Build Thread. Twin Turbo 408

[robert fugate]

First off to get everyone caught up to the present day. This was the first car I bought when I was 16. 1989 lx Car came with a bone stock 302 and was all White. Soon after buying it I purchased another. 1995 gt from my brother that had a few things done. While driving this car I would start tearing down my lx for upgrades.

Worked many hours as a brick mason and not having the time to dedicate the hours needed. The engine sat open with the intake off. Moisture got into the motor and months went by and locked up the motor. Ended up having a kid and the car sat in my moms barn for 9 or so years. Started to gather parts to bring it back to life, and couldnt catch a brake to save my life. Craigslist scams, ebay junk. Paid a good friend to build me a c4 that would blow up every time I raced someone. Paid another friend to paint the car orange.

Car looked terrible. Not enough color in places, not enough clear in places. Car sat again for another 4 or so years. Had another kid Got a divorce. Met the women of my dreams who was willing to work and do what ever it took to get the car running. Bought a ford explorer engine from a local Junk yard.
.

Built a Paint booth in my garage and painted the car myelf.

 

[robert fugate]

Put a trick flow cam in the explorer engine and droped it in the car.

 

[90sickfox]

Nice car, good history. That intake sure polished up nice....so did the paint job. [emoji106]

 

[robert fugate]

Took It to the track twice best et was a 13.3


Me being me, I'm never happy. Screwing around on ebay one day I put in a best offer for a 351w with 300k miles on it and won the bid. (somthing like $300 shipped) Sold the 302 to my dad. And started gathering parts for the 351w. Afr 205 58cc heads. BBK Long tube headers. Anderson PMS tuner. 42lb injectors. Victor jr intake (drilled for injectors) And A comp cam. Didnt even freshen the motor up. Infact My piston to valve clearance wouldnt work with the stock pistons. So I did some reading as I was broke from buying everything up to the point. Read about a tool you could rent to notch the pistons yourself. Very expensive, but I also came across someone who talked about taking one of the valves and gluing sandpaper to it and notching it himself. So thats what I did! And it worked very well!
.

Got the car fired up drive down the block and the water seals in the electric water pump I had bought 8 years earlier started leaking. It's a CSR water pump. Now csi, and everywhere I looked online to buy the rebuild kit was sold out. Called the company told them my dilemma and they said they infact had a rebuild kit in stock! Started to give them my address info and they said hey you're don't Live far from us! You could drive down and pick them up if you'd like. This was on saint patricks day 2012 I believe. So my girl and I set off, it was about an hour and a half drive one way. Go down pick up the parts,and drive back. Eat dinner and take the lady out for ice cream. Come home about 9pm, go to bed and watching tv. It's raining like cats and dogs. And I keep hearing a banging noise. Thing it was just the thunder and rain, we ignored it untill we let our dogs out b4 bed and they started barking like crazy. Walk to the garage to find someone had vandalized the car. Took a crow bad to all the doors, windows. poured paint thinner in the car on the seats. In the engine and gas tank. Spray painted down the side as well as keying the panels.

So we call the cops. And nothing ever comes of it. ex-wife some how broke her hand the same night. But we couldnt prove anything. Insurance didnt want to cover me because I still had the number on the window from when I took the car to the track with the 302. They seen I had a roll cage and race seats aswell as nitrous lines ran. (was bullting with the appraiser when he was taking pics about what all was done. Don't ever talk to those guys) As he reprted everything back to them. I had purchased special insurance for all of these items, But was denied because they stated it was for show car purposes only. This was e-surance btw and to this day this still have these things listed as things they cover. Fast forward 6 months we buy a 1990 off craigslist .

And started all over. End up moving out of the house we were in and buying one. Engine ended up being fine. Drained the oil, drained the gas tank. Aired out the car. painted the car ended up changing a few things. Didnt come out as clean as the first time because I didnt take the time to hang all the plastic up in the new garage.

 

[Boosted92LX]

So. Is the ex still alive???

 

[robert fugate]

Btw the is only the second time ever painting a car. The first time was when it was all orange.

Take the car to the track finally and bust off a 11.9 third pass.
Work gets crazy, end up meeting a mustang group called Poney Express. They help me out upgrading my rear end to 35 spline axles and installing my 3:55 that I had the same guy who built my transmission put wrong. And the gears would wine driving down the road. Some of them tell me they're running e-85, so I read up on all the benefits of it and decide to give it a shot. Get a decent tune in with the anderson pms, just driving around on the back roads. Bought the aem wide band failsafe gauge to tune with. Aswell as the interacq software for the pms, so that I could tune with my laptop instead of the game boy that comes with it. Program keep crashing and refuses to save my tunes. So contact the company and they blame my laptop Thats I need to be running windows XP. So I buy the laptop, same thing. Now they say its the data cord that I'm using, and that I have to buy a certain one. So I do, and same thing. Contacted the company many times and now no reply's. Get frustrated, do some research and find the holley efi hp.

Do lots of research, watch all the videos I can find and fell in love. So pull the anderson out of the car and order the Holley efi HP part number 550-604. This thing self tunes, you punch in a desired AFR and bam! So as I'm wiring this thing up and reading all I can about the different things it can do. I toy around with going turbo cause I've always wanted a turbo car. And I didnt want to have to learn to tune both types Nitrous and turbo. And the amount of wiring I would have to do, only to change it again down the road. So I do some research on turbo kits and find the on3 and cxracing. Read lots of reviews on both kits. Always wanted a twin turbo car. And cxracing has been in a few muscle mustang issues. One of which they took a junk yard 351w and pushed to past 1,100 hp untill the cracked the block.

So I find a kit on ebay at a decent price. Buy the kit. And start tearing the car down .
I will be ordering a dart block 408. Thinking 11-1 compression. But I will be putting the turbo kit on the junk yard 351w just to get a feel for tuning a turbo car. Kit should be here tomorrow. I will try to take lots of pictures and keep you updated!

 

[robert fugate]

So. Is the ex still alive???

She is still breathing for now. Since we couldn't prove anything I couldnt see getting in trouble worthwhile. As I'm sure I had a few enemies around from starting my car late at night and things of that nature. But I believe in karma. And it paid off. As her and her now new husband refuse to work and have since started living in a shed in his moms back yard and ting in a bucket. (I wish I was kidding.)

 

[robert fugate]

Nice car, good history. That intake sure polished up nice....so did the paint job. [emoji106]

I love to polish anything that can be. It takes a long time, especially somthing as rough as the explorer intake.

 

[Boosted92LX]

I love to polish anything that can be. It takes a long time, especially somthing as rough as the explorer intake.

I polshed an alternator once and it turned out awesome. Unfortunately, it didn't stay that way.

 

[Davedacarpainter]

Btw the is only the second time ever painting a car. The first time was when it was all orange.

Take the car to the track finally and bust off a 11.9 third pass.
Work gets crazy, end up meeting a mustang group called Poney Express. They help me out upgrading my rear end to 35 spline axles and installing my 3:55 that I had the same guy who built my transmission put wrong. And the gears would wine driving down the road. Some of them tell me they're running e-85, so I read up on all the benefits of it and decide to give it a shot. Get a decent tune in with the anderson pms, just driving around on the back roads. Bought the aem wide band failsafe gauge to tune with. Aswell as the interacq software for the pms, so that I could tune with my laptop instead of the game boy that comes with it. Program keep crashing and refuses to save my tunes. So contact the company and they blame my laptop Thats I need to be running windows XP. So I buy the laptop, same thing. Now they say its the data cord that I'm using, and that I have to buy a certain one. So I do, and same thing. Contacted the company many times and now no reply's. Get frustrated, do some research and find the holley efi hp.

Do lots of research, watch all the videos I can find and fell in love. So pull the anderson out of the car and order the Holley efi HP part number 550-604. This thing self tunes, you punch in a desired AFR and bam! So as I'm wiring this thing up and reading all I can about the different things it can do. I toy around with going turbo cause I've always wanted a turbo car. And I didnt want to have to learn to tune both types Nitrous and turbo. And the amount of wiring I would have to do, only to change it again down the road. So I do some research on turbo kits and find the on3 and cxracing. Read lots of reviews on both kits. Always wanted a twin turbo car. And cxracing has been in a few muscle mustang issues. One of which they took a junk yard 351w and pushed to past 1,100 hp untill the cracked the block.

So I find a kit on ebay at a decent price. Buy the kit. And start tearing the car down .
I will be ordering a dart block 408. Thinking 11-1 compression. But I will be putting the turbo kit on the junk yard 351w just to get a feel for tuning a turbo car. Kit should be here tomorrow. I will try to take lots of pictures and keep you updated!

Jeez, what a story!
You make me feel like a lazy bum.

Assuming your car stays undamaged for awhile, this ought to be very cool.

Big +1 to posting pictures, I'll have to watch this one.

 

[Noobz347]

Are you still planning to use the On3 kit? After all of that...

 

[robert fugate]

Are you still planning to use the On3 kit? After all of that...

No I went with the cxracing kit

 

[hoopty5.0]

I'll be watching. Hotrod magazine made 1000+ with the CX racing twin kit.

 

[FoxMustangLvr]

@robert fugate
I'm glad to see that your back at it bro! Broke my heart a while back when your car was vandalized. Sounds like your building a beast now

 

[95BlueStallion]

Two things. I am happy for you for moving on from someone who is ok with living in a shed and s hitting in a bucket, and I am even happier for you that you have someone now that supports your hobby despite all the issues you have been through with it. Pretty sure my wife would tell me to get a new hobby if I had half the bad luck you have. This looks like an awesome project, and I really hope this works out for you!

 

[robert fugate]

Small update. Turbo kit showed up today
Got off work late. Didn't have much time to mess with it. Got the intercooler mounted. Bolt holes don't really line up like you would think they would.
And I'm gonna have to relocate my tranny cooler as it was in the way. Drilled the holes in the oil pan for the oil return bungs. And got those installed. one on each side. After using my step bit it left some burs on the inside and out. So had to file those down a bit. Which is why you see the scratches around it.

Mocked up the header to see how those were gonna work. Now remember this kit is for a 302 and not a 351. So I'm not sure if you would have these same issues. Alternator will have to be moved to the driver side.
And I'm gonna have to move my coil and ignition box. as I'm sure if the turbo doesn't hit them. They will at least get melted.

 

[skyline247]

What a history man. It's looking great. I'm looking forward to the updates.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

[robert fugate]

Little update. In one of the magazines they mentioned in order to add the oil drain plugs to the oil pan, you can jack up the engine enough to drop the pan and drill the holes. And still be able to clean out the pan. I spent 3-4 hours trying to get the pan back on as the gasket kept falling back into the pan. I tried apply a thick grease to the pan so the gasket would stick. But by the time i would hold the pan up to start the bolts the gasket would fall again. mocked the turbos up. This kit comes with 0 instructions. And as I wrote the company to ask for some, their reply was find some picture of it installed on the internet. So from the pictures I found the driver side turbo would go straight down into the inner fender. and the passenger would pass just by it. .
But then the wastegate hits the pressure tubing. So I took it down into the inner fender as well.

In doing so I had to cut one of the tubes and add a coupler to allow me to turn it 90 degrees. And order a 45 degree coupler .
Some of the kits come with a oil cooler style fitting and some do not. I'm thinking the older kits came with it because i read you would need to run a shorter filter or relocate due to the driver side wastegate. Other kits come with a T they comes from the oil pressure sensor hole.

As for the headers a few of the tubes are turned so sharp that it was difficult to thread the header bolts in. And one of the tubes on driver side will be a pita to change plugs. When I install the 408 I will order some stainless header flanges with the 3" bolt spacing for my AFR heads to take advantage of the easier header bolt install.

 

[Davedacarpainter]

Little update. In one of the magazines they mentioned in order to add the oil drain plugs to the oil pan, you can jack up the engine enough to drop the pan and drill the holes. And still be able to clean out the pan. I spent 3-4 hours trying to get the pan back on as the gasket kept falling back into the pan. I tried apply a thick grease to the pan so the gasket would stick. But by the time i would hold the pan up to start the bolts the gasket would fall again. mocked the turbos up. This kit comes with 0 instructions. And as I wrote the company to ask for some, their reply was find some picture of it installed on the internet. So from the pictures I found the driver side turbo would go straight down into the inner fender. and the passenger would pass just by it. .
But then the wastegate hits the pressure tubing. So I took it down into the inner fender as well.

In doing so I had to cut one of the tubes and add a coupler to allow me to turn it 90 degrees. And order a 45 degree coupler .
Some of the kits come with a oil cooler style fitting and some do not. I'm thinking the older kits came with it because i read you would need to run a shorter filter or relocate due to the driver side wastegate. Other kits come with a T they comes from the oil pressure sensor hole.

As for the headers a few of the tubes are turned so sharp that it was difficult to thread the header bolts in. And one of the tubes on driver side will be a pita to change plugs. When I install the 408 I will order some stainless header flanges with the 3" bolt spacing for my AFR heads to take advantage of the easier header bolt install.

Jeeeeeez. You are impressing the hell out of me, if no one else!

Get after it brother, damn, this will be so freakin' hot!

 

[robert fugate]

Some of my fuel system showed up. Was going to weld in a sump but decided against it. Instead ordered a fuel pick up tube from granatelli. Has a 10an feed and a 6an return.http://www.brotherswcBformance.com/...vPO3VqnzYpIg2LPbyzXDHVk2MKcaPSrkWrBoCEezw_wcB.
The pump is a holley 12-1800. As I'm running e85 it supports up to 1800hp efi -30% for e85 puts it around 1,260.
Also got the down pipes wrapped . Passenger side down pipe was hitting the shock tower and had to be massaged. . I will probably work it some more before installing the 408 as I plan to fill in some holes and repainting the bay.

The passenger side turbo was hitting the alternator so it had to be moved to the driver side. It was then I found out the passenger side head sticks out about 3/4 of an inch more then the driver side. As I had to fabricate the mount.
As well as reroute the wires.