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Eaton M112 Install on 5.0 LTD (pics!)

430K views 2K replies 167 participants last post by  AlexLTDLX 
#1 · (Edited)
It is now time. For a quick history, go here:

http://www.musclemustangfastfords.com/features/0410mm_ford_muscle_car_comparison/index.html

That was before my daughter was born (she's now in kindergarten), just after I broke my back, and the "girlfriend" mentioned in the article became my wife, then crazy wife and now crazy ex-wife. I have become a single full-time working dad - much has happened. Now that the dust is settling, I have decided its time to do what all good men in my position do - resurrect a project from the past. Some time ago, I put together a little video of the car's Eaton M90 legacy; it's here:



Best pass with the M90 - 11.43 @ 119 mph.

I had pulled the major pieces together about 5 years ago (special thanks to the guy who gave me the M112 from a Jag - you know who you are; and as promised, your identity remains a secret); they've been sitting around, along with discharge plate and adapter plate I cut out and the Terminator TB ever since (thanks to Brian Bossone, former owner of ELD Performance for the throttle body). I started this assembly process about a week and a half ago; the goal is to make an M112 boosted pass this season. So let's get on with how to hack together a bunch of junk to make another bunch of junk that much faster (note: the LTD's engine bay is virtually identical to a fox mustang's - and it's a 5.0 to boot).

Here's the first mockup:




My brother, Mark, decided to come by and have some fun with my cheapie Harbor Freight flux-core mig:




Here's a couple of shots of the tacked together mockup:





A day or two later, I found some time to finish up the welds. Notice the exceptionally crappy weld at the front of the discharge - that was an attempt to fix one of 4 pinhole leaks. I've since abandoned the idea, and will do the grind/jb weld trick to make it look smooth. That should seal the leaks, and look better, too.




Here's a better look at the discharge tube. Two notes: no comments about the sleeping bag that I'm using as my work surface, please. It belonged to the crazy ex when she was a kid; I've discovered it catches fire pretty easily. The other note: see the ugly weld along the bottom seam? I guess you win some and you lose some. The top was really nice. This one... well, not so nice.





Moving on - things are starting to take shape! It rained the night before, and I left the stuff outside. It rusts fast, doesn't it?




Let's take a closer look at that belt routing:






Uh-oh. Hit a little snag. Did you notice the tensioner I'm using? It's an idler pulley from a 1990 Lincoln Town Car and a tensioner arm from some mystery junkyard car I had pulled years ago. The bearings in the pulley were shot. If I have to buy a new one, might as well get an 8 rib (as opposed to a 6). Well, looky here: an Econoline E350 with a 7.3L Diesel uses an 8 rib belt. I stopped at Autozone on my way home from work today and picked one up. Cost almost $30 - this is getting expensive (total target cost: no mare than $250 - this includes everything - expendables (grinding wheels, sanding drums, etc), tools (so far, an electric die grinder from Harbor Freight, some Lincoln welding wire, and one home-made deal you're about to see), the belt, supercharger oil; everything.

I put the thing together and realized I had to press the bearing about 1/8" further out to get it to clear. Made a really trick idler pulley bering press. It's the last picture below. I'll let you figure out how it works (if you really want to know, I'll tell you). I can say it works like a dream.






Another little snag - since I had nothing to bolt the plates to while welding, they warped. I dug out a rusty old iron SBF head, found some holes that lined up with the holes in the plate, put in some old automotive bolts, stuck an impact socket between to the plate and the head (at the high spots) and tightened the bolts. Pulled the plates *almost* straight. Believe it or not, this amount of misalignment is enough to cause the rotors to just touch the case when the bolts are tightened:




I'll be off to Mark's house (he owns a large belt sander - should get the plates close enough to perfect). I've also made a temporary air filter setup (it's 30% undersized, according to K&N; and I'm in danger of "collapsing" the air filter - whatever that means). I've also completely finished the front plate - painted and everything. Looks surprisingly decent.

More to come soon...
 
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#194 ·
pull the intake and check the spider and dog bones. This just happend to me - driving normally and the engine starts making a lot of valve clatter and an occasional screech of metal to metal. Limp it home and pull the intake - the spider bolts had backed out over 5-6 years and I had the two rear dog bones come off the lifters. When I look at the lifter flats, they are still aligned correctly, but I know they must have spun once or twice. Tonight I go pull the rocker and lifters to inspect them and the cam.

Oh, and is that a camera angle or did you side gap thos plugs?
 
#195 ·
the thing is that it's not just making noise but it seems that one of the cylinders is not firing.

For a bit I thought that he still had the set of plugs that I side gapped in the car, but they're actually autolite race plugs which come out of the box side gapped.
 
#196 ·
I think that it needs 3.27's which is probably enough reason that he will probably go with 3.08's (which will be enough gear to go 141 in the 1/4 which that car will never do with the current block/tranny)
 
#197 ·
He left out the part that the accel ignition box wouldn't fire the plugs when the engine was warm and it was trying to turn the fan on, so the car wouldn't restart when it was in my driveway or in the tech lanes. I ended up bringing a light switch and some zip ties that got wired in in the pits. Ah, it's a work of art:


I think I got some decent shots yesterday (I took 132pictures and I had my sniper lens with me so I could get shots of things from across the pits or down the track), like this burnout shot:
 

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#198 ·
How's about some photoshop work? Like this:


Or animated, perhaps?


Here's a launch still:


Let's take a closer look at that tired old slick:



And on a more technical side, I'm doing some preliminary testing, although at the moment there's a general consensus amongst my automotive gurus that there's an ignition problem. But early tests are inconclusive. I wish I could just pee on a stick and it would tell me what the problem is...
 
#199 ·
Alex... Searched to see what you had that you needed the air filter for. This is by far the best budget DIY build I have seen in a long time. Props to you man! Can't wait to see you clip off a 10.xx.

Just Awesome!
 
#201 · (Edited)
Ahh... the light switch - it's one of those little details I didn't bother to mention (thanks, Mark). It seems that the new accel ignition doesn't have the juice to fire during cranking if the cooling fan is on. Oddly, the jacobs was always fine. I didn't have time to find my stash of relays/connectors before track time. To avert a potential PITA, I wired in a light switch at the track just in case I had to move the car in the staging lanes while it was hot enough to turn the fan on. As you can tell from my track saga, that really wasn't an issue. Over the winter I'll wire in a relay properly.

And to answer your other question, it's the LTD. Although at one point he had nitrous on the WS6 and it ran into the 12's with about a mid one-teens mph. And fwiw, his WS6 is an LT1.
 
#210 · (Edited)
And to answer your other question, it's the LTD. Although at one point he had nitrous on the WS6 and it ran into the 12's with about a mid one-teens mph. And fwiw, his WS6 is an LT1.
Still living in your own little world, even after starting this same thing on sunday... 11.75@119.89 is the best timeslip that I found before I blew up the gears and the stock clutch gave up (the pass that they gave up on was a much slower ET at a higher MPH, 119.9x, but I can't seem to find that one). Probably would have run faster with slicks (this was on nitto radials), but the gears wouldn't have lasted as long. Nutshell, he's run a faster ET, I've run a higher MPH (which also suggests a lot more power since the LTD is around 3300#, and the last time I scaled the WS6 it was at 4090#).

As far as the timing thing... you didn't say anything about it not running right on the first pass till after the second pass, and said that it did the same thing on both runs (pushed through the lights, you redlighted both times and broke up at the top), just worse the second run. For that matter, you said that it was doing it on the dyno also, and weren't clear if it was the same breaking up that it was doing the first time out.
 
#203 ·
Kingsize - Thanks. As for the 10's - me too; that's become a holy grail of sorts...

bgjohnson - The charging system is fine. I've got a 140 amp alternator, and typically the voltage reads in the low 14's. During in dyno pull, according to the datalog, it'll get down to around 13.8. The valvesprings are fairly old, but low miles. I'll check 'em if the simpler to check stuff doesn't spec out. It now misses almost all the time. When I give it gas, it pops in the exhaust. Here's the current diagnostic efforts:

I checked the driver's side - that's where it seems to be coming from. The valvetrain seems to move fine (video'd it while cranking). I did a compression test on those four holes - 5,6,7,8 - and got 111, 111, 110 and 110 psi (I know that seems low, but it's a low-compression motor with a decent sized cam - that's why I'm able to run a civic battery in the car). I cleaned off the plugs, and drove it for about 10 minutes. All the plugs got a bit carbon fouled; it was popping in the exhaust like crazy. It's also making a ticking (but a loud ticking) noise. I checked the plug wires on that side; they tested good. I also put an old sparkplug and put it in the #8 wire and layed it on my caster'camber plate. While running, the idle was down about 100-200 rpm, but it wasn't any rougher and there was spark in the uninstalled plug. I'm gonna have to do the passenger side next; I'll do it without removing the blower so I can start it if need be. Assuming no problems on that side, I can only think of two potential causes - distributor (which is a duraspark reman and showing some pretty good wear on the gear) or injectors. I'm open to ideas... it's the popping in the exhaust and sudden loss of power that's worrying me.
 
#204 · (Edited)
If it's miss firing all the time and the #8 plug looks that black, I would check out the injector on that cylinder. I would swith it with #1 and see if the fouling changes to #1.

How old are your injectors?

EDIT: After reading about the ticking, I would definitely crack open the valley and take a look at those lifters. Sounds like you could be hanging an exhaust valve open.

I would try the injector switch first, since it is the easiest thing to do. Then take off the lower and see what there is to see. Good luck!
 
#205 ·
I appreciate the input. However, I am clearly an idiot. And my idiocy probably cost me my 10-slip for the season. I still intend to replace my headgaskets and give the engine internals a good look see; it's been ten years (at least) since the HGs have been replaced, and I probably have one that's "lightly blown" from the ignition fiasco (actually, the car's been losing a little bit of coolant for years, just now it's a little worse).

On to my stupidity. I like my Taylor plug wires. Though I've never actually seen an improvement from plug wires (I ran my previous best on $10 autozone specials), these Taylors fit well and look good. But thanks to my trying to be neat under the blower, it's now painfully obvious that the #2 wire has to go somewhere else. I didn't think it was that close to the #1 header primary. Really.





Sure, I can build a blower, but can I route plug wires? Apparently not.

Geez. Hopefully this fixes it. I'll put one of the Autozone specials on tomorrow and take it for a spin. And to answer bgjohnson's question, the injectors are old - probably close to 10 years; new injectors would probably idle better - new technology, just general newness, etc...
 
#206 ·
Good to hear it was an easy fix!

I would just get the injectors flowed and cleaned. Some places will do it for as little at $150 and give you a before and after flow sheet.

I think we have all had the " plug wire on header " issue before. I route mine all neat and tidy now with fancy holders and thermo sleeves. Has worked well so far!
 
#208 ·
I just want to add some stuff in here. This thread has become more like an actual conversation about racing and your build, than just some "this is what I did" thread. I think its great. Espically for me who could care less about what it is so long as it's fast.

Oh, and I was so caught up in the light siwtch thingie I forgot to tell you that it sounded like you broke the connector in the dist cap or burned a plug wire...but hey, still is pretty sweet.

SWS
 
#209 · (Edited)
Thanks, guys. I hope that one day, one of the weird little factoids and discoveries in this thread will help save a kitten's life. Then I will be complete.

Now let me tell you about the plug wire. I replaced it. It didn't fix it. It still popped. At idle. So I pulled out the heatshield under the blower and ran a compression test on the passenger side. Here's the results (for all the cylinders - being a single dad sometimes means it takes two days to run a complete compression test):

1 - 107
2 - 119
3 - 102 (I ran this one twice)
4 - 116
5 - 111
6 - 111
7 - 110
8 - 110

Looking at the plugs, they were all pretty well built up with carbon - there's a reason for that, and my 80lb Seimens injectors are on their way - but that's for a different post. I have to hurry here because I've gotta go play bingo in the living room. But see, I can spend money on some things...

Anyway, here's two shots of the number 3 plug (photo enhanced to show texture):





Can you spot the problem? More importantly, can you predict what caused it? Unless an evil leprechaun took out that plug and hammered it shut between my two passes at the track, I'm fearing the worst for my junk shortblock and it's eye-ball dremel flycut badger pistons. Head gaskets are already in my DD. In fact, there's a new air filter coming and a couple of other things, too. But again, gotta run.

The saga does not end here...
 
#212 ·
Yeah, I think so. When I pull the car in, I'll take pics of the damage. But it's not all bad - as I mentioned, the shortblock was wasted when I put it in - and just wait until you see my in-block fly cutting job! The pistons in the current block are "badger" brand hypers. Not exactly top of the line.

Now for the good - I just happen to have a good roller 302 on an engine stand in my garage. It came out of the ex-wife's 1990 Towncar from back in the day. I figure I can use everything from that motor except for the pistons. I'll get some decent ones this time - forged, reverse dome TW specific - any suggestions? Obviously, the cheaper the better. I'll re-use the crank and rods since I'm not turning over 6,000 rpm anyway. I'll just get the block cleaned, bored .030 over, new cam bearings put in and possibly deck the block - I won't bother align honing or anything - I know that motor ran very well (and smooth). So a sort of budget rebuild but with decent slugs.

I got to this point after talking with Matt - no point really in spending the $$ on stock block 302 stroker, when the limiting factor in this case will be the block. The rods and crank will likely hold up longer than the block, too. I'm open to suggestions on this one as well.

Looking at the pics of the deformed spark plug, I think I can see little bits of aluminum on it. You can't see them with the naked eye - I think the camera's flash highlights them better. We'll all know soon enough.
 
#214 ·
When you pull the heads, you will likely find a melted ring land on #3. Crap happens. I'm impressed as hell so far. My car has run as fast as 120 in the quarter with 3.55's and a T5, turning 5400-5500 at the stripe. I'd be worried that 3.27's will KILL your 60 ft. I was on a mission to get my first 11 sec slip this fall when the clutch fragged in a brilliant way. The auto trans swap is next. I feel your frustration. With the T-5, I just didn't have the heart to speed shift the poor thing.

Good luck, post pics of the carnage, we all love that stuff!
 
#216 ·
I think you guys are right. Tonight I finally pulled (well, pushed) the LTD into the garage under the guise of cleaning up to get the holiday decorations out of the attic. I've been doing quite a bit of research into pistons - basically, it looks like I could go with a compression ratio in the low 8's or 9's - which would you choose? Unfortunately, I'm not finding any pistons for TW heads that would give me 8.8-9.0:1. I'll hopefully tear it down this week and take some pics to share...
 
#218 ·
Nice! But I don't get it... the TB (or carb) is on the discharge? Are they running the blower backwards, or did they mill another opening on the blower, or have I just gone completely stupid?

Then again, I'm working on a plan to eliminate that heavy bit between the blower and exhaust. I figure it's just not necessary. If I can get the equations just right, I should just be able to generate necessary thrust straight outta the pipes. And fewer moving parts = fewer frictional losses. It's a win-win!

In reality, I've gotten swamped in the last month or so, and with a cold snap happening outside, I haven't had an opportunity to do the tear down. But I do have it all planned out, with input from Woody, my local machinist and Mark over at Probe. I've got a pretty good "semi-budget" plan of attack. And I have the 80 lb seimens injectors still sitting on my desk...

Thanks for the laugh! (and the "WTF"...)
 
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