Throwback: http://vb.foureyedpride.com/showthre...ercury-Capri-L
The story starts; After 5 years of building and overhauling custom motorcycles I found myself looking into my first car project. I had always wanted a DeLorean because of the totally rad flat, four eyed front end. I knew about the fox chassis but honestly had never seen the four eyed body style until I really started looking into buying my first project. After that the Capri was found. BAM. Loved it. Super square, four eyed, nice body lines, and that booty… which I was not crazy about to start with and seriously thought about the bubble delete. Fast forward, I’m very glad that I kept it because the fresh paint really made it work in my eyes and I’m glad I was able to keep it original.
On Craigslist one afternoon and notice a Capri up for Sale / Trade. He was interested in potential trade for a motorcycle. Lucky me, I had just finished a new café fighter that caught his eye and next thing you know I’m driving home my new ’83 Capri with a carb’d 351w and a T5. Everything was right in the world.
It smoked like a pig, had a front clip that looked like it went through a meat grinder, had a hood scoop that resembled a party tent, and with Cooper Cobras behind 4:10’s, hooking was a joke even with my 750 cfm fed 351.
I drove it for the summer as much as possible. Ran a 14.01 @ 101 at the track with a smile ear to ear. Once fall of 2015 came around it was time to begin the real project.
I knew I wanted a turbo car. I had a clean slate and a vision of a 600rwhp turbo stick car. Now how to get there. The build I ended up going with after forum surfing and feedback from motor heads at work lead me to the following build.
’96 351w Roller Block – Stock bore, studded caps, head bolts, all fresh bearings
On3 70mm
F303
GT40x Heads
1.72 Roller Rockers
Now it was building time….
With the motor all finished and sitting on an engine stand I was at a standstill with money, and with a garage situation. My wife and I bought our first house and I was able to get my hands on a 3 car garage and move the roller of a car from a storage unit to my new toy shop. I went ahead and bought some of the boring stuff, motor mounts, trans brace, driveshaft, mounting hardware etc. Now I was ready to drop the heart into the engine bay.
I bought a pair of China headers for the single turbo with the expectation to cut and weld as necessary. I was right. I had to do a bunch of tweaking and re-welding on the crossover pipe to make the system fit while keeping my front sway bar in place. I also had to notch a few sections of metal to allow clearance (just enough) for the headers and the tubing to actually fit on the motor. I also had to move the sway bar forward about a half an inch. Simply drilling new holes and some elbow grease got it into place.
With the turbo headers in, and the sway bar adjusted I was able to get onto my wastegate location. I didn’t want to use the garbage location that China provided me with so I made my own crafty wastegate junction right at the turbo’s hot side turbine.
With the wastegate in its permanent home, I had to get a little crafty with the accessories I was running. Power steering, alternator, and water pump required a custom rod end setup that took a few renditions to get perfect but we got there. With all that installed I was able to jump into the intercooler and routing of tubing. The intercooler fit PERFECTLY in the notch in the front clip grill. I had to make the mounting bracket attach to the lower portion of the intercooler which then bolter right to the cross brace on the front end of the frame.
With the turbo in place, and the ducting routed to support super-duper-boost I was ready to tackle the downpipe. I am pretty good with my TIG unit so I figured what the heck, I’ll buy a 10’ section of 3” and do pie cuts to fit the pipe to my application. It worked great. It took an afternoon of tweaking tack welds but I was able to get something that fit great, and looked good all at the same time.
Next was the fuel & intake system. The thought of making a fully custom welded aluminum intake elbow came across my mind, but at the end of the day went with a cast Edlebrock elbow. Price point was similar without any labor / risk involved. I ended up drilling/tapping 4 ports in the intake elbow for vacuum / boost reference ports to go to various components / gauges.
I also came up with a custom throttle cable idea made form a bike brake kit, and piece of steel, and a rod end.
With the intake installed it was time to run fuel lines. I went with -8 feed and -8 return. The feed line was split into two -6 lines at the oil pan that fed each rail individually and crossed over back to the FPR. I welded AN fittings to the fuel hat to make my standard AN fitting work at each connection point. I bought a Aero knock off from ebay and the 1/8 NPT tapped port for the gauge was machined too deep so my only option was to JB weld the gauge in place to prevent any leaks…
With the mechanical side of the engine bay wrapped up it was time to get my wiring game on. I had a partial harness from the F250 the block came out of, and the chopped up harness form the 94 mustang that my T4M0 came out of. Using these two harnesses, and a wiring diagram (and many beers) I decided I would make my own custom harness and run each wire that I needed. I deleted a bunch of systems from the harness so I figured this would keep it neat and concise.
With my wiring harness completed, it was time to turn this bad Charlie over and see what I got for spark/signals. “Crank, Crank, GRIND!”… My starter motor sounded like garbage. After extensive measurements on the starter motor and bell housing I determined that something was not right. Some more research proved that I had the “short snout” starter motor rather than the “long snout” motor. This made all the difference. Once the new motor (Wilson 91-02-5846) was installed I was cranking like a champ. Upon first attempt I had great looking spark…CHECK!
Next up was the injector pulses…not so lucky. I was seeing 8 pulses / rev of the motor which told me something was wrong. Long story short, I had the O2 sensors wired incorrectly and I was feeding my signal return wire 12v. The old 94/95 O2 harness confusion resulting in voltage at pin #46. I did NOT fry my ECM after this mistake. Simple rewire and boom! I had great looking injector pulses.
With these pulses I was able to get the motor to limp along (barley) which had me beaming with excitement. Again, stock ECM, 60# injectors, 24# calibrated MAF… car ran like a big bag of poo. BUT running none the less.
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