Progress Thread Slow Boat To China

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Yeaaaaaaaaaaa beeeeeeeer!

I would put in new main bearings, yes. They're cheap and good peace of mind, in case you warped them by installing the cap back asswards.

Bottled my first batch this weekend, ready for Xmas dinner!

And the bearings are $40 ea.... Yikes! It's just an absolute pain to take the whole engine apart to get to the mains.



@madmike1157 the holes took 10 mins to weld up... or it just seemed like it, but they were numerous. The '87 LX that I dissected was sold for scrap and I picked up the '85 coupe for $700. The body is straight and it's a 4 eye coupe - less work in a better looking car. This happened about 6 months ago.
 
I simultaneously gave up on filling holes and buying Scott Rod panels. This is what tonight netted me:

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First round of welding and grinding out of the way:

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And of course, I ground the sheet metal too thin in a couple places. I decided it was time to stop instead of getting frustrated and in a hurry. I think I have 3 hours total in the inner fenders, so I think it was worth doing this versus buying the panels. Will it look better? No. But I never claimed to be building a show car.
 
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I got a bunch of free birch wood from work, so I had to pause the car to redo my kitchen cabinets. What a pain in the ass, and I cant wait to clean up the mounds of sawdust and get back to grinding.

Anyway, I'm posting because I just read that On3 Performance is releasing a fox LSx swap kit for $1750.
76mm turbo, 4" IC, all hot and cold side. . . .. For $1750. 75% of me wants to build my own system just so I can say I can and because I have a few things Id wanna do different than the kit. The other 25% is screaming "take the easy way out and go play, you stubborn bastard!"


I still think I can build the kit myself for at or under the On3 kit cost. With the s400-75 I can make several hundred more hp if needed also....

A conundrum, I tell ya!
 
Progress!!! uhhh..... Sort of.

A couple of years ago, I hung an I beam in the garage from the underside of the rafters. I hung a trolley and a hoist from that to lift and move motors and such. Unfortunately, it wasn't high enough to lift a motor over the core support of a mustang.

Today, I swiped some leftover joist hangers and 2x12s from the job site and made an opening in the ceiling. Once I finish making the garage structurally sound again, Ill cut the beam down and move it to the top side of the rafters. With this setup, the hoist will be about 2' higher and since I cut out 2 rafters, Ill have 5' of lateral movement with the trolley. Now I can easily and safely put a motor in.

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With that said, I'm hoping to have enough saved up at the end of the month of March to buy the turbo. I've decided to order a 1st gen mustang radiator (triple pass) and move it all the way to the passenger side and have a forward facing hotside so the turbo mounts over the core support on the drivers side. It should be easier to brace the behemoth borg this way I think. I still have an old Caterpillar turbo for mock up purposes, so we will see what I can come up with.

The build isn't dead!
 
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