The nightmare is over.

I woke up this morning determined to solve the 'wrong footbox' problem. I went out there and with a series of drilling and chisel/hammer techniques I got the panel off. After that I decided to do some body work before attempting to attach the 4.6 panels. It was tricky and awkward, but I managed to get the new footbox on without removing the engine!

I took the angle grinder to the seams on the fiberglass body - jesus what a mess. The body work is going to be a real job! Here is a picture of the seams ground out.








Also done today was to cut out the battery box square in the trunk floor. I'm going to put a hinge on it so you can still get to the battery. I'll post a picture of that after it's done. The only other thing to report, is that the fuel lines are fully connected. Here is a picture of the fuel lines with the heater lines hooked up behind it.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

NOOOOOOOO NO NO NO NO! I have made a mistake...and discovered the reason my engine is touching the driver foot-box. There is a SEPARATE (unmentioned) panel for the 4.6L foot-box wall tucked away in a box. I looked at it, and I don't see ANY way to swap these panels without removing the engine. REMOVING THE ENGINE!!! Everything is plumbed up and spaced out and ready to go. Clutch, accelerator, cruise, heater, radiator, power steering, will all have to be redone.

I do however, have one hope. I am hoping to jack the engine a small amount and move it left a bit...hopefully giving me enough room to get the rivet tool down in there. Oh the humanity! I hope I don't have to lift it out...it was not fun to get in - though it might be easier with the right panels in place. heh heh heh.

On the upside - I finally changed the oil in my truck. Stink-gook is what it was. Diana also changed her oil so both our regular cars are in good working order...except for my truck's weirdness issues.

Catch up

I've gotten a little ahead of myself on the blog here, being so excited about having the engine in. I need to go back and document a few other things that have happened. And in no particular order they are:

1. Here is the view of the car from the front as it stands right now. The radiator is not completely installed yet.






b) With a bit of riveting help from Diana's brother, Milton, I have completed the battery box mod. This sinks the battery below the trunk so you have more space inside the trunk. It's pretty tightly squeezed between the gas tank and the differential plate, but there is just enough room for movement. (Unlike the driver's footbox - lol, sigh)

D. Thanks to the most excellent welding skills of Mr. Josh Minorics, the EGR was successfully routed to the old smog pump bung and the other 2 open bungs were welded shut for good. In this pic you can see at the bottom where the smog pipe is welded to the larger EGR pipe. Most excellent :-)

The Mystery Oil Sensor

When we put the new, shorter oil pan on the bottom of the engine, we discovered that an oil sensor that was plugged into the old oil pan had no place to go on the new pan.

After some researched I finally broke down and just asked the guys on the forum what the heck was going on. Turns out it's just an oil level sensor that the computer doesn't need. It powers a low oil level warning light.

So I have 2 choices, remove the pan weld in a new bung for the sensor, or do without an oil level warning light. Heh, if you helped me put the oil pan on, and tried to tighten any of the kickout bolts then you know which of these I'm choosing.

http://www.ffcobra.com/forums/showthread.php?t=204950

Installing all the mass air stuff was pretty easy and straight forward. The instructions generally even matched up with what I had to do.






The radiator on the other hand, is a totally different story. Nothing is lining up. Nothing fits. I'm going to have a lot of work to get the cooling system finished. But once it is, all I have to do is add fluids and do some wiring to get to a first crank.

On the road again

But not literally unfortunately. Just moving along real well now. With the engine in I'm freed up to do a LOT more stuff. Yesterday, I did these:
1. Mounted the seats
2. Adjusted and 'set' the steering wheel
3. Finished bolting on the oil pan
4. Installed the driveshaft
5. Installed the clutch cable
6. Installed the accelerator cable


Everything went great until I got to the accelerator. When I was mounting the accelerator bracket to the engine, I broke the bolt off. I had to rig something up to fix this mistake, but only after cutting the broken bolt and nut off the accelerator cable (very carefully!) Here is a picture of the ugly bracket.

While I was bolting my bracket up, I dropped it and it fell. It fell bad. It fell under the intake manifold so I could barely even see it. I couldn't reach it with pliers and couldn't grab it with a hook. So I got a magnet off the fridge and tried to lower it down with a zip tie. It was too big, so I smashed it with a hammer and tied some thread around it. I tried fishing it out, but it kept swinging to the side and hitting some magnetic object. I eventually stuck the magnet to a socket extension and was able to fish it out that way.

Here is the driveshaft - looking down from above.








Thought you might enjoy this picture showing you just how much room there is between the driver footbox and the engine. None! It's pushing it in about a half inch - and that's after I ground away some of the engine material.

The beast has a heart ... but not a pulse.

The engine is in!








It was a slow process, and the engine really BARELY fits. I had to grind away some of the aluminum off the engine and it's pushing against the drivers foot-box a little :-) But we finally got it in there and bolted up - then got the new oil pan bolted up. That was also quite horrible. The bolts were terrible to get to. You could not fit your hand up there - only a finger or two, and you couldn't see the bolts to tell what you were trying to do. Horrible. Also, Josh brought over his buck for the fiberglass body so I can get started on the body now.

It was a long process, but it's in! Stay tuned, a lot should get done in the next few weeks!