XR7 Phillip
Registered User
Hi everybody. For those of you who don't know me already, my name is Phillip Dalke and I am the son of the famous David Dalke. I am 17 years old and a junior in high school.
My dad and I purchased Mark Kovalcik's cougar back in the summer of 2009 (I had just turned 15) with no powertrain. After that I got to watch it sit in the driveway. It sat there (about a year) till there was sufficient space in the shop and I got the motivation to start this long project. Well, it wasn't originally planned as a long project, but that's just how sc's seem to turn out.
Once it was in the shop, one of the first things I did was rebuild a 5-speed transmission for the car so I could swap the auto for a manual. After that we got to work on a motor for the car. We ended up getting a stock motor from Corey Binks that supposedly only needed headgaskets. Back at the shop I tore the motor down and found some not-so-nice wear on the cylinder walls. Dad decided that wasn't acceptable and decided the motor would have to be rebuilt. In the end it was rebuilt with good used parts that were found in SCU inventory, including pistons (mix-matched set), forged connecting rods (four were bent and had to be straightened, one on which may still have an S-curve in it, as it's shorter that the rest), a cam with .600 lift (originally it had been damaged, but Dave worked his magic and polished it to be acceptable), heads that are not ported, but do have a nice, 5-angle valve grind and big valves (originally one of the valves did not seat properly, so we just ran it hoping it would work itself out), and 1.73 rocker arms (more than half had flat spots on the rollers, which had to be replaced). The motor is topped off with a ported early model blower with coated rotors, a raised top, and a 5% pulley. It runs really strong for a pile of leftover parts.
Back to the car itself. While we had the motor out, we noticed it had several cracks in the firewall, testament to the many aggressive launches the car had experienced. We decided it was best to fix them now while the motor was out so I got to work taking the dash out so they could be welded. Once the dash was out and the carpet/underlay was peeled back we could get to the bare metal. However, that turned out to be more of a curse than anything else.. Under the carpet we found rust...lots of it! There was no way we could put the carpet back down over top of it, so began the tedious job of rust repair. Out came the seats, front and back, the carpet, and wiring. There holes under both the driver and passenger's feet, as well as the floor right in front of the back seat on the driver side. Eventually all of the cancer was cut out and the unibody repaired. It was also at this time the firewall was repaired, the pedals swapped, and the wires for the trunk-mounted battery rerouted. That took the longest of any work we did to the car. Dad says I'm lucky I'm his son because he won't do rust repair every again for anyone. Thanks Dad!
Fast forward and the motor is in the car, along with the trans, driveshaft and 2:73 gears. We also swapped the mustang hubs for Supercoupe ones because the wheels I decided I wanted on the car were Supercoupe bolt pattern. The car also has the 13" brake upgrade, along with blue tokico shocks and chassis bracing.
Finally the car fired up for the first time in many years late January, but car was far from drivable. First on the list of problems turned out to be the clutch switch. The car would want to die when you put it in gear. Eventually we found our wiring error and solved that problem. When we finally tried to drive the car, it would lurch after shifting. The computer told us that the TPS, ACT, and ECT sensors were not working, specifically when the car was acting up. After some diagnostics and tracing the wiring diagrams, we solved the problem by adding an extra ground to that circuit. Then, Dad drove it for a couple of days before the ABS kicked out. Dad said my problem was either a bad pressure switch or bad pump. I really didn't want to have to change either so I got kinda mad and depressed with the car because I had worked so hard and so long on the car and it still wasn't drivable. I took a break for a while and today I decided I would tackle the problem. First, I tested for power at the pump, and low-and-behold, after wiggling the connectors the pump worked! Yeah! So I cleaned all the connections and added some grease and hopefully that solves the problem. Now hopefully, after a year and half, my car can be done.
Recently we got the car on the dyno and it put down some pretty impressive numbers for having an early blower and stock intercooler IMO. It is officially faster than my father’s car. See dyno sheets below.
First on the list of upgrades include a FMIC, some gauges (probably oil pressure and AFR), and a stereo system.
Wow...that was rather long winded. Thanks to anyone who took the time to read my story. I look forward to sharing information and experiences, as well as general bs-ing with everyone.
Thanks again,
Phillip
My dad and I purchased Mark Kovalcik's cougar back in the summer of 2009 (I had just turned 15) with no powertrain. After that I got to watch it sit in the driveway. It sat there (about a year) till there was sufficient space in the shop and I got the motivation to start this long project. Well, it wasn't originally planned as a long project, but that's just how sc's seem to turn out.
Once it was in the shop, one of the first things I did was rebuild a 5-speed transmission for the car so I could swap the auto for a manual. After that we got to work on a motor for the car. We ended up getting a stock motor from Corey Binks that supposedly only needed headgaskets. Back at the shop I tore the motor down and found some not-so-nice wear on the cylinder walls. Dad decided that wasn't acceptable and decided the motor would have to be rebuilt. In the end it was rebuilt with good used parts that were found in SCU inventory, including pistons (mix-matched set), forged connecting rods (four were bent and had to be straightened, one on which may still have an S-curve in it, as it's shorter that the rest), a cam with .600 lift (originally it had been damaged, but Dave worked his magic and polished it to be acceptable), heads that are not ported, but do have a nice, 5-angle valve grind and big valves (originally one of the valves did not seat properly, so we just ran it hoping it would work itself out), and 1.73 rocker arms (more than half had flat spots on the rollers, which had to be replaced). The motor is topped off with a ported early model blower with coated rotors, a raised top, and a 5% pulley. It runs really strong for a pile of leftover parts.
Back to the car itself. While we had the motor out, we noticed it had several cracks in the firewall, testament to the many aggressive launches the car had experienced. We decided it was best to fix them now while the motor was out so I got to work taking the dash out so they could be welded. Once the dash was out and the carpet/underlay was peeled back we could get to the bare metal. However, that turned out to be more of a curse than anything else.. Under the carpet we found rust...lots of it! There was no way we could put the carpet back down over top of it, so began the tedious job of rust repair. Out came the seats, front and back, the carpet, and wiring. There holes under both the driver and passenger's feet, as well as the floor right in front of the back seat on the driver side. Eventually all of the cancer was cut out and the unibody repaired. It was also at this time the firewall was repaired, the pedals swapped, and the wires for the trunk-mounted battery rerouted. That took the longest of any work we did to the car. Dad says I'm lucky I'm his son because he won't do rust repair every again for anyone. Thanks Dad!
Fast forward and the motor is in the car, along with the trans, driveshaft and 2:73 gears. We also swapped the mustang hubs for Supercoupe ones because the wheels I decided I wanted on the car were Supercoupe bolt pattern. The car also has the 13" brake upgrade, along with blue tokico shocks and chassis bracing.
Finally the car fired up for the first time in many years late January, but car was far from drivable. First on the list of problems turned out to be the clutch switch. The car would want to die when you put it in gear. Eventually we found our wiring error and solved that problem. When we finally tried to drive the car, it would lurch after shifting. The computer told us that the TPS, ACT, and ECT sensors were not working, specifically when the car was acting up. After some diagnostics and tracing the wiring diagrams, we solved the problem by adding an extra ground to that circuit. Then, Dad drove it for a couple of days before the ABS kicked out. Dad said my problem was either a bad pressure switch or bad pump. I really didn't want to have to change either so I got kinda mad and depressed with the car because I had worked so hard and so long on the car and it still wasn't drivable. I took a break for a while and today I decided I would tackle the problem. First, I tested for power at the pump, and low-and-behold, after wiggling the connectors the pump worked! Yeah! So I cleaned all the connections and added some grease and hopefully that solves the problem. Now hopefully, after a year and half, my car can be done.
Recently we got the car on the dyno and it put down some pretty impressive numbers for having an early blower and stock intercooler IMO. It is officially faster than my father’s car. See dyno sheets below.
First on the list of upgrades include a FMIC, some gauges (probably oil pressure and AFR), and a stereo system.
Wow...that was rather long winded. Thanks to anyone who took the time to read my story. I look forward to sharing information and experiences, as well as general bs-ing with everyone.
Thanks again,
Phillip
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