Killian's Rebuild Pics.

[Killian Korth]

As some of you may have learned from me or my sig, my sixxer recently has been in line for a rebuild. And now we finally have it in the shop and started working on it yesterday, so here are some of the pictures I got from the process.

Day one, got all the front stuff out of the way, radiator/fan/reservoir etc. started getting everything else ready to come out like the bolts around the bell housing and the starter

my hood.....'nuff said.

all pulled out :thumbup:

The tranny, of course.

the empty engine bay, once again

on the stand and all stripped down. the cylinder walls are....almost perfect, after 180,000 miles. My dad was shocked at this. I simply say, it's a ford

and this is the culprit. Burnt my valves to and made my car shake rattle and roll, and not in a good way. Luckily it's really only the valves that are shot and the rest of the motor is in pretty good condition.

might just throw a ring kit in it, redo the valves and throw it together, but we're thinking about boring it over, not for sure on what we're going to do. Dad's going to pull pistons tomorrow morning and we'll hopefully get everything off to the machinist (if we do that, he might just do all the valves here at home)

Overall, not bad for having pretty high mileage. More pics to come.

questions? comments? warnings?

don't be afraid to post

 

[Killian Korth]

Got all the parts in a few days ago so we've been slowly chipping away at the rebuild. Here's what it look like so far.

When we got all the pistons cleaned up and put new rings in, and ground all the cylinder walls too.

now with the new water pump, harmonic balancer, and the now clean oilpan safely put together.

and, lastly what we did today, With the heads on. The valves weren't too horrible, they were warped and burnt but just enough to cause engine problems. They just needed to be ground and reseated and then bam, all is well in valve world. Now just need push rods, rockers, valve covers and the intake and we'll be ready to throw the clutch on and put it back in

 

[kramer]

thanks for posting those, theirs not many 3.8 rebuild pics out there , same thing happened to me with the exhaust cracking except it cracked on the passenger side behind the flange , not on the manifold , and thank god , or id probably be tearin mine apart to , glad i fixed it in time , gave me a good excuse to buy an off road h pipe

 

[Killian Korth]

thanks for posting those, theirs not many 3.8 rebuild pics out there , same thing happened to me with the exhaust cracking except it cracked on the passenger side behind the flange , not on the manifold , and thank god , or id probably be tearin mine apart to , glad i fixed it in time , gave me a good excuse to buy an off road h pipe

Yeah no problem, I wanted to do exhaust but since my parents offered to pay for the rebuild as a sort of going away present (I moved out for a 4 year college after 2 years at a community college) we just stuck with stock. Still trying to scratch up the cash for new exhaust though, stuff's expensive.

 

[kramer]

what kind of exhaust setup are you lookin at?

 

[Killian Korth]

I really don't know why but I've always had a big ole chubby for side exhaust, so I'm going to try something like that, come out right in front of the back tires, I've got some resonators picked out already, I just need to get all the stuff and try and get it slapped on for cheap at some exhaust shop because we don't have the tools for pipe bending and such sadly.

 

[kramer]

what r u gonna do about the side skirts, i hope u keep the cats , its gonna really stink if you dont , if u do go with side exits itd probably be best to get a kit since the pipes have to immediately be bent towards the side exit after the manifold for it to be efficient other wise youll be making some really steep bends , how do you plan on hanging all that , im personally going through problems trying to hang my custom setup , i got a o/r h pipe going to what will be summit turbo mufflers dumped before the axle , it turns out to be very hard to hang and it is very hard to get ball flange fittings for it to connect to the h pipe so ill have to cut the ends off the h pipe and just weld my own fabricated pipes on it

 

[Killian Korth]

The way I see it, the bend will be less of a flow alteration than going over the rear axle. Instead of having to let pressure push the exhaust around up and down the pipe, it only needs to go one way and can be deflected off the inside of the pipe. Even if it's not quite as efficient as it could be it'll sure beat single exhaust.

As far as cats go, I really don't know yet. I'd like to keep them for better back pressure, but I also want longtubes and it's been hard finding a catted H or X pipe that works with longtubes for the V6. I'm staying away from kits because they're hard enough to find for the GT model, and just as hard to find and just as pricey as the GT kit. 700 bucks isn't something I'm looking to pay just for an exhaust system on a daily driver.

I'm planning on just having the pipe come out under the side skirts, I've seen it done that way and nothing seems to have gone wrong with anything I've read. I could get the side skirts that are fitted for side exhaust but for starters, expensive again, and also that only makes the side skirts taller along the space between the front and back wheels. I'd rather have a more raw look than refined I guess.

Hanging spots I suppose would be fairly difficult to find on any Mustang, but when all else fails just look at where the stock hangers were and see if there's a way you could use them with your custom setup. Works pretty well for people usually.

 

[kramer]

ya i guess thats true , thats why im just gonna dump them at the differential , im trying to get as little backpressure as possible , i dont know how that myth got started but i dont beleive it , after running my car with open headers for a while and seeing what a difference in power it has i just dont beleive in the need for back pressure , my car was incredibly fast with open headers , it was fast all through the high and low rpms , and it still is with the o/r h pipe , but i did lose a little bit of low end , and i mean a little tiny tiny bit , but i gained a butt load up top , and i really like the change , but of course i took off my cats so now its really really loud , like the illigal kind of loud and i have to put on mufflers , theirs an enormous difference in sound when you take off the cats , its unbearable , the drone shakes the whole car , especially at low throttle , the biggest thing you should worry about is the diameter of the pipe itself , 2 1/4 is good for the low end and it should be what is already on it stock , 2 1/2 inch pipe is what i got and its good for the top end , but looses a little low end because exhaust gas flows slower in larger pipe but it frees up those higher rpms that were restricted by the smaller pipe , the reason the smaller pipe worked better for the low end is cause it flows faster and theirs not as much exhaust being pushed through it at low rpms , im sure you already know this , i just like to spread the word in as many places as i can , cause alot of times people search on google with problems and it leads them to forums

 

[Killian Korth]

In all fairness, I know mine's a V6 and I'm not looking for THAT much power, but a little more is what I'm really after. And a nice sound is just an added bonus.

Back pressure is really a bitch when it's right at the block (hence the rebuild) but if there's a leak later on down the line or your exhaust is just really short then it's not really a big concern is the thing, as long as it's not close to open block haha.

I dunno, I suppose we'll see what my financial situation is this summer and maybe I'll buy my stuff and get it done.