Engine Bay Pictures — With Engine Cover!

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Latest development — I have the engine cover in place! This took a lot of time and work and of course I had help from my buddy Matthew Overbeek. Matt’s engine bay still sets the record for smooth, IMHO.

To get it to this point, we had to do some bending, sawing and welding (mostly on the cross-tower brace). One of the benefits introduced was to tap the holes for the cross-tower-brace. The rear holes were replaced with welded-in-studs. This means I can pull the cross-tower-brace with a 17mm wrench (just one). Huge improvement.

To get the cover to fit, the hood insulation/sound damper had to be removed. This freed up space over the cover, which is sitting rather close to the hood. Still some painting and cleaning to do, but man does it look sweet. I’m also finishing up a fuse-box (faux) to cover up that unsightly mess-o-wires in the passenger front of the car.

I’ve been too busy for video! I’ll get some of it out on youtube, hopefully today or tomorrow.

-=FeriCyde=-

Summertime Coyote Fun Begins

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I got some terrific footage with the GoPro recently. I did this by holding the camera and driving the car (kinda tricky, as one hand needs to shift, the other hand, steer, and with my third hand, I hold the camera).

Had a great time going to the back to the 50’s show with my Dad — we rode around a lot over the weekend with the top down. The car was quite bouncy, mainly due to the fact that I had the adjustable shock valving on the KYB struts (in the front of the car) set to their maximum stiffness setting :/ … Too bad I didn’t figure this out till Dad was back in Ohio. A small screwdriver and now the car is a lot more civilized.

During the show I had time to do a photo-shoot with Matthew Overbeek’s incredible 94. Here’s the photo album on Imgur:

I’m working on cleaning up the appearance of the engine bay. It’s not a simple operation — but a big portion of the mess is located in the passenger/front corner. Basically the Coyote PCM sits there, and a ton of wires run through that spot. I’ll be using a cheap plastic toolbox there to hide the mess. I’m probably going to use something black and round to cover the hydroboost plumbing in the opposite corner, and leave the fuel regulator on display. The final piece will come later — I’m looking at replacing the stock hood with a Cobra R hood, and that will give me vertical room for the Coyote engine cover.

Interest continues to pick up — more people are attempting Coyote swaps with New Edge cars. Happy Day! Contact me if you’re thinking about this, by the way.

-=FeriCyde=-

Buttoning up: Under Car Inspection

I’ve been driving the car — but I’m far from done. Since the car is so fresh out of the oven ;) I need to make sure that the work I did stays “done” — and that means I need to inspect the car over and under. Over is easy — open the hood. Under, not so easy. Fortunately, I have access to a lift and I can get under the car and look at the work closely. Every bolt that’s been turned as part of the build needs to be closely inspected.

Items I go over in the video but are worth mentioning here are:

  1. K-member bolts — 4 under the frame and 4 at the back (8 total).
  2. Exhaust bolts — the stainless exhaust system has 9 bolts per side — 18 total. There are also bolts that hold the hangers in place that need to be inspected.
  3. Fuel tank bolts — all of the hardware that holds the fuel tank in place needs to be inspected. 3 total.
  4. Fuel line — go from back to front and make sure that all of the parts are not colliding with things like the exhaust, the rear end and of course the drive shaft.
  5. Transmission — there are about 6-8 bolts that can be located and checked under the car. The ones near the top of the engine are of course hard to get to.
  6. Starter motor — while you’re there, there are a couple of bolts for the starter that should be checked. Note — there’s an un-fused power line running to the starter and you need to respect it.
  7. Alternator (under the engine) fasteners. In my case — one.
  8. Hydro-boost pump — check the four bolts that hold it in place and the two bolts that hold the bracket to the engine.
  9. Belt tension.
  10. Radiator lines.
  11. Hydroboost lines.
  12. Visible wiring.
  13. Tires (the usual stuff — tread, wear patterns, air pressure).
  14. Brakes (the usual stuff — wear, fluid leaks) and caliper mounting bolts.

Along the way, bring some soap stone (My buddy Dean uses this stuff and showed me the way — Thanks Dean Smith!). As you tighten a bolt or check for tightness, make a mark along the nut or bolt head, such that you can check the alignment of the nut later. The video illustrates how this works. Soap stone does wash off, so it won’t be there forever. It will be there for days though — enough time to get a feel for something if it’s not appropriately tight.

Enjoy!

-=FeriCyde=-

Weight Stats are in!

I took the car to the same scale that I used before the engine transplant, and the results are in. It bears noting that I did not install the A/C compressor and the strut tower brace is yet to be installed.
The spare is out also out of the car but a sub-woofer was installed. There were a few (not all that heavy) tools in the car as well.

Before Coyote:

Front 1980
Rear  1480
Overall weight: 3460 lbs
Bias:  57% front, 43% rear.
Weight difference front to rear: 500 lbs heavier in the front.

After Coyote (No A/C and without spare and cross member brace).

Front: 1790
Rear: 1560
Overall weight: 3350 lbs
Bias: 53% front 47% rear.
Weight difference front to rear: 230 lbs heavier in the front.

Weight loss total: 110 lbs. Front loses 190, rear gains 80.

Other items of note — I’m sure that the Herculiner applied all over the place added some significant weight. Likely 10 to 20 lbs but possibly more. About a gallon total was applied and it’s not exactly light. Thanks to the careful application of Herculiner and sound deadener, I am getting far less drive-train noise.

The remarkably lower front stance — although it looks awesome I’m starting to re-evaluate it. I think I’m going to ratchet things up another 1/2 inch. Simply too little travel up there and I’m already bottoming out all over the place just trying to drive the car…

Just attempting to merge into traffic with the car out of the weight scale area I was able to roast the tires — it’s got way more horsepower and torque (obviously). It used to be a bit “chirpy”, but this was a brand new experience. The car smoked the tires with such ease — I’m going to have to re-learn how to drive my old GT…

The balance change is actually more noticeable than I expected. I’ve driven the car a few more times and it simply handles a lot better than before and it can’t all be the coil-overs as they’re not totally adjusted — and the alignment is not fully complete.

Also note that I fully expected that with a fully aluminum motor that I’d be losing more weight from the front of the car — the battery has been relocated after all and the k-member + coil overs + lower control arm setup alone nets somewhere near 100 lbs. My suspicion is that the Coyote is a similar weight to the original iron-block 4.6 motor. It may have a lighter block but it’s definitely a larger motor and the heads are more complex (more steel parts there for sure).

Still, you have to see that a large amount of weight has shifted — almost 300 lbs at the end of the day (190 off the front to 80 on the rear — picture a big squishy weight of 270 lbs that slid from the front to the back of the car and some kind of evaporated along the way).

Engine install using the low boy method (imgur album)


One of the breathtaking aspects of the Coyote is the engine’s overall size — it’s big. It’s wide and it sits high compared to the stock motor. If you look at the pictures in this album, this aspect will stand out as a major problem. Putting the motor into the car presents issues for this reason. It will barely squeak by a lot of things — the brake master cylinder, the shock towers, the front ABS rat’s nest — it’s tight.

Which is why you should consider putting the car over the engine, instead of “putting the engine into the car”. The vast majority of swaps seem to focus on engine insertion the hard way — they involve finding a way to sling the motor into the car and how to work around all of the obstructions.

Over the course of this project I found that you need to be comfortable putting the engine into the car easily — it shouldn’t be something that painful in other words. The album presented here shows that it’s a lot simpler to put the engine in, with the k-member and transmission (and exhaust in my case) attached. The install using this method allows you to work easily on your engine in a place that’s comfortable — then put the car over the engine — in a method very similar to the factory install — with some simple parts (some jack stands, u-bolts, c-clamps, a crow-bar and a pair of lawn-mower ramps. and an engine hoist (of course).

Hope you enjoy my install photo album,

-=FeriCyde=-

Engine bay assembly / painting / wiring

My engine bay work continues — I’m almost done painting the primer coat (John Deere Yellow). I’m running the wiring for the battery relocation. I decided to use the hole that was in the firewall for the hood release cable — I drilled a “sister” hole to the right (looking toward the back of the car) and enlarged the hole.

The boss control pack wiring harness will be run shortly through the passenger side of the firewall using the hole for the original wiring harness. My buddy Matt explained that I could just pop the grommet (visible in the imgur album — barely visible in the video) and cut it a bit to allow for the coyote wiring.

I “deleted” the passenger air bag and fabbed a nifty bracket so I have a place to set the power distribution box (PDB) and a spot to easily hook up to the ODB2 (on board diagnostics port version two). The original ODB2 will also be live if I continue my original plan of using both PCMs (the factory one, mainly for doing instrument cluster duty).

Here’s the video below:

And an update from last week (5/10):

Here’s an imgur album that’s related to the work — some of the pictures are more useful than the video as the lighting on my 5/19 video is pretty crappy (my gopro was discharged — I need to charge it but can’t find the cable ATM).

We’re nearing the final engine fitting into the engine bay, which is so awesome. I’ve been inching down the road for months toward this day. I am thrilled to be this close.

Enjoy!

-=FeriCyde=-

Final Assembly Begins 5/3/2013

With most of the body prep out of the way, the final assembly of my Coyote project is in progress. I’m starting with some basic things — getting the braking and fuel systems put back together, painting the engine bay, fitting the drive-by-wire gas pedal, and finalizing the battery-relocation wiring. You can see a lot of the video here:

The gas pedal bracket is based upon the idea of the SVE gas pedal bracket, but I want one that’s adjustable. I started out pretty basic and so far it’s been a royal pain in the butt — but I think I can get what I’m after, which is a pedal assembly that allows me to adjust the gas pedal in a couple of key ways (left and right, and up and down). More on that in some later posts.

The obvious great news is that after a year or so of work and preparation, I’m finally getting back to putting the beast back together.

Enjoy!

-=FeriCyde=-

Body Prep Finalizing

The body prep work is almost complete. I have video and photos of the work in progress:

Older:

The body work has been extremely difficult for me — just way out of my comfort zone and the chemicals (mainly the stuff in Por15) are difficult to work with. Still, if I’m going to put so much effort into the motor the body needs to be somewhat solid for the next few years. The general prep work is nearing completion in these videos. It’s exciting for me — mainly because the final step is assembly, and having this done is the precursor to that.

Enjoy!

-=FeriCyde=-

Body prep continues…

I’m almost done mounting the batteries and getting the pieces for the mounting of the fuel tank prepped. I still need one bracket that holds the fuel neck to the tank, otherwise I have all of the parts.

Much of the body from the rear axle back has been coated with por15 / Herculiner.

Here’s some video I took of the car prior to the application of the por15 and Herculiner:

Note that I have video of the underside of the car with the stuff added, and will add that later.

This has taken quite some time to accomplish, but hopefully it will be worth it later when the car doesn’t evaporate… Joy!