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Power Steering: Fittings and Brake-Line Interference
The electrical components I need to complete the harness and alternator fuse work isn't here yet, but my power steering rack is! The installation process is very straight forward and it went on with no problems at all. The ends of the rack also screwed just deep enough into the tie-rods for the wheels to align roughly forward, so I didn't have to trim any of it off.
Attachment 164611
...and that's where the straight-forward part ends. Unfortunately when I did my brake lines I didn't take into account the locations of power steering hoses and fittings. The FFR provided manual says to use the 90degree hose end for the send line and straight hose end for return.
Attachment 164613 Attachment 164612
At that exact same place is my brake line.
Attachment 164614 Attachment 164615
The 90degree send line can probably fit fine, but there's no way for the straight return line to fit. I can't use the 90degree hose end for return because the 90degree bend is needed on the reservoir end. The best way to get around this that I can think of is to use a 45degree fitting instead of what FFR provides. Either that, or get new lines that have 90 degree fittings on both ends. FFR also hasn't sent me any of the fittings yet but that's besides the point. The most echoed comment around power-steering fittings on this forum is something along the lines of "call Mark at Breeze", so that's what I'll do.
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Electrical System: Alternator Fuse And Redoing Some Cables
Still talking with Mark at Breeze about the power steering lines, so we must do what we do best: Work on something else in the meantime!
To be honest, I was never that thrilled about my battery-cable setup near the firewall. It will probably do the job, but the crimp wasn’t done with a proper crimper and the cables are too stiff and too long for the connections they serve.
Attachment 165586 Attachment 165587 Attachment 165588
In post #229 We talked about installing a 150A resettable alternator fuse (Del City Part No. 77080). This is an excellent opportunity to improve the power cables around the area as well. The new cables I bought are #4 SGT cables. I bought higher quality crimp cable-ends as well as one of those huge crimping pliers. Re-installed the lines and they look much better than before!
Attachment 165599 Attachment 165600
The old cable I used for battery to alternator connection is a #10 cable, which is quite thin. I decided to replaces it with the new #4 SGT cables. I installed the manual-reset 150A circuit breaker on the driver-side firewall right next to the coyote fuse-box. It’s easily reachable and right next to the other fuse-related things so I’m quite satisfied with it.
Attachment 165601 Attachment 165602
The revamped firewall area looks much better now.
Attachment 165603
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Electrical System: More Harness Work
I remember staring at pictures of tail lights and couldn't figure out why it looks weird. Took me long enough to realize that there's no back up lights. Duh.
The unfortunate part was that I already had the rear-harness secures in place as well as the trunk riveted in. As a result I had to work with what little slack I had in the harness to insert another wire into the harness for a backup light. It how pops out from the back of the vehicle in the middle. Wasn't too difficult.
Attachment 165664
I did make a mistake when soldering though. Can you tell what's wrong in this picture? :p
Attachment 165661
Since I was already working in the area, I decided to splice out the rear turn and brake signals out for a third brake / turn light. The spliced connections pops out through a hole on the upper trunk aluminum panel. I'm not too sure about what the third brake light will look like, but it won't be anything conventional. What I actually want is a huge detachable light bar that I can mount to the top of my roll-bars to let other SUVs and trunks know that there's a car in front of them / behind them. I've heard too many stories of people not seeing short roadsters. Just something for the longer trips I'll make in the future. Won't be too useful in the near future, but routing it now doesn't hurt.
Attachment 165662 Attachment 165663
Last but not least I bought some spade connectors for the ignition panel. I really wanted to use weatherpack connectors, but the ignition panel wires carry quite a lot of current and I didn't want all that going through weatherpack connectors. weatherpack says it can handle up to 20A, but I'd rather use larger spade connectors for these big wires.
Attachment 165667Attachment 165666 Attachment 165665
As far as the harness goes this should be all for now? (I swear I've said this ten times and every time I come back with something else I forgot, lol)
Next I'll start working on coyote engine prep as well as the dashboard. I've pretty much finalized the dashboard design but I want to stare at it a bit more to make sure I didn't forget anything.
Attachment 165668
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Dashboard: Gauges Installed!
After a long trip to LA it's finally time to get back to the project! I'll talk about some cobra related adventures in LA later. For now let's talk about Dashboard Gauges.
In the last post I showed the cut outs for various gauges and buttons. I don't plan to have much stuff on the dash aside from the basic light switch, horn, and hazard indicators. Keeping it simple with this one. I do have an ignition control panel full of toggle switches that will sit right under the center of the dash, so the dash itself can be simple. I used the FFR provided faux-leather foam fabric. Sprayed two good layers of 3M Super77 adhesive onto the faux-leather material and stuck it on real good.
Attachment 166586
Clamped it on the table and left it there for a night to dry. I find Super77 adhesive not sticking too well to aluminum, but it's good enough for the dash. Next I needed to cut out the holes for the dashboard components. I found it difficult to use a utility knife for anything except the tach and speedo holes. Stopped by the local convenience store and bought these small curved scissors. They worked pretty well.
Attachment 166587 Attachment 166588 Attachment 166589
Something I wish I realized while cutting the dash was that the black faux leather surface compresses and curves towards the dash as the gauges are pressed in. I wish I had left a little extra material for the gauges to "stuff down". It wasn't a big deal because if I install the gauges exactly center then the gauge's rim will sit on the faux leather evenly. Even if the curve wasn't super consistent it's very hard to tell unless you look at it from awkward angles:
Attachment 166590 Attachment 166591
I'm particularly happy about the indicator lights. They match the rest of the dash so well! They are Alpinetech chrome-bezel indicator lights. I ordered it from their store on amazon.
Attachment 166592
... and here's the whole dash! I was afraid the hazard indicator light would stick out like a sore thumb, but it actually looks pretty good! It's not period correct at all, but I wasn't going for that anyway. The glove box is a problem for future Dan to solve. I have some ideas on how to fab one with left-over aluminum panels I have laying around.
Attachment 166593
After admiring them for a while I used blue scotch tape to tape the gauge bezels so they don't get scuffed up when I move it around.
Attachment 166594
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A visit to the Shelby Museum
During my visit to LA I stopped by the Segerstrom Shelby Event Center which served as a museum for Shelby's legacy. It's right next to Hillbank Motor's Superformance show rooom.
Attachment 166613
They had an entire show room just for cobras! I felt like a kid in a candy store... must've walked around each one ten times or more. To be respectful I didn't take many pictures (not that they prohibit it, but I don't want to steal their thunder), but I didn't manage to bring home a few.
Attachment 166614 Attachment 166615 Attachment 166616
At the center of the room is a mirror polished aluminum body cobra. It's... the most beautiful thing. I couldn't help it when I saw a Shelby jacket in their giftshop. Grabbed it and bought it in a heart beat. My favourite picture from the visit is this one:
Attachment 166617
You can bet that I sat there for quite a while. :P
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Moroso Coolant Expansion Tank
I'm so close to dropping the engine in... but there's always something else to do before it. I thought about installing the degas tank after dropping the engine in, but I think it's a better idea to leave myself some moving room to maneuver my power tools. So now we'll work on mounting the moroso degas tank.
My plan is to follow JohnK's excellent post on installing his moroso degas tank. One piece of valuable advice he gave me was to install the degas-tank further to the passenger side instead of toward the center. The reason being that the coyote intake takes quite a bit of space, and it might rub on one of the coolant lines if I mount the tank too close to the center. Here you can see I mounted pretty close to the passenger side hood hinges.
Attachment 166891
As for the height, I initially made a bracket that mirrored what JohnK did. When I tried mounting the tank, however, I saw that the filler opening was very high above the hood hinges. I know that the coyote's hood bulges up toward the middle, but I wanted to avoid any clearance issue I can. I made another bracket that bends down at a more severe angle before returning level, and the tank not sits much closer to the hinge height. The bracket is a thick strip of aluminum bent with my press brake. Wasn't too difficult with a big vise.
Attachment 166892 Attachment 166893
Note that the bracket still mounts high enough to clear the top of the radiator:
Attachment 166894 Attachment 166895
Currently the tank is attached via that one bracket. within the plane of the bracket the tank is rock solid, but it's not too strong vertically. Once again, taking inspiration from JohnK's post from above, I'm going to make another small bracket from a strip of steel that pushes up against the tank from the bottom to limit vertical travel. I haven't made that yet, but I should have it in the next update.
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Final Engine Install and the tools that helped me
Alright, so I know we were just talking about making that bracket for the moroso expansion tank. Unfortunately to do that I need to mount the radiator, and to do that I need to measure the angle of the radiator, which needs an angle measurement tool... which I don't have. So change of plans. My buddies are finally all free for a day. Time to drop the engine in!
Before the crew gathered I walked around and looked at the sweet engine one last time. Once it goes in, it's not coming back out (please god don't make me have to take it back out).
Attachment 167192 Attachment 167193
Having already installed the engine once and then pulled it back out, we were pretty "experienced" at the task. Lifting and inserting the transmission through the tunnel was a quick job since we were already familiar with the dimensions. The first 90% happened in about 30mins. The last 10% however, took 4 hours. You can probably guess why: The Headers. Honestly there isn't much I can even say about it. It's just... freaking tight everywhere! I had the engine hovering ~2in above the engine mounting brackets and ~3in towards the front of the chassis and it made 3 of the 8 bolts easier to access. 2 bolts towards the front were easy bolts anyway, and the remaining 3 were a PITA no matter what you do. If anyone here got the impression that installing the headers while the engine is in mid air is easy, IT'S NOT. Here's a visual comparison between the driver and passenger side exhaust header. Note how the driver side header's pipes are WAY closer to the flange. That closeness and the tight space is what makes it difficult. Wrenches and sockets you can fit on the passenger side simple won't go in on the driver's side.
Attachment 167194
Luckily I did have a few tools that made this process easier. The hard part of this is essentially reaching bolts, therefore extensions, pivoting racket heads, and ratcheting combination wrenches help a lot. Here's a visual reference of these tools:
Universal Joint Socket:
Attachment 167195
This helps you tighten bolts in tight areas from an angle. CRUCIAL for the bolts that normal wrenches can't reach.
Socket Extensions:
Attachment 167196
This helps you reach the bolts from a location away from the 4-pipe collector. Without this you'll be banging on the collector tube all the time, severely limiting your range of motion.
Ratcheting Combination Wrench:
Attachment 167199
This one in particular helps you reach the upper-rear bolt from the gap between the engine and the firewall. It's going to be a blind bolt, but once you fit the ratcheting head onto the bolt, all you gotta do is crank it up and down. Imagine if you have to re-fit an open wrench onto a blind bolt every 30 degrees. You don't want that.
After a few hours of arranging the bones in my arms and fingers in ways I never knew they could be before, the header was on. The final step was to slide the drive-shaft into the transmission before fully installing the engine onto its mounting bracket. For the T56 Magnum transmission, I found it impossible to install the drive shaft afterwards.
Attachment 167200
Here it sits nicely in the engine compartment. What a piece of work!
Attachment 167201
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FFR Engine Lift bracket and related whoopsies
Here's a picture of the upper front bolt of the driver side header. Right now it's nice and tight and all that, but just a few days ago I couldn't even put the bolt in and my gasket were misaligned. How did this happen? It all started with the driver-side engine lift bracket.
Attachment 167228
By lift bracket I mean the thick steel plates FFR install on two sides of the engine for lifting the engine. Here's a picture:
Attachment 167227
The bracket itself was big, thick, and it was too close to the bolt in the first picture. The bracket and the front most exhaust pipe together left no space to install that bolt. Here's an outline of roughly where the bracket was:
Attachment 167238
At the time I thought I could just install the other bolts and install this one after the engine is in place. After all, it's one of those "easy" bolts right? The problem here is that the ford coyote gaskets have 2 "aligning holes", and the hole in question happens to be one of them. Take a look at the 4 holes indicated in the picture below. You'll see they have these tabs that effectively make the hole smaller than all the other ones. You have to install the bolts for these two holes first because they align the gasket.
Attachment 167229
Because I didn't install that bolt, my gasket wasn't aligned. After dropping the engine and removing the lift bracket, I found that I couldn't insert the bolt because the tabs were in the way. From the two pictures below you can see both the misaligned gasket and the tabs sticking out into the hole.
Attachment 167230 Attachment 167231
This meant I had to loosen all the bolts, get the header loose enough to shift the gasket into the right place, insert the final bolt, and re-torque everything. To my surprise, re-torquing the bolts was pretty easy! I realize now that it's inserting the bolts that was difficult, but loosening and tightening the bolts isn't too hard. When I realized my gasket was misaligned I posted this thread to ask if it's still good for use. Mike Everson suggested it should be good, so I didn't replace the gasket.
The second mishap with the mounting bracket is with one of the bolts. With the header installed, the bolt can't actually be removed without cutting it in half mid-way. This is because it collides with the header. In the picture below you can see just how much more room it needs.
Attachment 167239
I used an oscillating tool and a metal cutting blade to cut off the bolt. If I knew about this earlier I would have pre-cut the bolt. There's still a lot of threads to grip into the block after the cut.
Attachment 167240
I'm not sure if this is only an issue with FFR provided lift brackets with FFR coyote headers. I hope this information helps y'all out there! :P
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Engine Harness: Oil Pressure and Water Temp Sensor Routing
There are 3 signals we need from the coyote to feed the FFR vintage style gauges: oil pressure, water temp, and tach pulse signal. Today we cover the first two.
The gen3 coyote crate engine comes with a harness with connectors for oil pressure sensor and the water-temp sensor hole blocked. I remember seeing a picture (probably from Paul's build thread) that explained what they were. I've spent about an hour reading through threads but still can't find that picture, so I'm going to recreate it:
Attachment 167272
According to this thread on the gen3 coyote PCM, the gen3 harness REQUIRES the oil pressure sensor to be installed. If the oil pressure isn't connected the PCM will throw codes and limit engine to 3500RPM. This means we can't just disconnect it to install sensor from oil pressure gauge. FFR's gen3 coyote install kit comes with the fittings required to make a T to connect both factory sensor and gauge sensor.
Attachment 167273
There's debate on whether or not the oil bypass solenoid is useful at all. Some reported no problems with it disconnected, some argue why not connect it if it's there. I found a good discussion on this thread for those who are interested. Just search for "solenoid" on the page and you should find the relevant posts. I've decided to connect it like ford has it. Don't see why not.
The water temp sensor goes on a hole that's plugged from factory. FFR supplies a set of fittings that convert the water temp sensor's size to that hole's size.
Attachment 167274
The area around the sensor plugs is pretty tight. The "tee" that splits oil pressure to two senders is also quite big. The factory harness is JUST long enough to reach the sensor location. With the "tee" in place, it can no longer reach.
Attachment 167275
The sensor harness in its original location also rubs the steering column.
Attachment 167276
To solve both of these issues, I detached the sensor harness from the last few mounting tabs and rerouted it. The new route isn't too far off from the old one, but it does reach the new sender location while being out of the way of the steering column. Here's a picture to illustrate. Red line marks the old route, green line marks the new.
Attachment 167277
The space is still pretty tight, but with enough planning and awkward zip-ties it managed to stay out of the way of both the alternator housing and the exhaust.
Attachment 167278 Attachment 167279
The last thing that still worries me is how close that bundle is to the exhaust pipe. At its closest point there's only 2.5 inches between the bundle at the forward-most pipe. Even after wrapping the exhaust I still worry about the amount of heat it radiates. I plan to wrap the bundle with heat reflecting foil tape. That should keep it under control.
Attachment 167280
Reflections on putting in gasoline too early.
Today I saw an instagram post of a fellow builder's fuel pump corroded from being left in the tank for 2 years with gas in it. I knew that gas does eventually go bad, but I had no idea that modern gas with its ethanol content was so much more corrosive.
On post #218 Paul expressed concern on putting gasoline so early into the build. At the time I really wanted to test my fuel system before putting in the trunk aluminum. Looking back... I didn't really have to install the trunk aluminum that early. It's been 3 months since I've tested my fuel system and my first start is still looking pretty far away (1 month out?). I've put some Stabil fuel stabilizer in the tank to help keep it fresh, but regardless my first start is going to be using some 4-5 month old gasoline. If I could do it again I'd hold off putting gasoline into the tank so early.
I just hope I didn't permanently damage any part of my fuel system by having the fuel sitting there for so long.
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Dashboard: bottom support and RT turning signal mount modifications.
Continuing from post #252, here are some updates on the dashboard.
After switching from Autometer gauges to the FFR vintage style gauges I realized I had to shift the entire dashboard down by quite a bit or else the speedo would collide with the curved dashboard tube. As a result the dashboard mounting brackets no longer worked. Since they were discontinuous and flimsy anyway I decided to order a full length pre-cut dashboard support panel from Mike Everson. It's a quality piece for $35, which is honestly about what I'd spend on the raw aluminum and cutting blades if I were to make a new one. Looks and works great!
Attachment 167484 Attachment 167485 Attachment 167486
Previously I used rivnuts to secure the dashboard to the bottom support panels. It was an absolute pain in the *** to install and remove. With the new dash support panel I decided to use velcro instead. It's strong enough to hold, doesn't rattle, and once everything is finalized I'll drill 2-3 holes and secure it with aluminum panel screws to lock it down for good. After installing/removing the panel several times today I'm very glad I went with velcro. In the picture below and one of the pictures above you can see where I attached the velcro strip.
Attachment 167487
The next issue with the panel having shifted down was that the steering column hole no longer aligned. The hole in its original location was perfect for Russ Thompson's turning signal stalk to poke through. I grunted in dismay as I expanded the perfectly circular hole upwards.
Unfortunately it wasn't after the deed was done did I realize that the new location would leave the steering column way too high. The arms of my steering wheel would cover up too much of the speedo and I may have trouble seeing some of my indicator lights. Here's a hindsight2020 shots of what I mean:
Attachment 167488 Attachment 167489
I didn't see a way to mount the dash panel higher, so I modified the steering column mount on the frame so I could mount the RT turning signal from the bottom instead and it brought the steering column down by about 3/8". The result isn't pretty, but functionality wise it did exactly what I needed.
Attachment 167490 Attachment 167491 Attachment 167492
Compared to what it was before the gauge swap it still sat higher, but it's a lot better than before.
Attachment 167493
I'll clean off the paint marker lines, paint the cuts with some black enamel paint, and call it done.
