racecougar
Registered User
Where to begin...
Well, I was pretty happy with the performance of the car early on last season, and then I went for a ride in David Neibert's 1.7L AR powered 91 SC...wow. I had been leaning towards just dropping in a higher stall torque converter, but after that ride I simply had to have a twin-screw SC sitting on top of the DOHC. And so it began. I waited anxiously for Kenne Bell's new "big bore" line of twin-screws, and I bought a 2.1L unit as soon as it became available.
That was back in November. I drove the car around until the end of Christmas, then started tearing it all apart.
While tearing it down, I happened to notice at least one reason why the car was only pulling high 13's at the track. The passenger side IMRC's were stuck closed (the driverside were fully operational). It was at that point that I decided that I would not be putting IMRC's back on. I purchased a pair of 96-97 Cobra IMRC's (which are necessary to mate the blower manifold to the heads), and turned them into IMRC deletes.
I also decided to do the "even flow cooling mod" while I had everything apart. In stock form, coolant in the rear of the driverside head has no outlet to return to the radiator, which in high performance applications tends to "cook" the #7 and #8 cylinders. To remedy this, I replaced the upper freeze plug at the rear of the driverside head with a fitting, and tied that into the heater core return line.
The blower manifold and the driverside IMRC delete required a bit of clearancing to clear the fitting, but nothing major. The alternator and the front of the blower manifold also required a bit of work to get them to clear one another. I stuck a set of 42lb. injectors on a 96-98 Cobra fuel rail, and finally was able to set the blower in place.
After that it was just little stuff...oh, you know, rewiring the engine harness, getting the '03 Cobra radiator/fan to fit, vacuum lines, finding a temporary location for the boost and fuel pressure gauges, making an intake tube, getting the old CAI box to fit around said intake tube, getting an initial tune for the EEC, etc., etc.
Finally, David Neibert and another friend stopped by on February 10th and witnessed the first firing of the engine with the blower on top. We were completely shocked with how well it started up and ran...no stumbling, erratic idle, hiccups...nothing. Big props go to David Dalke (XR7 Dave) for both the initial tune and the ongoing tuning of the car.
This video was shot the next day (Feb. 11th):
Once it was up and running, it was time to move onto a few other mods. First of which was an oil accumulator setup. I'm running a 1.5 quart Moroso oil accumulator with a electric solenoid valve and a one-way flow restrictor. The accumulator allows me to flip a switch inside the cabin to prime the engine with oil pressure before firing the engine.
I wasn't finished wiring it and cleaning everything up when that picture was taken, so disregard the mess. I also hooked up an inline oil seperator into the PCV-to-inlet plenum line to reduce the amount of oil being sucked into the engine.
I started datalogging everything last weekend. Just babying it on the short trip I took it on yesterday, I could already tell that this is a totally different car. I can't wait to get all of the little tuning bugs worked out of it so I'll finally be able to get into boost with it.
And that brings us to today:
We're currently working on a new hood, as the stock hood will obviously not clear any longer. I'll post up pictures of it when we have that done...you can't expect me to give up all of my secrets. We're also working on a driveshaft safety loop, a better stereo, and of course tuning.
Big thanks to my family, especially my dad, for helping out with everything. Needless to say, it sure was a lot of fun sticking a blower designed for a 96-98 Cobra on a 94 Mark 8 engine in a 90 XR7 with a Dalke-tuned 97 Tbird EEC and a J-modded 94 4R70W with a 99 valvebody and 97 controls. You should have heard the long pause on the line when I told the guy at Kenne Bell this when I was explaining why I didn't want their chip for my EEC.
-Rod
Well, I was pretty happy with the performance of the car early on last season, and then I went for a ride in David Neibert's 1.7L AR powered 91 SC...wow. I had been leaning towards just dropping in a higher stall torque converter, but after that ride I simply had to have a twin-screw SC sitting on top of the DOHC. And so it began. I waited anxiously for Kenne Bell's new "big bore" line of twin-screws, and I bought a 2.1L unit as soon as it became available.
That was back in November. I drove the car around until the end of Christmas, then started tearing it all apart.
While tearing it down, I happened to notice at least one reason why the car was only pulling high 13's at the track. The passenger side IMRC's were stuck closed (the driverside were fully operational). It was at that point that I decided that I would not be putting IMRC's back on. I purchased a pair of 96-97 Cobra IMRC's (which are necessary to mate the blower manifold to the heads), and turned them into IMRC deletes.
I also decided to do the "even flow cooling mod" while I had everything apart. In stock form, coolant in the rear of the driverside head has no outlet to return to the radiator, which in high performance applications tends to "cook" the #7 and #8 cylinders. To remedy this, I replaced the upper freeze plug at the rear of the driverside head with a fitting, and tied that into the heater core return line.
The blower manifold and the driverside IMRC delete required a bit of clearancing to clear the fitting, but nothing major. The alternator and the front of the blower manifold also required a bit of work to get them to clear one another. I stuck a set of 42lb. injectors on a 96-98 Cobra fuel rail, and finally was able to set the blower in place.
After that it was just little stuff...oh, you know, rewiring the engine harness, getting the '03 Cobra radiator/fan to fit, vacuum lines, finding a temporary location for the boost and fuel pressure gauges, making an intake tube, getting the old CAI box to fit around said intake tube, getting an initial tune for the EEC, etc., etc.
Finally, David Neibert and another friend stopped by on February 10th and witnessed the first firing of the engine with the blower on top. We were completely shocked with how well it started up and ran...no stumbling, erratic idle, hiccups...nothing. Big props go to David Dalke (XR7 Dave) for both the initial tune and the ongoing tuning of the car.
This video was shot the next day (Feb. 11th):
Once it was up and running, it was time to move onto a few other mods. First of which was an oil accumulator setup. I'm running a 1.5 quart Moroso oil accumulator with a electric solenoid valve and a one-way flow restrictor. The accumulator allows me to flip a switch inside the cabin to prime the engine with oil pressure before firing the engine.
I wasn't finished wiring it and cleaning everything up when that picture was taken, so disregard the mess. I also hooked up an inline oil seperator into the PCV-to-inlet plenum line to reduce the amount of oil being sucked into the engine.
I started datalogging everything last weekend. Just babying it on the short trip I took it on yesterday, I could already tell that this is a totally different car. I can't wait to get all of the little tuning bugs worked out of it so I'll finally be able to get into boost with it.
And that brings us to today:
We're currently working on a new hood, as the stock hood will obviously not clear any longer. I'll post up pictures of it when we have that done...you can't expect me to give up all of my secrets. We're also working on a driveshaft safety loop, a better stereo, and of course tuning.
Big thanks to my family, especially my dad, for helping out with everything. Needless to say, it sure was a lot of fun sticking a blower designed for a 96-98 Cobra on a 94 Mark 8 engine in a 90 XR7 with a Dalke-tuned 97 Tbird EEC and a J-modded 94 4R70W with a 99 valvebody and 97 controls. You should have heard the long pause on the line when I told the guy at Kenne Bell this when I was explaining why I didn't want their chip for my EEC.
-Rod