been using Red RTV on the header flanges with no gaskets, never a leak. I see a LOT of turbo guys goin that route.

 

Yeah I got scolded on the Mustang forum I frequent for not doing that already. I'm toying with the idea of tearing it all down now for powder coating since it's so close to 'done'. Need to check with my guy and see how backed up he is.

 

Scott? lol

 

Yep! He's good people and has been a great help along the way for me. I've know him about 6 years now.

 

Yeah he's def a good dude. He did a nice ceramic coating on my turbine housing that has held up for about 2 years now. I try to advertise him to others whenever I can. Lol

 

I installed the Accel TFI module back on the Accel distributor and removed the motorcraft one. I hit it with the timing light and it seemed to be behaving (timing increased with RPM). But before I went to drive it, I wanted to fix the exhaust leak at the headers because that wreaks havoc on the O2 sensor.

Simple job, right?
Here's the aftermath.

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Stripping aluminum heads is the pain of my existence. I once sold a car because i cleaned about 5 various threads out of a set of 185's. Almost makes me want to drill out every single thread in an aluminum head and replace it with stainless or black oxide threaded inserts.

 

I see you're using an autolite 3924. That's stock heat range for N/A motors I think. Might be an issue for you?

 

Not sure on that one, I did some research and from what I read, the 3924s are what people run. As far as the bolts go, I cross threaded a couple which I thought were just tight. It was strange. But I have it all fixed, just need to reinstall the header now.

 

I know it's a pain, but safety wire plain works.

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I would totally do this. #7 and 8 cylinders are all but impossible to reach though.

 

Well I drove it to work today. 80+ mph, heat cranked, tunes mumbling over the usual fox rattles. WOT still sucks, but it's still enjoyable to drive. I'm gonna not mess with it for a while, other than it needs an alignment in the worst kind of way.

Oh, and a hood. Still need to paint/install the hood.

 

Quick note -

My ignition issues don't appear to be fixed. I decided to do a little data logging in the HOV lan--- I mean Mexico yesterday to since I thought my issues were pretty close to fixed. Well, they arent. Downshifted into 4th and let it go. 2500-4000 was pretty lame; lots of noise, not a lot of movement. 4-5000 progressively pulled me back into my seat until I lifted. I thought, "cool, that felt ok."

The issue became apparent when I looked at the datalog -- 22.4psi at 5000 rpm. WHOOOOPS!
(side note: I actually did 2 runs, and both said the same)


Here's the problem - at that psi, the car should have:
a) blown through the clutch
b) had an epic 70+ mph rolling burnout with a brown stripe between the two black ones.
c) all of the above.

I still think the ignition is retarding for some reason. I'm going to unplug the start +12v from the TFI module again and see what happens. Assuming it fixes the timing issue, I need to log the boost again, but I did set up the overboost control in megasquirt to cut out at 18psi. Probably higher than I'll ever need, but hey, what fun is stopping at a low level?

I'll report back with more results soon.

 

All of my TFI stuff is for sale, going DIS. let me know if anyone is interested.

 

Switching from TFI (MSD Digital 6) to LS coils, by switching from an MS1 to an MS3X, was the best move I have ever made with my car. Good luck with yours.

 

Man I really hope so, thank you! What benefit did you see going from MS1 to MS3X?

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I figured out my IAC was bad. It was honking like a goose even when it was unplugged, so I swapped on another one I had. Now the TB whistles (BBK). I'll address that today. I also have a leak on the other header gasket that I didn't replace yet. Luckily, this one is really easy to get to and can be done in <1hr.


I had my wife shoot a video of my timing issues last night so yall can all see that I'm not crazy.
There are 3 white lines on my balancer - 0, 10, 20 degrees. Watch as it revs - it will advance past 20 to about 30 degrees and then crash back down to 10. As soon as I let off the throttle, it goes to 0 before bouncing back up to 20. Weird.


***Watch with the sound OFF, believe me!***

 

After switching over, the car runs and drives a lot smoother (I assume that's because of switching to the coils, and also switching from batch fire to sequential injection). I had a problem with mine not wanting to rev over ~5200 as well. Anything above that, it would start breaking up. I tried a bunch of stuff to fix it, but never figured out the problem. After switching, that problem is completely gone. I actually had to drop my fuel values by ~40%, IIRC, to get the air fuel back where it should be! That was amazing to me.

Also, being able to have A LOT more inputs and outputs is nice as well. I'm able to monitor a lot more things now, and that has already come in handy. Shortly after getting it all together and beginning to play with the tune, I saw that my fuel pressure was dropping in the upper rpm range. I switched to a bigger fuel pump, and all was good. That was something that I never got to see with the old setup, and since my AFR was still ok, I didn't realize that it was a problem.

 

Wow, that is really impressive. Are you running a crank trigger? If so, how did you mount the wheel?

 

Yep. I got everything, wheel included, from DIY Autotune. The wheel is just mounted between the pulley and the balancer. I have a TON of pictures of how I did everything in my build thread. Here's a link to that, and also a shot of the wheel and how I mounted the sensor.

https://www.theturboforums.com/threads/356643-The-inconspicuous-91-Mustang-turbo-build

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Thanks, Wayne! I dig how you mounted your coils. I may rip off your idea there, haha

I thought I had tracked down my issue Christmas Eve, but apparently I didn't after driving it yesterday. I'm going to try one more thing today, but I'm also ordering the rest of the stuff for the DIS swap. I've had about 6 people tell me now that ditching TFI and going DIS solved all of their ignition problems.


What really chaps my ass is that I purposely installed the Megasquirt well ahead of the 351w swap so I could learn it and iron out any kinks. The 302 ran perfect, so it should stand to reason that the MS and factory harness didn't have any issues leading up to the swap. If that's the case, then the only thing that changed within the ignition system was the distributor. I've swapped out 2 distributors and 2 TFI modules, so I'm honestly at a loss.

What's even more maddening is I can't get mad and call anything junk or a piece of s*** because, well... I built it all, so all i'd be doing is insulting myself, LOL