Tech Articles

(Somewhat) Technical Articles

Here you will find some of the tech articles that I wrote over the past year. Most of these articles give you a good idea of what's involved with the different tasks. If you have any more questions, feel free to e-mail me and fire away.

A complete engine rebuild with detailed pictures!

NHRA legal fuel cell install in a hatchback Mustang

Installing a rollbar is required to run 11's. See here how I installed mine from S & W Race Cars.

How to weld your torqueboxes to prevent tearing them under power

While the engine was out in winter 1999-2000 I painted the engine bay. You'll need to remove everything from the engine bay (wiring harness, brake booster, etc) to do a nice job.

Making fan brackets for mounting dual SPAL fans to a radiator

Tips/facts for fitting a 351W to a Fox3 platform

Tips/facts for changing a 4cyl Mustang to a V8

Tips/facts for changing an FI Mustang to a carburetor setup

Removing the dash is a real pain!

Other pages about my car that are no longer maintained:

Miscellaneous tech tidbits collected over the years:

5 lug conversion:

It seems everyone is going to 5 lug rotors and axles, and for a good reason. The wheel choice is much better. What do you need to do that? For an 87-93 Mustang with 11" brakes, not much. A set of 86 SVO rotors for the front, and a pair of drivers side axles out of an 85-89 Ranger, with the 5 lug drums off of the same. The rotors are identical to the stock 11" four lug rotors in every way except the lug count. Similarly, the ranger axles are the same as stock, except the lug count.

The C4 big/small bellhousing game:

The C4 actually came with three different bellhousings, but the third bellhousing is so rare that the chances of seeing one are so remote I won't touch on them. Now, the C4 basically came with two different size bellhousings, the large and the small bellhousing. With a C4, the converter, flexplate, and bellhousing all have to match, or it won't fit. The large bellhousing uses a 164 tooth flexplate, with a converter that has a 11 7/16" bolt circle. The small bellhousing uses a 157 tooth flexplate, with a converter that has a 10 1/2" bolt circle. To make things more interesting, the small bolt circle converter is 0.3" shorter than the large bolt circle converter, so you cannot redrill a large bellhousing flexplate to accept a small bolt circle converter and vice versa. Despite what the torque converter manufacturers tell you, you cannot tell whether you have a large bell or a small bell C4 by what style of dipstick (case/pan fill) you have. The large and small bellhousings interchange and both styles of dipstick came with both styles of bellhousings.

Another interesting note, the large bell (164T) flexplate is the same dimentionally as an AOD flexplate. So if you need a post 81 302 flexplate (50oz balance) for your C4, just get one for a post 81 AOD, and you're good to go. Unfortunately there were never any small bellhousing C4's used after Ford switched to the 50 oz offset, so if you need a 157T flexplate for your late model 302, you're stuck using aftermarket.

Fuel pickup tube for a carb conversion:

When switching from EFI to carbureted, you will need to change from an intank fuel pump to an external pump. Great, you say, I will get a fuel tank from a carbureted Mustang. It will bolt in, but your fuel gauge won't work. Why? When Ford switched to fuel injection, they took the fuel level sender off the pickup tube and moved it to a seperate hole in the fuel tank. In the process, they changed the resistive value of the sender, so an 87 and up fuel level gauge is incompatible with the old sender. Not to worry though, all you have to do is remove the fuel pump assembly from your EFI fuel tank, and replace it with a fuel pickup from a carbureted Mustang from 1984 or 1985 (pre 84 used a smaller 12 gallon tank, and the Mustangs went to EFI in 86). Just make sure you cut the sender off the fuel pickup tube so it doesn't interfere with your current sender. Need more flow? Aftermarket pickups are available from several vendors, including this one from Cartech (bottom of the page).

Battery relocation:

Again, this is one area where the NHRA is picky. A battery must be isolated from the passenger compartment using a bulkhead like the one from Wolfe Racecraft, or use a sealed battery enclosure like the one I use made by Moroso (the famous "blue battery box"). I also used the Moroso battery disconnect switch to make the setup legal. I don't have any pictures of my setup, but you can find a wiring diagram of my setup here.

5 point harness:

I love my camlock, and would not hesitate to recommend one to anyone. You can simply get in and out of them alot faster then the old style with the buckle. I used a non-Y type (seperate shoulder straps) 5 point harness from RJS. I wrapped the shoulder straps around the rollbars' crossbar, bolted the two lap belt straps to the stock mounting points for the seatbelts using the stock T50 fasteners, and mounted my submarine strap to a custom made bar that mounts to the front two bolts that hold the seat in. I just used two pieces of barstock with holes drilled in them, welded to a 1" diameter section of gas pipe that the sub strap wraps around.

If you like tech articles, definitely check out Jason Fletchers page. His page contains some very in depth tech articles. Click the banner below...

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