Out of the ashes, a Phoenix is born

[ford20]

I worked my way down to the exhaust now as per the manual's instructions. So I went ahead and grabbed my long tubes out of the boxes.



First thing I did was grab the exhaust studs. Mind you, these are 2015 heads so I am not 100% certain if the studs are interchangable or if they have the same part number as the 11-14 heads.



Then I went ahead and grabbed the gaskets for 2015 heads. Just a quick shot of the exhaust valves before I put them on. Very nice looking





I put the long tubes on followed by the nuts for the studs.

Parts List

• Kooks 1 7/8 x 3 - 11412400
• Exhaust Manifold Studs 2015 - 6mm - W714869-S431
• Exhaust Manifold Nuts - 15mm - W714870-S430
• Exhaust Gaskets - BR3Z-9448-A

Torque Specs

• Exhaust Studs - 18lb-ft
• Exhaust Nuts - 2 Steps
• Stage 1 - 18lb-ft
• Stage 2 - 24lb-ft

shiznit, I don't know what you guys are bitching about. Installing headers is f***ing cake, bunch of pansy's .....

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

I hope you are reinstalling with the K-Member out or as a completed subframe

 

[ford20]

Im hoping to do it that way if I ever get the motivation to finish it. Degreeing the cams has taken a lot of wind out of my sails.

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

Take a day's rest and come back at it again.

 

[ford20]

It has been about a week haha. I am having major troubles wrapping my head around the exhaust cams. The intake cam I have I think, it's just the exhaust cam that I am having a hard time with.

 

[VoodooBoss]

If you're not sure pay someone to help you. Or talk to Steve Esposito.

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

This in fact does work, fuel pump and ignition deactivates. Did this after changing valve springs, takes about 15 seconds to build pressure.

I did this the other day when doing my occasional warm-up on the race car, could see the pressure build on my AIM. It went over 30PSI in about 10 seconds worth of cranking. Then I fired it for real.

 

[ford20]

I guess I will just make this my general build thread from here on out. As I said before, I think that I can break just about anything. When I went to go put on my blowfish tow hook I ended up breaking one of the bolts from the Laguna Seca bracket while taking it off the car. It looks like someone replaced it at one point since I only had 3 out of 4 bolts installed and the 3rd bolt that I broke was a different kind of bolt all together.



If you look at the bolt heads, you will see that 2 of them are painted that brown primer color while the broken one isn't and even the bolt itself is different. I'm not sure if that is by design but it looks like the bracket was replaced at one point.

The install is pretty straight forward, you basically center the bracket up and line them up in the recesses in the bumper bar and you can bolt the two halves together.



Since I have a 2012 I had to use the supplied spacer along with the longer carriage bolts.



Oh, and I ended up braking a bolt from the blowfish hardware -_-



I sent a message to Steve and within like 4 minutes he sent me a message and we talked about and said he was going to send new hardware out on Monday. I got the in hardware in a couple of days and I was back in business. He even sent me two new bolts and inserts for the top of the mount which was very nice. The customer service from my side of things is absolutely excellent with Steve, I would HIGHLY recommend the blowfish bracket. It appears to be very well constructed and the hardware seems to be of pretty good quality (despite me breaking one) and the powder coating on this is very nice! I bolted everything up and used Blue Loctite #242 on all of the bolts for a little bit of extra security.

On the 2010-2012 with the Boss 302 front valance you have to cut a hole in it so that the tow hook assembly can fit through the bumper. It is pretty easy though so no big deal here.

Parts Used

• Blowfish Racing Next Generation Tow Hook Bracket - TOW-10-500
• Blue Locktite - 01-24200

While I had the bumper off I figured I would take the old turn signals out and put some new blackout ones in which was a pretty simple mod. Just remove these two plastic nuts, pop the old one out and put the nuts back on.



Old vs. New



Finished product

Parts used

• Black Side Marker Lights - 49191

 

[ford20]

I wanted to change up the front end a little bit and I remembered seeing a set of headlights that AM and LMR had sold so I went looking for them. I found them on LMR, or so I thought. They were supposed to look something like this according to their webpage:



When I received them they looked just a wee bit different:



Not only were the lenses black black, they didn't properly fit! Notice the large gap between the headlight and the grill -_-

Anyway, I figured I would pull the black lens off and swap it with my factory clear lens since the internals are all black with clear turn signal lenses. So I pulled out the factory headlights and turned the oven on and set the temperature to 235 degrees. While I was waiting for the oven to preheat I removed the rubber gasket for the headlights.



Once I removed those, I ended up putting the headlight in the over for 10 minutes. I was wearing my work gloves but you could still feel the heat as you were prying off the lens. I ended up putting it in for 2 cycles at 10 minutes each and finally the lens popped off to reveal the lights.



In order to get all of the rubber out, I threw it back in the oven for another 10 minutes and it all easily came out without issue. I grabbed the rubber butyl I bought and began putting it in the recess where I removed the old rubber. Granted this stuff is a little thick at 3/8" but if you stretched it a little and pinched the bottom it went in without issues not to mention I have so much left over. This is what I used:



Made in America



From this point I grabbed my factory headlight and turned the oven up to 275 and put that one in there. After 3 rounds of 15 minute intervals I was able to get the lens off and put it on the new headlight housing. After squeezing it in together by hand I put it in the oven at 275 for 7 minutes and took it out again and clamped it down.

As you can see I only had one pair of vice grips so I had to improvise a little.



Anyway, as I let that one sit for 45 minutes I went to work on the second factory light. Remember when I said I can break anything

I had the entire lens off except for that one corner .... f***

I bought a factory lens off of ebay with a tab missing for $55 shipped and went along my way. I got the second headlight a few days later and without much, if any difficulty it popped out and went back on easy peasy.





It looks like with the factory lenses in there the gap is smaller so I think I am ok with it now and it isn't going to drive me crazy. Maybe it will but who knows. After about 3 going on 4 days of rain, the headlights have held up and I don't see any fogging inside of the housings so I think I am pretty good on this setup. I like them, they add a small distinct touch and a bit of the blackout look without going overboard IMO. Now I just need to get Amber turn signal lenses.

Parts Used

• 2010-12 Ford Mustang SVE Euro Style Headlights Black - S197 - SDT-MST10SM
• Damplifier Butyl Rope (3/8" X 15' Each) - ROPE

Tools Used

• 10mm socket wrench x3 bolts per headlight

 

[ford20]

In the mean time I spent about 3 weeks tracking down the bolts for the Laguna Seca splitter. When you look up the kit that FRPP sells it lists them as 20 M8x25mm bolts. I went around looking for M8 fine thread x 25mm countersunk bolts and was sort of laughed at when I kept asking because turns out nobody has them. I went to one place who did have them, but they said they had to order them from the UK and it could take 2 or 3 weeks to get them. So I turned to Amazon and found some! I ordered 20 of them and in a couple of days I checked the tracking. It turns out that they are shipping from the UK as well

2 weeks go by and I get the bolts ... turns out they are WAY too big.

So, I run to The Home Depot and look at their selection of bolts and I think I found them in 1/4" x 28 x 1" using their little bolt measuring thing. I go to my local hardware store since they have just about every bolt in SAE and grab 20 of those. I get home and wouldn't you know it, they don't fit. Wrong thread size

f***ing piece of junk bolt measuring crap never works. I even threaded it in 98% of the way down by hand without issue.

Well I run down to work and dig through our boxes of spare hardware from all of the European furniture and low and behold M6 x fine thread x 20mm bolts. So I grab them and head home hoping that they are the right thread size!!!!! Hallelujah!!!!! I put everything together and now the car looks complete finally! For the first time since like Last November the car finally looks like it is complete.

I ordered some brake cooling duct hose from Pegasus Auto Racing since the old one got chewed up something fierce by the splash shields so that should be here before the weekend hopefully. I also got some new Vinyl for the grill since I did a horrible job on it the first time which is another weekend project . I will have to pull one of them out and run to Metrix and grab the correct bolts and replace all of them but at least I have everything correct except for the length which will be corrected soon hopefully!

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

Next time you need a bolt or screw that isn't available at your local Ace Hardware, or Ford, look online at McMaster-Carr and order that stuff up.

www.mcmaster.com

And EVERYTHING that came from the factory or interacts with factory parts on this car is Metric.

 

[ford20]

Next time you need a bolt or screw that isn't available at your local Ace Hardware, or Ford, look online at McMaster-Carr and order that stuff up.

www.mcmaster.com

And EVERYTHING that came from the factory or interacts with factory parts on this car is Metric.

Holy schnikes ....

That is I don't think I have words for it. Holy schnikes. I never knew there was such a place like that, freaking awesome!!

And I found the bolts I needed and it could ship today .... Thank you grand puba!

 

[Fat Boss]

Holy schnikes ....

That is I don't think I have words for it. Holy schnikes. I never knew there was such a place like that, freaking awesome!!

And I found the bolts I needed and it could ship today .... Thank you grand puba!

First exposure to McMaster-CARR, eh? Been ordering from them for a long time. I'd like to see the warehouse(s) they use to stock EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN. 8)

 

[VoodooBoss]

First exposure to McMaster-CARR, eh? Been ordering from them for a long time. I'd like to see the warehouse(s) they use to stock EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN. 8)

And that was your 1000th post!

 

[ford20]

Yes sir it is! I have to imagine that it is like some of the warehouses you see in Jersey with around 300 loading dock doors. THey look like they have A LOT of product!

And that was your 1000th post!

He wins the Pink Elephant!!

 

[ford20]

I forgot about this last update haha.

So this weekend I went to go and replace my old brake cooling ducts. They had seen better days that's for sure. The wheel well liners had rubbed up against them for 18k miles (I think. I forget how many miles are on the damn thing) and caused the rubber liner to wear away and caused holes in the ducts which I'm sure isn't that great for brake cooling.



New ducts were cut to 35" and I put them in. As you can see, this is why the old ones had been rubbed to nothing.

So I cut the wheel well liner to give ample clearance so that this wouldn't happen again. I need to get some zip ties and zip tie the hoses to the wheel well liners to keep them in place. I have to say though getting them onto the cooling ducts was a major pain in the ass!

All nice and new now

I also got my braided clutch line installed as well this weekend. It was a fairly simple and easy thing to do. The little clip by the master cylinder was a pain to get out but still very manageable. Out with the old:



In with the new



I had no idea what the metal surrounding the factory clutch line was so I figured it was either for heat resistance or for abrasion control so to speak so either way I grabbed some gold Heat Tape I had laying around and wrapped the line at the same point as the factory one was wrapped. Who knows if it will help or hurt but I figured why not, what's the worst that can happen.



After that I cleaned the engine bay. As you can see, it was not at all pretty. So I ran some spray wax through that and cleaned it up all nice and nice. I then turned to the exterior and just washed it and gave it a quick claybar. I still have to do a quick spray wax to make it shine a bit more. Considering the fact that it has been sitting outside for the last year and 4 months I think it looks pretty damn good. You can see that it needs a correction when you get up close to it but hot damn it still shines pretty darn nice.

 

[TMSBOSS]

Sean

I also replaced recently my brake ducts. I bought a set from Blowfish. The hoses were cut to length and had the steel reinforcement removed. Nice touch.

I added duct tape to reinforce rub areas. I went to Walmart and picked up a couple of rolls of Orange colored tape. I wrapped the spots which wore through on my first set. I figured this would be cheap insurance against rub through again.

Any idea when you will be able to fill the space in he engine compartment?? I an dying to hear how the new monster motor works out!!

Good luck with the remainder of your build.

 

[ford20]

Sean

I also replaced recently my brake ducts. I bought a set from Blowfish. The hoses were cut to length and had the steel reinforcement removed. Nice touch.

I added duct tape to reinforce rub areas. I went to Walmart and picked up a couple of rolls of Orange colored tape. I wrapped the spots which wore through on my first set. I figured this would be cheap insurance against rub through again.

Any idea when you will be able to fill the space in he engine compartment?? I an dying to hear how the new monster motor works out!!

Good luck with the remainder of your build.

I never even thought of that, which is a genius idea!! I will have to go and grab some and do that, thank you for the idea!!

I was hoping to drop it off this week but I don't think that is happening to be honest. If they are open next week I will do it then though so hopefully by February the car will be done. I am dying to hear this as well. I keep watching this video and drooling because I love the way this car sounds. I'm hoping it will make at least 570 on E85 and if it makes 580 I will be happier than a tornado in a trailer park!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwVVaG4ERGw

 

[VoodooBoss]

LOL I have an unused roll of orange duct tape I can send you. I never had a problem with running on the hoses.

I haven't seen Tim around in a while but he sure did a nice job on that engine build.

 

[ford20]

LOL I have an unused roll of orange duct tape I can send you. I never had a problem with running on the hoses.

I haven't seen Tim around in a while but he sure did a nice job on that engine build.

I don't think I will have an issue either as I did cut away enough room so that nothing will rub especially once I can zip tie them in place.

He sure did, that thing is a work of art IMO.