Engine is here!
What a day yesterday! I'll try to make it short, but no promises, I can get carried away talking about awesome stuff
My wife and I already were in MI the night before at our lake house, so in morning we headed towards the Detroit burbs to meet Barry (Survival Motorsports) at the dyno shop, JimKid Motorsports. Barry, Jim, and Mark were finishing hooking up the engine when we got there. Man this thing is beautiful! The size of it is pretty impressive too. Time came for the first start. After some cranking and troubleshooting we figured out that the EFI tach signal needed to be hooked up a different way. After that, it fired right up. I had forgotten how amazing the sound of a big block is! Following the break in time, Barry and Jim ran some constant rpm loads so that the EFI could "learn" and set it self up for the different rpm ranges. It is really really cool to see the computer go through its "learning". When you increase the rpms, it initially goes fat (around 10.0), then after about 45 seconds, you see the ratio start to go up, then it levels, another amount of time, then it goes up again, really neat. It is also very cool to hear the engine sound healthier and healthier as it figures it out. After a series of these rpm runs, and some good lunch, we did a couple of pulls. Pulls from 3 to 5700. I cannot wait to drive this thing, but I have to be honest, when you hear and feel that power during a pull you really start thinking about going easy on the throttle for a while, hahah. The power just went up every pull as the ecu was learning the WOT curves. Last one we did we got 541 hp, and 549 tq, just what we were looking for. Plus this thing is really responsive, and sounds great.
After the pulls we tackled the idle... oh man. The TWM stacks are great but not that easy to fine tune. Every time you adjust one, it screws with the others... it was a bit of a chase but then everything came together perfectly. It was idling at 850, +/- 20 rpm, super smooth.
Felt great with all the progress so we packed it, put it on the truck and drove back home to Chicago. Got home at midnight, we another full, albeit tired, smile on my face
I have to buy a few more things to make this engine work in the car but it shouldn't be a problem. Things such as efi pump, cable throttle linkage, fuel lines + fittings, and a couple more details.
Overall, it was just a great day. Thank you so much to Barry, Mark, and Jim for all their hard work to get this thing dialed in. They make one hell of an FE! Really good people which we were happy to finally meet
Here are some pictures and videos.
Me on the left trying to figure out what's going on, hah.
Barry getting it all ready for the trip home.
The videos. First start, break in, and the run.
Ford FE 454 EFI First start - YouTube
Ford 454 FE EFI, Break in and EFI software "learning" - YouTube
Ford 454 FE w/EFI Dyno run - YouTube
It's home!
