KM647 is here! (lots of pics)

[Avmaviator]

It's alive!!

Finally, I was able to get the engine going. I got the EFI ecu back two days ago from FAST. Good customer service over there. They said three circuit boards got fried due to bad grounding...which was surprising to me as the harness is pretty simple, and I was pretty diligent when putting it in, anyways. So I took the harness off, checked it, didn't really find anything, and re-installed everything. I tried to start it last night when I got done but it did not want to fire up... Checked the tach signal, msd box, etc... Pretty frustrating. In the morning I wanted to trouble shoot the problem by putting some gas directly in the stacks. If it fired up the. It would be a fuel problem, if not, most likely an ignition problem. I did that and it fired right up and continue running! What a feeling! It sounds so good with those pipes, althoug it is running like crap (super rich). The really crappy part is that it was all "tuned" on the dyno but with the new box it is back to zero. Just means more driving around I guess
Tonight I started it up again and let it warm up to the 180f on the water temp needed for the ecu to start "learning/tuning", which was hard to do in 15f weather, with the garage doors open, and me getting high on fumes, but it was so worth it

Alright, I'm done with my rambling. Here is the vid.

Cobra Start - YouTube

[fordracing65]

Sweet vid, ill be at the Kirkham open house next week, hope to see more of those FE monsters. By the way it was 78 in Phoenix today.

[BMK]

fordracing65

Geeee 78 sounds like a great day. The few times I have been there it has been well over 100. This is the time of the year to be there. Real Cobra driving weather.

Bernie

[mreid]

Sounds even better in the video than the sound clip you sent me. Congratulations! Feels great, doesn't it?! My 427w smoked just like that when I first started it. Of course my problem was operator error (mine) on setting timing and oil getting sucked into the intake combining for a confusing issue. All sorted now, though!

On a side note, make sure you install a steering wheel before you leave the garage. Just a little safety brief for you.

[Avmaviator]

Blew another ECU... not in a good mood. I'm going back to square one with this thing.

there is something that still does not make sense... I don't have any crazy wiring, and the harness itself is simple. I'm getting a ground short thru somewhere... there are only three places where the EFI harness hookups to the car"s harness; at the fuel pump relay, the fan relay, and the 12v Switched line.. makes no sense.

I was about to take it out too, but at least now there is a bunch of snow and I don't feel so bad about that. I'll use this down time to get the pipes ceramic coated.

[fordracing65]

I hope it works out soon so you can unleash all that power on the streets of Illinois.

[Dimis]

Ouch...! Not good news!

I got nothing to even suggest... It's probably a 20-cent part somewhere that's causing the problem.
Perhaps the wiring itself is at fault... Multimeter tests all round?

I'm sure you'll figure it out. Best of luck with it.

[Avmaviator]

Hey guys,

It has been a while since I have given some updates, so, here it is... I've been somewhat of a stand still for a while because the car blew a second ecu, that put me in a good mood The worse is that I don't really know what is the problem. So FAST sent me another ecu, along with a new harness to try to isolate the problem. That took 2 weeks as wrong parts were sent out and such. I will be installing the new harness and ecu next week. I will also be mounting a fuse box, and will make every connection between the efi harness and the car's harness pass thru this fuse box. I'll also put some really low fuses to hopefully see where it is coming from, if it blows again. The efi harness has a fuse on it too, but did not blow the two times the ecu got fried...

Other then that, picked up the exhaust from the ceramic coater yesterday. The outside look really nice, BUT, upon inspection of the inside of the side pipes, I discovered something that really pissed me off, again. When they sand blasted the pipes, they blasted the collector area (inlet) of the side pipes. So, they basically shoot a bunch of media down the muffler sections.... well our classic chambered pipes have the little louvers facing opposite to the flow of the exhaust, i.e. facing towards the engine. So now there is a bunch of media in the louvers, and I honestly don't know what to do. I turned the pipes upside down and tapped them with a rubber mallet. A bunch of media came out. Next I might try to make a "chimey sweeper's brush" to put down the pipes. The coater has not contacted me back yet (found this out at lunch time today). What I'm afraid of 1) the louvers are not useless and it will be loud, 2) could the media get sucked back in the engine with back pressure? 3) how much media there is in the packing and the effect of that.
What do you guys think?

The interior is coming along but the upholsterer, who was supposed to drop off the carpet and seats, got rear-ended by this lady, who was texting, at 45 mph, he was stopped. He is alright. He had heart surgery a couple years ago so I told him to call me in two weeks when he feels better.

So between all my issues, work, new baby, and such, it hasn't progressed much. But that is part of it. What kills me now is this gorgeous weather we have had here in Chicago for the past week. When it was snowing outside I didn't care, now I do :roll eyes:

I will post pics of the pipes, and all that stuff later. Got training for work the next 4 days, joy.

Take care everybody

[Tim Brewer]

The media you see is probably not from blasting... it's from polishing. After the pipes get ceramic coated, they are a dull silver and are placed in a vibrating vat of tiny media balls that polish the pipes. Your engine won't suck any of them back into it. I wouldn't worry about much. They'll blow out when you get your engine fired up.

[Avmaviator]

Originally Posted by Tim Brewer

The media you see is probably not from blasting... it's from polishing. After the pipes get ceramic coated, they are a dull silver and are placed in a vibrating vat of tiny media balls that polish the pipes. Your engine won't suck any of them back into it. I wouldn't worry about much. They'll blow out when you get your engine fired up.

Tim,

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately the media in the pipes is from the blasting process. It is a mixture of fine sand and glass. I'm dropping off the pipes today to get redone and cleaned up. We'll see what happens.

[Avmaviator]

Seats are done and look great. 1.5 inches were shaved off the bottom cushion. The carpet on the side of the seats will be the same as the main carpet in the car.





The exhaust is getting recoated.

And I worked on the efi wiring harness a bunch last night, should be re-installing it in the car soon

[mreid]

Wow, Arnaud, looking good! Your interior is going to look great.



Try to resist calling it diaper brown. He will be potty trained before you know it!

[rooster]

Lookin' good Arno, Hope all works out with the electric stuff. I have a small gauge problem but I did drive it last weekend. Had fun. Russ

[Keithc8]

Do you have a real good heavy ground on the engine to the frame. I had this same problem and did not have the engine grounded well. It was trying to ground through the harness and blowing stuff.
Good luck, Keith

[Avmaviator]

Originally Posted by Keithc8

Do you have a real good heavy ground on the engine to the frame. I had this same problem and did not have the engine grounded well. It was trying to ground through the harness and blowing stuff.
Good luck, Keith

I just bought another grounding strap So far it is grouded via the tranny to the frame, but hopefully this extra will help. Thanks for the advice Keith.

[blykins]

Keith is right Arnaud....you can't have too many grounds. On an install, I'll ground each cylinder head to the frame rail and ground the trans too.

[Avmaviator]

Originally Posted by blykins

Keith is right Arnaud....you can't have too many grounds. On an install, I'll ground each cylinder head to the frame rail and ground the trans too.

Good idea Brent. I will do that.

[Jerry Clayton]

Your electric system is unbalanced by the differant materials (alum block,coated steel bell housing, alum trans, etc)all the rubber mounts that are used. the circuit loop to to battery isn't capable of handling the amps required either for starting or the huge charging (100+ amps) common in todays vehicles---AND----all the braided lines are performing a big balancing act to make up for the poor ground system. I would also look at the way the fans and radiator are mounted to get rid of the current from the fans as often it will become a back feed thru the coolant---

If you want me to stop by, send me a PM with your contact #---


Jerry

[Avmaviator]

Alrighty folks, sorry for such a gap in updates...I've been waiting on parts, time to work on the car, and a couple idiotic people (more later). But things have picked up again.

I got a new wiring harness for the EZ-EFI system from FAST, along with a new box (big thumbs up to FAST). They had originally sent me a wrong harness, made for the throttle body style intake. I finally got the right harness but apparently the TPS plug used on my original harness was a special item order for that system (same as TPS sensor for the Inglese set up). For some reason it has taken over two weeks for FAST to send me a new plug, anyways it is supposed to be on it's way as we speak. That is the last piece of the puzzle for the EFI system. I reinstalled the harness, along with a modification. I installed a fuse bar with 4 fuses. The fuses will be low amperage fuses. The fuel pump relay line, along with the fan, the tach pick up, and the 12v Switched line will all go through these fuses. These are the only four connections from the EFI harness which connect to the car's harness. So if something blows from that direction it will hopefully save the box, and tell me where it is coming from, in theory.
Otherwise I have followed the advice of a few of you guys (big thanks) by installing a couple more grounding straps. **Jerry, I pmed you about coming over a while back..** Now I have a strap coming from the block to the frame, and from the right head to the frame, along with one at the tranny. I might put another one of the other side of the engine...
I'm crossing my fingers that these fixes will be permanent...


Harness being "prepared". Mainly running some wires into the loom and tying up the ones I don't need.

Installed. The new fuse box in the middle.


Grounding straps.



Got the pipes back from the ceramic coater. Overall they look good except for a couple of bubbles on the end of the right turn down. My biggest gripe is the sand inside the pipes, which has gotten worse. They disregarded my specific instructions to plug up the pipes for blasting, a SECOND time. I was rather "unhappy/unpleasant" when I got the pipes back and could hear 1) the sand in the pipes going back and forth, and 2) the packing moving around because it is so saturated with sand. Un-freaking-real.
I told the coater to get me new Classic Chambered sections. I have mounted the current ones for right now so I can start it up and take pictures for registration.







I just finished another side project too. We didn't really like the small black shift knob provided by Kirkham. Looks cheap and too small. So I decided to make my own shift knob. I wasn't really sure of what to design but then we were driving in the Carrera GT and found the shift knob in there to be pretty neat. A little history on these. They are originally made of balsa wood for the Porsche 917 Le Mans car. The knobs used to get really hot because the linkage
was almost directly bolted to more then a 1000 angry horses, which made a tremendous amount of heat. So they made these wood shifter which wouldn't get super hot. Pretty neat.

Here is what the GT knob looks like.


So with a few hours in the shop I created my own version. The rings have a little more contrast then the original knob but I don't think it is too bad.






Here it is "finished". I still need to put a couple more coats of tung oil polish.



The interior might be installed tomorrow... we'll see.

[fordracing65]

What are you some kind of rocket scientist, carpenter, math matician, welder and good guy, looks awesome, you should be putting the space shuttles together, oh ya they stopped that program, great job.