I have but on engine masters they compare one combination with the different header sizes what they don’t do is show the differences of overlap on all the tube sizes also the difference between tri-y and long tube on an smaller displacement engine where the torque peak is around 4500 RPM let alone the difference between dyno and chassis headers performance. There can easily be a 35 to 40hp loss in header performance before normal parasitic loss.
I am referring to season 5 episode 18 where they literally ran a 1 3/4 Schoenfeld dyno header against a 1 5/8 Doug’s Tri Y (2.5” collector and all) on a 383 in the upper mid 400 hp range. The Tri Y hung well with the dyno header - within 5. The rest were worse. Fluke or ligit I don’t know - a lot of things can be done I reckon to convey the results you want to convey on TV so I guess grain of salt. I’m not too worried and honestly I am not going to find a 1 3/4 4 into 1 that fits worth a darn in this car. BTDT. A long time ago I went through like 3 or 4 different sets to find what would fit best. I would have kept the ones I had (hooker I believe) but having them coated was about the price of new coated headers and they were dented and clearanced pretty hard so were rather ugly… so I guess it doesn’t matter if I lose 5 or I lose 25. If my dyno guy would have had the provisions to run the Tri Y I had I would have but it didn’t adapt well to his exhaust / muffler system. So kind of limited to what fits and works…. Either way upgrading to a toploader and 9” is directionally correct so I don’t have to spend more $ down the road.
Buttoned the engine back up after getting headers in place. Added a phenolic 1” spacer between carb and intake. It likely won’t have any negatives. The RPM intake seems to generally respond well to a 1” open spacer. This pro-systems carb though uses a 5/16 thread for air cleaner stud. So I grabbed a piece of 5/16 round stock and fired up the lathe and whipped one out. I have a 4” Wix element - good thing for the teardrop. Onto the cooling system adventure. It’s been another challenge.. Even found this surfing the eBay. Figured it would be fitting on the air cleaner.
Geez been a minute since I updated this thread… not a ton has happened since last July. I upholstered my seats, created new door panels and bought wheels and tires and built a 9”…. So let’s catch up I guess… It took some time to figure out the radiator hose situation. The upper was easy but the lower was a bit more challenging. NPD mustang upper , cut to length. The lower I wasted a lot of money on figuring out and destroying a few hoses. In the end a 13” Gates flex hose is all I found to work in the space I had with a drivers side inlet. After thinking long and hard I decided to put my electric fan on the front as a pusher. Fabbed up some brackets and bolted it all up. When you do that then hood latch / valence support bracket no longer fits. Good thing I had a spare Even ponied up for a Moroso overflow tank
Fast forward to September… I had not worked much on the ole girl since early Summer. Decided it was time to figure out the rearend housing and assemble the third member. So I found myself with some time on a Friday evening so I assembled my 9” third member just to get all of these boxes out of my way! This thing is a Yukon case, Aluminum Daytona support, solid pinion spacer, billet 1350 yoke, Motive Perf 4.11 gear set and I have a good friend who donated a NIB 31 spline 3.25+ Detroit Locker to the cause. The case needed to be clearanced for the gear. The Gears couldn’t achieve the “desired” pattern on both sides. My understanding is that it is a crapshoot these days with gears and a lot of them are like this so they are “quiet”. This straight from a tech spec @ Eaton torque control div FWIW. Even broke out the enforcer to put 200 ft-lb on that pinion nut Quite a bit of clearance needed for the 4.11s. QP was like yeah, you often need to do this… well ok then… Running the ole pattern. The pinion depth was spot on at 1.029” Good enough for the girl I go with..
The upholstery journey… I pulled everything out of my small storage trailer that had been holding parts because I sold it to a friend. The front seats and front fenders and some other odds and ends were still in there. So, that just kind of led to stripping the front seats down. What a nasty mess! The drivers side bucket back had at some point over the last 25 years become home to a chipmunk or mouse or something and was chock full of nest material, empty walnut shells, etc. NASTY! An hour or two later I had everything stripped down to the frames. Surprisingly the foams are still decent. Burlap was gone and the passenger seat upright was looking pretty nasty. First thing I noticed was I have a broken seat spring on one base and one that is yielded on the other. The back of the drivers seat needs a bit of patch work and I am missing one of the back pivot bolts…. A bag of sand through the sandblaster cleaned them up enough to repair them and then shoot with rust encapsulater. Pics of the carnage… or as I was calling it at the time - the 7th circle of Hell… just happy no rodents came scurrying out to nibble on my digits.
When it came time to price interior components it was a bit of sticker shock. if I just bought all new stuff from foams to covers to door panels, headliner, dash pad, carpet, a few trim pieces - from NW Interiors I was very close to $4k - holy moly. I planned to replace the foams. I am sure I can sell the old to offset cost since NEW is $275 / bucket. Door panel sets are $800. I have my originals. I just spend $54 on 2 yards of red heat pleated vinyl and will buy a 1/8”x4x8 sheet of Masonite from Home Depot for $13 and see if I can recreate these for 1/8 the cost of new. I reckon I will need to pull the backing off and remove some of the padding. I’ve pretty much done everything else on this thing with my own two hands so what learning to make upholstery, right? Onward and upward! I also have my original headliner and boards and see I can buy moon crater vinyl by the yard for about $20… sure beats $400 for a new headliner…. Vinyl material - https://www.greatlakesskipper.com/track ... nQMXQgMxuM
Last October Quick Performance delivered everything for my new rearend. They even threw in a lubelocker gasket at no charge that I had inquired about. The only issue is that I had purchased Moser axles with 1/2” x 3” studs since I am not sure I will use wheel spacers or not and 2” were delivered in the axles. Quick call and the right ones are on the way. Very pleasant experience overall, except for the need to severely clearance the Yukon housing to clear the ring gear… For the housing I opted for a fabbed housing, fill and drain plugs, reenforced perches with additional holes 1” forward to move rearend back if I chose, late style big bearing ends, 1/4” wall axle tubes… the 331 shouldn’t be able to break this one…
On a Sunday in Mid October I got ambitious and decided to try my hand at making interior panels. Mine have seen better days and I have no desire to reuse them. Interesting enough I have multiple people wanting to buy them so there is that… Look at how these are made it is pretty clear it was through a dielectric heat embossing process as the heated seams have stitching embossed in them. Probably why they are $800 a set, new. For about $100 I purchased a 2 yards of heat pleated vinyl with what looked like minimum fill, a few pieces of 2’ x 4’ x 1/8” hardboard and some 3M 90 spray adhesive. Figured what’s the worst that can happen? If it goes well, I save $700, if not, what’s another $100 at this point in the game. So I grabbed my rear panels and a piece of hardboard and traced them out. I wanted to make a dimensioned pattern too so that I could recreate in the future if needed / wanted. What I found is that nothing is square or really consistent on those. The top and front edge are an 89 degree angle and over 18 inches that throws the leg off fairly far. I cut the patterns out and test fitted them and had to trim here and there. One thing you will notice is that the vinyl doesn’t wrap around the the edges except for where visible on the cyclone. I figured heck I will at least wrap top, front and rear and make it look somewhat professional… but what I discovered is that if you do the top, the panel won’t fit into the trim channel that secures it.. Not much of an issue but I want to come up with a method to heat seal it right along the edge rather than leave the pleating open for things to make a home in. So here are a few photos from my first attempt at making interior door panels…. At least most of it is hidden by the back seat…
Copied what i did on rear filler panels to make door panels. Was pleased. Then seat covers arrived from NW Classics. Front and back covers and seat backs. $1090 to my door. No listing wires included and they are a shade or two darker than my door panels. Almost a blood red. Foams took a few weeks more to arrive. Was told I would receive Falcon foams, they are different and I will need to do some work to them… the Comet foam is quite different from a Falcon… In the mean time I got listing wires made and I got seat frames ready to accept foams - burlap, batting, listing wires, etc….
Waiting on foams for seats I spent my time getting the frames ready to accept foam and covers when stuff arrived. Not sure I was doing anything correctly at this point but thank God for YouTube, though no two people do anything the same way…. I am sure it will all be just fine. Beats the horse hair that came off of these things, what a nasty mess. Btw, after sandblasting and repairing frames I coated them in Eastwood rust encapsulator. Burlap is from Hobby Lobby ($4.19 / yd) and the jute pad and listing wire is from Amazon. The listing wire came with the springs I purchased - (came as a kit). The hog rings are 3/4 and stainless. seat backs. The one thing about the comet and falcon buckets is that the seat covers are held in place by barbed tabs around the back opening. The burlap actually has a pocket sewn into it at the top for a listing wire that bends around the main frame and gets trapped Under more of those barbs. This essentially closes the top in and I assume supports the foam as it wraps over the top of the wire frame. I had to go buy a $25 sewing machine for this.
Onto the rear seat. Frames were pretty clean so they got a scrub down and some rust encapsulater for good measure. Originally FoMoCo literally laid a piece of burlap (with listing springs) on the seat springs, floating and attached to nothing, then some batting on top of that and the seat base also received a foam pad. I went a little further and stretched and hog ringed burlap over the spring field. The base batting pad was pretty good so I reused it and the foam and added a little batting here and there where needed. Cover went on easily and I probably used 2x as many hog rings as needed but oh well. The top is another story. The same general layup as the bottom minus the foam. Between the spring frame and the seat frame there is a 3” wide burlap strip that runs the width of the seat. This strip has pockets sewn into each edge and has wires through those pockets. This piece gets hog ringed one edge to the spring field and the other edge to the seat frame. This is to support the batting that rolls over the top to support the cover from sagging in. Or in my case the lack thereof due to rodents needing it more than I did. Rear seat back done. Getting that cover stretched over the top and attached took some weight and muscle. I ended up standing on the frame to compress the springs so I could pull the cover to the anchor holes. I ended up using the original batting but took new batting and rolled it up to meet thickness of the piece I did have from the top of the frame and left a tail and draped it over the front of the old pad and tacked it all with some adhesive. Everything needs a day in the hot sun to relax and creep. You can see the felt underlayment I put down first for some reenforcement and to buffer against the hog rings since the batting has a joint on that edge now and that takes a lot of stress on that edge Finishes product
Since I was done upholstering until foams arrive and it was 80 degrees outside I took an hour and put my 9” together. I wanted to measure everything one more time before I commit to wheels and tires. Got the 9” bolted in place and everything torqued down. Drum to drum is 57.25 (std mustang width I believe).
Had to drop one end of the rear springs go get rear wheels and tires in. There just is not enough droop with the Calvert split mono springs and 11” drums to snake wheels and tires in there. rears are 235/60-15 M/T ET Street radials on 15x7 Cragers. Front are 26x6 - 15 M/T ET Street radials on 15x4.5 Cragers. I could use another 1/2” of backspacing on the rear but not happening with the Cragers in 15x7… Put the export brace in and rolled it outside and up and down the driveway a few times and bounced it a bit. Needs some more shim on the passenger side to get the suspension evened out a bit. Figure there is at least another 800-1000# of stuff to go on / in this car to get it squatted a bit more.
The Comet wheel well is kind of tricky, but it looks like you got the tires right where they need to be. Fantastic work on the little car, keep it up. -Abone.
The rear wheels are in the stock location. I have holes in the perch and the shock plate so I can move it 1” back if I wish. Should be OK - rear tire is 26.2” Dia and has clearance. Need to go get a driveshaft made so now is the time to make changes.
Added some tools to the arsenal today… cage should be here later next month the Alpha TIG is supposed to be the best bang for the buck. We will see if I still remember how to stack dimes…
Stackin Dimes ! Haven’t heard that one in a long while . Foot pedal was always tough for me in some positions . I sometimes use the finger control in a tight spot , you may need to try one the cage build . Car is top shelf , I had a sedan years ago , guy I sold it to still owns it and I can not get it back , going to restore it some day . Great work , keep it up your on the home stretch now .
While I fix the daughter’s car that is blocking the garage door I figured it would be a good time to audit all of my trim pieces and mount the buffer I bought to polish them. Segregating everything - this is really the only chrome plated steel on the interior. I have no idea why FoMoCo didn’t make them SS like all of the exterior trim…. Getting some quotations from various SE Michigan platers - hopefully not too terribly expensive… I also went on a bit of a eBay spending spree and just decided to buy new door handles and cranks and a few other odds and ends - likely cheaper than refinishing. I still need one tail light housing though. In my super wisdom I decided to mount my buffer to the floor at the back of the garage… it’s been like 20 years since I have seriously buffed and polished anything… I forgot how messy it is… ugh. A first pass on all of the SS and a few pot metal pieces showed me what I probably need to just replace - lower windshield trim at least and the aluminum trim on the edge of the trunk lid - mine is beaten to heck and back… I need to put a polishing compound on and buff all do this one more time. It’ll never be showroom new but it’s good enough for the girls I go with… hopefully future judges don’t hold it against me…
Took some time yesterday and disassembled my doors to the point where I can do body work and paint them. Basically removed all of the glass, frames and lock and handle hardware. Left the window lift and the inner door open handle mechanisms in place. Other than needing new window felts, whatever the weave material is in the window tracks and seals for the vent windows everything is pretty much reuse able… They are also a lot lighter without all of the glass in them. My door hinges have a slight bit of play in the pins. Not sure if I need to rebuild them or not as I am not sure what is normal as new assemblies.
I recently rebuilt my Buds 66 Ford pickup door hinges . They worked beautifully , but body lines were all off after rebuilds . WTH !
Mish mosh of activities on the Cyclone the last week or so. Roll bar arrived last week and the “pro street” bars the following day. I am going to have to mock up the rear bars and have them made locally it seems. In the meantime I have been transitioning to paint mode. Visited Painters Supply (PPG jobber) and found out that I can no longer have Carnival / Rangoon Red mixed - PPG discontinued the toners that contained lead and did not reformulate. That was stopper #1 for the week. But I did pick up everything else to get this thing faired and painted. 1 gallon of JP375 2K Epoxy (can be reduced to use as a sealer) 1 gallon of JP202 2K Surfacer Primer 2 gallons of Evercoat Z Grip body filler 1 qt of Evercoat Z Grip glaze 2 gallons of JC630 Clear Not a lot of luck finding an alternate for the base yet. The local Sikkens jobber told me a gallon of Lesanol base would be about $3k…. Sherwin wants $1000. Then Saturday I started sanding on the trunk lid and quickly decided that was for the birds and broke out the quart of Aircraft Stripper Ultra formula I had kicking around. It worked pretty well unless you apply in sun, forget to abrade surface or have body filler under the paint… all of which I got in a yank and did. So I needed more - a quart a panel is a good swag… only to find out Michigan and Ohio have outlawed it. Only the weak stuff is available and it doesn’t work for jack or crap. But Indiana is still free and only an hour and a half away… Then for Mother’s Day I hit the Detroit River before sunrise for some walleye jigging action and then did lunch with the wife, kids and MIL. Then in the afternoon I told the wife I was taking her on an adventure… to Indiana… I pillaged advanced auto and Orielly’s in Angola, introduced the women to the wonders of Rural King and headed back home. And that brings us to today. I shot paint on a few test cards so they I can put them under the PPG dealers camera and hopefully match it closely to something they can make. Then I went to work on the front fenders. This time I did it right and most of the paint melted off, except again where there was body filler under the original paint. But some 80 grit on the DA got them the rest of the ways. Doors up next.
Door skins stripped before the rain started to roll in. I’ll get the rest structure sanded snd scuffed and the skins sanded later this week. To my surprise it appears my car had mirrors on both sides of the car at one time.
Spent a couple of hours Friday pounding on fenders. Mounting points were all bent up, front bottom mounting point was totally jacked up from being moved around for years. It was bent and inverted from what it should have been. Matches fairly well now but there is a crack and hole that needs to be welded up and ground down. Think I am going to POR15 the inside of the front fenders… Sprayed test panels with the closest “PPG match” to Rangoon red and yeah, it’s a no from me dawg…. Next photo shows JAU “Rangoon red” @ 3 coats on left (2 panels), right is the PPG 3660 @ 3 coats and one with some clear the far right just base. Not really what I am looking for. The 3660 has an orange pastel feel to it in person…. Have a local comet friend whose dad has some vermillion in DBC who has offered to shoot me a test panel to see how I like that. Vermillion is $315 / gal in Shopline or $640 in Shopline plus basecoat. Think I have narrowed to Vermillion, race or torch red… Also blew all of the mice nests out of the rear deck lid. Have a big dent I need to remove so in the absence of a stud welder I guess I’ll tack a washer in the dent and put the hook on the slide hammer.
The Jalopy Journal
