Project "Snotty 289" update (long)

[jdean]

When Jim bought this car a few years ago, there was no information on the engine in the car. He got a great deal and made some improvements to the car. The shop that built the engine was out of business. The only info about the engine available was what you could tell from the outside. No cam specs, no head info (except they were cast iron). It has a 4bbl Holley, looks like a 600CFM vacuum secondary on a Performer intake. Thats about it.

Jim had the rare and unusual desire, at least among Cobra owners, for more power from the engine. So almost a year ago, I told Jim I would love to help him out on it. It ran well but just was not mean and snotty enough. It had also developed an annoying ticking sound on the drivers side engine bank. Thus the beginning of "Project Snotty 289".

The little 289 was like the Forrest Gump box of chocolates........you don't know what you are going to get.

Session One

So last week Jim and I tore into it. Pulling the valve covers, we found it had Comp Cams roller rockers, which was a good find. They are the "red" pedestal mount, which adjust at the pushrod cup like an FE. The valve springs looked pretty substantial, and had been shimmed at the bottom. Another good sign that whoever built it was paying attention to correct spring height. We could

The distributor looks like a nice billet aftermarket unit, and against the centrifugal springs the rotor moved light to the touch....so the timing curve will come in quicky. Good.

Getting the valve covers and spark plug wires out of the way, we could see down near the bottom of the heads the letters "GT" cast into the edge. So these heads were in fact the Ford 5.0 GT40 (not the 40"P") type iron heads. Not too shabby but certainly not on a par with good aluminum aftermarket stuff.

Pulling off the intake manifold, we could see it also had good Comp brand hardened pushrods. Lifters were hydraulic flat tappet. I hope the pushrods fit when we mock up the new heads, but going from flat tappet to roller rockers what are the odds? Not good.

Summary of Session one:

Drained radiator and removed:
Valve covers
Distributor
Intake, Carb

[jdean]

Session 2

Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:30 am and could not go back to sleep. So what does one think of at that hour......of course the second thing is wrenching on a some type of Ford V8.

I went out and unbolted the headers, loosened all the head bolts. Crap the alternator mount is attached to the left head. I did not want to fool with that right now, but I took it loose. In Jim's car the whole alternator mount set up is complicated......but I got it unattached.

Pulled the pushrods out, then put on gloves and pulled each head off and layed on newspaper on the garage floor. The combustion chambers were all dark and sooty......been running too rich. Spark plug ceramic was kinda dark, which is hard to get with an MSD box even when running rich. Spark plug gaps were way on the wide side too.

Sign of pending doom

Since Jim complained of noise from the back drivers side bank, I started at the back cylinder and pulled the lifters out. First exhaust and intake pulled out easy. Second intake pulled out easy. Second exhaust would not come out more than 1/4" and then stuck. Uh oh. I put a small rag on the end of the lifter for grip, and to protect it, and pulled on it with a pair of channel locks. Out it comes, sporting a caved in bottom.

Yep, cam lobe failure in the making. Ticking noise explained. With no more than 2-3,000 miles on this car, there is no question that this cam never got past breaking in. Folks see this a lot nowadays. Good news is we caught it just before lots of metal slivers crunched off the lobe and the lifter.

Future upgrades:

1 - Edelbrock Performer RPM heads. Yes I know AFRs are great too., but within this small cubic inch SBF product offering, the AFRs cost 20% more but only flow 1-2% more, and if memory serves correctly the AFRs don't flow as much at mid-lift as the comparable Edelbrocks in this class of head.

2 - Meaner Comp hydro roller cam and lifters. No more threat of wiped out lobes.

3- RPM Air Gap intake. Hope it clears the hood. Will mock up on Saturday.

4- Get that carb tuned! no more running rich.

We will also put in an exhaust bung so we can use the LM-1 Innovative wide band meter to make sure the AFR is spot on after carb tuning.

I put this info into CamQuest.....and it spit out 450 horses. I seriously doubt this but if we get close to between 375-400 fwhp we will have created a little monster in that light FIA Cobra.

[LuvDaBlues]

Jim,

The build is never enough. You always want more, more, more. As I have learned the last few weeks, you'll need to brace yourself for the credit card challange.

I bet you start looking at new transmissions soon.

[392cobra]

John,
What kind of RPM are y'all wanting to pull out of it ?

[jrussell]

Jim,
All I can say is........ get this baby running by mid-March, and I want a ride...please, please, please??????
It sounds like you and John are really on the track to "SNOTTY", so keep us informed.
John R

[jdean]

Fred,

I think just 6,000-6,300 for most power would be fine. That's probably the most RPM the valves springs can take for the ones that came with the Edelbrock heads, and it is towards the top of the range for the hydraulic roller lifters. No question though that the heads, intake and cam can do all that on a 289.

John

[jdean]

Session 3 Saturday

While we unfortunately missed seeing all the folks at Cafe Brazil, we really needed to spend the time to be sure we get it up and running for a couple of weeks before Austin just to be sure it is all good to go.

The Parkers brought their two Hurricanes by after the breakfast to check on us. Seeing them driving the Cobras on a nice day was inspiration.

Here is what we did:

-finished taking off alternator, water pump, fuel pump, timing cover.
-pulled out old camshaft.....this required taking out engine mount bolts and lifting
the engine about an inch so the the length of the cam would clear part of the chassis bracing.
- installed the new camshaft. Well so far things have gone smoothly, so it was about time for something to be difficult. In this case, the cam pin that goes into the timing gear would not cooperate. Neither of the two that came with the cam would go in, and I had sort of messed up the old one by pulling it out with vise grips. After messing with it for over an hour, we finally filed on the old one enough that it went into the cam.
- installed the "retro lifter kit" - 289s did not come with roller lifters like later 302s, so they need a spider installed in the lifter valley to hold down the lifter retainers. To do this had to drill and tap holes in the lifter valley.
- mock up - Jim was concerned about hood clearance with the taller RPM Air Gap intake . We set the heads, intake and carburetor on......and the clearance was barely enough. Man I was glad we did not have to send back that nice intake.

[jdean]

Here is the scene of the surgery:


And the engine upgrade in process:


Boxes of goodies:

[LuvDaBlues]

Hey John,

You're living in the past. Or you need to set the date stamp on your camera.

Looks and sounds like you two are off and running. I'm wondering if you'll be up and running before me now.

Keep the updates coming.

[jdean]

Yeah, my camera batteries were dead and it came up with that old date when I replaced 'em.

[Jim Jacobs]

I want EVERYONE to know that John Dean is a engine genius. About all I'm doing is asking dumb questions and making sure I don't get in his way. This is a very cool/fun project and I'm learning a lot. My goal was to run at the same HP level that Shelby did when he won the FIA's and from what I've read that was 395HP. Looks like we're going to be pretty close.

[FST FOX]

I expected more pics to go along with that great story

[jdean]

If I were a genius, I would know to get the date set on my pictures.
But I do I promise more pics later.

[jdean]

Session 3

Well last time we laid the new heads and intake on the bare block. Good news is that the taller RPM Air Gap will still clear the hood with the breather on it. Bad news is they sent us the wrong camshaft. In this application, to use roller rockers in an engine not designed for them, we needed a "small base circle" cam. With a normal base circle, the roller lifters, being taller, would emerge too far out of the lifter bore....and oil pressure would be lost. So we sent the cam back. The new cam will be here likely next week. Meanwhie a few more pics:

Naked 289. Good news is these are TRW forged pistons. Nice to have.



When good lifters go bad.....see the overheated darkness and the rough bottom on the bad vs good lifter? This already had worn the cam lobe down some, but we caught it in time to avoid a complete rebuild due to metal flakes.



Here you can see how it was running a bit rich, this was one of the better looking spark plugs as far as color. Others were pretty black.



Here are the roller rockers....nice Comp units but we cannot use them. These are for pedestal mount. The new Edelbrock heads need stud mount rockers. Jim has ordered some new Scorpion 1.6 rockers. Notice the previous builder was nice enough to coat all engine innards with Glyptol....the shiny rust colored chemical resistant paint. Makes oil drainback from top of engine to oil pan quicker.



Here is the flat vs. roller lifter. Hopefully no more failed cams with this.....and a bit better cam lobe curve getting air into the intake valve earlier for more power.

[jrussell]

John,
Sounds like things are going rather "normal"-buying "stuff", getting it in- Whoops- boxing it up, sending it back....ordering some more "stuff"
I can really see SNOTTY coming....
Keep up the good work and the pictures.
John R.

[jdean]

Friday update

John,

You are right. It is like a lot of things with cars.....even a small project takes 3 trips to the auto store !!

Did some math and with the 289 and 60cc heads, it would make barely over 9-to-1 compression. Not good for a power recipe especially with a decent cam. So yesterday I dropped off the new heads at Kim Barr Racing Engines (KBRC) in Garland. Kim will remove .040 of material from the bottom of the heads, which will bring the CR up to 10.5-to-1. If you take more than .020 off the heads, it is likely you would need to mill the intake as well (or the intake face of the heads) in order for things to align properly.

So I left the intake with Kim as well to get it surfaced to match the heads. KBRC is where I had my 521 work done, and had Kim break it in on the engine dyno there. He does mostly Chevy work......but does his share of work for the "dark side" brand of engines like ours. He has complete machining, boring, surfacing facilities. A long time drag racer who set a few NHRA records himself, Kim caters mostly to the north Texas local drag racing and circle track industry. Why doesn't he campaign his cars anymore?Too expensive nowadays he says. It is alway interesting so look around his shop to see all of the high performance engines, with their expensive unobtainium parts, in various states of machining and assembly.

When the new cam gets here, we will mock up the heads, valves, pistons with clay to be sure there is enough piston to valve clearance. Jim bought a pushrod length checker so that we can be sure we have the exact size pushrods for this, especially after milling the heads.

[SSSammy]

John, are the TRW pistons dished enough if you shave the heads? I know this is sometimes an issue with FEs.

Sure appreciate your help with welding the Lakewood collars! I gotta runner now

Sam

[jdean]

Sammy, they have the eyebrows, but that is why we need to mock them up. In any case it had to be done, so I have my fingers crossed. I asked some other experienced builders just for a sanity check, with cam specs, and they thought it would be OK.
One thing in our favor is the intake valves are the 1.90 instead of the 2.02. Exhaust I am not too worried about.

A lot of the FEs running around in Cobra's have more valve lift than our .560 or so, and bigger valves to boot.

So the odds seem to be in our favor, but you never know until you check it out.

Congratulations on getting it back on the road. I can't wait to hear that new engine of yours running......I thought your last one sounded pretty mean. You better keep an egg under your right foot for a while until you get used to that thing!

[jdean]

Saturday

We can't do much without the camshaft. But we did get the heads back from being milled down, then cc'd which had them measuring to 54cc.



Also, Jim got his new carb in the mail. This is the 670 CFM Street Avenger. It looks nice on the new top end of the engine:



It turns out the intake did not need any milling to match up with the milled heads. It lined up perfectly. The rest of the time we spent re-doing the complicated alternator mounting, looking to simplify it. Then we used oven cleaner on the old heads to get them ready to sell.

Anybody want a good set of GT40 5.0 heads? Less than 3,000 miles on them. Complete with Comp Cams roller rockers.

[jdean]

The custom cam is taking too long to get here, so I got bored and convert Jim's car to side draft fuel injection.....what do ya'll think?



And yes the hood does close with this installed!!!

I hope Jim doesn't get upset with my decision......but I just could not resist.