The 83GT

OBX BBF up and forward "turbo" headers.  Haha.  I think they looked more like boat headers. This is one mounted on a head upside down.

The shorty BBC headers showed up the other day. Not bad for a $139 set of headers. A quickie looky shows they will probably work very good.

Adapters seem to fit the headers as intended.

Just looking at this, a guy could dang near just drill the BBC flange with the BBF pattern. Some bolts might be impossible to tighten though.

Missed a pic

I tapped the BBC holes and countersunk the BBF holes. I have some shallow socket head bolts ordered. Very happy with how it is all coming together.

A few more.

Where am I headed with all this?

NA for now. With Raceweek coming up in June, I don't want to dive into a full turbo build. I do have 2 brand new GT45's that are just itching to go under this hood.

As bad as I hate it, it will have fender exit exhaust. I have long maintained that fender exhaust is just people being lazy and I am definitely being lazy here. Sort of. I could try to fix and reuse the old Hooker headers, but they are pretty beat and they take up a TON of room under the car by the transmission. Nobody really makes BBF in a Foxbody headers anymore. Used ones are scarce and I have zero motivation to build a custom set (or pay for a custom set!)

Current line of thinking is crossing the exhaust side to side and running a small chambered muffler on each side to knock the sound down.

I think crossing side to side will also make hot side piping easier to route later.

Whoo hoo here we go!

Engine is out and on the stand. I cleaned the piston tops a little but the bores all look fantastic. I built this short block back in 2015, I believe.

While the engine is out I'm also going to swap back to my PG Raceshop 4000 converter. The current Hays is a 2800 and it's just too tight.

I made a quickie cross member that bolts in underneath the transmission to support the front of the transmission while the engine is out. I don't know why I haven't thought of this before because it works great.

Nice !

After Raceweek, the #2 plug looked terrible. It was all gunked up. I figured out what the problem was. The #2 exhaust port is the only one on that bank that is connected to the exhaust crossover passage. I did not block the crossover on the intake face with a piece of sheet metal like I normally do. The exhaust heat finally cooked the intake gasket and it started sucking oil from engine valley. The crossover passage is all oily and gooey inside. Lesson learned for future stock head builds.

I set a head on with no gasket and just started roughly looking at rocker geometry and P2V clearance.  

These SCJ heads usually require a dedicated piston.  However, the pistons I have in this thing have a pretty decent dish.  I rotated the engine over checking to see if there was valve travel about evey 15 degrees. With the cam that is still in it and no head gasket, there is still tons of P2V clearance.  I will check it with clay after the new cam is installed, but it seems like no fly cutting will be needed.  This is a big relief.

I am going to have to get some different pushrods.  The one's I have (from previous projects) look to be a little short.  

I swapped the converter, finished the steering shaft, added a couple of gussets and finish welded the engine mount, shaped the aluminum engine plate, drained the block, and pulled all the injectors and inspected them.

I got lucky with with the steering shaft because I welded part of it before I checked how it should be clocked. By sheer luck I got it right.​

Also, if you don't have a portaband, you need one. Best tool I have bought lately.

Front plate turned out nice after shaping.

I'm ready to stab the new cam and check p2v clearance. The old cam and lifters looked perfect.

I pulled out the lifters I bought some time ago and was happy to see I bought the better ones that have a snap ring. I was thinking I bought the one's with the little wire retainer.

Slathered up the cam and poked it in. Then I put clay on the piston to check p2v clearance.

I have a hyd lifter that I made solid for this task. I put an old head gasket on, and snugged down the head bolts.

I started with the intake. I spun the motor over twice, then did the exhaust side the same. I popped the head off and was surprised at what I saw.

The intake didn't touch the clay at all. The exhaust did though, and it barely touched the edge of the dish in the piston. Boo.

This is surprising enough that I am going recheck p2v and degree the cam to make sure everything is happening like the cam card says. This cam is supposed to be ground 2 deg advanced, but the cam card does not include this information. With the exhaust being that close, it makes me think this cam is retarded a bit.

I popped the degree wheel and piston stop on, found TDC and then checked the cam position. I put the cam specs into two cam event calculators and both said the intake opening at 0.050" should be 12 degrees BTDC.

I checked it twice and both times it came up 10 degrees BTDC. So the cam as installed is retarded 2°. The lower gear is actually in the "4 deg advanced" position so I am going to have to get a set with more keyways in order to sort this out. That is ok seeing that I have been running this timing set since 2009 or so. Haha.

Header adapters are looking good.

Good afternoon in the shop. I blended the BBF side of the header adapters. That took a while because I kept having to wait for the air compressor to catch up.

Poked the new cam back in, cleaned the block decks and mocked up the adapters with the SCJ heads. I thought I might need to trim the BBC header flanges a little for spark plug clearance, but the SCJ plugs are more centered, so they will work great as is. New timing set and pushrods will be here Tuesday.

I also started re-routing the fuel line from the back of the engine bay up to the front.

BigBlockRanger wrote:Good afternoon in the shop. I blended the BBF side of the header adapters. That took a while because I kept having to wait for the air compressor to catch up.

Poked the new cam back in, cleaned the block decks and mocked up the adapters with the SCJ heads. I thought I might need to trim the BBC header flanges a little for spark plug clearance, but the SCJ plugs are more centered, so they will work great as is. New timing set and pushrods will be here Tuesday.

I also started re-routing the fuel line from the back of the engine bay up to the front.

Is that the Ford Racing 460 Fox Body Swap Truck Oil Pan and if so is that the Oil Pan you have been using?That's what i have on my 460 bought a brand new Canton Pan but don't know if i will ever use it i have it for sale on here!!

Yep. I added a simple baffle to it back in 2015. I never really had any problem with it before the baffle, but figured it wouldn't hurt.

Popped the new timing chain on, degreed the cam using the intake centerline method and it is spot on.

After that, I put some clay on the No.1 piston and checked piston to valve clearance. The valves didn't even touch the clay! I added more clay, and they still didn't touch, so we are good to go. No SCJ valve notches needed!

BigBlockRanger wrote:Popped the new timing chain on, degreed the cam using the intake centerline method and it is spot on.

After that, I put some clay on the No.1 piston and checked piston to valve clearance.  The valves didn't even touch the clay!  I added more clay, and they still didn't touch, so we are good to go.  No SCJ valve notches needed!  

So is the plan to assemble it with the SCJ Heads and run it N/A in the Mustang?

Yep. It will be 11.6:1 so it will be N/A for Raceweek this year.

After that, I will decide where I want this project to go.  The current intent is to eventually put 2 GT45's on it (maybe not this shortblock though), so I am kinda doing things now (forward dump headers, etc.) to facilitate that later.

This thing is gonna be snappy. Calculator shows 200psi cranking. The original 545 I built for this car was 185ish. That motor went low 10.40's n/a all day long.  It had a little more cam and TFS Street heads.   I don't expect this one to run mid 10's but a low 11 or 10.999 would be fine. Haha.

Heads on and torqued. (140 lb.ft.!)

Rocker studs swapped, pushrods dropped in and rockers set in place. This is the part I like!

And a pic to document that I installed the head gaskets correctly!

BigBlockRanger wrote:Yep. It will be 11.6:1 so it will be N/A for Raceweek this year.

After that, I will decide where I want this project to go.  The current intent is to eventually put 2 GT45's on it (maybe not this shortblock though), so I am kinda doing things now (forward dump headers, etc.) to facilitate that later.

This thing is gonna be snappy. Calculator shows 200psi cranking. The original 545 I built for this car was 185ish. That motor went low 10.40's n/a all day long.  It had a little more cam and TFS Street heads.   I don't expect this one to run mid 10's but a low 11 or 10.999 would be fine. Haha.

What cubic inch is this engine?

It's a 552.

BigBlockRanger wrote:It's a 552.

following this thread would like to see your deal once you get the twins setup on it . would you go with blowthrough or would you efi , what type of fuel you planning to run . methonal or like q16 if you turbo it up .