I met my dad down at Dino Fry’s racing shop this morning. Almost immediately, he suggested canceling the dyno run because he had no way to connect his exhaust tubes (the flexible stainless tubing at the bottom left of this picture) to my headers. He suggested ordering a couple of the end flanges from the exhaust manufacturer and welding some 90º elbows onto them to turn the exhaust aft. That could take weeks, so I began suggesting alternatives. He ended up agreeing to weld on the tubing if we purchased it and I could fabricate some exhaust flanges.

My dad headed over to a diesel semi exhaust shop that had the right tubing in stock and I headed to the TechShop to fabricate the flanges. While we were gone, Dino installed the engine on the dyno.

It turns out that I didn’t need to install the water neck as he needed to remove it anyway.

After lunch, Dino welded on the elbows and a piece of straight tubing. This is 5″ diameter tubing. The two elbows and straight pipes ran about $140. Sucks to spend this much on a one-time use part, but there were no other good options.

After welding the flange in place, Dino heated up the pipes and dented it in to make room for the bolts. After they cooled down, we bolted them to the exhaust headers.

We moved my fuel tank in place and finished up the fuel, electrical and water connections. This thing is ready to run!

After a couple of failed start attempts, we realized that we weren’t getting spark. I quickly diagnosed that the FiTech config was wrong and I needed to let it know that we were using a two-wire distributor and external coil. Once that was done, the engine fired on the first turn of the crank!

After a 30 minute break-in at 2000rpm, we shut down and pulled all the plugs to confirm there were no problems that needed to be addressed. Everything looked good, so we reinstalled the plugs and got the engine ready for the first dyno pull. Here’s a video of the first pull. The engine had cooled off significantly since we shut down for so long, so we needed to let it warm up for over 6 minutes. In the video, you can see how quickly the engine fires and how smoothly it runs at higher rpms. You can also get a good sense of how lopey the idle is (which is exactly what we were looking for). I was a little concerned that the idle would be too smooth with a 114º lobe separation, but it sounds fantastic. Most of the video is just the warmup; if you want to skip ahead, the dyno pull itself happens in the last 45 seconds.

We did a total of 8 dyno pulls today while adjusting ignition advance and the accel pump setting. We saw about 465hp and 480 lbf-ft of torque on the best run, but I think we’ll be able to improve that a bit when we finish tuning the engine tomorrow.

The water neck that I ordered from TD Motion over 2 months ago finally arrived. They took quite a bit longer than expected due to manufacturing and shipping delays, but this was worth waiting for. This thing is beautifully machined and eliminates the ugly inline filler port.

I also installed the short thermostat bypass hose you see below the water neck. When I plumb in the heater core, I may see about using hose with AN fittings for all of the coolant hoses, but I need this installed before the dyno run.

You can also see a couple of lifting straps I bolted to the front of the cylinder heads. There are two more on the back of the engine.

About the only thing I dislike about this is that all three parts (lower, middle, and upper) had different finishes. The lower part had a satin, bare aluminum finish. The center part was clear powder coated and the upper part was shiny. I sanded off the clear powder coat (except for a bit that will be hidden under the coolant hose on the far left) and polished all the pieces to match.

We’re just about ready to take the engine to the dyno shop, so I’m wrapping up a few last minute details. Although this is a neutral balance flywheel, the dyno shop we’re using needs it mounted because they don’t have an adaptor flange to made directly to a Ford crankshaft. This will have to come off after the dyno runs since there is a plate that sits between the block and the bell housing and it will fit behind the flywheel. These bolts call for locktite, but I’m hoping it won’t be a problem to leave that out until it goes on for good.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I needed to use longer screws to attach the exhaust headers. Because we stepped up to 1.75″ tubing and the pipes start curving as soon as they leave the flange, some of the longer screws can’t even be inserted through the mounting holes.

I used a carbide burr to slightly relieve the inside of the hole, just enough to allow the bolts to slip in.

The tubing also prevents using a socket to tighten the bolts, so I wasn’t sure how I was going to torque these. In fact, the only wrench I had that would fit over the bolts without contacting the tubing was this old S-K box end wrench I got from somewhere. I thought I was just going to have to guess at how much to tighten these. Fortunately, the other end of the wrench fit perfectly over the 3/8″ square drive on my torque wrench.

One of the tricks with torque wrenches is that if you use an extension mounted at 90º to the handle, you don’t need to adjust the torque setting to compensate for the extension. You can see here that the wrench made it easy to access the bolts.

After figuring out the how to torque the bolts, it was pretty straightforward to get all 16 bolts in both headers installed and tightened down.

After installing the headers, I installed a stainless steel plug in the left side O2 bung.

I received the M/E Wagner PCV valve in the mail today. I cut a couple of pieces of the silicone hose and had it installed in just a few minutes.

The inlet on the bottom of the unit is aligned with the breather cap and the outlet on the side is aligned with the nipple on the throttle body.

The adjustment screws will be easy to reach from the left side of the engine by reaching under the air cleaner. Getting to the calibration port may be a little more challenging as it’s basically on the bottom of the unit. Although these hoses are under vacuum, I will probably add some worm clamps to them.

The valve covers came with a Ford Racing breather cap, but we want to have a matching breather cap on one valve cover and PCV valve on the other. This also has a weird, crinkle finish on it that doesn’t match anything else on the engine.

Billet Specialties sells these really nice PCV valves that fit in the 1.25″ valve cover holes. My plan was to remove the PCV valve from one of them and use it as a breather, but a friend of mine recommended an M/E Wagner adjustable PCV valve, so I’m going to pull the PCV valve from both of them.

After unscrewing the base, the PCV valve can easily be removed with a pair of snap ring pliers.

I fit a piece of silicone hose with chrome fitting on the end and installed it in the valve cover.

The breather needs to have access to a filtered air supply, so I drilled a 9/16″ hole in the air cleaner base.

In the hole, I installed a straight bulkhead fitting and a 90º hose adapter.

It’s is a pretty straight shot from the breather to the hose fitting. When the M/E Wagner PCV valve arrives, I’ll plumb it inline between the other cap and the throttle body.