Another Ford (LOL) Falcon Thread

Here are some terrible pictures that show the mid-engine-ness of this car, for the casual engin-erd.  One might also note changes taking place while engine was apart.  In both car-oriented pics, there is actually an engine in place.  I could nearly place a chair inside the engine compartment to sit and touch the front of the block when the engine was apart.  The placement was about an inch further back from standard C4.

I did spend some time driving the car with the (LS) engine completely stock, which made somewhere around 330-350 horsepower; the DOD/AFM had been deactivated.  It got ridiculously good mileage, behaved like a Toyota Camry, and with the car's new footprint, once I had enough tire clearance figured out within the body, it could be floored in the middle of a turn at Thunderhill like a total slob and just get up and go.  At that point, I knew I had a chassis that could take a lot more power.

To reiterate, some of the dumbest thrills were found in how well-behaved the car was in contrast to the previous version of the old-school Ford 5.0, which loped and cam-surged and had finicky carbonator manners under high pressure situations.  The X-302 engine made the same power as the LS, but generally did everything worse.  The new, stock LS barely used any gas in four sessions of being floored on the track, and I could drive it up a gravel road, uphill with full traction, at like three miles per hour.  Little joys go a long way sometimes.

brad131a4 (Forum Supporter) said:

The only thing that saddens me is the wheel wells being cut. Other than that I like it a lot.

With everything un-falcon-like that had been done, it's the wheel wells that get ya???? 

In reply to rustomatic :

I always dislike the "just slap a chebby in it" fords. But that Falcon is one of the coolest cars I've ever seen. So well executed, it WELL worth it. Awesome. 

This process is turning out to be more fun than I expected.  My character is such that unfortunately, unless I'm obsessing, I'm kinda bored--fortunately, this site is full of people with such a problem.  I even went and plugged up a redundant gas tank breather on the Falcon earlier after dumping 20 bags of mulch in the front yard (not enough).  How about some racing-oriented pics?

Dents, bro--funny story about those rocker dents that led my to building an electric power steering system, fitting whopping 15x8 Chrysler steelies, and so many other steps to infinity hotrodding . . . I hit October rain on the river road I used to live on, flipped a 180, and landed in a ditch after taking out a metal reflector post or two.  It's fun being the guy at a track day with bitchin' dents.

Both of these cars have an LS.  Certain questionable upgrades eventually lowered the Falcon's front way before the rear . . .

I've been a fan of the 63 falcon since I was in middle school.  And I'm old. 
Love this thing!

Here's a random thought or two, and some recognition for how polarizing (or not) this mess of a car can be.  I do realize that many just can't help but stick to a team, be it Ferd, Chebby, Honda, Citroen, whathaveyou.  I'm not that way--I have a Ram that I call a Dodge (I've also had Ferd, GMC, and Toyota trucks).  I've always liked VWs, and my wife drives one.  We've had a Prius (which got front-ended--not pretty atall).  Anyhoo, this thing is just where the sometimes addled mind led me.  On that note, nobody's ever given me E36 M3 for how massively I've hacked this thing, so that's nice . . .

On a side note, this car has some of the worst paint I have ever seen; pictures do not do justice to how bad the paint on this thing is/was.  Granted, since I've had it, there have been many changes that involved sanding (to get the dirt out) and re-spraying (Rustoleum, then sanding).  To clarify, the white this thing came with was applied by a roller, I think.  Somebody apparently did not understand that your car's roof should not embrace the wall texture of the average suburban bathroom, but whatever.  Most of the texture's gone at this point.  Nevertheless, this thing's goal has never been a perfect shine or to be attractive to non-motorheads.

So how about some dash:

So yes, there is one hackery effort I do kind of regret, even though it was pretty much unavoidable:  Losing the original dash.  I really did enjoy its style, shape, and lack of padding.  It was in the way, though.

The rectangular device is a ScanGauge II.  I caught on to these when I had a 2006 F250 with the powersmoke, because you kind of need deep info on those things all the time, lest you need to get towed (which you do).  Digressing, that's my speedo, tacho, tempo, and charge-o, plus it shows and clears error codes.  Pretty cool deal.  I'll leave the rest of the telemetry to the eagle eyes.

Okay, well, the toggle switch in the gauge panel is the turn signal thing (Ron Francis?).  There is now a fireproof shifter boot.  Yes, throttle is via wire(s).  Original headlight switch is via ziptie.  That thing to the right of the headlight switch is the e38 PCM.

I have a scan gauge II in my miata. I can monitor coolant temperature, useful for summer autocross here in Florida. It reads the speed pretty accurately off of the ECU (when checked with GPS), which is weird since the speedometer reads high. I don't even look at the speedometer, I just use the scangauge.

This is burly and awesome. I love it.

In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :

I do love the ScanGauge.  I've bought like three of them now (sold two with cars)--they are great for initial start-ups of engine swaps (in combination with a check engine light).  When you compare them to the ridiculously overpriced tablet setups that Holley and others sell, it's kind of a joke how overpriced the tablets are.  Practicality is not attractive?

Today was exhausting.  I had new gutters installed on my house in December, and it seems that the bigger gutters (upgrade, right?) may have overpowered the original downspouts, as a few of them were actually puking upward in today's rain.  There was that and the $SPY falling on its face again . . . exhausting.

I found a couple of pics from the last autox I did with this car; I've since switched to coilovers (made lower) and bigger front brakes (changed masters for like the nth time), which of course resulted in all kinds of pain in my rear. 

Anyhoo, I did buy an SCCA membership and possibly an entry to a Goodguys (autox) event in Nashville next month; I'm also on a waitlist for a Tracknight next week, but no words coming in . . .

This car just has the perfect stance. It's beautiful. See you at the next autocross in May.

In reply to maschinenbau :

Thanks, man--looking forward to beating on this thing.

Once upon a time . . .

So in returning to the front of the car, I initially re-used the C4's radiator/box thing that mounted the radiator diagonally in a large fiberglass box.  It worked well after I figured out how to get air into the thing, which required opening up a large hole in the front bumper, behind which I welded some large, heavy mesh.  After the N/A thing got boring, hairdryer and cooling parts began to really take up a ton of space (and weight).

I used to be able to fit a chair in there.  Now, it's a nest of hot/cold pipes and coolers.  The fan is one cheap-o 16" electric unit bolted through the radiator.

Here, you can see most of the coolers:  big radiator, intercooler (for scale, I think it's 31x4x12 or so), trans cooler, and if you look really closely, you can see some oil cooler lines going down behind the bumper.  You can also see the wastegate and bov (JGS units).  With the relatively small Borg-Warner snail (s366), this is like 100 pounds of crap in front of the front axle line, which necessitated a heavier-than stock front spring setup (doesn't exist presently, hence coilovers) . . .

I'm technically still figuring out the tune (perpetual), but it's been running and driving pretty good in this state for a few years now.  Track day and autox incoming for the first week of May . . .

Okay, so I did an autocross on Sunday.  The Atlanta chapter of the SCCA put on one of the best events I've ever attended; it was generally well-organized, and I got six runs right off the bat (never happened before outside of a USCA event, which is expensive).  The course was long and fast, and there were no big off-spinners.  As I've not done an event in like three years, I generally sucked, but it was fun, and it was good to put the perpetual science experiment that is the Falcon to work.

Why no pictures?  Well, I've seen my own car enough; plenty of others took pictures and video that will turn up somewhere.  As for the event's other participants, nobody needs another picture of a Honda or Miata running cones . . .

Since I don't have sufficient PCV breathing capacity, my turbo system seems to be pushing on the engine's rear main seal, which is not an enjoyable scenario.  There's that, plus I can't really control my 6l80 beyond the D position, even though I've selected "performance" in HP Tuners, so driving in anger is kind of like an odd sequence of trying to trick the tranny into a lower gear with the gas pedal.  This leads the mind to killing a flock of birds with one boulder-like procedure, which would be pulling the engine and trans to fix the oil leak, locating a manual transmission (which would also help with a certain ground clearance problem), blah, blah, blah.  This is not appealing.  Take my car, please . . .

I'm scheduled for a Track Night at Road Atlanta this week, so we'll see how far I can get without being called the Exxon Valdez (it's really not that bad, but it will get worse).  The auto really works a lot better on the road course, anyhoo . . .

So I've got a nice pic from Road Atlanta a couple weeks ago.  The car failed in my first session as a result of some as yet undiagnosed electrical crap, so I got towed (been towed off of Laguna Seca as well--kinda cool).  Nevertheless, I had a blast with the SCCA Tracknight group, and I now love Road Atlanta; I out-braked a Honda, so I feel better about the car's brakes than ever before.  Big changes incoming--they include a third pedal.  Just got to find the time . . .

Anyone interested in a low-ish mile 2wd slip-yoke 6l80?  Hit me up.

rustomatic said:

Great pic! This thing is going to be even more awesome with a stick

The content in this filthy peekchur is geared (punny!) for two objectives:

The first is performance driving--I need the control back in order to make purposeful use of revs, chassis condition/state, and powerband.  I am all for autos, but the 6l80 is not a track tool.

The second is utter porkiness; the 6l80 weighs 200+ pounds, and even though it is in the middle of the chassis, the chubb needs to go.

What you see in the image is my brand-new Tremec TKX.  It weighs 99-ish pounds, and it is several inches shorter than the slushbox.  Yay, yet another new driveshaft will be needed . . .

Oh, and I forgot the much needed ground clearance that a stupid auto trans pan does not provide.

So I have like really limited time now, but I have decided to de-turbo (and further de-weight) this car.  Every few years, I get a bug up you-know-where and decide to do a reformat of this car's general hard drive.  It usually begins with a track day or an autocross . . .

This means I'll be selling a bunch of really good stuff at a discount once again.  Eventually, I will legitimately list a full turbo kit, a nice Gen IV 5.3 LSX, a 6l80 . . .

The turbo stuff includes a Borg Warner s366, JGS wastegate and blowoff valves, an AEM A/F gauge and wideband, a huge 31" intercooler, and potentially other stuff that may work, depending on how your project is configured.

The 5.3 (maybe 66k miles) has an LS9 cam and head gaskets, along with Pac 1218 springs and ARP head studs.  Oil pan and intake situation are yet to be determined, but I will more than likely sell as more of a long block.

Weight savings (and simplicity) seems like an appealing concept to me now, as an aluminum block N/A engine is on the horizon to go with the TKX.

Like any average American, I have decided that losing 300 pounds seems like a great idea, so continuing changes are under foot (mostly just creating piles in my garage).  What this means is both the 5.3 and the 6l80 are leaving, along with the turbo (and related complications/hardware).  In their places will be the TKX and a new larger, lighter engine made of aluminum.

Here's the pic:

The aluminum engine, when I get to it (really dumb timing with new job that takes up way too much time), will get a cam/valve spring upgrade, featuring the Summit 8710R1.  To be super-cool and below-radar, the engine will wear a square port truck intake, hopefully my truck accessories and Summit underdriven balancer, and some lovely new eBay-sourced shorty headers (which are among the absolute most amazing value in hotrodding to date).

What's funny is that what drove me to the LS swap originally was annoyance with the combo of lopey cam and manual trans (X302 + T5z).  I now no longer have any delusions of utility with this car, however . . .

The look of turbo stuff disappearing from the engine bay is kind of inspiring (not so much having to build yet another exhaust system), but lots of work does lie ahead.  There are visions of being able to modulate power application .  .

Once I figure out which oil pan came with the new engine (either muscle car or F-body--it is not clear), I can more clearly proceed with posting the 5.3 up for sale (and know what parts I'll be able to include).

Ugh.  Perhaps deconstruction can be considered progress.  Yes it can, when it comes to weight loss.  And yes, you can yank 700 pounds on the 500-pound setting.

Wow, so much progress since I last checked in on this thread. I love the ideas for the next iteration. I'll be following along, my automotive add has me wanting a smoother running motor than my current warmed over 302 and this thread isn't helping me resist!

Your car is one that helped push me over the edge of tube frame race car with duster body and radiused wheel openings. 

Glad to see it getting crazier!

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

You have my apologies, dude--I didn't intend to infect anyone.  I thought I was de-crazying this thing with the switch back to N/A and one less gear/manual.

The main "crazy" is how stupid I am with my checking account.

I do look forward to your Duster results.  That one with the C5 stuff underneath is pretty damn cool.