Build Thread Want To Blow 5 Years And $50k On A Foxbody? Step By Step Instructions Inside!

Yes there are all kinds of little tricks that need to be figured out with it and everything needs to be checked 100 times. Over the winter i rewired the entire holley with the unterminated harness a with the help of a friend who does some really clean work, and doing that job really got me knee deep in how everything works together.

It is nice that standalone EFI systems have become so accessable to guys like us, cause 10 years ago we would probably have been so lost without the wealth of knowledge that is shared by everyone. I think thats where companies like bigstuff and FAST went wrong, they catered towards the professionals and made working with these systems very exclusive to the casual hobbyist, where as holley, in my opinion, took the right approach by sharing all kinds of knowledge and letting the little guys in on all of the secrets and tricks with their hardware and software, which only leads to better, more user friendly products will all of the feedback they get.
 
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I completely agree with you on that. The wealth of information on the Holley forums is what ultimately made me choose the Holley over Fast or BS3. I wanted to be able to know enough to be dangerous so I could make my own adjustments in the future without having to take it somewhere to make minor changes. The help section in the Holley software is also amazing. There is hours upon hours of reading material in there.
 
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I was able to get the timing where it needs to be as far as synchronizing it goes. What I ended up needing to do was change the ignition reference angle from 50 degrees to 60 degrees. When the balancer is at 60 degrees (or at least close, mine only reads to 50), the magnet on the trigger wheel is sitting on the very edge of the pickup. When I had it at 50 degrees, I had the magnet sitting on the wrong side of the pickup. The whole digital rising and digital falling got the best of me. With the timing locked at 25 degrees, that's exactly what I see on the balancer. I did some revs to about 4k, and after half a dozen times I wound up with an inductive delay of 85 microseconds. I'm going to do it again later this week while logging the timing to see exactly what everything is doing. What's interesting is that the software now brings up a warning that says an inductive delay over 50 microseconds with a hall effect sensor may result in over-advanced timing at high RPMs.

The tune still needs a lot of work. Idle is surging until the engine gets up to operating temp. When I lock the timing, it idles a lot better and the AFR stays tighter at idle. I'm only pulling 7in of vacuum at idle, but I think it's always been that way. I honestly can't remember what the vacuum was prior to the rebuild. I was concerned about a vacuum leak, and I'm still going to check things to make sure that's not an issue.

In non-engine related news, I need to work on adjusting the hydraulic clutch a bit. I think it needs another round of bleeding. I'm having a difficult time getting the transmission into gear with the engine running. I went as far as backing the car out of the garage and pulling it back in. I will say that this clutch feels like an absolute dream. Between the twin-disc setup and the hydraulic clutch, it has amazingly light pedal feel. Two fingers will get the clutch pedal to the floor. I just need to fine tune it a bit to get the engagement where it needs to be. Fingers crossed that I didn't setup the adjustable pivot stud incorrectly. I'd hate to have to pull the trans to get the clutch setup right.
 
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I got the clutch bled properly. Finally! I wound up having to take the hydraulic bits out of the car to bench bleed it again. I first gravity bled the lines, but that didn't seem to help much. I decided to put in a call to McLeod to see what kind of advice they could offer. Their tech told me to read the instructions on their website. I reminded him that their instructions only explained how to bench bleed their hydraulic TOB. I also explained that I watched their installation video online and went through the bench bleed process but still had engagement issues. He told me that I also need to pump the master cylinder in addition to the slave cylinder. It would have been nice if their video explained that. I hung up with their extra grumpy tech department and proceeded to pump the slave cylinder about 100 times and then pump the master another 100 times. After all that pumping, I got all the air out. I was able to confirm that I had instant engagement of the slave cylinder as soon as I started pulling on the master.

I got the hydraulic bits back in the car and hooked up up the clutch fork. With the hydraulic clutch, there is no air gap between the TOB and the pressure plate fingers. You set it so the TOB just rests on the fingers. I started up the engine and pushed in the super light clutch and then attempted to put the transmission into first gear. It fell right into place. :banana:. I let the car warm up and took it for a spin around the block. The clutch is amazing. The engagement is incredibly smooth and it catches in the perfect spot. No more on and off switch! My other half has a Focus ST, and the clutch in the Mustang actually closely resembles the pedal effort and engagement of the ST clutch. Not bad for a clutch that will handle 900hp. We'll see how it does holding the power on the dyno.

Once I hear back from Kris and get the tune dialed in a little better, I want to put a 100 miles or so on the engine before we do more dyno pulls with it. There is some smoke coming out of the breather at idle, but I guess I should expect a small amount. It's nothing like the amount that was previously coming out of it. I have it packed with steel wool as well as a headband wrapped around the filter to tame the smoke some.

I've been reading a lot about Alpha-N tuning for the idle. The Holley offers a combo mode where you can use Alpha-N for the idle and speed density for the rest of the fuel map. The Alpha-N just uses the TPS and lbs/hr fuel to tune at idle, and can be set to turn over to speed density at a specific TPS or RPM value. That may be the way for me to go due to my low vacuum at idle. I think the ECU is going to have a hard time at idle because of my cam. I'll see what Kris thinks, but it may be a viable option.

Oh, and my water pump is still leaking from the weep hole. I think it's a bad motor seal. That's what I get for trying to save money by purchasing a used pump. I have an e-mail to Meziere to see what they recommend.
 
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I've been reading a lot about Alpha-N tuning for the idle. The Holley offers a combo mode where you can use Alpha-N for the idle and speed density for the rest of the fuel map. The Alpha-N just uses the TPS and lbs/hr fuel to tune at idle, and can be set to turn over to speed density at a specific TPS or RPM value. That may be the way for me to go due to my low vacuum at idle. I think the ECU is going to have a hard time at idle because of my cam. I'll see what Kris thinks, but it may be a viable option.
What RPM are you trying to get the car to idle at? With a FAST XFI getting idle speed to just under 1,000 RPM is no problem with a cam that has over .700 lift and duration over 258* at .050 so one would think that the Holley system should easily be able to accommodate your set-up.
 
Kris had the car idling pretty well the last time around at 900 rpm. It was just the cold idle that was the issue. The car wouldn't keep an idle under 150 degrees. I'm sure he'll be able to get the car to idle fine. My cam is not nearly as radical as that one.
 
Just whoring another engine bay picture.

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In other news, I was browsing around online and I think I'm going to get myself into another (unnecessary) winter project. I found out that Holley came out with a 7" digital dash late last year. The next firmware update will allow it to expand my HP ECU's input and output capacity. That would allow me to get the ECU to control more things without having to upgrade to the Dominator ECU. That 7" display also nicely fits into the stock gauge shroud area. I can sell my existing gauge plate and gauges for what the digital dash would cost me. Some re-wiring will be necessary, but it's nothing major. The digital dash even has provisions for blinkers, high beam, and barking brake inputs.

I can also then get the Holley to control the electric fan and water pump and sell my Dccontrol unit. Same deal with the boost controller. I don't really need any of these external units. They just add points of failure, IMO. The Holley EFI was not part of the original plan, so that's why I have all these other units. Now that I have the Holley, I'd like to use it to its full potential and I would actually save money in the process. Maybe I'll also switch to a DIS setup as well and ditch my CD ignition box. I've gotten real good at doing things twice, so I might as well continue the tradition!

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I love my digital dash (FAST) even though it isn't nearly as fancy as that one:(... Controlling the fan and water pump on the ecu is a great idea imho, the ecu triggers the ground side of the relay and you get to eliminate a ton of unneeded devices like you said. Not quite sure what a barking brake is though:O_o::nonono:

Engine bay is absolutely killer btw!
 
Just whoring another engine bay picture.

06cd5654fd2f9aef67a59511b344ffa0.jpg



In other news, I was browsing around online and I think I'm going to get myself into another (unnecessary) winter project. I found out that Holley came out with a 7" digital dash late last year. The next firmware update will allow it to expand my HP ECU's input and output capacity. That would allow me to get the ECU to control more things without having to upgrade to the Dominator ECU. That 7" display also nicely fits into the stock gauge shroud area. I can sell my existing gauge plate and gauges for what the digital dash would cost me. Some re-wiring will be necessary, but it's nothing major. The digital dash even has provisions for blinkers, high beam, and barking brake inputs.

I can also then get the Holley to control the electric fan and water pump and sell my Dccontrol unit. Same deal with the boost controller. I don't really need any of these external units. They just add points of failure, IMO. The Holley EFI was not part of the original plan, so that's why I have all these other units. Now that I have the Holley, I'd like to use it to its full potential and I would actually save money in the process. Maybe I'll also switch to a DIS setup as well and ditch my CD ignition box. I've gotten real good at doing things twice, so I might as well continue the tradition!

5135a6b1099db6dd09fb1198e531ea52.jpg
I want a 4k pic next I just love the outcome of this engine bay.
 
Haha. Thanks guys. I'm happy with how the bay came out. Now we just need to nail this tune down and we're ready to rip.

I've been working on the hatch interior over the past few days. I have all the MDF cut. It's coming along nicely. I should have some pictures up later tonight.
 
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I hear that. I needed to switch gears a little bit and get away from the engine stuff. I enjoy working on every part of the car, but sometimes you just get sick of turning wrenches on the same stuff for weeks at a time. Now my garage is all full of sawdust from cutting up MDF.
 
The holley dash is badass, the possibilities of stuff it can do is only limited by the user. If i were you i would order one now, cause like everything else holley, the price will go up and up.

Have you messed with math channels at all yet? You should check that out, you can set up guages to do pretty much anything you want with them. I found one that would estimate horspower off of the datalog. I also talked to the guys at holley about making some sort of odometer with the dash and they said it is definitely possible. I have one just sitting on the shelf waiting to go in.
 
It's so funny you mention the odometer. That was the only thing I realized I would need on the dash. It would be so easy for them to add that because the Holley digital would already have the speed sensor input for the speedometer, and I have a hall effect speed sensor all ready to be hooked up. It would be nice if the digital dash can accept a magnetic 2 wire sensor input like the dominator. I guess I'll find out once they release the I/O harness for it.

I thought about pulling the trigger on it sooner than later and doing the firmware upgrade once holley releases I/O update.
 
you can hook the speedo into an input and use the math channel to calibrate it, that is what i was planning on doing. I have a magnetic collar on the DS so i will use that for a signal.