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Most of the wiring is (in theory) done now. I connected a battery to check my work and I'm having issues with the starter request and fuel pump relay out. I didn't have much time to troubleshoot, but if the issues continue I'll have to contact Ford Racing and get their input. Initially I tried to integrate the control pack wiring into the existing ignition cylinder, but I've decided to use separate toggle switches at least for now to simplify the wiring and try to get it going sooner. Here's how that turned out:
The amber light on the dash there is the Malfunction Indicator Lamp (MIL) for the control pack.
I tried my best to weld a bead around the end of the intercooler piping that I do have finished, but it was no use. The aluminum was too thin to get a decent bead on it with my spool gun, plus I'm sure the fact that it is crap quality Chinese ebay piping didn't help. Pipe beaders are too expensive to fit in the budget right now (car parts take priority) so I made my own. The welds aren't great (I just started welding recently) and I only had straight argon, so it's not the prettiest, but it works. It's the pretty standard vice grips, muffler clamp, and washer design, but with a few tweaks. I have 3 different sizes of pipe to work with so the clamp bolts to a piece of angle steel, rather than welding the clamp directly to the vice grip. I was having difficulty getting enough force on it to bead the pipe, so I welded some angle steel to the lower handle to give me a bit more leverage. The square steel slips over the top handle so I can still easily adjust the grip. I was able to get a decent bead on a piece of scrap pipe with it, so hopefully it continues to work. I got a bit of work done on the intercooler piping too but no pictures, I'll update again when I have more news.
So there are lots of new developments. First off, CAC piping is done. The makeshift pipe beader worked great, though the extensions to the handles turned out to be overkill. All the plumbing is done. I modified the factory air box to accept an aftermarket filter (the air box was far too big to fit as it came). I drained most of the old fuel out of the tank, put in some fresh fuel, and tested fuel pressure. As far as I can tell, it's right on the money. I got a new battery, slightly smaller than stock. It's a bit lighter than stock too, I think just enough to offset the added weight of the 15 feet of 1/0 gauge welding cable needed to get the power from the trunk to the engine bay. I had an issue with the starter not getting good contact from the +12V cable but it's resolved now. The whole car is back together now with the exception of the passenger side O2 (the connector got cut off at the junk yard, for whatever reason, I just now noticed that) so I have to figure out which wires that is supposed to go to. But there's one bigger problem. The car will not start and it's proven difficult to figure out why. I've been contacting everyone I can that I think might be able to shed light on this issue and it seems to be that the pcm is not getting anything from the crank position (CKP) sensor. The sensor is getting the appropriate voltage though so I feel like the sensor itself may be the issue. I'll continue trying to figure out what's going on tomorrow, but that's all I know right now.
Thanks! I've been driving a 3.0 Ranger for the past 6 months so I'm really looking forward to driving this thing!
I think we actually have the problem figured out now, but I'm not too happy with the fix. The ECU isn't reading crank position properly. I ordered a new sensor, and if I'm lucky, that fixes it. But more likely I will have to drop the trans and replace the trigger ring. I'm not looking forward to that part, but the sooner I get it done, the sooner I can drive it. Plus on the bright side, the O2 sensor wiring will be more accessible without the trans in the way lol. I'm mostly waiting on parts right now, but in the mean time I'm putting in a BMR panhard rod and cleaning the car up a bit.
The problem ended up being the crank position trigger ring and after pulling the transmission and replacing it (a $7 part that apparently got damaged during install), it started right up!
Great job! Your install looks really nice, I'm happy for you!
FYI, MPT will wake that car up. Mine drove so much better after the tune. You may want to leave off the nitrous though, my pistons didn't like that very much lol.
Thanks! I definitely can't wait to get it down to MPT. I don't think I'll be using any nitrous anytime soon though, I have to daily this thing haha.
I took it for a quick test drive last night and it went ok. I do have a few DTCs though and some issues that need addressing. I dropped it off at the exhaust shop this morning, so by the end of the day I should be able to take it for a longer test drive without worrying about CO poisoning.
The to do list is as follows:
- Wire ignition switch to factory 12V switched
- Figure out O2 sensor related DTCs
- Fix a few issues with charge air piping
- Get factory tach to work with the control pack
- Get power steering working
- Clean up wiring
- Get AC working
- Balance wheels
- Align rear axle
There's a good chance this list may grow, but those are the main points at the moment.
I just talked to the exhaust shop and I should have the car back later today. We're doing 2.5" downpipes to an H pipe and a stock 2.75" coyote cat back. Out the door cost is going to be just under 300 bucks. That will put the total cost for my exhaust system at a little less than 450, which is not too shabby. I'll upload pictures and get a video as soon as I can!
Now that I have the car back and it has an exhaust on it, I've gotten to drive it around a little bit. She really moves out now, even on the base tune. I can't wait to see how she does once we turn up the boost!
There's still more to do though. Having a full exhaust took care of the O2 related codes, and I fixed the charge air piping pretty quickly. I am speaking with Walt (TimeWarp F100) and he has been extremely helpful in figuring out how to get all of my other systems to work. According to him, if we can get RPM and cam position to both ECUs, the car should function pretty much like normal. He used to work at Ford (I think he said he was an engineer) so he has a lot of contacts at Ford who design or work with these systems. All of this has been extremely helpful and I don't think I would be able to figure this out without him. Hopefully we'll get this wiring done soon!
But today I'm taking it up to a Ford dealer for the Takata recall and maybe a crank relearn (my handheld doesn't want to do it unfortunately) so that should be fun.
The Takata recall has been taken care of and the reactions were pretty good. The service advisor didn't really seem to understand what it was, but the guy from the parts desk who helped me get a pigtail for the passenger side O2 definitely got a kick out of it, and he said the tech who was working on it did too. I guess the service advisor hadn't driven stick in a while, because he stalled it when he first got in it and then he did a little accidental burnout on his second attempt right in the middle of the service lane. It was pretty cringe-worthy given I was trying to take it easy on the new clutch, but it survived and it was pretty funny at least.
I took it to a car meet too and stole the show as soon as I pulled up, so that was fun. But there's still more to do. We are having issues figuring out how to get the two HSCAN systems to cooperate with each other. We know there is a way to fix this, but we are having trouble finding the right person to help. Basically, from what I understand, what we need is a module that can convert HSCAN signals into the order the PCM is expecting. This seems to be a lot easier said than done, but I'll admit I don't know exactly what's going on.
But in other news, I've put almost 500 miles on the car so far and it's doing great! It definitely pulls pretty well for a base tune, and methanol injection is coming soon!
I also finished up installing the meth injection system. Right now it is not tuned for but it should still help with the intake air temps.
In addition I took it to the drag strip over the weekend just to see what it would do. The time is pretty meaningless, it's not nearly "finished" yet and it was extremely difficult to get it off the line quickly (60 times were all around 2.3) and 1st-3rd gear went by so quickly it could barely build boost in those gears. We also had one of the charge air pipes under the bumper blow off and that ate up quite a bit of our testing time with fixing it. In the end it ran a 14.0@105 which is extremely unimpressive compared with the times it ran before the swap. It definitely needs higher gearing and launch control, so those are among the next steps.
I'm working with Lund Racing's calibration engineer to get a "black box" made that will allow my factory PCM and the control pack to communicate. This should fix a number of issues, crucially the lack of power steering and tach. It's going to be more expensive than I was hoping but I don't really have much choice at this point.
In other news, my roommate and I will be taking it to a track day soon, so that should be a lot of fun. We're hoping to do Road Atlanta around the middle of October if the car is ready by then.
Your still on the stock tune right? The gearing and the stock tune are defintely working against you. I seriously considered launching the car in 2nd at the drag strip when I had a manual trans. You are experiencing what I was warning about, it doesn't like to get into the boost until 3rd with the manual.
Maybe a 2 step would help? You have to do some writing to make them work, the plug-and-play MSD 2 step for 5.0 has different coil plugs.
What was your mph? Does it spin? Got any video of your runs?
Yeah, it's still stock tune and 3.55 gears. After we got home both my roommate and I had the same idea to try launching in second but by that point it was too late lol. Trap speed was 105.07 which isn't terrible I guess, but given how much faster the car feels compared to before I'm a little disappointed (before the swap it ran 13.32@104.76). I didn't expect great times but I was at least expecting 13s and a slightly higher trap speed. It spins a lot and the 60 foot times were consistently in the 2.3 range. I'll go ahead and post the time slip below. There's a video too but I'm not sure I want to post such a slow pass on YouTube lol.
I have the N2MB WOT box, so I was hoping I could use that for 2 step but I'm not sure if it's compatible because the EcoBoost uses different cam position sensors than the Mustang. If not I'll have to try to figure something else out. I suppose worst case scenario fuel cut 2 step would be better than nothing and could probably be written into the tune.
I'm not planning to do anything competitive on a drag strip so it's not the end of the world, but I would still like it to be a well rounded car and perform well enough to be fun at test and tune.
Your main problem is that the v6 mt 82 has a first gear of 4.24. It would be interesting if the bellhousings were interchangable with the v8 mt82, but then again the rest of the gears are fairly similar between them that it maybe also possible just to swap 1st gear out. Its all about cost. Even with just swaping the final drive you will always be left with a funky 1st.
Or like Ecostang suggested just use 2nd gear as it is comparable to some tr6060 and magnum xl 1st gear.
You guys make me wish I bought the v6 that I original was going to!
8/7/16, 10:24 PM
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