It's all powder coated. The valve covers were a pain in the ass. The teal is a base/top coat... So I had to spray/bake the whole valve cover with chrome and then wipe everything off leaving only the inset letters and stripe. Then do it all over again with the teal. On the second cover, I tried masking it all off, but the powder still goes everywhere and is a bitch to clean. Im happy with how they turned out, considering this was my first time powder coating.

And since this photo was taken, I went back over the intake with a clear coat and it has the same gloss as the valve covers now.
* the valve covers have 4 layers of powder on them!

 

Dang I think I need to buy a dedicated oven now..

 

Buy mine. I’ve had my fun with this shit, haha

 

Lol did you use the kitchen oven or buy a dedicated one?

 

Bought one of the local for sale page for $35 then spent $30 to make a pig tail to plug into my 240v wall outlet. I think I’m all in, including powder for $300. Not too bad.

 

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Little more done. Need more time!

 

Wow!

 

Got more stuff done, even more than this picture reflects. Really just down to waiting on plug wires to show up and fill it with fluids. I've got the cam sync oriented, Measured the offset for the trigger wheel, pressure tested the fuel system. I'm excited!

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Not much to update here, I'm not getting any spark at the coils, also found that I modded the MS for a VR sensor when I have a hall effect sensor. Fixed that last night. Need time to do more troubleshooting. Hard to figure shit out in 30 minute intervals each night.

 

Yeah you kind of just need a full weekend to fully sort stuff out. lol seems like the first start will be very soon though

 

I HAVE SPARK!

For whatever reason, I was only getting spark on the Spark D (MS has 4 spark outputs, A->D) for all of the coils. After opening the case, I found one strand of wire had come loose from the spark A output and was touching spark B. After consulting with a buddy, I rigged up an LED and used Tunerstudio's coil testing function to test fire the coils, and I have all 4 outputs sending spark like they should be. Unfortunately, that's as far as I got... My wife came home and that was all she wrote last night.

 

Ah, wish I knew. I have some jimstims that you could have used. lol

 

I ended up pulling my coil harness I made completely out of the car last night to go through it and make sure I didn't screw something up. Surprisingly, I didn't wire anything there wrong. So I plugged it back in and went through each of the 8 plugs with a volt meter... All 8 of the signal ground wires back to the computer had a rock solid 5 volts.... Uhhh wut?!

Turns out my 1990 mustang has a 1991+ engine harness in it.

I soldered the SG to the correct grey/red wire, but then ran out of time. I have a few more checks and test to run, but I can't think of anything else that could be wrong, short of having a set of fried coils.....

Famous last words, right?

 

Got the grounding sorted and finished my plug wires last night. (OOOooooo, AAAAAhhhhhh)

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Car didn't start though. I took a few data logs and sent them off to a buddy to see if he can help me figure it out. I KNOW I have spark and fuel, so either the crank trigger isn't working right, or the timing offset is way off.

 

Apologies for shooting this in potato mode.

 

Well, the crank trigger wasn’t working because I had it wired up incorrectly like the coils - the ground wasn’t a ground. So, I fixed that and turned it over to get another log and it tried to start!

Now the problem is the timing is way out and I need someone to help me crank it over while I use the timing light and adjust the offset to make the commanded and actual timing line up. Should run then.

 

Small update -

I whiffed on the trigger wheel install and the runout was too much. Looking into a few options to remedy the situation, but not much hurry. I'm busy as hell with the baby, job, and everything else. So maybe soon it'll run. I still miss driving it but I just can't seem to get into the garage to work on it much.

 

Having a crank wheel issue like that is why I have held off on trying to set something up for a 24X on my SBC. From what I've read the run out has to be something like .010 which is fairly precise.

 

Yeah that’s pretty tight. I have a plan to try and fix it myself. I don’t have much spare cash these days so I’m slim on options. Sucks to get 99.9% there and then die on the finish line haha

 

What gap do you have to the wheel? Is it adjustable? Which sensor are you using, the stock Ford or a Cherry Red? Did you follow the manual carefully on the cam sync setup? I thought I did and fought it for two days before slowing down enough to read it and fully understand it. Fired right up after that. Also, man have to change polarity on the VR to get it all right.