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Motorsports "POS" Mustang Cobra Restoration Journal |
| #78: August 23rd, 2012 - The POS roars to life.... (and leaks all over the garage floor) | ||
| After
getting the MAF/Air filter housing reinstalled and bolting on the new
Dynomax off-road X-pipe and air tube, I could finally start it up. I
hit the key and the engine started up right away. It was running a
little rough, as the timing had not been set yet. I checked the gages and saw I had no oil pressure! I shut down the engine right away and grabbed my flashlight to look for the reason. Sure enough, I forgot to connect the wire to the oil pressure sending unit. With that resolved, I started the engine again and this time the oil pressure was fine! I ran the engine for several minutes while adding additional water to the radiator as required. I went around the engine with my infra-red thermometer to check the individual header pipe temperatures to verifying that all the cylinders were firing. As the engines water temperature increased, water started coming out of the radiator, but I did not see any movement of water across the radiators cooling rows. I thought that the thermostat may be stuck, so I shut down the engine. I still had a leak from the thermostat housing that I needed to fix, so after the engine cooled, I unbolted the housing to check out the thermostat. To my surprise, it was totally caked with crud. This was a brand new thermostat just after about 5 minutes of running! | ||
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| The
intake manifold had a pile of the same crud piled up in the area behind
the thermostat. Whether or not it prevented the water from flowing, I
don't know. The intake and heads had been throughly cleaned by the machine shop, while I had washed out the block and radiator myself using over-the-counter cleaners and a water hose. My guess is I am the one at fault. After cleaning the mating surfaces on the housing and intake and removing the built-up crud, I reinstalled the housing without the thermostat, as I wanted to completely flush the cooling system to clean it out. I waited overnight before filling up the cooling system to allow the RTV sealant on the housing to cure, so in the meantime, I went ahead and bolted on the Dynomax Ultra-Flow cat-back system I purchase a couple of years ago. It's a 2 1/2 inch, system with Stainless steel Ultra-Flow mufflers and tips. It installed without any cutting or tweaking of any kind. All the hangers fit fine and the system was clamped together. Once the bumper is installed, I may need to do some final adjustments at that time. | ||
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| The next day I filled the cooling system and added a bottle of cooling system flush. I fired up the engine and while bringing the car up to operating temperature, I adjust the ignition timing to 15 degrees BTDC. The car runs so nice with the timing set and the exhaust on! After getting the car up to temperature, I shut it down and drained the cooling system by disconnecting the lower radiator hose. I then disconnected the upper hose and force water from the hose through the radiator as well as the motor. I then started the engine with water from the hose flowing into the upper hose and into the motor and ran it for a couple of minutes. This is sometimes referred to as a 'reverse flush' of the cooling system. After the flushing was complete, I reconnected all the hoses and filled the cooling system and fired up the engine again. Now I had nice flow through the radiator and no crud. To commemorate the event, I sat the video camera in front of the car: (The sound in the background of the video is all the shop exhaust fans running) However, not all is peaches and cream. There was a puddle of fuel under the car at the back of the motor. Turns out my fuel rail is leaking. This actually, is not a surprise. This fuel rail use to be on my race car. I took it off because it was leaking. You're probably thinking why I put it on the POS if I knew it was leaking on the other car? Well, I did not know for sure it was the rail that was leaking on the race car. When I put the new rail on the race car, I changed the injector and regulator o-rings too. I was never sure exactly where the leak came from until now. I have purchased an new rail on eBay and it's on the way to me now. While waiting for the new fuel rail to arrive, I went ahead and took care of some other task. First I got the tires and wheel mounted and balanced. The wheels are 17x9 Cobra R wheels from Ford Racing that I purchased several years ago. The tires are new P255/45R17 Kumho Ecsta MX's. Some people don't like running Korean tires, but I used Kumhos on my race car for many years, so I know they make a quality product. | ||
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| Before I could bolt on the tires and wheels, I still needed to bleed the rear brakes. Once again, I got a lot of air and very little fluid. And, repeating what happened with the fronts, after sitting for a while, I had 3 puddles of brake fluid on the garage floor. The fix is the same as the front too. I have new lines on the way to me right now. Once I get them installed and the system bled, I'll put on the tires and take the car for a spin down the street... | ||
All images are property of Titanium Motorsports and may not be used without permission.Last Modified: August 27th, 2012. | ||