May have over-tightened the oil pressure sender fitting...
In post #272 I documented the oil pressure and water temp senders, and I realized I may have made a mistake by over-tightening to straight-thread m12x1.5 o-ring fittings. The FFR instructions didn't mention a torque value so I just made it as tight as I could with bare hands. After a brief discussion on the power steering fittings, I learned that the o-ring sealed fittings have a super low torque spec. So now I'm debating whether I should remove the fittings now to check for o-ring damage, or just wait and see if it leaks.
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Engine Harness: O2 sensors routed.
The O2 sensor harness is the last engine harness to tackle. It's also the least straightforward one, so here are some tips and pictures to help future builders along. The O2 sensor harness has 4 branches, but we only need two. It wasn't hard to unwrap the harness to trim it all the way back so I definitely recommend doing that. It will also give you some wires to work with when splicing the red power wire.
The O2 sensor harness reaches pretty far, but depending on where you place your ECU it might not reach the driver-side exhaust. I was lucky that I mounted by ECU pretty close to the front of the engine. The FFR manual suggests mounting the ECU on top of the passenger footwell.
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When I mounted my ECU the coyote install kit was still backordered so I decided to make my own bracket and mounted it closer to the front. I'm not sure if the bracket that comes with FFR coyote install kit will fit there though.
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Because I had my ECU in-line with the front face of the engine, I was able to route the O2 sensor harness almost straight across the top just behind the intake. In the picture below it's the harness with exposed wires.
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This allowed me to JUST reach the driver side O2 sensor with some slack for the engine to vibrate.
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The passenger side O2 sensor wires are way longer than they need to be, so I trimmed them short to avoid having a large bundle of unnecessary wires.
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With everything wrapped up the harness tucks away neatly along the top with the rest of the engine harness.
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Coolant System: Planning, Routing, and Part Numbers.
There are threads with very complete documentation on the coyote coolant system. In this post I'll provide links to the ones that helped me the most, updated part numbers, and any extra notes from my own discoveries.
A few knowledge points:
- The coolant plumbing system routes are identical between gen 1, 2, and 3 coyote engines. I confirmed this with Paul (edwardb). This means if you see a helpful post about plumbing on the gen 2 coyote then you can also apply it to gen3.
- The Ford coyote install kit provides "everything you need", but a popular approach addition in the incorporation of a de-gas tank. I went with this approach. Explanations of the degas tank can be found here.
- You don't need water in the system to crank and start your engine for a few mins. I'm mocking up the system to ensure everything fits and routes correctly, but I won't be putting water/coolant in the system until I verify that I don't need to take it off again due to some leak. More on this later.
- DO lubricate the coolant hoses with dish soap and water when installing them. It makes it easier and also prevents damaging the hoses.
- I'm not installing a heater and this point will not talk about installing one.
I mostly used Paul (edwardb) and John (JohnK)'s build threads as supplemental guides to the FFR guide. Here's my list of recommended readings:
- From Paul's Type65 with a gen3 coyote: posts #414, #485, #488.
- From Paul's 20th anniversary Mk4 roadster with gen2 coyote: posts #143, #145.
- From John's Mk4 roadster with gen2 coyote: posts #201, #207.
In a conversation with JohnK he graciously provided me a list of ford part numbers of everything I needed. I'll echo them here:
- CL3Z-8260-A: A better upper radiator hose than the one in the coyote install kit. Part is originally for a 2012 F150 upper hose. Advice from both John and I on this one: Be careful how you trim the radiator end. It’s easy to screw up. Checkout John's thread #207 to see how he modified it slightly to be able to rotate it to get more clearance from the PS pulley.
- FR3Z-8C289-C: De-gas tank bottom to engine. An updated version of FR3Z-8C289-B.
- FR3Z-8075-E: De-gas tank top/front to radiator, including one-way check valve. An updated version of FR3Z-8075-C.
- DG9Z-8100-A: Stock Mustang reservoir cap. The de-gas tank I bought didn't come with a cap.
- FR3Z-8276-B: Hose from the overflow tank top/rear to the water neck near the throttle body. Neither Paul, John, or I were able to find this in stock anywhere. The tank side is 3/8” ID hose and the engine side is 5/16” ID. Can be made quite easily with a 3/8" to 5/16" conversion fitting and respective hoses. John had some left over and kindly passed them onto me. I'll probably have some left over afterwards too so if you'd in the area I'll pass it onto you. Glen Davis posted below that part FR3Z-8C362-D maybe a good replacement.
- Boig Motorsports BMS-104: Lower radiator hose. A high quality replacement for the one provided in the coyote install kit.
With the above parts and parts from the FFR provided coyote install kit, you should be able to completely finish routing the coolant system. A few visits to the local hardware store to buy hose clamps maybe required.
Here are some pictures of my coolant system (some hoses aren't clamped down yet):
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Now here's perhaps a controversial topic: Filling the system before first start.
I don't plan to fill my system until I've verified the correct operation of systems that are require moving the radiator to access. These systems include engine oil circulation and power steering pump/rack fluid circulation. Leaks on these two systems don't required very long to appear and I don't plan to run the engine for more than a minute or two without coolant and it shouldn't be anywhere close to needing coolant at that stage. If my power steering fittings leak it will be much easier to fix while the radiator can still be easily removed.
Another thing to note is that you can fill the system with distilled water to test the coolant circulation system before adding real coolant. Draining coolant is a PITA compared to just draining water. You can always replace the water with coolant afterwards.
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Misc Updates: Filling fluids
Everyday we get one step closer to that mythical first start. So far I've been mostly worried about the mechanical aspects of the car, but as all that's settling down it's time to put the proper fluids into their respective components. I didn't do this all in one day, but I thought it'd be nicer to put it all in one post for the sake of organization.
Trans fluid:
I have the T56 magnum transmission which has a capacity of 3.75qts. I used 4 bottled of Royal Purple MAX ATF which I've seen recommended from quite a few places. I did this with the transmission already in the car with the drive-shaft pinion inserted. With a funnel it wasn't hard at all. In post #151 I showed how I removed the transmission shifter plate. I did that in reverse to close it up with some Permantex #2 gasket maker.
Powersteering:
The coyote power steering kit supplied by FFR is the KRC coyote power steering kit. After bleeding the power steering rack it used almost exactly 1qt for both the rack and the reservoir. The fluid I used was the KRC power steering fluid I bought together with a #4 restrictor flow valve. IDK what's in it... but I trust KRC enough to not ask too many questions.
IRC center-section/diff:
The IRS center section supplied through FFR comes directly from Ford. I asked FFR about how filled it was because I saw many threads saying it's already filled from Ford. The answer I got was that yes, it's filled, but not full and I should top it off with gear lube. So I purchased some Motorcraft SAE 75W-85 to fill it up.
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If you look at the mounted diff you'd think that you can't just pour fluid into the fill hole using the bottle because there's no way to raise the bottle above the actual fill hole. I thought I had to get some hose to awkwardly route into the hole. Instead, I realized that you can get the bottle JUST horizontal enough to squeeze the fluid out of the nozzle and effectively squirt it into the fill hole. The diff only needed about 1/2qt of lube anyway, so that was more than enough. No need for hoses!
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Engine oil:
A cursory glance at the coyote threads will convince anyone that priming the engine before first start is a good idea. I bought a garden sprayer and a 3/8NPT fitting that will fit the oil-pressure sensor hole, plugged the sprayer tube with the fitting and used it to pump about 2qts of oil into the engine through the oil pressure sensor hole.
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I then poured in the rest of the oil through the normal fill hole at the top. In total (pre-filling the oil filter, priming, and pouring at the end) the engine took just about 10qts of oil. I did spill a little, so that's a rough estimate. I just kept pouring until it reached the "full" indicator on the oil dipstick.
Beer:
I didn't see it recommended anywhere on the forums nor was it in the FFR provided guide, so I guess this was a bit of a risky maneuver. I first chilled 1 can of beer by leaving it in the fridge for about an hour. I then poured the beer down my mouth. It was pretty easy and straight forward, so I didn't use a funnel. TBH, not using a funnel was probably a good idea since I don't want oil-contaminated beer. I made sure to fill myself with beer now instead of right before a drive since I heard doing so can severely impair the traction/stability control of the vehicle. It felt great!
P.S. The garden sprayer oil primer is effectively useless to me now. If anyone in the area wants it feel free to take it from me.
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Misc Updates: Wiring, Side-pipes, and other improvements.
Some more knick-knacks to check-off along the way!
On the wiring front, connected the ignition control panel wires to the main harness. It looked neater than I thought it would. Pretty happy with it. :)
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After routing my oil pressure and water temp sensor cables, I realized I forgot to tap the sparkplug for my tach-signal. Undid a part of my sensor harness and routed the purple tach-signal wire through it. On the other end I decided to use a single-connector weatherpack connector. I know usually people just solder it in or tap it some other way. Since I had these weatherpack connectors lying around I thought why not make the whole thing unpluggable?
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Pretty sweet. Looks like it's a part of the engine itself!
In both Paul and John's roadster build they recommended the Treadstone airflow straightener. I purchased one too and inserted it right before the MAF sensor. I secured it with some JB-weld. Not the prettiest thing, but it works.
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My oil-filler neck has so far been "secured" by a chain of hanging zip-ties. By "secure" I mean they are not secure at all and will definitely swing around if I were to drive the car around. I took some time to trim down the hose in place, made a little wooden "support block" with just the right distance from the aluminum panels, and secured it with metal hose clamps. Now it's super solid and ain't going anywhere.
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Last but not least, the side-pipes! I bolted them on just to see the fit. The passenger-side pipe is pretty okay, but the driver-side is way off. They are both flared outwards enough that the FFR provided mount won't reach far enough, so I'll need the wedges for sure. I ordered some wedges of different sizes from Breeze (you can find theM here). I'll post updates here on how they align when I get them. The car looks real badass with the side-pipes!
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Dashboard: Harness connected and working!
I'll admit that I've been putting off the dashboard for quite a while. Just didn't want to throw myself into the mess of wires until I have to. :p Now's the time to do it though. I need those gauges for my first start!
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The Ron Francis FFR harness instructions, although resourceful, wasn't too helpful with its step-by-step instructions. What I did find the most useful was the large wiring diagram that showed where every wire go. I spent quite some time making sure that I understand what every wire was for and where it leads before starting on the harness itself. The vintage-style FFR gauges also came with paper instructions on how to connect them. Putting the two together and you get a very good idea what to do. In the end it only looked scary but once you get started with a good picture in mind it's not bad at all. I wired everything pretty much exactly as shown except the turning signal and indicator lights. I got the Russ Thompson turn signal which had 5 wires coming out of it: 3 for turning signal, 2 for the momentary switch at the end of the stalk. I used weatherpack connectors to split it into plugs of 2+3 for easy assembly.
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For my indicators I used a 6-pin molex connector for the 6 indicator lights for easy removal.
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And that's it really. Everything else was by the book. I made sure that the dash harness could be connected and still be pulled out quite far as in the future I'll need to install/remove the dash without taking off the body or the bottom support panel.
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You may have noticed that I didn't spend too much time trimming the wires to just the right length. That's for a reason, an upsetting one if I may say so: I really like the competition dash layout.
In the beginning I went with the street layout for practicality, just I just can't get the comp dash out of my head. This was especially after seeing JohnK's fantastic dash in person when I visited his shop. (I mean just look at it!) I really do like the look of my indicator lights, but the "olympics symbol" arrangement of the other dials just... look... awkward? Something about the competition dash looks really nice and balanced. I've decided to make the competition dash a "future upgrade". I'll settle with this for now, but I know I want the other one. Grass is greener? Perhaps.
I plugged the dash harness in and turned on the switches. To my surprised stuff actually worked! TBH I was expecting something to be broken or non-responsive and I'll end up spending all night debugging what's wired wrong. I was pretty darn happy. Here's a video of the completed (for now) dash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOV59Z0-nw8
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Misc concerns: Driver side windshield mount?
7 days until first start. Just churning along with the remaining items on my to-do list for that fateful day.
Found my coil of brake safety wire from my box of parts. Totally forgot that I bought it. Spent a whole afternoon just safety-wiring my rotors all by hand. The youtube instruction videos all use some fancy twisty pliers but I didn't have one of those. It was completely doable without out, but gosh do my hands hurt right now from wrestling with the thin steel wires. Turned out pretty good though.
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The mounting clips for my power steering lines also arrived just in time. Now it no longer dangles dangerously beneath the X brace.
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Was tidying up my front-harness when I had this thought: How the heck am I supposed to bolt in my windshield? The passenger-side mounting point is uncluttered so I don't see a problem there, but the driver-side is filled with fuse-box wiring and pedal-box hardware. The FFR instructions only show a picture for the passenger side but not the driver side. I'll admit I haven't the time to do any deep-forum-reading on windshield mounting yet, but it was definitely a big "hmmmmm" moment.
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First-start prep: seat mounting, ride height, and alignment.
5 days until first start.
Been thinking about the possibility of driving it down the street and back after it starts. I understand that an untuned coyote (especially gen 3) will be quite jerky to drive since nothing's calibrated, but I still want to give it a try. After bleeding and connecting all the pedals I sat in the driver's seat going through the motions, and realized I'm sliding back on the seat a bit every time I depress the clutch. By the 5th time I'm finding it really hard to reach all the day. I asked about temporary seat mounting solutions in this thread and got lots of good suggestions. Some say it's okay to drive without the seat secured while some suggests it's a safety issue to not have a secured seat depending on what "go-kart" means. Go-kart to me means tootin down the local residential area driving strictly under 25mph and away from big streets until I'm ready to put the body on. I imagine I want to do this for at least a month or so while putting together the rest of the car just to see if something leaks or gets loose. Call it mental assurance? I also plan to take it to a tuning shop to get the coyote tuned by an in-person tuner, so before I do that I want to make sure the car isn't going to break down on the dyno. Some go-karting would help with that too.
As for the seats, I don't think I'll secure it after all. I'll put some blankets and what not behind the seat so I won't keep sliding back. I don't plan to take any corners at speed either. If I do I'll be sure to have the seat secured and seat belts installed, but I just don't see that happening.
Another item of preparation is alignment and ride height. There's an excellent thread here discussing initial ride-height adjustment which I read over and helped me decide to not worry too much about it. The koni-shocks will have to "settle-in" a bit. That kinda makes sense to me, but I got no clue how much "settling" it needs. With the collars adjusted to be just snug on the springs, I'm getting ~4 1/2in in the front and 5in in the back. I think that's totally good enough for some initial go-karting before I dive into actually setting the ride height. As for alignment, I don't plan to get it dialed in either since I don't even have the ride-height set. what I will do is to at least make sure the toe, caster, and rear thrust angle aren't horribly off. When everything's settled in I'll take it to a shop and have it properly height-adjusted and aligned.
With that, the only remaining thing is the coolant circulation system, which has been quite the adventure. Stay tuned!
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Rough alignment: Learning how to do String Alignment
3 days until first start.
some good news and some bad news. I guess I'll start with the bad.
The reputable welder I found in the area wasn't able to completely fix my radiator leak (a full report on the whole journey coming soon) so I'll have to purchase a new one. He tried chasing down the gap but the radiator channels are just so thin that it's extremely difficult to do. I went to go pick it up this morning, but of course, I forgot my wallet. Had to leave him with apologies and that I'll come back to get it next week. Ugh, what a bummer. Regardless, I had a radiator ordered from FFR and it's arriving soon. I'll still be able to fire up the engine. It will just be radiatorless for one more week after that.
After putting on my rear wheels I realized that my driver-side toe-arm's chasses mounting end is a little loose. Upon a close look it appears that the spacers weren't enough to tightly hold the rod-end in place. I'm gonna have to take that part off and add in another washer. It's a PITA to do, but at least I have a solid plan. Once again, just takes time.
The good news is that my car is now roughly aligned. I decided to learn the good'ol string alignment method. Went to ACE hardware, bought two 6ft wood beams and some fishing line. Had a friend over each with a caliper in our hands and we were off. The setup didn't take long at all. It's pretty amazing how simple it really is.
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I decided to do my alignment using my brake rotors instead of the wheels because that way I can adjust the upper control arm and toe-arms without swapping the wheel on and off every time. I secured the rotor to the hubs using lug nuts and a few thick washers. It did the trick.
Before this I had it "setup" by eyeballing and boy was I off! In the picture below you can see just how far off my driver side thrust angle was:
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Yikes!
As this is by no means a "final alignment", the specs I went with were quite straightforward. 0 degree camber and toe in the rear. 1/16in total toe-in in the front with FFR suggested UCA specs for power-steered setups. Should be good enough for go-karting. :)
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The night before Christmas In July
0 more days until first start. In just a few hours it will have been exactly a year since I got the shipment from stewart transport.
Spent today finishing the coolant circulation system. In post #288 I detailed the part numbers and de-gas tank setup I used. Today I finished installing them onto the car. It should have been done a WHILE ago, but I made a super expensive mistake by having my power drill too close to the radiator while walking around. If only my brain was as sharp as that drill bit...
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So yeah, that hole is right in the middle of the radiator. I started this thread to ask for advice on how to fix this. Many suggested that I try a local welder or radiator shop. Just about every radiator shop I called told me they can't do anything for me the moment I told them it's an aluminum radiator. The rest didn't pick up. I asked my mechanic (for my daily driver) for a recommendation and he gave me the contact info of John Romanoff, a very experienced and skilled welder up in Redwood City. I took the radiator to him and showed him the damage. He wasn't too confident about it, but he said he'll take it and try his best. A week later he called back and I went to pick up the radiator. John tried his best to chase down the pin hole leaks after welding the row shut, but he just couldn't chase them all. He said he pressure tested it and used soapy water to identify where the leaks were and he knows there are still tiny leaks. I appreciate his efforts and honestly. In the end I decided that it was just not worth it to patch the rest with epoxy so I ordered a new radiator from FFR. It arrived a few days later.
Perhaps it's just my biased memory, but I recall seeing a few threads on radiator leaks and damaged recently. I jerry-rigged a pressure-testing setup using some of the left-over coolant tubes, a PVC cap, and my radiator pressure-testing kit. Pumped 6psi of air into it and left it there overnight. I didn't want to pump a whole bar into it because the setup was pretty janky. The idea was that even the smallest leak would let out that 6psi of pressure overnight. If I come back the next morning and see that the needle has not moved, then I'd be confident that the radiator is good.
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...and sure enough, the next morning the needle didn't move at all. Nice.
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I then proceeded to plumb the rest of the system. Since I've already done it once it was pretty quick. The network of tubes are pretty kool to look at. I AM a little concerned about how difficult it would be to swap the battery... but I do see a way to do it. I'm sure I'll be fine! :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
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After tightening everything down, I pressurized the system with 1 bar of pressure. I'll leave it there overnight to see if the pressure stays the same. If I wake up tomorrow and the needle is still at 1 bar then I'll be able to put coolant in with confidence. Can't wait!
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Everything else is pretty much ready for the first start. I tried playing around with the seat belt but didn't get anywhere, so it's just for show in the pictures below. Regardless, if everything goes well tomorrow I'll be able to fire it up and perhaps drive it back into the garage from my drive way! Fingers crossed.
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