The motor on the Austang was completely rebuilt by Jack Jones in Newcastle (jeez wasn't he a bundle of joy waiting to unfold - not), he put a "Stage One" camshaft in it to help it go and give it a nice note, plus set up the heads for unleaded fuel. I whacked a pair of genie extractors and a twin exhaust system under the hood and man it started sounding like a beast!
I was never happy with the standard ignition, apart from a "sports" coil, the whole system relied on the crappy old distributor. This had been frigged with by a "speed mechanic" before I had rebuilt the engine in an attempt to pull some performance out of the original configuration. After running the new motor on the dyno, I discovered the ignition was extremely advanced under a load and high speed. So I paid another guy to readjust it to be within safe limits.
I was reading about these you-beaut High Energy Ignition jobbies that were spin-offs from a successful rig built for Chevrolet, and decided to take a look at good old E-Bay. I picked one up really cheap, compared to the prices in the Speed Shops and was stoked to see the billett aluminium beauty arrive. The distributor has a 50,000 volt coil built into the cap and is able to throw an arc that would kill an elephant. Only problem was, that the new dissie was so huge, the old 14" drop-base air filter would no longer fit! In addition to this, the base was setup to sit at 90 degrees to the old one and neccesitated the disconnection and plugging of the heater hose connections.
While trying to fit the thing, I discovered the pain of getting the socket on the bottom of the shaft to engage the oil pump drive. Man I tried everything, over a period of a week before I got it to engage, but couldn't get the engine to run with any gusto. So eventually I had a mobile mechanic come and take a look at what I had done. He promptly pulled it out for a look . . I gasped thinking of how long it will take to replace and how I was paying him by the hour! He plopped it back in, wiggled the fan and it just clunked right back in without issue. "Oh I probably shouldn't have shown you how easy that was" he said, laughing at my expression.
(Bastard!)
Turns out I had everything right, just the distributor was too advanced and it could not be pulled back in without modifying the base and the plenum of the Alloy Wieand intake manifold. So after a little filing, the distributor was in place and the engine purring.
"She's a sweet motor" the mechanic says listening to it idle.
"Too bloody right" I agreed like a cheshire cat.
Now to the problem of getting an air filter. I had this idea of putting in a cold induction system but no idea how to go about it. The local car part shops I visited were worthless, although one sent me to see a guy in Kunda Park that could manufacture one . . . possibly. But that guy just wanted to install a fuel injection system off an old Falcon for a few grand, told me a cold air injection system would cause ice and condensation problems with a carburettor - but was really too busy and quite frankly didn't need my work. After that interview with a tosser exprerience, I figured he wouldn't give a shit either way, so I never saw him again.
I happened into Auto One in Maroochydore and met a young fella who was into real cars. He's doing up an old Valiant Charger and his old man has a Mustang. I liked him right away. He gave me the heads up on a cold air induction system that was available by Spectre. They only had that rice buggy 3 inch stuff in stock for all the Hyundai and Lancer drivers that wanted to feel like they had something special. I went away and researched it on the net and found this stuff should do the job.
We ordered up a 4" double plenum, made from alloy, which bolts right onto the Holley 600 cfm 4 barrell. A couple of aluminium extenders, elbows and 2 Power Adder airfilters were included and a sweet kit turned up ready to take the place of the pathetic 9" air cleaner I was running.
I installed the gear over a couple of nights after work and took it out for a test run at 10:30pm. Would all the money be worth it? Will I see a difference?
Pulling onto the motorway, I gunned it and holy shit! The beast took off like a scalded cat! The sound of all the throats wide open coupled with the major burbling coming out the back gave me goose bumps. I took it to 70mph, then planted it again, it leapt to 90 mph and was powering on but I was very tired, itchy eyes on a dark highway. So discretion being the better part of valour, I decided not to go for it's top speed that night.
So what is the performance outcome? Well I have not dynoed anything, but notice a massive increase in acceleration at the top end - where it was a little lethargic in the past, it now just keeping powering on. I guess that's the ram effect from the tubes. The biggest bonus is the glam factor - man they just look phat! Have a decko at the pics and tell me I am wrong - and we will know you're a damn liar!
I was never happy with the standard ignition, apart from a "sports" coil, the whole system relied on the crappy old distributor. This had been frigged with by a "speed mechanic" before I had rebuilt the engine in an attempt to pull some performance out of the original configuration. After running the new motor on the dyno, I discovered the ignition was extremely advanced under a load and high speed. So I paid another guy to readjust it to be within safe limits.I was reading about these you-beaut High Energy Ignition jobbies that were spin-offs from a successful rig built for Chevrolet, and decided to take a look at good old E-Bay. I picked one up really cheap, compared to the prices in the Speed Shops and was stoked to see the billett aluminium beauty arrive. The distributor has a 50,000 volt coil built into the cap and is able to throw an arc that would kill an elephant. Only problem was, that the new dissie was so huge, the old 14" drop-base air filter would no longer fit! In addition to this, the base was setup to sit at 90 degrees to the old one and neccesitated the disconnection and plugging of the heater hose connections.
While trying to fit the thing, I discovered the pain of getting the socket on the bottom of the shaft to engage the oil pump drive. Man I tried everything, over a period of a week before I got it to engage, but couldn't get the engine to run with any gusto. So eventually I had a mobile mechanic come and take a look at what I had done. He promptly pulled it out for a look . . I gasped thinking of how long it will take to replace and how I was paying him by the hour! He plopped it back in, wiggled the fan and it just clunked right back in without issue. "Oh I probably shouldn't have shown you how easy that was" he said, laughing at my expression.
(Bastard!)
Turns out I had everything right, just the distributor was too advanced and it could not be pulled back in without modifying the base and the plenum of the Alloy Wieand intake manifold. So after a little filing, the distributor was in place and the engine purring.
"She's a sweet motor" the mechanic says listening to it idle.
"Too bloody right" I agreed like a cheshire cat.
Now to the problem of getting an air filter. I had this idea of putting in a cold induction system but no idea how to go about it. The local car part shops I visited were worthless, although one sent me to see a guy in Kunda Park that could manufacture one . . . possibly. But that guy just wanted to install a fuel injection system off an old Falcon for a few grand, told me a cold air injection system would cause ice and condensation problems with a carburettor - but was really too busy and quite frankly didn't need my work. After that interview with a tosser exprerience, I figured he wouldn't give a shit either way, so I never saw him again.
I happened into Auto One in Maroochydore and met a young fella who was into real cars. He's doing up an old Valiant Charger and his old man has a Mustang. I liked him right away. He gave me the heads up on a cold air induction system that was available by Spectre. They only had that rice buggy 3 inch stuff in stock for all the Hyundai and Lancer drivers that wanted to feel like they had something special. I went away and researched it on the net and found this stuff should do the job.We ordered up a 4" double plenum, made from alloy, which bolts right onto the Holley 600 cfm 4 barrell. A couple of aluminium extenders, elbows and 2 Power Adder airfilters were included and a sweet kit turned up ready to take the place of the pathetic 9" air cleaner I was running.
I installed the gear over a couple of nights after work and took it out for a test run at 10:30pm. Would all the money be worth it? Will I see a difference?
Pulling onto the motorway, I gunned it and holy shit! The beast took off like a scalded cat! The sound of all the throats wide open coupled with the major burbling coming out the back gave me goose bumps. I took it to 70mph, then planted it again, it leapt to 90 mph and was powering on but I was very tired, itchy eyes on a dark highway. So discretion being the better part of valour, I decided not to go for it's top speed that night.
So what is the performance outcome? Well I have not dynoed anything, but notice a massive increase in acceleration at the top end - where it was a little lethargic in the past, it now just keeping powering on. I guess that's the ram effect from the tubes. The biggest bonus is the glam factor - man they just look phat! Have a decko at the pics and tell me I am wrong - and we will know you're a damn liar!
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