When I got the car it was BONE stock.. and well, as much as I said I wasn't going to do a thing to it, I couldn't stick to that so, it has some light tweaks. Rather than the usual autocrossing people do with these cars, I decided to do a 4 cylinder turbo 1/4 miler. My goal is to get into the 11.90s using basically all the stock 2.3L turbo parts, and the bone stock 1984 untouched longblock, and tuning.... and TRACTION.
SHORTBLOCK: Stock, original shortblock, unrebuilt with around 70000 miles or 117000 Kms on it.
HEAD / CAM / VALVETRAIN: Stock original cast iron, still stock valves, I did some pretty extensive porting [well the best *I* could lol], Ford Motorsport A-237 cam run straight up, stock cam sprocket. I installed new HLAs and upgraded valve springs bought from Boport. Timing belt is new. Has a new Fel Pro 1035 head gasket and I used ARP undercut head studs to seal it up. I snugged the studs in the block by hand with an allen wrench, then tq'd them to 80 ft lbs using the moly lube then, after a few heat cycles, rides around the block, etc, to operating temps... I loosened them off one at a time, and re torqued each one to 80 ft lbs [if they look dry and motor oil has washed away the moly lube, re add moly lube to each one again when re tq'ing] again.
INTAKE / THROTTLE BODY / VAM / AIR FILTER: Ractive front and side breathing conical filter mounted directly on front on stock untouched Vane Air Meter, 60 mm T-Bird Super Coupe throttle body, and ported stock inline style upper and lower intakes. [standard on the 83-84-early 85 2.3 turbo cars]. I can't take credit for the porting, but the work was done by "Gator".
FUEL SYSTEM: Stock dual fuel pumps [low pressure intake and high pressure inline], BBK adjustable fuel pressure regulator w/ a 3 foot braided hose and an Autometer fuel pressure guage. Seimans 55 lb/hr injectors. Want to see how far the stock dual pumps actually go before I need to convert to a single 255 hi-press in the tank, or Walbro rail mount replacement fuel pump.
IGNITION: Brand New Ford Motorcraft: plug wires, plugs, cap, rotor, and TFI, the coil is a used one [looks like an Accel] that came out of a T Bird Turbo Coupe parts car, that I bought the motor/trans/all computer related stuff out of. Lastly an MSD 6AL which allows me to run a .045" plug gap even while running 26-27 PSI boost.
EEC / CHIPS: I ditched the stock 84 "TJ" EEC computer and green top 30 lb injectors, in favor of the "LA3" EEC, which came in the 1988 T Bird Turbos. Haven't re-chipped or added a tuner of any sort to compensate for the larger 55 lb injectors. I did however take the bottom off the vane air meter, did some clean up/porting, and I managed to get the car running "ok" on the 55 lb injectors, by tightening the vam spring 10 clicks and messing with the bypass screw. This is not a solution for good engine managment and the car will still flake out if the weather severely changes in temperature. For the track, and a quick solution, it DID the job. It cruises around and idles stoich on the wideband, spools up quite nice, but try passing someone at 10 psi in 4rth at 2800 rpm, or doing a burnout and it gets ugly.
EXHAUST: Upgraded from last years ported stock E6 manifold to a tubular ATR header. Bob Lee 3" wastegate housing/elbow, an old ETS 3" downpipe mated to Bobs housing/elbow that stays 3", into a Stinger 3" exhaust, and run a 3" Dyno Max race bullet muffler that is dumped right before the rear axle.
TURBO AND INTERCOOLER: I am running a Hybrid turbo built by Charlie at Evergreen turbo. It has the stock turbine wheel clipped, an M-2 trim T04B cold wheel machined into a stock housing and the 360* thrust system. I ditched the stock SVO intercooler for a very big bottom mount setup. The intercooler core is about 30" long and is made from two full Probe GT Turbo Cores with new endtanks welded on. It has 52 rows, and a sheetmetal air scoop under the front fascia to pull air up through the core. Also built into this kit and still on my car now is an Evolution Motorsports bypass valve.
TRANSMISSION / CLUTCH/ DRIVESHAFT: Stock 1987 4 cylinder "3.97" T5 with stock SVO Hurst shifter, Spec Stage III 6 puck clutch, Ford Racing aluminum driveshaft and Ford racing driveshaft safety loop.
REAR END: Rear end is an 8.8 unit out of an automatic 1988 T Bird Turbo Coupe. I rebuilt the Trac loc with the extra cluches, and added a Ford Racing girdle and Amsoil synthetic fluid. I had to use the brackets, braking system, traction bars, and axles from my stock 7.5" SVO rear and install them in/on the 8.8 housing.
SUSPENSION AND BRAKES: Stock Koni struts and shocks, stock coils, control arms etc, however front sway bar is removed for better weight transfer. Brakes are stock SVO stuff. This season I removed the stock SVO "slapper bars" and added a set of modified Competition Engineering traction bars. Instead of snubbing up against the TQ boxes, like they would when bought new, these ones have modded brackets and now sit inward on an angle and they snub up onto the rear frame rails instead, under hard launching.
RIMS AND TIRES: I have the stock rims and tires and the stock rims are polished. However now it is sitting on Weld Draglites. Rears are 15 x 8 with a 5.50" backspace and have 26 x 8.50" ET Drags. Fronts are 15 x 3, backspace unknown, [bought fronts used], with BFG 155 65 R15 radials TAs.
MISCELLANEOUS: I've done alot of weight removal, like removing the steel front bumper crash support, sound deadener and tar under the carpet, A/C pump and lines are no longer on the car, the damper on the back of the transmission, as well as the one on the rear end housing, adding the alum D/S, the Draglites, etc. I've removed ~330 Lbs from it [so far]. Other Misc. stuff includes: RNH Performance Stainless steel torque box supports - VERY nice kit, awesome vendor, and couldn't beat the price!! AEM Wideband 02 kit for monitoring air/fuel ratio, Autometer 20-0-30 PSI boost guage, some bellmouthing / porting / cleaning up to the stock T3 turbo inlet bell, 160* T stat, Gillis boost control valve.
TRACK TIMES: Got to the track on September 22nd 2005, and with the stock 3.45:1 7 1/2" rear end in place and 22-23 PSI boost, 26* locked timing, and air fuel ratio in the upper 11s, and temps around [humid] 80*, the car ran a best of 12.94 @ 106.85 MPH and also ran two 13.1s and a 12.97, all over 106 MPH..
Got back to the track October 29, 2005. To start with we had 30* cooler.. temps in the low 50*s.. This time the tune was more aggressive. 25 PSI boost, 27* fixed timing [locked in - spout unplugged] removed the air filter from the meter and ran the VAM open, Air fuel ratio was in the low to mid 12s on the wideband, and had the 3.73 gears. The car ran great but the track was NOT prepped whatsoever so 60' foots were terrible. None the less, I ran some new bests.. both ET and MPH wise. Ran 12.79 @ 109.47 , 12.82 @ 109.98 , and 12.74 @ 109.95 Clicking on the ET, will take you to a scan of that time slip.
Got to the track May 20, 2006:
Same basic tune as last year, same cool 50* temps, but the trac bars helped, and they were prepping the track & the car was hooking hard. It cut 1.60s all day and best 60 foot was a 1.67. It ran a string of 12.30s @ 110 MPH and one 12.25 @ 110.85 MPH, so that's a new best ET and MPH with the setup I now have. There's a couple vids below...
Got to the track October 15, 2007. I only got two good passes in, but ran some new bests. I ran a 1.69, 12.10 @ 112 MPH, backed up [hotlapping literally] by a 1.600, 11.900 @ 113.56 MPH. I made a 3rd pass and left hard cutting a 1.56 60' time then botched the 2-3 shift and aborted the run. I'm confident that would have been an 11.80.
Got to the track November 1, 2008. I only got two good passes in, but ran some new bests. Actually I made 3 passes but the first pass Ispun bad thru 3rd but still ran a 12.0 @ 116 MPH. Next, I ran a 1.57, 7.50 1/8 mile @ 90 MPH, 11.81 @ 115 MPH, backed up [hot lapping literally] by a 1.61, 11.91 @ 114.97 MPH
FUTURE PLANS: Future plans include: Getting rid of the weak links that are surfacing. First on the list is fix the 8.8 T Bird rear end. I need to put some moser axles in, as this car is starting to consistently run 1.5 60 foots and stuff is gonna keep breaking. I have bent two axles and broke one.. so.. After that, install my Subframe connectors. Then I plan to add a 75 shot of nitrous to the car and if the car goes solid 10.90/11.00s with on the bottle, I will be sure to get booted from the track, for no roll bar so that will likely be the end of the road. Will likely focus on paint and body/detail under the hood, and just street race now and then.
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