Now that I had a car that fired up, and “ran” I was ready to tackle some cosmetics. I know I know, kinda backwards. Build the car then paint it? . I first installed the pre-83 mustand air dam after I spent about 6 hours sanding down the stupid urethane bumper cover. Trust me, it is FAR from perfect but it came out decent. They are next to impossible to find in good shape anyway. Plus, im not really a cosmetic guy, 110% function over form… adds to the sleeper look I guess.
The car was brown before and has a full brown interior so in an attempt to keep it a touch original I went with a bronze metallic color. Bought me a HVLP spray gun and I was ready to shoot paint for the first time. My prep work consisted of 600 grit over the whole car, and a denatured wipe on each panel before I sprayed it. I removed the urethane moldings from the car (I was missing one anyway) and painted a black stripe in their place. Masked the line, and hit the car with 3 coasts of base, then 3 coats of high solids clear. Form my first spray job, in a dusty open garage, I think it came out AWESOME. Sure there is a bit of peel, dust specks and a few bug trails, but it adds to the look….
It was time to get the car down to the dyno and have Josh and Pete over at Performance Dyno get me running. Trip one; “That MAF is totally going to peg once we get this thing rev’d up” … Pete was totally right. He gave me a great base tune that let the car run and drive out of boost so now I was at least able to road test it a bit. I got the BA5000 on order and scheduled my next pull.
This time I was able to drive to the dyno and didn’t need to bother with the trailer which was awesome. We got it on the rollers and started doing some more tuning with the new MAF in place. Once it came time for some real pulls we did a few boost checks to see where my minimum boost was sitting, I had all 3 wategate spring installed and holy crap…we hit 18.2 psi first pull. EASY cowboy! I pulled the wastegate and took out a spring which set me right where I wanted to be. 11.8. That gave me a great base with room to grow if I wanted.
Now we were ready for some full pulls. Josh dropped it in 4th and gave her the dinnah! The car would pull nice until about 3500 then, whack! It would tach out almost instantly. We both scratched our heads for a bit and then I asked him if this could be a symptom of a crappy clutch. We agreed at the point that it was totally what was going on. I honestly cant remember the part number but the clutch was some stock application unit that for some reason I trusted to hold power…
My buddy down the street has a two post lift, so I jumped over there to get my new clutch in place. I went with a dual ceramic McLeod street extreme (75307). Good up to 700/700, and I heard it drove well. I was very surprised at just how well it did drove. Smooth engagement, great modulation. Highly recommend.
Now that we had a clutch in place, back to the dyno for one last hurrah. I was ready to see what my first motor build would put down. 574/503 at the wheels at 12 psi. SO stoked.
Next chapter is to see what it will run (what I can drive) in the ¼ mile! Gonna try and head down this week for street night in Epping weather dependent. I also need to do the clutch packs in my diff because with the Toyo R888 in the rear, I am one legging the car during burnouts…super embarrassing.
Overall I had a blast building the car. Plenty of frustrations, but that lead to lots of lessons learned. I did the build on a “budget” and certainly went cheap on a few items that I will certainly avoid next time. Spend the money and do it right the first time. You don’t need an $800 wastegate…but the $100 China setup is certainly not ideal.
Big shout to this forum and community here. Im 27 and use forums for everything… I don’t know how you guys build cars without the internet before…
I can do my best to answer questions or give tips for anyone doing a similar projected. I learned a ton, but there is still plenty to learn. [MENTION=265690]PancakeShake[/MENTION] on the gram, and #shathatch to follow the project
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