Pre-race Report – 24 Hours of Lemons Arse-sweat… 6/30-7/1
Its looking pretty finished in the garage. Sure there’s a motor and parts all over the place, but there is also a running motor currently in the car. So, I will build this motor with the Clay Smith cam and milled head, but it will just be as the back up to the current 2002 rebuilt 60s Mustang motor current installed. I will be adding an exhaust crossover tube (that’s got to be good for a few ponies) and opening up the hole in the intake manifold as much as possible in the current motor though. The picture shows where I applied a mill and JB Weld to make a much bigger hole for the motor to breath thru, more on this later.
We’ve got our night driving lights taken care of thanks to 4 Wheel Parts Performance Centers Hella knock-offs, and a handful of odd ball light I had around, plus new Chinese non-sealed beam 4″ x 6″ hi-lo headlights in the stock locations. With packaging like this you know they are quality.
I call the one on the right Willie, the one on the left Leela, and the Pro-comps the Big Guns. Below those (but above the plywood duck bill air dam) are criss-crossed apex lights.
We installed cheatonium bushings and boxed the rear lower trailing arms, which should make the 1986 5.0 Mustang GT sway bar work more effectively. As well as cheatonium in the front A-arms and steering rack bushings to get rid of the “old folks on the way to Shoney’s” ride. Don’t worry, we’re still under budget, and I didn’t even ask for a residual after Sears Pointless.
We also applied cut off wheel, drill and welder to move the “onion head” strut mounts as far back (more negative caster) and inward as possible (more negative camber). A quick measurement showed we had -1 degree on the passenger side, +1 on the driver side, but I think my garage floor is sloped to one side. Fine tuning is in order.
The only other real worry is the fuel starvation issue we had a Sears Point. Taking apart the carb revealed the emulsion tube had come loose, So I’m hoping that is all it was. I removed the stock non-Holley numbered main jet and put in a #65 which is slightly smaller according to my numbered very small drill index. The spark plugs from Sears Pointless showed on the richer side of perfect, so 1-2 numbers should be correct.
Still a few things to do, but it fired up Saturday afternoon like nothing and sounded mean (without the exhaust system), Oh yeah, Have to put the exhaust back on. Should I change the oil?