ITS Ford Mustang(s) Build - Stripper Stang Part II

[Ron Earp]

Oh, and I forgot installing the cam, that was done too. A cam is useful to make the motor run.

Completed short block, well mostly.

The rest of the dress out went smoothly and the engine was installed into the car.

The install didn't go well though because the old headers no longer fit the engine. The car got a different subframe as mentioned in a previous post, but, things were just enough different that the header pipes fouled on the steering shaft. They touched before, but now there was a 1/4" of interference and, given the old exhaust was crappy, it was time to have a new one built.

 

[Ron Earp]

So we went from bare block to this:

In somewhere around 30 hours or so, roughly. Actually, that is a bit long. Of course there was some beer drinking in there somewhere, got to have time for social activities.

After consulting with all the exhaust gurus we settled on a new exhaust design. It was fabbed up by R&J in Apex NC and we painted, baked, wrapped, and installed it last night. It has proper sized primaries, collectors, and merges unlike the old one that was a hodge podge of design and off the shelf parts. The best thing is that it is 18 lbs lighter than the old design. Always look for places to get some weight off. I'll try to get some pictures of that up later.

I summary, the red car has a new motor to try out at VIR and I'm sure it'll be better than the last one. The old motor didn't have a 0.5 compression hike, was 4 oz out of balance, had an imbalanced drive shaft, had inferior rings, and probably wasn't torque plate bored although it was supposed to have been.

 

[Ron Earp]

Another update from the Stangwerks….

We got Jeff’s new motor in the car and running without incident. And, we headed out to VIR for the March Memories race and test day early Friday morning. On the initial session a problem reared its head, one that we’d experienced before – a driveline vibration. Jeff reported it was very bad and since the motor was new, and we knew it was properly assembled, we immediately figured it was the driveshaft. So we swapped the driveshaft from the green car, which has never had a problem, and put it into the red car for testing. Next session out the problem was entirely eliminated and the car ran well. Smooth, powerful, good water temps and oil pressure, so all was good with the motor.

So Friday noon I took the old drive shaft down to Russell at Triangle Driveshaft in Durham and they fixed it while I waited. It was horribly out of balance due to a poor balance job at a shop in Raleigh from Fleetpride. Anyhow, Russell fixed it up and I returned to VIR to install it into my car. A couple more sessions out in the red car for the test day, some adjustments to rear roll center and shock dampening, and we decided we were on for the weekend.

Saturday morning came a bit too early but we were ready for qualifying. The ECR group qualified first with Zsolt’s Acura Integra taking the ITS pole. The Mustangs were not far behind though in second and third, although the field was a bit light. The SARRC qualifying order was a bit different with Jeff G. putting the Mustang on the pole I think, but I can’t remember the rest of the field. I think I started third. Anyhow, we were pretty happy with the results although again, the field was pretty light on strong ITS competition. Jeff Young had a problem with a front wheel hub disintegrating and got no good time, Chuck Hines was not racing on competitive rubber and wasn’t running as fast as normal, and a few others had dropped out.

The ECR on Saturday was a lot of fun. Jeff G and I were in the red Mustang, Robert Mitchell and Jeff Young in the green Mustang. Zsolt’s co-driver Trevor set a strong of smoking laps at the start of the ECR. Not one, but five or six 2:14s and I think one of them was a 2:14.0 according to my RaceMonitor app. Smoking, and says a few of things – prep matters, driver matters, and FWD can flat out get it done – kudos to them for building such a fast car and driving the hell out of it. The ECR progressed with the red stang second, the green one third, and then Zolt’s Acura had a hub failure and was retired from the race. That left the Mustangs with a one-two ECR finish, but I can definitely say if Zsolt hadn’t had the wheel failure they would have won the race as we were tuning no higher than 18/19/20 in ECR trim. Also in there was a smoking fast ITA Ford Focus by Mike Sperber so the Fords had a pretty good showing in the ECR.

After the ECR we retired to the paddock to work on the TR8 which was still laid up with a bad hub. We also worked on Chris Dercole’s Mustang and trying to help him sort his oil control problem, however, it was pretty reasonably clear he had bad rings and no amount of work was going to help. Car work done we retired to the Tavern with the crew and had a bonfire party later that evening. Unfortunately we forgot about the time change and Sunday morning came quick. Ow.

The SARRC came and went pretty quickly. A sprint race ain’t no ECR and it was over too fast. At the green it was Jeff G, Ron E, Chuck H, and Russ B., but at T1 Chuck got a clean pass in T1 on me and assumed second place. Later that lap or the next, Chuck passed Jeff G and was in the lead, Jeff G second, Ron E third, and Russ fourth. However, I could tell that Russ had more power than me and was gaining on the back straight so I figured it was a matter of time before he got me. Mustangs have good brakes, great midrange, but on the top end the RX7, TR8, Acura, etc. seem to do better. Russ got by a few laps in and it was Chuck, Jeff, Russ, Ron with me dropping.

Five or six laps into the race we were all coming into Hogs Pen and someone had tracked mud and straw all across the track. It had just happened and was in a place you couldn’t see well, therefore, Chuck had no choice but to hit it first and he went off track. The other cars managed to stay on track but the mud reduced everyone’s speed through that corner for a couple of laps. The race finished Jeff, Russ, Ron – first SARRC race win for a Mustang, although not for Jeff G since he’s been racing for 10+ years. We didn’t have the fastest cars on track for that weekend by a long shot but it was reliable and most importantly fun. And, as mentioned, we were missing a lot of regulars with two of them at the track, Zsolt and Jeff Young, not being able to race because of broken or wrecked cars.

Now, what was fast was the Mazda MX5s – have a look at those times, they were running 2:12, 2:13s, 2:14s all weekend, fantastic. Now the track was fast for the March VIR race, but those cars are getting it done. At the start of the SARRC they blew away the field. Jeff and I were right behind the two MX5s when the green flag dropped. I thought for sure I'd pass one on the start because they wouldn't have power. Nope. They dropped the stangs like a bad habit and gapped us all the way to the braking zone. We managed to follow them around but they moved out on the straights.

 

[Ron Earp]

And on the technical side, work continues at Stangwerks. We’re putting together motor number four, the second motor for the green car. The green car’s engine is still running well but the build is not of the quality of the engine in the red car. Len Hoffman from www.hamheads.com is doing the flow work and head prep for this new engine, while the block prep was done by a local machine shop. There will be a number of differences between this motor and what is in the green car: max 9.5:1 compression, good head work, torque plate bored, piston clearances, aftermarket OEM pistons (required, Ford doesn’t supply a 0.040” over), better ring package, carefully selected rods, different strategy for setting up the pushrods/lifters, and a few other changes.

We hope that this engine will perform better than the one in Sleestak. The red car’s engine is doing very well, although we are not generating any more top end speed at VIR. The mid-range we have is fantastic and we are probably in the upper percentile for off-corner power. But at the end of VIR’s back straight we won’t be doing much more than 123-125mph. I suspect the frontal area and Cd is just something we can’t get around. We are contemplating one more rear gear swap and avoiding fifth entirely because we can clearly see that when we have to use fifth the game is over, but that would cause us to have to use second in a couple of places on track and containing wheel spin with the high torque multiplication of second is going to be an issue. Anyhow, for the time being I think we’re going to struggle a bit on tracks that require a high top speed – VIR and CMS come to mind, we got nothing for the Acura and TR8 unless we manage to make some time in the short bits.

Lately we’ve been having a lot of problems with the red car and communicating with the ECU. We think we have it figured out, but in doing so we created a test rig for the bench where we can hook up an ECU outside of the car and program it. Dr. Giordano was the major motivation behind this job but it’ll definitely help us out for the future. We’re planning to mount it on a panel with switches, not this rigged up mess here, so that all you need to do is connect it to 12V, connect the laptop, and you can do whatever you want with the ECU. Programming the ECU in the car is what we generally do but this will help us prepare spares and test stuff out. We’re also planning to equip the ECU with an external EPROM so that we can load five pre-defined tunes into the ECU and switch them with a rotary switch, no laptop or reprogramming needed. The ECU program we’ve developed fuels very well but every now and then it needs a tweak. If we had four tunes with air fuel and timing targets, like 12.4, 12.8, 13.1, 13.3 we could quickly adjust up what was needed based on visual info off the wideband.

Work on DR COOL is progressing too. DR COOL is getting a dual peltier device engine, better insulation on all lines, a much better R value water reservoir, and an overall much lighter package even in comparison to the traditional water/ice cooling system. The goal is to have DR COOL in the car and functioning for the April RRR race.

 

[Ron Earp]

And we did a bit of clean up in the Mustang parts warehouse. I think we have enough parts above my garage to build another Mustang.

Took some different head castings apart for exploration. There are a good number of heads to work with on these cars, although the differences among them seem to be minor. Len has the "best" heads from what we can tell.

The number of blocks Ford has used, now that is a pain in the ass. We have discovered at least three different types of blocks for 94-98 MYs. No advantages among them that we can tell, but you've got to keep them separated because their critical bolts are not interchangable. We have sorted them into:

A - large coarse man cap bolts, short head bolts

B - small fine main cap bolts, one row short head bolts, one row long

C - smal fine main cap bolts with provisions for windage tray, long head bolts on both rows

We prefer "C", but it appears we've only got a pile of As and Bs, with both new motors having to be built from As.

And we got the Torino fired up and ready for the street.

However, the Torino could not hit the street. We worked with a local Ford guy in Mebane NC to have this motor built. But, he went too racy on the cam and what we've got is a big block Ford with all forged internals that wants to rev to 7k+ but won't idle worth a damn. We worked with the carb for 3-4 hours on adjustments to try and get it to idle but at 2k, running smoothly and purring along, it only generates 14" of vacuum. When the RPM hits 1500 that drops to 10", and as soon as we try and go lower the vacuum becomes non-existent and she won't run. Timing, fuel, idle, it seems that nothing will do the trick. But holy hell, rev this thing up and it sounds flat out awesome, like a NASCAR screamer. Anyhow, new cam and intake manifold on the way that is reported from a BB Ford builder and guru to cure this issue.

+------------------------------+

I've had a couple of people comment to me on the huge amount of time put into these cars and the relatively rapid development. No doubt, we spend a lot of time on the cars but having two cars being built at once provides more that twice the amount of development data. And it is less than twice the work. In looking back over the last 16 months we have disassembled three SN95 cars for parts, taken apart seven 3.8L Ford V6s of various years, built four race motors, built five rear ends with four different ratios, tried two different traction devices, tried out three types of brake pads, developed 20+ ECU tunes, dyno tuned at least five times, rebuilt two transmissions, run multiplr track widths, changed out springs rates four times and always going up in rate, Lots of changes in camber/caster/toe/corner weighting and had three separate exhaust systems built plus a lot of other things that I can't remember. For a single car/single driver team, in particular an oddball, this might normally take much, much more time. All I know is you're never at the end of development for an IT car although we're looking for the pace to slow down a bit.

But not yet. I'm out to Henderson at the crack of dawn to get a 2001 dual port 3.8L V6 as used in the ITR cars. Got an idea.....

 

[Ron]

Ron keep up the work. My parts area looks like yours. I have rows and rows of tried and failed parts. And the different motors, the 2.3 is just as bad. We have 3 race motors in development all the time and every block is different from ford. No real difference in "power" just little things that make them all their own.

I have had to take some time off from the car. Kids in college demand a ton of $$$$$$$$. I mean metric tons of $$$$$$$$. But we will be back, maybe with a different car powered by the same motor.

I am very lucky that I have great friends who have offered rides in their cars while mine is dormant. Wonderful friends.

 

[Andy Bettencourt]

Best build thread on IT.com

 

[Ron Earp]

Best build thread on IT.com

Thanks, we're trying to keep the fans happy.

Ron keep up the work. My parts area looks like yours. I have rows and rows of tried and failed parts. And the different motors, the 2.3 is just as bad.

Man, Ford is bad with parts. I just was reading through some of my info last night and Ford had used, up to 2001, ten different blocks for the 3.8. The variations are slight and mean little (other than the FWD/RWD distinction) but can create headaches for building engines and using parts on hand.

The 1999+ split port 3.8L engine is one hell of a motor. We got one yesterday and disassembled it to have a look at what it is all about. Mostly it is the same as the 3.8L single port motors like we have, but the heads on this engine can really breathe. They have two intake ports and larger valves to boot. The exhaust ports are tiny, but, they are way undersized for the gasket and unless the water jacket is a problem they could be improved even under IT rules. The motors are internally balanced therefore the crank is different than our engines.

Anyhow, for ITR I think these motors could really put down some power. They are rated at 190hp from the factory but they would see significant gains with a proper IT build. However, my main reason to purchase it didn't pan out so well. I wanted the windage tray from this engine since the 94-99 units are NLA from Ford and we're out of them. But, this motor is a 2001 and Ford decided to change the windage tray unit to be a stud girdle/windage tray that I can't use. At least the front cover was the same though and I can use that. Front covers are fragile and we've a pile of cracked ones.

Ron come to one of the race weekends and you can have a drive of the Mustang on a test day or race. I think you'd find it to be like your ITB car, just with a little more power. After all the underpinnings are essentially the same, very honest handling and fun to drive.

 

[Ron Earp]

Best build thread on IT.com

Thanks, we're trying to keep the fans happy.

Ron keep up the work. My parts area looks like yours. I have rows and rows of tried and failed parts. And the different motors, the 2.3 is just as bad.

Man, Ford is bad with parts. I just was reading through some of my info last night and Ford had used, up to 2001, ten different blocks for the 3.8. The variations are slight and mean little (other than the FWD/RWD distinction) but can create headaches for building engines and using parts on hand.

The 1999+ split port 3.8L engine is one hell of a motor. We got one yesterday and disassembled it to have a look at what it is all about. Mostly it is the same as the 3.8L single port motors like we have, but the heads on this engine can really breathe. They have two intake ports and larger valves to boot. The exhaust ports are tiny, but, they are way undersized for the gasket and unless the water jacket is a problem they could be improved even under IT rules. The motors are internally balanced therefore the crank is different than our engines.

Six intake ports, three cylinders. We're going to keep the parts around for the possibility of building an ITE motor for the stang we have, or maybe one day building an ITR car. Anyhow, for ITR I think these motors could really put down some power. They are rated at 190hp from the factory but they would see significant gains with a proper IT build. However, my main reason to purchase it didn't pan out so well. I wanted the windage tray from this engine since the 94-99 units are NLA from Ford and we're out of them. But, this motor is a 2001 and Ford decided to change the windage tray unit to be a stud girdle/windage tray that I can't use. At least the front cover was the same though and I can use that. Front covers are fragile and we've a pile of cracked ones.

Ron come to one of the race weekends and you can have a drive of the Mustang on a test day or race. I think you'd find it to be like your ITB car, just with a little more power. After all the underpinnings are essentially the same, very honest handling and fun to drive.

 

[Ron]

Thank you for the generous offer. I'm so glad that the car is a good handling beast. I'm sure it still is not light and nimble but perdictable and forgiving. Find the tracks that suit it best and you will continue with your success.

What I enjoy best about your build and development is that you and the team is that you are attacking several issues at the same time. None of this "lets improve braking first" "then fix handling" "Power now". You guys are hitting almost all of it all the time.

I, any many other non-traditional car developers, appreciate the effort in time and money it takes to make a car that doesn't come with a play book become competitive.

Well done boys, well done.

 

[lateapex911]

Good update, and great thorough work! Andy is right, best build thread here.

 

[Ron Earp]

Another Stangwerks Update

Both Mustangs made the recent races at CMP and for the most part a good time was had by all. Jeff G ran the red car for the test day on Friday and we incrementally improved our laptimes each session. One of our biggest issues was tires, or lack thereof, as we were trying to use old tires for the testing thus saving the new tires for the racing. That isn’t a good idea because at a tight track like CMP suspension changes can be masked by crappy tires. Anyhow, we got the car down to some high 50s and figured new tires would improve upon those times.

Test Day Arrival

The weather at CMP was quite nice, 60s in the day and while it was cold at night this took care of that problem.

Fire

We had a couple of enjoyable night sitting around the fire, BSing with friends, and having a few adult beverages. Good times were had by all, even our large furry friend decided to take it easy and not bite Steve Parrish’s leg off and take the beer.

Saturday was race day and the Mustangs were entered in the Carolina Cup at the SARRC race. Given that we had practice sessions for the races, plus qualifying, it was a busy morning and afternoon with little down time considering we had a few unplanned maintenance activities pop up. The morning sessions were cool but both Mustangs were fueling correctly and hitting a reasonable A/F target. Qualfiying came and went, and I was pretty happy with the results. There were not too many ITS cars entered in the CCPS and I was able to get the Mustang on the overall pole for that race with a 1:49.999, the fastest time I’ve ever turned at CMP. The SARRC qualifying was tight with two cars in the 48s and two in the 49s. I managed a 1:49.564 which became my best ever CMP time and put me fourth in ITS.

Steve E was getting it done with a 48, and Ron Munnerlyn gets my go-fast award by driving the damn wheels off his Miata. We all know the ITS Miata doesn't have class-leading horsepower by a long shot but if the car is driven expertly then it can do the job.

The Mustang was pretty easy to drive at CMP but in retrospect we wish we had done more to tune the car for that track. We made changes to the front roll bar, front compression and rebound, and changed the rear roll center as well as rear rebound settings. But I wish we’d have swapped in our softer springs too. Both cars were manageable and very predictable, but were looser than we would have liked and our ability to apply the go fast pedal was limited.

 

[Ron Earp]

The CCPS race was a lot of fun. It is the first race that I’ve started and following a pace car around with an Easter Bunny in the passenger seat was entertaining. Since I was starting I held speeds way down, or shall I say, held speeds down so that I was turning over about 2.8k in third gear, in the meat of my torque band and giving me the broadest RPM range to my 51-5200 RPM shift point. When the green dropped I was able to get the drop and get out ahead of the field. A fast SRF was directly on me though and a couple of laps in I waved him around. He and I weren’t racing and were just going to slow each other up.

The 45 min race went by quickly and I had some good times racing with Rickey T in his BMW and Ron M. in his Miata. Ron was in first place at one point and ended up breaking, so I got the lead and the ITS win for the day. Good times by all and a clean race. Back in the pits and through impound left us little time to prepare for the SARRC. I rotated the tires and did a bit of other car work, finishing just in time to make the grid for the SARRC race, rolling in under the five whistle.

On the grid ahead of Jeff!

The SARRC was fast and hairy. I got off to a poor start and made a number of mistakes in lap one, something not allowed in a sprint. Steve E took off like a rabbit on the green and quickly set a fast pace for the race. Rickey T went off in turn eight of lap one making that a bit exciting. I should have blocked #59 Tim J into turn twelve but I didn’t and he got around me. Once he was past he and I had to dice for position while the leaders, Steve E, Ron M, and Jeff Y. ran off into the distance. Laps four through seven or eight have us going back and forth three or four times for position. Good stuff. I eventually got around Tim and made it stick, leaving him to dice it up with Russ B., but by then a top three finish was out of the question. Or was it….

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toGQFkwdxfw[/ame]

At some point I come rolling out of T14 and find Steve E on the side of the track with smoke coming out of the hood. Turned out he had an electrical issue and had to retire for the weekend. And, coming into T7 I run up on a green British car traveling quite slowly, which isn’t the norm for the TR8. It pulled off to the side and had to retire as well, having let out all the Lucas Electrical Smoke it could no longer run. That left Ron M in the lead who won the race putting me in a distant second. Again, Ron gets my Go-Fast award by driving the heck of his Miata. Steve E and Jeff Yound both led the SARRC race, but Ron M. was never more than a couple of car lengths behind. Way to go!

Ron M, Ron E, and TimJ

So the Mustangs had a pretty good showing for the weekend, collecting a couple of pieces of wood for the garage wall. Next time around, in May, we'll be faster. I'm pretty sure we have a good baseline setup and can improve upon it. We'll also be lighter too as some of our new parts to save weight will be in use by then.

Next races are at Roebling Road and I'm looking forward to seeing how we shake out there. We have a decent setup for RRR that netted some 22s back at the SIC and I am pretty sure we can improve upon that for April 2013.

 

[Ron Earp]

Things have been busy at the Stangwerks but unfortunately it hasn’t been all fun and games. On the good news, I got a set of heads back from Hoffman machine and he has made some improvements in the flow numbers. Nice new heads, all cleaned up and re-machined for the correct 9.5:1 compression ratio, new valves, valve job, and ready to go on my new motor.

And here are some shots of the different head types that we have to use on the Mustangs. There are a few, and Len has another set of Mustang heads, different castings, that he’s going to flow and work up for us as well. Maybe we’ll be able to pick some winners from our collection. While some of the heads, for example the N39 and N42 castings, look identical and have similar combustion chamber shapes, the E series do not. However, even among ones that look the same, the N heads, there are definitely winners and losers.

I’m not sure why Ford changed castings so often, but if one thing is certain to anyone who is a Ford enthusiast, Ford is synonymous with Change. Len at Hoffman heads has been great to work with and I look forward to seeing what data he can provide to help with the development of the motor.

 

[Ron Earp]

Work has been progressing on my new engine and now that the heads are here we'll quickly progress on that front.

This engine is the same as Jeff's new motor and has the same improvements over his original motor. My original motor is still going strong, knock on wood, but it has always been my intention to have a spare motor at all times so once this one is finish it'll replace the unit in the car and the old one will be rebuilt to the new specs.

Progress has occurred on other fronts as well, Jeff finished up the bench top Ford EEC-V programmer and it has been successfully used at the track a couple of times. This allows us to program an ECU without the car being present, which is useful for setting up multiple ECUs to be swapped in in dire situations.

But the big news is that Jeff's new motor, with less than ten hours of racing on the clock, decided to shit the bed. Yep, it's done and we're now in the middle of a rebuild on it.

Jeff's car did fine at CMP, raced all the entered races and seemed to be doing what it was supposed to do. Loaded on the trailer, loaded off the trailer, nary a sign of trouble. We parked the car at my house while we finished up the cam swap on the Torino, which by the way took way longer than expected. Anyhow, ten days later we go to put Jeff's stang on the scales and there is a puddle of oil under it just where the bellhousing and engine block are mated together. No big deal we figure, we'll put it up in the air, drop the tranny, and fix that rear main seal.

Nope. When we got the tranny out and drove a new rear seal in we noticed this:

And then a few hours and beers of work later we saw this:

Bummer. So we had to have a beer of sorrow. Then a smoke of sorrow. Then another beer of sorrow. After that we said enough and got our asses to work and tore the motor down completely.

 

[Ron Earp]

And another:

The engine has since been completely torn down, with a lot of swearing and cussing, and I dropped the block and crank off with the machine shop this morning. We hope to get the newly line bored block back tomorrow and reassemble the engine Thursday night.

What happened?

We don't know. I called the Ford V6 specialists, Jeff called Ford and Dave Brown, and we talked with the shop. Nobody has ever seen a rear main cap failure on a Ford 3.8L V6. It happens on Ford 302s pretty frequently but only if they are making a lot of power and turned up to a lot of RPM, neither of which apply here. The data doesn't show any over revs, oil pressure issues, or anything that would be indicative of this type of failure.

The engine is relatively un-stressed, doesn't turn a lot of RPM, and all the parts removed from the engine look great. The bearings look like normal bearings with a bit of wear, I'd have no problem using them again. The engine even ran and behaved normally, mostly, although now we know that something was up with it I suspect one could detect an issue. Rods good, the crank is straight (checked this morning), pistons all good, we're a bit perplexed but as we develop theories and test them out we'll sort through it.

Anyhow, our goal is to have the engine back in the car and running this weekend for the RRR race. The removal and installation of this V6 into the Mustang sort of sucks. The old Datsun inline six was so much easier. Unfortunately we're stuck at around 2-3 hours for a removal just because so much has to be unhooked and access is limited around a vee engine in a small engine compartment. Hopefully we'll make.

 

[joeg]

YIKES!!!

From the Internet:

"A cap broken/cracked in a block --it can be any number of things. A lot of times it can be tracked back to how the cap was installed in the first place in torqueing the caps down. Was that cap checked for cracks before installation? If so,...was it also checked inside the bolt hole?"

 

[Ron Earp]

The block and caps are being checked now. It was installed and torqued correctly. We've some other theories too but at this point they are just that.

 

[joeg]

Then have the crank crack checked too...

 

[Ron Earp]

Already did, in original post. They checked it before I left the shop.