I used to use 3" pipes but I could never get it around corners. So I ran it outside my car, but it rusted and I changed to 3" irrigation pipe. It never rusted but people got burned on it.
Thanks guys, for helping me get my mounts figured out. I made the 1/4" plates that fit the block but the rest will have to wait until the motor is ready to go into the frame. And now I understand how the mounts are supposed to work.
Phil, It looks like I will have to make a quick turn in the exhaust pipe immediately below the manifold to avoid the center motor mount. How are you handling this tight a turn? Dick
If you go back to my pic on the 1st page of this thread, you will see a divot welded in the top of the frame. Keep in mind a V8 manifold will point out on a four. I cut the stub short, then turned it forward to go through the inner skirt then down under the running board into a header muffler. The bends were std. Hooker stuff but really too large a radius to work well. I'd recommend buying a donut and cutting bends out of it. I'll post a pic late tomorrow or Sat.
I've seen and been impressed with the sharpness of bends possible with donuts but I've only seen the donuts. I'm not aware of seeing one used.
For those of you who may be buying a motor in parts as I did, be aware that aluminum blocks can warp and that may be why it is being sold. Ihad to have my block align-honed so the crank will turn. There is an advantage in buying an assembled engine, you can tell if its block is true. Ps: shop around I found the estimates to vary widely.
http://weirtech.ca makes very affordable mild steel or SS flanges and since they also fabricate intakes, maybe they can do aluminum as well? In the past all they asked for on a "custom" job was the gasket for a template which is exactly what you plan to do.... Worth a shot? Which model Lakewood bell housing are you using for the ford T5 to "chevy" block? I'll have one of mine together sooner than anticipated if I don't have to mess with depth (since you said the long SN95 T5 input shaft takes care of it in your application) Do you have any pictures of your Astro T5 bellhousing? I thought all of those years GM T5 applications would have used the wider GM bolt pattern between the bell and the transmission, and not the Ford style that's on the V6 mustang T5's. (And possibly been tilted over? Or was that just S10 and Fbody applications?) Don't see any of the mini starters on ebay right now and was about to buy the $70 overweight factory one from the local parts house. Do you have a contact for the ones you bought?
Faster7, The starter is listed on ebay under International scout starter. It is $235.00 and is available from Quality Power in Yucaipa, California. I have Lakewood 15032 bellhousings that adapt Chevrolet to Ford T5. They measure 7" from face to face. I also have 1 chevy bellhousing that I think is from a Chevy Astrovan. It has a Pemco # 1589686A cast inside. It measures 6 3/8" face to face. The T5 cases can have the internals changed to have the long or short input shaft installed. I am not a transmission guy but I think as long as you change all of the internals at the same time you will be OK. I purchased a CD on ebay that shows step by step how to rebuild a T5. It is very good and even I can follow it along because the instructor is very explicit and works slowly thru each part of the take down and rebuild. I don't remember how much I payed for it but it is worth every penney. As an example if you were to change WC mustang V6 internals into a chevy S10 case it should work fine. You might have to change the input and output seals. This way you could possibly use a regular Chevy bellhousing with the Chevy T5 bolt pattern. I would avoid the Camaro bellhousings as they tilt the transmission so that the shifter is at an angle. Tell us about your installation. What kind of car and is it a driver or a High performance installation. Dick
Dick, as long as you are having 6 flanges made up go for 8 as you can then make two manifolds and have a choice of designs. My concern is the possible warping on welding the pipes to the flanges. I deal with that by welding or brazing a short pipe to the flange and then milling the flange flat. Threaded two inch aluminum pipe is available as rigid conduit, it is however difficult to buy in short lengths.
dennis g, I am having 3 flange plates made. They are full width of the Mercruiser aluminum intake manifold. They will go between the undersize intake and the oversize aluminum head and will be cut to match the stock intake manifold gasket. The problem is that the Mercruiser intake manifold just bearly covers the water jacket holes in the intake side of the original Ford cast iron heads. The aluminum heads that I got have bigger holes in the water jacket that the Mercruiser intake manifold does not completely cover. So these flange plates are not really not going to have flanges on them. I guess that they are really cover plates to fully cover the head and they will go between the intake and the head. I am having them made out of 1/4" flat plate aluminum. I don't understand which manifold you are welding up. I am using the stock mercruiser intake manifolds both the 2 barrel and the 4 barrel because I think that you would have to do some pretty good engineering to improve on them. I received the first of two 370-429-460 center dump Ford exhaust manifolds that I purchased on ebay. It flows into a 2 1/2" tailpipe and it looks like I won't be trying to improve on the flow that it will provide either. These engines are not going into a dragster or land speed car so the stock parts will do for my needs. They have very good flow for a carburated 224ci 4 cylinder engine just the way they are. Dick
I'm doing exhaust manifolds. I agree that the intake manifold and the exhaust manifold you are using will flow very well. I will be using the stock intake manifold As to the exhaust, I'm presently running it under the car but for appearance, I will make an old-fashioned outside exhaust up on the side of the car. I
dennis g, I am going to install my engine with the top of the oil pan about 5" below the bottom of the frame. That puts the carb well below anything on my Model A's. What kind of car are you building? Dick
A replica of an old sprint car. Locating the top of the pan 5" below my frame would have the pan sitting firmly on the ground. I've at most an inch over the top of my engine before body contact.
dennis g, Now I understand. What kind of updraft carbs are you going to use. Ford 600 or 800 gas tractors had carburators that would probably be big enough if you ran 4 of them on a log manifold. They look old enough in design to work on a old car but I don't know what old sprint car engines looked like. What I don't know would fill a wearhouse. Dick
They used whatever was available. Allis Chalmers tractor engines were used, model A engines were used Miller engines were used etc. I collected several updraft carbs this spring one is an airplane carb another is a ford carb and when I remember how to post pix here, I will. It turned out that the best updraft carb was from a forklift at $5 it was also cheap I used a forklift engine chev 153 temporarily after my 170 broke. Its power was nowhere near the 170.
so here are pictures of the carbs I mentioned and a log manifold is so easy to make The orange carb is a new old stock ford carb the silver one is for an airplane the view through it is in the direction of airflow. And i've a pair of matched zenith carbs which together have good throat area. None of them have enrichening circuits so that may have to be added
dennis g, Just remember that these engines can take a lot of carb. The QuadraJet flows 750 fps. But the QuadraJet has the ability to feed that much carb at a rate that the engine can take. The small primaries give good milage and cannot over carburate the engine even if the throttle is opened all of the way right off idle. The large secondaries open both mechanically and thru vacuum so that if they are properly set they don't cause the engine to bog down like some other high flow carbs do. You might have to sacrefice some performance to get a balance between good power and smooth throttle responce. It's too bad it has to look old school because if it didn't and you could lower the engine about 2" you could build a low profile plenum hooked to a remote aircleaner and retain the QuadraJet performance. The top of the QuadraJet sits about level with the top of the valve cover. An other alternative would be Jaguar carbs. They are relatively easy to find, are not too expensive and have good flow. Let us know how you decide to do it and include pictures when you are done. Dick
I have two quadrajets on the shelf and also several ford 2bbl carbs[ my preferred choice]. With small throttle openings the quadrajets do get reasonable economy. Although I have several, I've never liked su carbs ( just too much magic in their operation ;0). ) I do like the old cable operated Mikunis (I have them from 19mm to 38 mm{all too small}) although one can easily go crazy selecting needles and needle jets on them. I'll do an initial engine setup with the 2bbl Merc carb & manifold as a benchmark. I may make a bulge in the body over the carb and use a remote aircleaner. The car presently has an autolite 2100 that is outside the body and I'd like to have the whole engine inside the body. And I have been warned about throttle response problems with the updraft carbs I now have... but I could make a progressive linkage between a small one and a large one. I've always considered TBI as an option and have some Chevy Lumina throttle bodies on hand. I've a ecu from an old cavalier but to get it all to work will take a different distributor and some magic. For now i'll do carbs.
If I ever get around to doing this, I would probably use EFI with four throttle bodies. It should drive very nicely and also have excellent fuel economy.
The problem that has disuaded me is that of regulating the injectors properly. I've been told it is a major undertaking but I've no way of knowing. Even gas just splashed on the aircleaner element runs an engine a moment. It may be possible to get the mixture roughly in the ballpark playing with fuel pressure & perhaps injector count. I normally run O2 sensors on my engines to assist me in jetting them.
Electronic fuel injection solves all the problems. For instance, my Autronic SMC system tunes itself. You just tell it what air fuel ratios you want at different throttle openings and different rpm, shove an exhaust gas analyser up the exhaust pipe, and just drive the car. Software within the EFI computer tunes itself. A laptop computer plugged in shows you exactly what is happening. Once the air fuel ratios for each cell in the tuning matrix have tuned themselves correctly, they go green. This can also be done on a chassis dyno, and is probably easier to do it that way. Once you have experienced programmable EFI, you will never stuff around with carbs ever again. It is that good.
Warpspeed, What would the cost of setting up one of the Autronic systems on one of these engines be? I keep seeing Full page adds for the FAST EZ-EFI system but it cost more than I will have in a whole running engine. I also wouldn't buy one from FAST anyway untill they remove the picture of the unshaven bald guy with the disagreeable look on his face from their adds. Its funny how advertising works. Apparently that add works for them but it just turns me off. I guess I have just seen enough angry disagreeable prople allready to last me a life time. Anyway electronic fuel injection would be good if the cost were not so high. Let us know if you have a cost effective way to fuel inject these engines. Dick
I'll be megasquirting mine, likely ~$350 to invest as I already have suitable pumps and injectors and will make the intake myself. If you wanted to go even cheaper you could put the late 80's 2.3 mustang coil pack setup on it, computer, harness, everything, add in a $80 memory adapter and free-ish tuning software and away you go. Same type trigger wheel/ pickup will have to be put on the front of it (same configuration as the coil pack 4cyl mustangs) that I'll be using with my megasquirted one.
Basically an Autronic kit gives you everything that you need to make an existing factory EFI car fully tunable with a lap top computer. That is full engine management of fuel and spark. Maybe 1,500 $US as a guess. To convert a carby engine to EFI, you also need a high pressure fuel pump, and a fuel system that will not draw air as you accelerate, brake, and go around corners. You also need to fit a fuel injector to each inlet port somehow, and an electronic (non points) distributor in place of the original points distributor. You will also need a lap top computer running Windows. There are lower cost ways of doing it than an Autronic or a Motec system, but truly, you get what you pay for. The lower cost budget systems have far fewer features and can be a lot more difficult to tune. It ain't cheap, but once you have a system, it is transferable from car to car. The same Autronic system could be used on a single cylinder lawn mower engine, a Harley, a Small block Chev, or a V12 Merlin engine.
The deck surface on my block has a coarsely rippled milling pattern. I assume the factory did it that way. Now the question: Is it just faster to mill it that way or does it seal better than a smooth slick surface?
dennis g, I don't know the answer to that question, however several of my standard bore blocks have a very smooth surface and I would assume that that is the way they came from Mercruiser. The 1 engine that has .030 pistons has a machined look to the surface. I hope this information helps. As you have probably read everyone agrees that you should only use Mercruiser head gaskets. Dick
I have been busy welding up a manifold I made it from some mandrel bends and from a driveshaft tube. the 0.083" driveshaft tube sounds radical but it was not plated [ very important to me] and it was free. I pulled it most of the way into a cone with clamps and then marked it and used a small cutoff wheel to eliminate the excess overlap . for the final compression of the cone muffler clamps are needed. I began with the hose clamps that close with a 1/45" bolt but they were not strong enough[ in spite of being expensive]. I had not completed the welding[ and grinding] when these photos were taken. As you can see, it is made up bolted onto a junk head. That is the only way to make up headers that are not warped. It tapers from 2" to 4". Both dimensions are important as the 2" pipe is the best fit for a Ford 460 exhaust port and the 4" size was selected so a glasspack muffler can be slipped inside. [Also because it will be extended with a section of irrigation pipe which hides the muffler and extends the exhaust pipe to the rear of the car.]
I'm trying to choose motor mounts for the 470 and seek advice. So far after a checking a "junk yard" and an auto parts store, and a speed shop I found: 1. old style chevy V8 mounts [made in India and the metal is marginal] 2. recent chevy V6 mounts [somewhat bulky] 3. a parts store mount numbered DEA 2469 [but it is on the small side] The above three were inexpensive, easy to find and reasonably strong, particularly #2. Some which I rejected: 1. Toyota had a nice little mount in their pickups. It was too small and sells for $56 new. 2. I peered at Datsun 300 Z mounts but new they sell for $125 per side. 3. Volvo [ looks weak] 4. BMW [most that I saw were torn apart] --------------------------------------------------------------- Aside from being made of metal which looked marginal to bear the weight of an engine, the old style Chevrolet mounts did not seem bad calculation of bearing strength for them: 0.107" thickness x 0.4275" bolt hole diameter = 0.0467inch^2 load bearing area per bolt hole or 0.0934inch^2 per mount. 0.0934in^2 x 17,000lbs working strength per in^2 = 1587 lbs bearing strength per mount. however as the bolt will never be a perfect fit reducing the bearing area, [lets say by 50%] so the bearing strength at failure becomes 793 lbs. As the motor is vibrating a safety factor of 2 (a guess on my part) is deducted and reduces it to 397 lbs. available per mount to support 150 lbs of the 300 lb engine and also resist the engine torque. [ x ft.lbs]. {ignoring the support provided by and weight of the transmission}. [as the engine twists, one mount is loaded in compression and the other in tension] 397-150 = 247 lbs [if the engine produces 170 hp at 3800rpm then its torque is 235 ft lbs] If the mount is a foot away from the crankshaft center 247lbs- [235lbs/2] = 129lb margin As the mount is designed to be closer, the torque on it will be more I regret that there are so many assumptions and suppositions in the above. Rubber will reduce the shock loads on the mount and I've not calculated its effect.
The Jalopy Journal
