steel sleeve face and flow out along the bolt on either the hex-head side of the bolt or out the other direction where the nut is on the 5/8 bolt. If grease is flowing in those regions it means it's not as effectively flowing up the face of the poly bushings.
I carefully resurfaced the faces of those sleeves but then added some precision punch-die buttons (McMaster-Carr) that were the same OD as the steel sleeve but we're in thicknesses of 0.003" and 0.005". This allowed me to build up the length of the steel sleeve again so that there wasn't undue pressure on the bushing faces when torquing down on the 5/8 bolt.
The rough surface is typical of the face of these steel sleeves.
Attachment 215746

Good point. I'll put smoothing the faces of the sleeves on my list to do before I re-check torque on all the suspension bolts. Thanks!

I feel a little bit bad to have brought it up since to inspect them now means tearing down the control ams to actually remove the sleeves from the poly bushings, dress them up, etc. If you're fully assembled I'd say just let it go and hopefully the extra grooves in the poly bushing faces will make the difference and you won't have a grease flow problem.

I think I could remove the bushings without disassembling the whole control arm. I did look at it yesterday and there were two areas (one on each side of the front suspension) where a significant amount of grease is pushing out. The other bushings looked fine. I'll put it on the list to address. I still need to put some miles on it and I'm sure will have a punchlist of things that need attention in the first 100-200 miles.

IGNITION TIMING

Well, I've been doing a bit of a deep dive into ignition timing over the past few days, trying to educate myself on the best timing curve for this engine. Took it for a long drive yesterday and while it ran well, it didn't seem to have the get up and go that I remember. It didn't seem slow or sluggish and would definitely move out when I pushed the throttle, but I thought I remembered it having more instant torque on tip in. Maybe I'm getting used to the power, I thought. Or maybe because it was crazy hot outside...who knows. But I realized that I didn't know how the distributor was set up and wanted to find out.

I decided to explore the distributor...find out exactly what springs and limiters were there, play with idle, see where the engine likes to idle best and build from there.

After warming the engine up and letting idle stabilize, I removed the vacuum hose to the distributor, plugged it and swept the initial timing between 8 and 14 degrees advanced while keeping an eye on the Kpa reading. It idled anywhere in that range ok, but seems to pull the most vacuum with 10 degrees so that's where I left it. I was also able to use the Sniper to drop it down from 850 to a smooth 800 rpm. Great. (As a bonus it also starts up real easy when hot at that timing, as well. This 114LSA cam is very accommodating.)

From there I had my dad hold it at 3500rpm and took a reading...right at 32 degrees. That's fine. I also took a look in the Pertronix distributor and found the #10 limiter on there and a pair of silver springs. (The #10 limiter is supposed to limit the advance to 20 degrees, but obviously it's allowing 22 degrees. No biggie.) So far so good. But I still wasn't sure how the vacuum advance was affecting things. I've read that Blueprint advises not to run vacuum advance timing on their engines at all, so I decided to take a drive without it and see how it felt. Holy crap, batman. The throttle response was much sharper than before. I actually spun the tires a couple times on takeoff without intending to...man, it felt good! I had thought Blueprint advising not to run vacuum advance was just something they said to give a big safety margin so people don't damage their engines by using too much advance, but now I see that (for my engine, at least) it actually performs noticeably better without it. Power on takeoff, passing power on the highway, low rpm power under load...it felt better everywhere.

I'm a big fan of vacuum advance and think it's a great way to improve the economy of an older engine if you aren't controlling the timing with an ecu, but in this specific instance it was causing some unwanted side effects. I'm sure I will lose some fuel economy by disconnecting it, but that's not something I'm too concerned about. The smiles it gave me on that drive compared to the previous drive was enough to convince me to run it solely on mechanically advanced timing. Smiles per mile > miles per gallon!

As always, your results when tuning your timing may vary...but I found what seems to make my particular engine happy. I could always swap out the springs and see how it responds to a quicker timing advance, or bump it up a couple degrees and see what happens at 12 and 34 degrees timing...but it was crazy hot and and I'm very pleased with the way the car is running, so I'll leave that experiment for another day. :)

Three letters for you, my friend...E.F.I. I just don't understand why anyone wants to mess with carburetors, when the EFI options are so good these days.

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Originally Posted by gbranham

Three letters for you, my friend...E.F.I. I just don't understand why anyone wants to mess with carburetors, when the EFI options are so good these days.

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I think I rewrote my post after you read it, it makes a bit more sense now.

I have the Holley Sniper EFI, but it's not controlling timing. (Weird, right??) I originally ordered my engine with the Hyperspark, but somehow Forte had trouble making it work with the crate engine. After he messed with it for a while he asked if I was ok with running a regular Pertronix distributor and I said fine. At that point I just wanted my engine! It's not a race engine and I kind of like the old school vibe. The Pertronix uses some nifty tech to solve the maintenance problems of the old style distributors. The hyperspark was my first preference, but oh well. I haven't used a timing light in two decades so it's fun to play with one again. I'm happy with the overall package and it gave me plenty of smiles today, which is really the point of these cars, right?

For sure, John! I thought you were EFI, but your pics of your engine looked like good ole carbed. When you're ready to ditch the Sniper and move up to, say, ProFlo4 or Terminator, let me know. I'll help you with the swap. ;)

Im teasing. Sort of.

That's one of the reasons I picked the Sniper to begin with. The benefits of EFI (even with the limitations of throttle body EFI), but the old school looks. I didn't want any new technology visible in the engine bay (fuel rails aren't very attractive). A multiport EFI is definitely the superior design, but I think a well set up Sniper should be able to run just as well in most conditions I'm likely to encounter and that's enough for me with this build. If I do another build it will probably be more track oriented and use a more modern engine setup. This one is more of an homage to the original design.

You'll get it dialed in, John. You're a smart dude. And I'm sure it'll run awesome for you! Can't wait to see it in person!

FWIW

Sniper I is a great, great concept with poor execution. I appreciate your desire for old school looks, especially in a Cobra, so if you get a chance to upgrade to the Sniper Ii it is a huge improvement. It's basically the Sniper Holley should have built in the first place and fixes most if not all of the problems the Sniper I has. I recently picked up a brand new never used Sniper II at the Summit scratch & dent place for $300. I've seen them on FB Marketplace a few times also.

EFI timing control is a great tool, you should seriously consider the Hyperspark. Gives you plug & play EFI controlled spark.

This might help some, this is a Spark Landscape Map for an EFI system but still applies to any engine.

Attachment 215868

Thanks for the input, Mike. I'm in total agreement. I actually made sure to get the Sniper 2 because of the issues they originally had with the Sniper 1. In fact, you quoted me on this very thing on a previous thread: https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/show...l=1#post584889

I'm guessing you forgot that was me. ;) I love the Holley tuning software and have already been able to solve a few issues I was having using it. Between the tuning and datalogging capability it's easy to diagnose problems if you know how to interpret the sensor data. It doesn't control spark, but does pretty much darn anything else I could want. I'm convinced that 90% of people's issues with the Sniper 2 is due to them not taking the time to learn how to tune it properly or them blaming it for other issues that are actually unrelated. Setting it up and tuning isn't hard, but does take a good bit of research and patience to learn. A large percentage of the problems with the Sniper 1 were actually due to the Sniper 1...lol.

I know the Hyperspark is a better setup, but I'm pretty happy with the way it is for my application. As SuperFastMatt would say: certified good enough. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JMD

Thanks for the input, Mike. I'm in total agreement. I actually made sure to get the Sniper 2 because of the issues they originally had with the Sniper 1. In fact, you quoted me on this very thing on a previous thread: https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/show...l=1#post584889

I'm guessing you forgot that was me. ;)

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You have to go easy on me, I'm old and that was last month:p

I am happy you have the Sniper II. I'm thinking about putting the one I bought on my 68 Camaro to get rid of the ancient carburetor it has now. I'm planning on installing a 489 BBC with EFI port injection but that's down the road some so the Sniper would give me EFI until then..

Once I started driving the car at speed I found the best power steering flow restrictor for the FFR power steering rack and GM type II pump is a 1.3 gpm unit. The 2.0 gpm I had previously installed worked but was still kind of twitchy. With the lower flow unit it feels very neutral and intuitive. The assist isn’t much different from the pump, maybe requires a little more effort but still very easy to turn. Overall the response rate is lower so that a jiggle in the road doesn’t translate into an accidental steering input. The one I’m using now is a Turn One 301-020 and I'm happy with it. The only side effect I've noticed is that the reservoir seems to splash a bit of fluid out of the cap vent hole upon vigorous driving. I'm guessing that's because so much of the fluid is getting diverted back into the reservoir from the restrictor instead of going through the steering rack?

I like how the reservoir is integral with the pump on the GM type II unit I got from Forte, but it doesn't seem like a great fit to use a pump that is trying to push so much more fluid than is necessary. I think the 'typical' restrictor used in these units is a 3 gpm, which is more than twice what my steering rack needs.

Been busy on the car but haven't updated much lately. One thing I'll throw on here real quick is how I'm finishing the footwells...at least for now. I happened to see on his build thread where CV2065 put diamond plate in his driver side footwell. I liked that idea as I've been reconsidering installing the interior carpet. I'm driving it now with bare metal interior and kind of loving how maintenance free it is. Any dirt or grime that gets tracked in is super easy to wipe off. As a permanently open vehicle, keeping interior clean is an ongoing task. We had a convertible Mustang for a few years and you just knew that if you wanted to pull the top down that you had about two days before the interior got dirty and dusty.

I also hate wet carpet. The smell, the texture...ugh. So I'm considering alternatives. I looked at aluminum tread plate, but wound up ordering some rubber diamond plate rubber flooring rolls from Amazon and cutting it to fit the footwells. I've had them in for about a week and love it, so far. They give great grip, don't move around and are removable if needed for cleaning. I thought if I liked them I might glue them down, but there's really no need. A half roll did both pieces and it was super easy to work with. I'm thinking I may do the rest of the floor with this and only carpet the vertical interior surfaces. Here are some pics:

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Link to product if you're interested: https://a.co/d/fuuaz0R

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JMD

Been busy on the car but haven't updated much lately. One thing I'll throw on here real quick is how I'm finishing the footwells...at least for now. I happened to see on his build thread where CV2065 put diamond plate in his driver side footwell. I liked that idea as I've been reconsidering installing the interior carpet. I'm driving it now with bare metal interior and kind of loving how maintenance free it is. Any dirt or grime that gets tracked in is super easy to wipe off. As a permanently open vehicle, keeping interior clean is an ongoing task. We had a convertible Mustang for a few years and you just knew that if you wanted to pull the top down that you had about two days before the interior got dirty and dusty.

I also hate wet carpet. The smell, the texture...ugh. So I'm considering alternatives. I looked at aluminum tread plate, but wound up ordering some rubber diamond plate rubber flooring rolls from Amazon and cutting it to fit the footwells. I've had them in for about a week and love it, so far. They give great grip, don't move around and are removable if needed for cleaning. I thought if I liked them I might glue them down, but there's really no need. A half roll did both pieces and it was super easy to work with. I'm thinking I may do the rest of the floor with this and only carpet the vertical interior surfaces. Here are some pics:

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Link to product if you're interested: https://a.co/d/fuuaz0R

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I am ordering a MK5 kit in the next month or so and wanted to say your build was fantastic. The pics and info you shared and timestamped were extremely valuable and I'm sure took a herculean effort. I will be using a Ford Crate 427 stroker based off the 351 with carb, manual steering, wildwoods, 17" wheels and tires, Tremec TKO, 8.8 3 link. What type of heat protection did you use on the panels and did you undercoat or paint the inside of body? I am in Texas and will not be running ac or heat, as it would be futile anyway, but wanted to try and minimize header heat as much as possible.

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Originally Posted by Wicked427

I am ordering a MK5 kit in the next month or so and wanted to say your build was fantastic. The pics and info you shared and timestamped were extremely valuable and I'm sure took a herculean effort. I will be using a Ford Crate 427 stroker based off the 351 with carb, manual steering, wildwoods, 17" wheels and tires, Tremec TKO, 8.8 3 link. What type of heat protection did you use on the panels and did you undercoat or paint the inside of body? I am in Texas and will not be running ac or heat, as it would be futile anyway, but wanted to try and minimize header heat as much as possible.

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I'm glad you've enjoyed the thread! It sounds like you're in the 'read all the build threads I can' phase of the building process. That's the one where you look at a bunch of builds and get ideas for what you like, what you don't, and take notes on all the problems everyone else had and how to prevent or solve them. At least that's what that phase looked like for me. I had 8 typed pages of notes before I even got my kit.

I used Raptor roll on bed liner to coat the underbody, Themo-tec Cool it mat on the interior aluminum, Dynamat 1/2" closed cell foam insulation on top of the Thermo-tec just on the front walls of the footwells, and generic Summit brand reflective heat shield on the bottom half of the aluminum panels near the headers. (I thought I had pics of that but can't find them...) I've put about 400 miles on the car and haven't had any uncomfortable heat in the footwells even on 90 degree days, so I think that's all I'm going to need. I was coming up with plans for a footwell blower, but don't think that's going to be necessary.

If you're not doing a heater it may be a good idea to get heated seats and install 12v outlets for a heated vest or blanket or something, in case you ever did want to drive in chilly weather.

Well, I've been working on the car just a little bit almost every day this week. First experimenting with how my engine liked different initial timing settings, curves, etc. I started at 10 degrees initial timing and worked up to 17 degrees. Car was hard to start hot with that much advance, so I backed it down and settled on 14 degrees as the best compromise. Tried different spring combinations in my Pertronix distributor and found that the lightest springs were too weak and timing would swing quite a bit at idle rpm, causing a surging idle that wouldn't settle down. I wound up with two of the medium (silver) springs as they are the lightest I can run that don't cause bad behavior on start or low rpm. They bring the total advance all in before 3k rpm, which seems to be a good place to be. I know having full command over ignition timing would be better in every way, but I'm kind of enjoying the simplicity of the traditional distributor. It actually goes with the theme of my build quite well and I am pleased with the engine performance and behavior.

(I attended a local car show with Greg (gbranham) a couple of weeks ago. Chip Foose and his team was there, so that was the big occasion. Lots of exotic, cool and classic cars from the KC area. I actually got a lot of thumbs up and waves on the way to the show and as I pulled past the crowd. It was a lot of fun. I really wasn't expecting the car to get that much attention, but people really seemed to like it.)

After setting the timing I worked on my Sniper 2 AFR target table for quite some time. Got some good input from tuners on the Holley Sniper forum and came up with a map that I feel will work well. My engine seems to like it. I actually had to reconfigure the fuel map resolution to gain control of sub 30 kpa fueling. This helped me tune out the excessive exhaust popping on decel. I've got it mitigated to an occasional pleasant burble. Engine is happy at cruise and smooth on throttle application, low rpm and everywhere else. I'm super happy with it. I did a ton of research on AFR maps and had a hard time finding good examples, so I'm posting mine here for anyone else to reference, if needed:

Attachment 217671

One point of interest: even though the table shows AFR for gasoline, the O2 sensor is actually just using percentage of lambda. This is pretty cool because no matter if you're running straight gas or gas with E10 ethanol, it's basing it's measurement off stoich for whatever fuel is being burned, so no need to change your AFR ratios for gas with 10% ethanol (which is different than pure gasoline). That was a big controversy and misunderstanding a lot of Sniper users had when setting up their AFRs. Set it up for pure gas and no need to change if you have a small amount of ethanol in it. You can also convert the table and tune using lambda values if you prefer. Just FYI.

The next thing I worked on was tuning the hot & cold startup and idle. This was fun. I really had to learn how each variable worked to make the appropriate adjustments, but it fires up instantly both hot and cold and idles quite nicely in all conditions. I had to work on the IAC holdoff settings and ramps to cure a high idle issue when warm, but got that figured out as well.

At the moment I'm working on dialing in the acceleration enrichment tables. No dyno, just good old fashioned street tuning and datalogging on rural roads. It's coming right along.

The Sniper 2 runs pretty well out of the box but you're really missing out on what it can do if you're not using the free desktop tuning software. You can diagnose and solve most any problem, fine tune your fuel delivery and all sorts of other parameters to get it to run the way you want it to.

I enjoyed the meetup, Greg (gbraham) & Don (kirby). It was fun to get the cars together so they could socialize. ;)

Attachment 217945

It was a fun day! Couldn't ask for better weather. Looking forward to the next meet-up...closer to your neck of the woods this time!

Greg

I was posting on a thread about tires and thought it might be helpful for someone for me to relate my experience with the 295/50-15 Cooper Cobras I'm running.

The bottom line: they are great tires for this setup, which really surprised me. For 300-400hp motors they work remarkably well. They will spin through first and into second, but then they grip and rip. I really thought the car would be more tail happy than it is. The 295 width meat and trak-loc differential do a great job keeping the rear end planted so much that I have to really jab the throttle and attempt to unsettle it to get it loose. Sure you can roast the tires if you want to, but they don't really spin excessively unless you do a hard launch or a quick shift from 1-2 and 2-3 before just gripping and going. First gear launches best feathering it up to ~70% throttle through first gear then rolling up to 100% after engaging second. Both gears go by pretty fast then it kind of settles into 3rd gear for a more sustained pull. Of course this is during the summer months, maybe that will change as temps drop. I feel like they would be great tires up to about 400-430hp before you really had to be more careful on the throttle. Probably not a great tire for anything bigger than a spicy 350 ci engine.

Of course one thing they do is 'float' a bit while cornering at speed. Not sliding, but the sidewall rolls a bit before taking a set when changing direction, causing it to feel a little disconnected from the road the first split second of a steering input. You can get used to it and account for it and it's not really a problem as traction is still good, but it takes a little getting used to. The 50 and 60 series sidewalls at 23 psi aren't real rigid. But for even spirited road driving it's totally fine and does not feel unsafe at all. I'm also running the IRS. A rear solid axle might be a bit more tailhappy...

All said, I've been pleasantly surprised. I've heard all sorts of negative things about 15" radial tires and was expecting them to slide everywhere. They don't. I think it really mostly depends on what engine you're running and for a 302 or 347, I think they are quite adequate for most situations and drivers. For maximum grip get something with a softer tread compound.