Oil pan swap

The original oil pan that is used on the engine is flawless but does not work for my cobra. The reason being is that it's too tall. The engine sits much lower in cobra and the tall oil pan protrudes way too low. The risk of puncturing the oil pan and loosing all the oil is unacceptably high. Therefore the oil pan needs to be replaced with something that works for my application. The Factory Five was supposed to include the oil pan with my kit but they choose not too. Shame on them. After long arguments with them I did not get the part nor the money. I am disappointed how they handled this but what can you do. Luckily, there are other sources. I placed an order with North Racecars and got a Camp oil pan. It's supposed to be great in almost every condition: street, strip or circle track. To save on shipping I sent my parts to CBI. Now that I had a trip to US in my future, I decided to make it worth while. After some time on Summit Racing and Jegs a rather noticeable dent was made on my credit card. A few weeks later, I got the fruits of my investment. 

So onto the oil pan replacement. Flip the engine.

 

Grab a wrench and take the original off. So we have this

 

This is not the end yet, the oil pick up must go too. This one is designed for the deeper original pan.

You can see how much shorter the right side is on the one on the top. The original is the bottom one on the picture.

The new oil pick up in place. It's probably safe to reuse the old gasket. It's a well made gasket with rubber insert. However, I wanted to go extra mile and got new one by Fel-Pro. Remember to apply bead of gasket maker on the spots where block joins with various covers.

At last, the oil pan comes on. I had to shorten the mounting bolts a bit so they fit. The new oil pan design does no allow the bolts to go in some locations.

It's very important for the uniform seal to follow Ford's instruction on the tightening order of the bolts.

Flip the engine over, pull the deep stick out. It too needs to be adjusted. Measure and clip the end off to ensure it fits the new oil pan. The markings on the deep stick are correct but the length is a bit too long. The new pan is 8 quarts in capacity. Fill up the engine with oil and have a beer. :)

Engine prep

At this time I had the fuel lines positioned all the way up to the engine. I needed the engine dropped in to make sure I have the line ending at the right spot. This is where the adventure begins.

Before the engine goes in it needs to be "refreshed". The thing was in the mustang for over 10 years so it's not looking shiny enough for me. Moreover, the engine has to go through a series of small modifications to make it work in the new home.

The engine has spend the longest time on the stand now. It has collected some dust and needed a basic clean up job. I did not go overboard with this and gave up after a quick Simple Green MAX degreasing. It was good enough for me at this time. The next part was to get collectors off. They will be turned 180* to face forward to work with the side pipes. These things are not pretty by any means but apparently (and a bit sadly for me) are well designed and don't impede the flow. So no headers for me. I did, however, spend time to gasket match the ports on them.

I also ensure that the inside is polished too. The casting left the surface full of mini bumps. It took me way too much time and effort to level it out and bore out the ports. It is cast iron after all. The things went significantly faster on the other side of the gasket. The heads are aluminum and are much softer. Here are some pictures of before. If you look close enough you'll notice that the gasket is about 1-2 mm larger than the port.

 
Here it's more obvious with the carbon deposit marks. See what happens when the gasket does not fully seal the exhaust system? The left port here exposes the blow by the gasket visible by the black deposits.

And now the "after"

Now that collectors needed some make over too

and now comes some header paint from VHT

While at it, the cats get the same treatment.

Ah, the things I do for my wife. These stupid things have a brick inside that chocks the exhaust system and robs me of the valuable horse power. But I have to make sure my loved one is not deafened by the roar of the V8. On the plus side, she cannot complain anymore that my cars are not environmentally friendly gas guzzlers. Maybe one day the turbos will replace these pesky catalytic converters. However, till that day comes they will be pretty.

Since I am on the painting spree, the engine block got a coat of VHT metallic paint

The trick is to use aluminum foil for masking. It's way easier than any kind of masking tape and paper. Here's the result.

It's not in your face colour popping paint job but I like it. While the engine mounts where off the block they too got sprayed.

I will take a break here and continue in a next post. The next little mods are a bit involved and deserve individual posts.