Nov. 12/06

Alrighty, here we go. I got the fox into the project space with the Cobra and they are sitting side by side. Alot of Saturday was spent arranging the workspace, gathering supplies and coming up with a plan. Work contiunues on prepping the engine bay. Patches are in the fox car on the cowl area now and everything should be ready to paint soon. It will not be getting painted as soon as it is ready though.

I removed the Rad, heatexchanger, and AC condensor as well as the top coolant resevoirs. If I were Japanese, I would call the coolant plumbing "Happy fun coolant plumbing joy time". There is definately some interesting plumbing going on. I have never run a car with forced induction, so some of this stuff is unfamiliar to me. To empty the AC, I used a reclaimer kit for the gas. You shouldn't just let it leak into the atmosphere as it is noxious and probably breaks several laws on air polluting. Other than the tip on the AC, there nothing much to tell abouttaking a rad out of a car. Undo the hoses and brackets and yank it out. One other note, this car held a lot of coolant. I almost overfilled a large coolant pan when I drained the system.

A pleasant surprise was that the car is equipped with a 95mm mass air setup. I thought it looked pretty big compared to stock. There are goodies hiding all over this thing.

One of my goals for this car is to have everything work. A lot of the cars I read about that have done this swap say how their speedos don't work, or the AC is none functional etc. I am going to have everything work in the car. Which brings me to why the engine bay won't get painted for a while. When doing a mock up of the AC condensor, there is some fabricating we have to do. The rad support is going to have to be slotted on all four corners of the condensor so that we can use the stock rubber mounting bracket for it. That means we also have to do some minor fabricating so that the Cobra radiator mounts will also work. The Rad in the cobra is actually on a floating mount system. I will post about the technical aspects of slotting for the AC condensor and what has to be done with the rad mounts when we get there.

While I'm taliking about this stuff, let me touch on the dimensions of the engine bays of the cars. They are nearly identical. The only real difference in measuring from rail to rail, strut to rad support, firewall to rad support etc. is about 3/4 of an inch in favour of the fox car. That is right. As bulky as the Cobra is, the engine bay in the fox car actullay gives you just a little more room to play with lengthwise. The only other significant difference is that the top rad support rail (where the hood latch connects to) on the Cobra is a full inch slimmer than the fox car, hence why we have to slot for the AC condensor. It should also be noted that the trunk pan in the cars are identical. Other than the bloated body panels, there is not much difference at all.

As far as the parts departement goes, I just picked up my Cobra wing, decklid, heat extractor hood, and ground effects for the fox car. All of the parts came from Cervinis Auto Designs. I have not seen quality like this in other brands of fibreglass products. The stuff is gorgeous. Grand total on all of that stuff including shipping is around $2300.

That's it for now. There are no picture this time as most of the pics I took are of general disassembly and not terribly interesting. Monday I will be fabricating the mounting for the cooling system.

Nov. 19/06

Ok...where do I begin. Ah, right here.



That would be a 2003 Cobra Engine on the floor. First let me say that pulling this motor was a BREEZE. Compared to a 5.0, this engine is a walk in the park. I have never pulled an easier motor. I could get to most things from up top and everything was buttoned up just nicely. Thank God for mass production.

I will not go through everything that needs to be disconnected because you can get that on the first page of my site. It is basically the same as a 5.0 pull with one major exception; you should drop the motor out of the bottom of the car and not pull it through the top. This combines a k-member drop with an engine pull. As you can see form the pic above, I droped the whole motor, k frame, front suspension, and transmission all together and sat it on some wheel carts. I then simply pulled the motor out from underneath the car. Pulling this motor from the top would have been near impossible to do for this car because of the bent frame. Even with a straight fram, it would be way easier to drop the engine from underneath.

One thing I will tell you is to make sure you label everything that needs to be reconnected. Vac lines, electrical, and even some coolant lines should be labelled in order to keep track of them. Here is a picture showing the way I like to label things, which is basically using corresponding tags.



Easy, and if you take the time to do it, it will save headaches later on. Other than that, like I said, this engine pull is no different from a 5.0 pull. If you have gotten that far, you can get this far.

Next I want to touch on the radiator mounting. I am using the floating mounts for the rad because I am also going to be using the AC in this car. The rad support has to be slotted for the AC condensor to fit in. You will notice that if you use the mounts for the AC from the donor car, there are actually holes already in the fox car where the condensor can bolt to. That is how similar these cars are. Basically place the mounting bracket where it will line up to where it will be bolted and trace out the slot that needs to be cut. Here is a pic.

The bracket will fit in that hole and bolt to the hole above it. The bottom of the rad support does not have to be slotted, but you will have to bang the corners down a bit to mount the bottom brackets. To mount the bottom brackets, bolt the condenser at the top and lhen mark on the bottom where the brackets need to be. There are 2 prongs on the bottom brackets. You need to mark those prongs on the rad support and then drill holes where they will sit. If you drill the holes to be just a bit smaller than the prongs, you can hamer them down into place and they should be fairly snug.

Next are the bottom mounts for the floating rad. On the bottom of the rad on either side are pegs. You need to measure from the center of one peg to the center of the other. You will find it is 28 inches from center to center of the pegs. You then need to measure 28 inches across on the lower rad support. At either end of that 28 inches is where the center of the holes in the mounts need to be. Always measure form center to center when dealing with holes, pegs or whatever. This ensure that everything will line up correctly. Here is a pic of one of the mounts in place.



Once you have the center measurment, you can weld the bracket in place as above. I had to cut those brackets off of the Cobra. Next week I will finish the fabrication of the top mounts.

Let us talk a moment about hood clearance and a supercharged Cobra motor. You will read on most sites that you require a 2.5 inch lift on your hood in order to fit the motor under it. This is true from a certain point of view. Allow me to offer an alternative. I am using a hood with a 1 inch lift. You heard me right 1 inch. I am using the heat extractor hood from Cervini Auto Designs. It is basically an 03/04 Cobra hood for a fox car. Surprise surprise, there are no clearance issues with this particular hood desite the small lift. What you need to realize is that the only place you need elevated clearance is above the supercharger and particularly at the pully. The thing with a 2.5" cowl hood is that it slopes from back to front. It is a 2.5" lift at the back of the hood, but that lift drops exponetially as it goes to the from of the car. The heat extractor hood is only a 1" lift, but it is a sraight 1" from front to back which means the blower sits as it does in the Cobras: Up in the lift area. Don;t believe me? Feast your eyes.



Here it is sitting flat with no hood rubbers installed. Still don't believe me? Here you go:



There is literally a half inch of clearance on this stock pully underneath of this hood. It is a low profile hood and maintains the Cobra look for your fox. I am elated that it works this well.

The last think I am going to talk about is the primering of the engine bay.



As you can see, it is black. This is the undercoat that goes on before the finish coat. It is a special paint from Eastwood Company called Rust Encapsulator. It is basically an acrylic enamal paint that is very durable and chip resistant. I will be laying a finish coat of Eastwood gloss chassis black, the same stuff people use on street rods like Model T Fords etc. I will sand all of the runs down and get the enamal nice and smooth before blowing on the finish coat. With this first coat, I slammed it on thick so there would be lots of sandable material. My cowl is not filled yet, so it is still off of the car. Hopefully it will be done soon so I can get it buttoned back up. Here is a pic of one of the corner pieces that was patched. It was patched on the inside. The piece you see missing still in the upper frame rail will be welded back into place on Monday.



So that is about it for today. Pretty big update actually. We have rounded a bend in the project now that we have actually begun swap work. Next Saturday we will be tackling the removal of the IRS and the beginning of getting it into the fox car.

Goodies I found today: Short Shifter, Programmable traction control eliminator, awsome aluminum driveshaft.

Hours in so far: 70

Saturday Nov. 19 + 13 hours for 83 total hours or around $5400 in labour costs saved.

Nov. 29/06

IRS Madness

Ok, it has been a while. I have had a flu so work slowed abit. I have worked on the car a few times in the last couple weeks and have a treat: How to do a complete IRS swap. I will cover the droppng of the rearends, fox car prep, and the installation of the IRS.

This is a very easy mod to do as the rearends of both cars are nearly identical.

Dropping the fox rearend:

Loosen the wheel nuts so you can take the tires off once you jack up the car. Then you need to support the 8.8 rearend with a jack positioned under the pot (the normal jacking point for the rearend). Put axle stands under the axles and undo the driveshaft bolts if you haven't already removed the driveshaft for the swap. After the driveshaft is out, disconnect the e-brake cables from the bracket that is located in the tranny tunnel. This is the easiest point to disconnect them from. The e-brake cables are also held in by clips near the back of the car (underneath where the rear seats are located). These clips can be a pain in the ass to get out. I just destroy mine and use new ones later whenever I change e-brake cables. Next, undo the shocks from the top and bottom points of connection and remove them completely. Now undo the upper control arms at the point where they connect to the car and get the bolts out of there. While you are up there, undo the flex line for the brakes. Now you should be able to jack the rearend up until it is off the stands. Move the stands up so the car is supported underneath of the chassis and chalk the front tires. SLOWLY lower the rearend down to take the tension off of the coil springs. If you can kick the springs out, do so. You may need to motivate them with a prybar. Now you can undo the lower control arms from the torque boxes. Once the bolts are out, pry the arms out and the rearend should be free.

A problem you may encounter: Sometimes, especially in high mileage fox cars, the bolts in the lower control arms will fuse to the metal sleeve in the torque box. This makes it impossible to get the bolt out. If this happens, you need to carefully and surgically remove the bolt and sleeve with cutting torches. You have to be careful not to burn holes through the sides of the torque boxes. Have water handy because the rubber bushing around the sleeve will catch on fire. It is a good idea to try and cut some of the rubber bushing out with a knife or razor blade if you can before torching.

Dropping the IRS: See above. It is basically the exact same process save for a couple of different bolt locations.

Prepping the fox car. There is a couple of things you need to do with the fox car before you put the IRS into place. First, there are rubber snubbers on brackets on both sides of the car in the wheel well that are attached to the frame. These will interfere with the IRS so you need to cut them out. I don;t have a picture, but they are easy to find. Next, you can remove the pinion snubber from underneath the car. After that, remove the quadshock brackets from the frame. Again, there is no picture. If you don;t know what I am talking about, you shouldn't be doing this to begin with. Now you will need to slot the pinch weld on the driver's side of the car. I do have a picture of this here:



You need to cut enough off so that the IRS bracket rests squarely on the frame. On the passenger's side, the IRS bracket will interfere slightly with part of the trunk pan. You will see where this is when you mock up the IRS. Mark the spot and simply hammer it flush with the fram rail. It may sound confusing, but you will see it easily.

I have seen some other tutorials where they put the whole IRS into the car before attaching the rear brackets. You will save a lot of time if you remove the rear brackets (the ones that attach to the framerail) to put them on the car. There are 4 bolt locations on the rear bracket. You will notice that one of the quadshock bolt holes actually lines up with the IRS bolt holes perfectly. This is by design. The quadshock hole that will line up on both sides are the ones closest to the front of the car. Make sure you use the old bolts that cam out of that location on the fox as they are SAE and the IRS bolts are metric. Put those bolts in but do not tighten them. Making sure that the bracket is flush with the frame rail, use a center punch to mark where you will need to drill new holes for the IRS. There are 2 on the bottom of the frame rail and one that you will need to drill on the side. The side hole should be drilled above the quadshock hole. It is very important that the brackets are flush with the rail before marking or your holes will be off.

The tutorials I have seen on the net about this swap do it wrong when it comes to affixing the bracket in place. They drill through the bottom of the framerails and up through the trunkpan and then bolt it up like that. This created a massive weak point in your car. You can't leave that much slush in the connection, especially when it is connected to an 8th inch of steel. To do this right, you need to slice doorways in your trunkpan so you can see into the frame rail. You must affix the bolts with locknuts so that they are tightened to the frame rail and not the trunkpan. Here is a picture. Note: The bolts are not yet tightened down in this picture, but you get the idea.



Now when the bolts are tightened, you may opt to weld the doors back in completely, or you may do what I am going to do incase you need to get at the bolts for any reason. I am going to spot weld the corners of the door down and seam seal the rest. That way if I need to get in there I just have 2 spot welds to deal with instead of cutting a new door. The nice thing with the IRS is that it can be dropped off of the brackets.

Now that your brackets are installed, go ahead and jack the rearend so the lower control arms go into place. Bolt them in as they fit perfectly in the stock location. Now jack the pumpkin so that the large cross bar goes into the brackets and bolt them into place. Now in my car, I have a coil over shock setup so I didn't have to put the factory springs back in the car. you may have to so be vigilent of that fact and don't bolt the rear  before you put your springs in. Voila, your IRS is installed. I have not run the brake lines or the e brakes yet, so I won't comment on that stuff at the mooment.

Some tidbits.

I started to fabricate the radiator mounting brackets for the floatng rad set up. I basically cut the factory cobra mounts in half, cut a piece of steel for the vertical support and then welded it all back together. Here is a pic of one of the mounts. This is before it is ground and painted, so it looks a bit ugly.



The other mount is a bit mroe challenging, Here it is before welding.




As you can see, this one has some angled cuts in it so it runs along the rad support properly.

Other than this stuff, I have been doing a lot of little loose end type stuff. I have the upper frame rails welded back up.



They just need cleaned up and painted.

I have also begun to dismantle the interior in the Cobra. I will post about that on Saturday once it is all out of the car.

I think I put like 25 hours in in the last 2 weeks. I kind of lost track from being sick, but 25 sounds about right. 83 previous+25 = 108 hours in so far.

Dec. 03/06

Not a huge update today. Basically all I have done is dismantel the interior in the Cobra. I see now what has to be done to get the rear seats to work in the car. It is a bit of a nightmare, but it shouldn't be too bad.

When removing the dash from a SN mustang, it is basically the same as removing the dash from a fox car. Find all hte hidden bolts, dissconnect what you have to, adn yank the dash out. The dash comes out in one piece more or less and even the wiring harness in behind it can stay affixed to it. You will have to dismantel the console and stereo area to get at some connectors. I also recommend taking out the guage cluster. The steering column has to be dropped, but this is much easier on the SN car than the fox.

Most importantly, make sure to label your connections and keep track of your screws and bolts. Many different sizes are used and it is easy to mix tham up. Here is a pic of the dash sitting in the fox car. It is not trimmed for install yet and there remains a bit of work to do on the interior before it can be put in.