While the air pan may not be how I want and ultimately determined that it is not fit for use on the car, that doesn’t mean that it is useless. More so than an air pan, this has been a learning experience and the learning isn’t complete until every step in the project is done.
The next part of the process was to cut the air pan so it can be attached to air cleaner base. The plan is to use rivets to attach it to the underside of the air cleaner lip.
The other side of this face is the surface on which the air filter sits, so the rivets head will face up to allow the filter to seal properly. Since the filter has a rubber body, it should conform to a small surface imperfection such as rivet head. If not, well, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
I made a centering mark and then placed the air cleaner housing in the proper location in order to trace a circle around it.
Of course, that is the outer diameter, which were I to cut around, would leave no lip in the fiberglass to attach to the air cleaner. The cleaner base would fall right through.
The solution is to measure the width of the lip on the air cleaner base and measure inwards from the circle drawn on the fiberglass in a number of places. Connect the dots and you get the above. It doesn’t have to be perfect since it is just a guide for a rough cut that will need to be finished after the cutting is complete.
Lesson 4 – A wide tipped marker works better to mark GRP than the pencil tip Sharpie.
Time to cut, but first:
Important note:
Cutting fiberglass creates a lot of dust. That dust is hazardous to your health. Wear a good dust mask. The first time I worked with fiberglass I didn’t and by the end of day, I was coughing up little specs of blood. Wear eye protection. I have had fiberglass in my eye and it was one of the single most painful events of my life. Look online for a picture of fiberglass under a microscope and you will understand why. Learn from my experiences and protect yourself.
I tried to use hand tools to cut the fiberglass to minimize dust production and spread, but found nothing that worked for this part of the project. On the edges, a hand hacksaw and high leverage metal snips worked well, but neither of these work well cutting a hole out of a panel. So I went to the Dremel with a drill bit in it.
Lesson 5 – Start on a slow speed with the Dremel as high speed will melt the GRP.
While cutting I could feel the bubbles as the cut rate would suddenly speed up. I am still looking into the solution to that, but I am now convinced that it is a problem that must be completely rectified before I continue.
Only step left is to make sure things line up properly.
Not too bad for an experiment. I am glad that I took it to the end as I found a potential problem.
There isn’t a lot of clearance around the neck for the PCV hose. I will have to clamp the final air pan to the cleaner base before final riveting so that I can mock it up on the engine with the hose attached in order to be certain that it will clear. A fiberglass edge will slice a rubber hose in no time, so the clearance will have to be generous.
The next fiberglassing installment might not be for some time as I have the research to complete, but I will report what I find out and my new game plan. Back to metal for the time being.
Time to lay some glass! With the preparations done it is finally time to lay some mat, mix some resin and make a part. For this entry, there isn’t the usual level of detail I try to provide. This is for two reasons. One, the pot time of the resin (how long it takes to become gel) is such that in-progress pictures aren’t going to happen until I have someone with me to operate the camera while I work the fiberglass. Two, I am still learning this process and I don’t want to post up what I do until I have finalized my own procedures. This is why there are no resin to catalyst ratios, cloth weights, specific set times or other details. I am not sure I have it right so I don’t want to make any suggestions until I feel more confident.
Step 1 – I laid out the mat dry to make sure that it wasn’t too small. Too large is OK, but excessively so just gets in the way, so trimming it to only slightly oversize makes sense.
Lesson 1 – Mark the cloth so that you know which way to lay it when the time comes.
Step 2 – I mixed a batch of resin. I made an extra large batch; larger than was calculated for the mass of the mat because I needed extra for step 3.
Lesson 2 – Have everything ready before you add the catalyst to the resin. You want the entire pot time to work with, not waste it looking for a brush or your gloves.
Step 3 – I spread a layer of resin all over the mold. In this case that was the aluminum foil.
Step 4 – I put the mat over the wet mold and tried to press it into the corners as best I could. You will see later that I am not exactly an expert at this part.
Step 5 – I then wet down with resin the top side of the mat. I am still developing my own application technique. Getting the resin to be even can be a challenge. This step used up the remained of the resin made in step 2.
Lesson 3 – Be gentle with the brush. As the resin starts to thicken slightly it gets sticky and a hard brush technique will pull apart the mat pretty badly.
Step 6 – I added natural fiber reinforcements (mixing sticks), mixed up more resin and put down another layer. This may have been a mistake as I think it generated too much heat, causing the bubbles you will see later. Perhaps I should have let it dry first.
Here is the wet layup.
Step 7 – Next, I let it dry. Took about one hour in the upper 80° temperatures of North Carolina in August.
Step 8 – I pulled it off the table and then removed any of the aluminum foil still hanging on.
Now time for the real analysis of the experiment. This was a learning experience, so the bad parts are going to be more instructive than the good. Here is the catalog of problems that I need to determine resolution of before continuing with more GRP projects.
Problem 1 – The aluminum tape didn’t release like the aluminum foil.
Problem 2 – The corners didn’t form properly.
Problem 3 – Bubbles. Lots of bubbles.
Time for some research on how to fix each of these problems. Although there are obviously some issues, I am still pleased with the progress I am making. The aluminum foil mold release worked really well. I am getting a much better handle on pot times. My application technique has improved. Overall, I am gaining skill and feel like I am not far from being able to tackle the fender flares.
Next step in the experiment that is to become that air pan was to set up the mold. Slightly more complex than a flat panel, the pan still wouldn’t require any other than straight lines.
First thing to do was make sure I had a flat surface. Unfortunately, I didn’t do this first, as the pictures will show, but I did do it early enough so as not to impact the final product.
The wet lay up process will take place on a rolling metal work table I got free when an office building was cleaned out. The metal top is not level like a machinist’s ruler, but it is certainly close enough for this project. There were a couple of lumps in the surface that needed to be taken care of.
They look like someone drove nails into the top, but there is nothing on the underside indicating that to be the case.
Since I didn’t want to risk damage to other parts of the surface, I kept the power tools in the drawer and took the offending lumps down with a hand file.
Halfway done.
Finished. Lots of dust needed to be cleaned off afterward, but the surface is now smooth enough for my purposes.
Important note:
I am doing this entire project in an attached, two-car garage and chose a rolling table for this step so it can go outside once I start using chemicals. My sources tell me that the smell of polyester fiberglass resin can permeate food quite easily. Furthermore, the dust from dry fiberglass mat and sanding the composite material is irritating to airways. This is a job best done outside.
The pictures above show glimpses of the next couple of steps, but here is the process in greater detail.
After measuring the underside of the hood and the filter base, I put up fences that would make the perimeter lip when duplicated in GRP.
Just some steel tube I had laying around, held with welding magnets. Nothing fancy.
Next, I sealed the corners with tape so that when I put down the aluminum foil, there would be a smoother radius. Not sure if this will make any difference, but in metal working sharp edges are a weak point, so I just followed my old habits.
Again, nothing out of the ordinary, just standard blue painters tape.
All of this was just the base for the aluminum foil that would be the surface against which the fiberglass would be laid up. This is the same method as used by the guys on Muscle Car.
The only thing I did differently than the guys on TV was to not glue the foil in place. Since they were using a disposable foam mold, that made sense for them, but since I want to keep this table and use it again, I just taped the edges down and sealed the seams with aluminum tape.
Here is the approximate location of the air filter housing on the mold.
Since the car now has wheels, the need for fender flares has become very obvious. I am not ready to dive right in and start with such a big composites project, so I have decided to start small. I have previously made some flat fiberglass panels for purposes such as an undercar splash shield, but that allowed me to make it extra large and then cut to shape. With the fender flares, I won’t have the luxury of avoiding bad areas, and I will have to follow curves, raising the difficulty level considerably.
I brushed up on my GRP (Glass Reinforced Plastic, aka fiberglass) knowledge by reviewing the resources I posted over a year ago. Once I felt like I was up to speed, I looked for a good starter project. Having gone through all the trouble of making a cowl induction system, I decided that having the air filter sit open to the engine bay made no sense. Cold air makes any engine run better and provides more horsepower, so an airbox of sorts makes sense as a functional project.
I wasn’t sure that I could do a full box, but since I didn’t want to do another flat panel project a flat pan was out of the question. I decided that an airpan with a lip around the edge would provide both good practice and function. Something like this, but in GRP.
I would need a way to seal the pan to the underside of the hood; a function performed by the rubber door seal material in the picture above. While cowl induction is supposed to provide a steady stream of cool air to the engine, I am still not confident that a rubber seal like that would last under the hood. Perhaps in some applications, but I have very little room and precious few escape paths for heat, so I am going err on the side of caution.
I found that Moroso sells air pan kits for certain carburetor combinations, and that if you read the fine print, the fire retardant foam is available separately as part number 97070. At just $12.95 from Summit Racing, I decided to pick up two boxes worth. The beauty of the foam is that not only am I going to be using it for what is designed for (shocking, I know) but it will easily conform to the underside of the hood, which, because of strengthening ribs, is far from flat.
For materials, I will be using chopped strand mat (CSM). The one square yard bag made by Bondo and sold in nearly all autoparts stores. I don’t even know the weight, but I assume it 1½oz/ft². The resin is polyester and from Elmers. I got that at Lowes Home Improvement. Once I feel like I have a handle on the process, I am going to find an online supplier that I can use to order in bulk to save money as buying piecemeal is never cost effective.
I will be using the aluminum foil method I saw on the Muscle Car TV show instead of a chemical release agent. It has served me well in my flat panel trials, is cheap, available, and about impossible to mess up. Since I don’t have a part to copy, I will be making a box without a top to serve as my mold. Nothing fancy, this is about the learning experience more than anything else.
Hopefully I will end up with a usable part and the skill set needed to flare the fenders.
While there has been a lull in online content, the progress on the car has been slowly moving forward. Apologies to those who enjoy this site, but I really stopped enjoying putting content online for a while. It has become fun again, so I will be doing it again until it isn’t.
That was a pretty big day. Here is the link to YouTube, where you can watch it in HD. More to come as I feel the urge.
So after looking through the many pictures I have, I found a couple that might be useful in describing the oil pans. First, here is the original pan from the Fox body Mustang.
This is an old picture, but the double hump is clear.
To reiterate, there was no real problem with this pan other than the fact that it has limited capacity. This led me to buy the Moroso deep sump pan that you can see below.
While not an ideal picture, hopefully you can see how much deeper the rear sump (on the left of the picture above) is compared to the Mustang one hanging on the crane.
The reason I had to remove this pan should be clear in the following picture.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get all the pan in the picture, but that is an indication of the problem. The deep sump pan would be the lowest point on the car by some two inches! The yellow line indicates the bottom of the front subframe, and approximately where the Mustang pan sat at its deepest point.
So it was clear that the deep sump pan wouldn’t work, but I wasn’t too excited about giving up the extra oil capacity. As in many cases, a quick thumb through the Summit Racing catalog showed me a simple solution. But was this simple solution really simple? The answer you already know, in the next installment.
The engine in the V8Mongrel has yet to turn over and it is already on its third oil pan. Add this to the long list of things that I did not foresee that have added to he amount of time the car is taking to complete. Here is the back story.
I’ll be using Moroso pans to illustrate as I am most familiar with their product line. The Ford small block has two types of oil pans available. The older engines have a front sump. The front half of the pan is lower, holds the oil and the pump, while the back is just low enough to clear the crank.
Moroso Front Sump Pan
The back is on the left, the front is on the right.
Since I am using the Granny’s Speed Shop SBF First Gen RX-7mounting kit, I cannot use this type of pan. I must use the double hump or rear sump style. Also called a Fox body pan, this pan has a small area in front to hold the pump, and then a large rear sump for the oil. There is a long pickup tube that goes from the front mounted pump to the rear sump.
Moroso Rear Sump Pan
The front is on the left, the back is on the right.
When I got the engine from Jeff Diehl, it had an OE oil pan that he had added some baffling to. Nothing too extensive, but when Jeff says it is good enough, with the amount of track time he has in small block Ford powered vehicles, I tend to trust him. However, the one thing I was worried about was oil temperatures.
The stock Fox body pan holds around five quarts. That isn’t much. And while the actual pan isn’t supposed to provide a large portion of the cooling capacity, the smaller the amount of oil in the sump, the more often it is passed through the engine. This means that it heats up faster.
A quick look at the nose of an SA22C will give a good indication of why I was concerned.
SA22C Nose
Since I knew I’d require a larger radiator to handle the extra power and heat generated by the V8, air to an oil cooler would be a precious commodity given the limited nose area. So when a used, high capacity pan came up for sale on a forum, I jumped at the chance. Since the engine was on the stand, the change over wouldn’t be hard. Little did I know, this would be but the start of a long saga.
The camshaft is generally described as the component that imparts the distinctive character or soul each engine combination possess. The timing of the valve events will determine more so than anything else if the engine will pull like a diesel down low, or scream like a GSX-R when the tach needle is near the red. The temptation for most enthusiasts is, like everything else, to go for the extreme. But the smart money bets on those who recognize that camshaft selection is a series of compromises.
What are the variables in camshaft selection and what are the trade offs?
1. Lifter type
There are two types of lifters, and each is offered in two configurations. The two types are flat and roller, and they can be supplied in solid or hydraulic configurations. The roller lifter has all the advantages of roller rockers I described before, as well as fast ramp rates. The faster ramp rate means that the lifter can be open more per degree of cam rotation. The disadvantages of roller lifters are a high entry price and higher weight. The higher price, well, isn’t that everything? The higher weight means that the valve springs may lose control of the valves and experience float at a lower RPM. Valve float is bad and potentially a lot more expensive than the premium for roller lifters and the matching camshaft.
With budget pushing me away from the roller cams, I selected a hydraulic cam because I have no choice. The pedestal style rocker arm mount doesn’t permit the use of solid lifter cam. The solid lifter requires periodic setting of the valve lash, while the hydraulic lifter uses engine oil to compensate for the change clearances due to temperature change. The pedestal mount has no provision for this adjustment. A solid lifter is simpler, lighter and can produce more with the same cam specs, but requires periodic maintenance and due to a scarcity of OE use, generally costs more than equivalent hydraulic lifters.
2. Duration
The cam duration is simply a measure of how long the valves are held open. It is tempting to think that the valves should be closed enough only to avoid contact with the pistons, but due a large number of factors that would take an entire book to cover¹, this isn’t the case. While an oversimplification, it is generally true that the greater the cam duration, the greater the RPM at which peak power occurs. Thus, cam selection comes down to the desired operating range of the engine. With little weight compared to most cars with a Ford 302, I had the luxury of being able to sacrifice a little on the bottom end without worry.
3. Lift
Much like duration, it might be tempting to go with the most lift possible without two engine components attempting to occupy the same space at the same time. High lift allows for the valve to act as less of a restriction to the incoming intake charge; and that is what power production is all about. However, like everything else, it is a compromise. My main concern was that too much lift can lead to increased wear. Particularly with a flat tappet camshaft, how much camshaft lift per degree of duration is limited. Also, fast acting cams (high lift per degree of duration) require stiffer valve springs; another wear compromise.
After talking it over with Jeff Diehl, I ordered Crane part number 130062, a full camshaft and lifter kit for under $120 at the time of order. The full specs are available from Crane Cams, and my hope is that it lives up to the projected RPM range of 3000 to 6000. I was told that this should return excellent durability and my calculations on gearing show that it will work well without the need for expensive custom gear sets.
Once Jeff put the camshaft in, he oiled up the lifters, measured the pushrods and checked the contact of the rocker on the valve stem. These are things I really wish I had been able to witness, as it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that I will need to service these parts one day. However, I am very glad Jeff built the engine and not me, since the chances of him making a mistake are much less than had I done it. Missing this was a small price to pay.
¹ – I would suggest Four Stroke Performance Tuning by A. Graham Bell, published by Haynes.
For a site with V8 in its name, I realized V8Mongrel.com is awfully light on engine content. Well, this will be one post in many rectifying that. Most of the engine stuff is older content. As you have likely gathered from other pictures, the engine is sealed up and in the engine bay right now. I do have some pictures that I will share, but a lot of this will be text.
The main reason for the preponderance of text is I did not build the engine. Jeff “The Real” Diehl has built a number of small block Fords and offered to do one for me at a price I couldn’t refuse – just pay for the parts and any machine work. But I will share what info I have, and while this is deemed an action post, it was Jeff’s actions, not mine.
The Edelbrock cylinder heads were detailed before and were in need of rocker arms when I bought them. Ford small block cylinder heads have a variety of rocker arms and rocker arm mounting styles, to which the aftermarket adds even more variety and confusion. The late model 5.0 heads come with what is known as a pedestal mount rocker arm system. Common aftermarket rocker arms are stud mount. Thinking that the Edelbrock heads would follow the aftermarket convention, I bought some stud mount rockers for $100 off a local guy who put them on eBay.
I then found out from Jeff that the heads were pedestal mount. Turns out that in order to make them more of a true bolt on, Edelbrock made the Performer and Performer RPM heads available with either stud or pedestal mount. So I had some stud mount rockers and some pedestal style heads.
Internet to the rescue! I managed to swap straight up my stud mounts for a set of pedestal mounts, to a guy who had the reverse predicament I had encountered – stud mount heads and pedestal rockers. We were a perfect match. I got a bonus in that his units were the Cobra 1.7:1 ratio rockers, while the stud mounts I gave up were only 1.6:1. While the merits of high ratio rockers aren’t absolute, they do provide great valve lift and thus potentially greater airflow.
The one difficulty in adding these rockers was the clearance to the underside of the valve cover. As you can see in the above photo, the head is fitted with a thick, cork valve cover gasket. This is required as the aluminum body rockers are larger than the factory stamped steel units. Using the thick gaskets and removing some material from the offending areas of the valve covers solved the problems. I will write more about the valve covers in a later post as this wasn’t the limit of the modifications required.
Aside from higher lift, the rocker arms fitted provide another benefit. The function of the rocker arm is to convert the upward motion of the pushrod into downward motion on the valve. In doing so, the arm needs to pivot in the center. The factory setup is a sled; basically a half circle which rides in a cup. The rockers for the V8Mongrel employ a low-friction roller. This frees up horsepower and reportedly lowers oil temperatures.
Also, as the tip of the rocker arm moves it follows an arc. Since the valve motion is linear, there is scrubbing at the tip if both are fixed. The solution is a roller tip. Combine the roller pivot and the roller tip, and you have a full roller rocker arm.
This picture allows you to see the roller pivot and the pin hole for the roller tips. If you look in the background, you can also see some of the work underway on the valve covers.
One of the great things about owning a domestic V8 is the plethora of off-the-shelf speed parts that are available. The number of choices is often dizzying; go to Summit Racing and try to pick a camshaft for a small block Chevy if you don’t believe me. Yet, even with this amazing variety, sometimes the options aren’t appealing.
One such case for me was plug wires (high tension leads for those readers in the English, rather than American, automotive world). While a simple item, manufacturers seem to have difficulty getting them right. Or at least getting them right by my definition. Typically, the application specific wire sets are made intentionally long so as to be guaranteed to fit, regardless of other modifications the owner may have made. This leaves them looking untidy, even though they are the “right” parts for the job.
Thankfully, these same manufacturers that offer sloppy, over-length kits also offer for the more compulsive among us a perfect solution – do it yourself, cut-to-length kits. I got Moroso part number 73233 for the Mongrel.
You need little more than the instructions, as Moroso includes a rudimentary wire stripper that works very well. You will need a crimper larger than the one typically used for insulated terminals, and I found that the installation of the boots was made much easier with some silicone spray. I suppose you could do it without these items, but my guess is that you wouldn’t be the type who felt the need to buy a cut-to-length kit in the first place if you did.
Like everything, measure twice, cut once. I also bought some wire clips (Moroso part number 72130) and almost found out the hard way that you should not forget to use them while mocking up the routing of the wires before you cut.
I am very happy with the results.
You can also see that the MSD distributor I have is fitted with a wire retainer on the cap. A nice touch, in my opinion. I have been impressed by every MSD Ignition product I have ever owned. I bought my first MSD about 10 years ago and have put their products, in one form or another, on all of my cars that have seen track time. The plug wires aren’t MSD brand because they don’t offer a 135° plug end cut-to-length kit. I was advised that the 135° ends work better on the small block Ford than the 90°, and that I would likely be happy with Moroso. While I have no real experience to make the comparison, I can say that I do see how the 135° ends would be beneficial compared to 90° units, particularly on a couple of the cylinders.
I won’t deny that a significant portion of my motivation for choosing a cut-to-length set was aesthetic. After all, I want the appearance of car to reflect the effort that is put into it. However, there is also a compelling performance reason to take the time and use a cut-to-length kit. Wires that are loose can contact the hot surface of the headers and burn. A custom fit kit that is exactly the right length is not going to have excess that the wire clips cannot contain.
For a final touch, I added numbering tags. Chevy and Ford use a different numbering convention for cylinders, so while one would think that these tags wouldn’t be unnecessary, this lack of consistency can give rise to some confusion. Plus, the tags make confirming the distributor is properly hooked up a lot easier. A car that isn’t running right because plug wires aren’t on the right distributor terminals is an embarrassment I’d rather avoid.
