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WildWillyWalker

Swapping a Terminator Drivetrain (Exc. IRS) into a Mach 1

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Me and Josh have been working on a Mach 1 for over a week now. This customer bought a Kenne Bell'd Cobra engine, transmission and required accessories to swap into his Mustang along with Cobra bumpers, a Cobra hood and all the Cobra badging, and Kooks long tubes and x-pipe combo.

 

Here's what he bought: http://www.ebay.com/itm/03-04-Ford-Mustang-SVT-Cobra-Engine-Drivetrain-Transmission-Swap-T56-600RWHP-KB-/181623815434?nav=WATCHING_ENDED&nma=true&si=s3D2j1CzFyvfMdEkAYdLLBDvnUQ%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

 

I don't have a ton of pictures but some interesting information and warnings about buying something like this.

 

I'll apologize now for the crappy/blurry pictures. We're too busy to worry about using a nice camera so all the pictures are from our phones.

 

Here we are unloading everything:

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The Mach 1's radiator is bigger than this... interesting.

 

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What a mess of pulleys and belts! The bad news began really fast as we found 3 of the 4 Metco idler pulleys to have bad bearings along with 1 or 2 other factory idlers.

 

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And what's this?!?! A freaking missing main cap side bolt!

 

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We came up with this list in the first day or two.

 

- The oil pan was smashed from shipping and removal of the pan showed the pickup to be bent as well.

- We had a set of powder coated cam covers to install so we needed to remove the factory cam covers. Two intake manifold bolts snapped but thankfully (For some weird reason), the rest of the broken bolts unthreaded by hand. Phew!

- This was claimed to be a "drop in". No way. The timing cover gaskets were leaking and needed replaced.

- One of the nipples on the bottom of the power steering reservoir was broken off.

- When we removed the transmission, the inner part of the pilot bearing fell right out. It was toast!!!

 

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This scared us at first. The back half of the intake manifold was covered in oil. We weren't sure if the included oil separator had caused the issue or not so we were crossing our fingers, hoping there wasn't a bigger problem. The supercharger had no oil in it which was a cause for concern.

 

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I've never seen of these before so I had to check out www.Acceleronics.com to read up. It's a neat concept. The VersaFueler is a box that allows the use of low impedence injectors with the factory computer.

 

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We removed the fuel pumps from the new tank real quick to make sure the tank was indeed from a Cobra. I guess we'll see how the factory pumps work with the VersaFueler and larger fuel injectors. If you take notice, there is one connection that is different from the Mach 1 tank to the Cobra tank. The Cobra has a nipple (I'm going to use this word so much) on the front of the tank on the driver side. The Mach's connection is in the middle so we had to swap all the emissions hoses.

 

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Aaaannndddd onto another post so I don't lose all this :D

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Josh muscling out the Mach engine.

 

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Empty!

 

Same with the interior. We removed the dash to install the dash harness and Cobra gauges only to find out we were given the exact same harness in the car already.

 

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Now that we were getting onto the installation of parts, we really started to come across problems. The previous owner spliced on a strange connector that went from the engine harness to the dash harness which meant we needed to get the correct pigtail.

 

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Here's the connector that plugs into the ABS!! It got all sorts of toasty warm. The seller agreed to cut out that connector from a wiring harness he had. We can't wait to get to splicing in a new connector....

 

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The quality of these Kooks headers is fantastic. The installation was horrible. I will always stick with ARH.

 

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We needed to remove both of the crank pulleys to remove the timing cover but the crank pulley that runs the supercharger is STUPID tight. We screwed in some ARP flywheel bolts and I held the engine with a long pry bar. Just used a breaker bar and about 4' cheater bar and all we did was bend the ARP bolts!!!!! We needed to get the engine in the car and use a jack to jack up a breaker bar to try and get that pulley off. In addition, josh used a pry bar and hammer and it finally broke free.

 

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The inner part of the pilot bearing broke apart but left a shell which I used a slide hammer with some teeth to remove. It took wwwwaaayyyy too many tries, especially since the shell was all chewed up. After that came out, we still needed to remove the thick outer part so the bread trick came in handy!

 

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The transmission has a 26 spline input shaft and Spec puck clutch.

 

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After the flywheel was installed, we could use a special Ford tool to hole it in place and remove the crankshaft pulley. Aaaannnddddd the bushings were all bad. Amazingly enough, the seller said he would send a Metco Kit. Of course when we receive it, it's missing half the hardware which we are currently waiting on.

 

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What a mess!

 

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All cleaned up.

 

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As I mentioned, he's going aaallll Cobra.

 

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The Cobra body harness is slightly different from the Mach harness. We thought we could change it, but decided against it and the customer bought a new harness, even thought the ebay listing said it was included....

 

Out came more interior.

 

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Also, we had new pads and rotors to install so got that done.

 

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The Mustang got some company this past weekend as we installed a turbo-back and gauges in an SRT4.

 

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Unfortunately, you don't always spot problems real fast. The powder coated cam covers had the breather hole on the back of the passenger side cover, instead of the front like the stockers.

 

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The bearings were bad in the Metco pulleys, so instead of buying new bearings our customer bought a whole new kit from UPR.

 

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The power steering hoses have small details that differ from each other, but they make a big difference.

 

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Perched like a majestic bald eagle.

 

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Here's the culprit of the oil mess! The best part? The previous owner had the PCV/oil separator line connected to a boosted source! No wonder there was oil everywhere!!! More vacuum lines will be run as we redo the mess.

 

Besides the wrong connector that needs removed, the interior is all together.

 

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It's really starting to come together. We have to get the wiring harness completely installed then the supercharger can be dropped in. We can't finish installing all the belts until we get the needed hardware for the Metco kit.

 

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See post 2. You stuff the crank full of bread and then hammer a socket in to force the pilot bearing out. We got paid pretty well. We also are also keeping ALL of the old parts. Most of which will be finding their way into my car :) however if anyone is interested in a Mach 1 hood or shaker pm me or Sean :)

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I would have returned that shit to seller.

 

We were pretty far into this engine when the customer mentioned that and we were like... well we're still getting paid for our work and it just wouldn't have been worth it. In the end this should be a pretty darn sweet car!

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I feel tired just reading through this, lol. Good to see you guys are getting this done correctly though, I can't say for sure that most shops would take the same care. Most would either slap it together and say they aren't responsible for the condition of the parts received, or they would treat the customer like a blank check and charge the living shit out of them for every small issue they find.

 

I'd also be a little worried about the condition of the motor, if I was your customer. Obviously that issue isn't your problem, but judging by some of the careless things you have found I'd be interested to see compression test numbers. I'd guess the blower not having oil is maybe just for shipping purposes. I know when I bought my 3550, Fedex told the guy it had to be 100% free of all fluids. He drained it but not very well, the box came soaked with transmission fluid and in a big plastic bag. I felt a little bad for the delivery driver since we all know how great trans fluid smells, but that quickly went away when he carried the box to my garage on his shoulder like a macho man and then dropped it onto my garage floor directly on the input shaft. I could have ripped his spine out Mortal Kombat style... I ended up having a local guy rebuild it to be safe and it did a bit of damage...

 

The seller of that motor you guys are swapping definitely sounds like a little bit of a hack. But then again, it seems most people selling anything used these days are hacks sadly.

 

On a positive note, I agree this should be one badass Mach when it's done. And it's my favorite Mach color to boot. Are you guys getting into a bit of a business doing performance work I'm guessing? Sounds fun and a little stressful at the same time haha.

 

Oh and LOL at "Perched like a majestic bald eagle."

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never heard of using bread but hey if it works then awesome.  i can't believe how much motivation you guys have when you get paid for your work vs. your own cars.  it's been what? 3 weeks now on this thing and you've practically rebuilt everything.  hasn't josh's car has been in pieces for 3 years now with barely a bolt touched?

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We had the cam covers off as well as the oil pan so we just poked around, but that's all. He keeps saying he doesn't have anymore money to spend so we aren't really doing anything we don't HAVE to do. However, we are making sure we do what we can to get this done right. The wiring mess makes me nervous. The entire engine harness has been spliced into (Like every single injector) for the VersaFueler. Plus, we just found the bolt on the fuse box to be messed up, so I rrrreeeaaalllyyyy hope there isn't a wiring issue when we are all said and done.

 

@95riosnake I'm hoping it was just drained for shipping purposes as well but you just can't be too sure.

 

@Prokiller Well, with any luck this Mach engine should be a nice booster to get Josh's car on track for road worthiness. It also REALLY helps to do work inside. I need all the motivation I can get to do something and working outside is a big inhibitor.

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never heard of using bread but hey if it works then awesome. i can't believe how much motivation you guys have when you get paid for your work vs. your own cars. it's been what? 3 weeks now on this thing and you've practically rebuilt everything. hasn't josh's car has been in pieces for 3 years now with barely a bolt touched?

lol your a jerk :) maybe when it's all done I'll just pull my car in and replace all the parts... Or I'll wait another year or two:)

@95riosnake, we are attempting a "performance" business. I enjoy this much more than putting engines in ford E vans. We had an exhaust install on an SRT-4 this past weekend. If anyone hasn't look up our Facebook page Precision MotorSport Solutions. Or PMS for short ;) we are in linglestown pa.

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lol your a jerk :) maybe when it's all done I'll just pull my car in and replace all the parts... Or I'll wait another year or two:)

@95riosnake, we are attempting a "performance" business. I enjoy this much more than putting engines in ford E vans. We had an exhaust install on an SRT-4 this past weekend. If anyone hasn't look up our Facebook page Precision MotorSport Solutions. Or PMS for short ;) we are in linglestown pa.

 

That's awesome for you guys. Dipping your toes in gradually like this will keep you from getting overwhelmed. If you have the ability and knowledge, might as well put it to use doing something you love right? You could even start up a thread in Tony's Garage with an ongoing thread showing the non mustang stuff you guys end up working on. Anything cool is interesting to me, mustang or not. :2thumb:

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we are not in with the "performance" crowd exactly yet, so we are still doing general repair work to fund the powder coating projects. Im hoping that this mustang swap and the SRT are the beginnings of some new performance work. Im hoping for some good word of mouth reviews :)

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we are not in with the "performance" crowd exactly yet, so we are still doing general repair work to fund the powder coating projects. Im hoping that this mustang swap and the SRT are the beginnings of some new performance work. Im hoping for some good word of mouth reviews :)

 

I'm sure the owner of this mach will have good things to say, you guys are definitely taking care of him!

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i had some headaches with my 4v swap and eaton swap but nothing like this... i got my motor swap kit from MPS and it was perfect!

we actually recommended this customer to buy from MPS. However I think he saw that this engine had a Kenne Bell on it and he jumped. This was a upgrade he had panned to do down the road and it was to good to pass up. We have over a grand in just "fixing" this engine before we have even heard it run :mellow:

 

planning on trying to finish up my mass of wiring tonight. need to look into the 03 cobra ABS module being different than the Mach 1 set up. Parts for the crank pulley and driveshaft as supposed to be showing up today.

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What did they pay for this setup?  I understand wearable items and these engines being 11 and 12 years old now but I can't believe how much you guys are having to fix and deal with.  Seems definitely like a get-what-you-pay-for situation with the components he provided for you guys...

 

Kudos for taking the initiative to do it the right way and take care of the guy.

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I would say it would have been a great deal. except I had to put 10ish hours in to just oil leak repairs. I believe the engine was advertised as 50k miles. problem is that every one of those 50,000 was probably at 3/4-wide open throttle :blink:

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I would say it would have been a great deal. except I had to put 10ish hours in to just oil leak repairs. I believe the engine was advertised as 50k miles. problem is that every one of those 50,000 was probably at 3/4-wide open throttle :blink:

 

Sounds like a BMW V8.  Those things are sieves at 50k miles.

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i had some headaches with my 4v swap and eaton swap but nothing like this... i got my motor swap kit from MPS and it was perfect!

 

Yup. I wish he would've bought the kit from MPS. It's about the same price but I definitely would have trusted MPS over this never-heard-of-fellow.

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Soooo as you may have seen in the first post we had a horrific looking ABS connector. The seller was nice enough to send me a pigtail from

A harness he had since you cannot but that specific one from

Ford. That's he good news... The bad news is I had to splice and wire 32 wires YAY. Sean does not like wiring so I have all the fun :) detailed below is a quick guide.

Step 1 0dab74ec900d34a73612e0e9604a924b.jpg yep it's busted.

Step 27ef5f9b5de04fef54c5fbef6e9087e3c.jpg cut one wire at a time. Just I case some of the colors are different.

Step3

45a18c49f452e25ccfe98341aa8af19d.jpg Use solder it makes a much better connection.

Step 4

6a4e9afbd3b69df51670ba6ee8814600.jpg Heat shrink to keep out moisture. I really like the heat shrink tuning Ford uses. When it gets tight it has some "ooze" that comes out. That way I know it's a good seal ;)

Step 5? I think...

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Repeat 31 more times!

Step 6

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Wrap your wires all pretty. Again I like the Ford issue electrical tape. It's a gelt based tape instead of the vinyl. Not a yucky mess and it's supposed to shed water better.

Step 7or8

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Plug your connector in and admire all the wonderful work you just did for free :(

On a side note, I don't recommend soldering directly over your abs module. Excess solder tends to succumb to gravity and you don't want to short any module pins together accidentally! Ask me why I included this ;)

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A little tip for solder newbz, when you're soldering a big pigtail like that, a lot of times, it keeps the after product cleaner if you stagger the location of the splices if at all possible!

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For this evening a little more information. With using the T-56 you need to use the cobra driveshaft. However the cobra pinion flange for 03-04 is larger. I have a simple fix. I'm not saying this is the best way to do this Because I'm sure Ford used a bigger u- joint for a reason ;) I'll let the pictures do the talking! f1b5468d5882e162dc261501175dbf09.jpg430a45974cb73a5624d5c4ad6e44e948.jpgf704ca0bfcd70feaa9bfecbf147279c7.jpge4c45bac051250654e07c72578298ec3.jpg9b34054895d2dec02bf1f1c2a003ee6d.jpg900ec46a4b04ffa246d073fdc45b9d54.jpgea99bd7588353e886a9ee47e0589f245.jpg

The precision u joint has 2 larger caps to match the cobra aluminum driveshaft and 2 smaller cups for the GT/ Mach 1 driveshaft flange. We needed to use the driveshaft spacer our customer supplied so this is why I did not opt to switch to the cobra pinion flange on our SRA. We are planning a rear end rebuilt in the near future( it's gonna blow for sure) soni will most likely change out the flange at this time. Still hoping for a start up this weekend fingers crossed! :)

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@Blackmage. we got the car running on Saturday evening/sunday morning. Unfortunately the car does not run. severe amounts of blue smoke. compression test reveals only 120 psi on cylinder #5. along with a cylinder leak down test that appears to have a decent leak out of the exhaust. Its not looking good. car overheats. At this point it would appear to me that it has a cracked head on cylinder 5. however I cant say for 100% with out tearing the engine back out and inspecting. The customer is adamant that he does not have any more money so we are sort of in limbo at this points. Its a very unfortunate situation. however with the over all condition of the engine we were presented with for this project im not completely surprise. I will have a video later. im sure @WildWillyWalker with be able to add some as well.

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Hard to tell how blue the exhaust is from the video. I'm thinking compression test might be the next step (not your problem really, more like something the seller can do... you were only tasked with the swap, not diagnosing a motor that's been run hard and put away wet). That's really gonna blow nuts for the guy if he spent over $10k and has a motor that needs rebuilt...

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were you able to get the car up to operating temp?   nvm, just re-read previous post.

 

Also, just thinking out loud here.  Leakdown test showed a leaky exhaust valve.  wheres the oil coming from then? just for shits i would put a teaspoon of oil into cylinder 5 and re-run the compression test to see if rings are bad in it as well.

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