Bluebird

Dont they sound good on the dyno?

This is relevant to my interests. I also have a Cobra-swapped T-Bird I want to dyno. Mine has C heads/intake and a few small mods. I'm hoping for 275 at the wheels, but that may be optimistic.

Did you tune yours on the dyno, or just record the results?

In reply to Will :

That is b-e-a-utiful. The C heads and intake are definitely an upgrade vs stock B heads. I doubt that 275rwhp is out of reach for your car.

We tuned a stock 2v GT PCM for my setup, using SCT equipment. The shop is in Owensboro, KY if you are looking for someome to tune yours

Winter update, I suppose. All was not right with the world last summer as I only enjoyed having my car back for about a month before I broke it. I knew the T45 was suspect before I installed it as I had spent a little bit of time driving the donor before it met its demise. The trans was never happy shifting 1-2 above 5500rpm. Putting a better shifter on it helped, but I didn't put much stock in it living a long life. My suspicions were right and the very first hard 1-2 shift at a TnT night in June, the fork let go. I was able to limp the car home starting in 3rd from stops and basically parked it due to a lack of time to pull it back apart.

I got the car into the shop after Challenge and started puttering about, but I had to work up the motivation to really dig in. Removing the transmission from this parts bin stew pot involves removing the right side header. To get the right side header out, I first needed to drop the kmember.

Way back when, I ran the brake lines across the firewall instead of under the engine in anticipation of this exact scenario. Getting the kmember down was much more of a mental hurdle than actual work. With the engine hanging from the support beam and a ratchet strap pulling the drivetrain to the left, I was able to wiggle the right side header out and onto the floor

I searched around for a replacement T45 and ended up finding a TR3650 instead. T45 standing up, TR3650 laying down

Supposed to be a direct replacement for 99-01 T45s, but my T45 is older so there would be a change from gear driven speed sensor to a reluctor wheel. Oh, and a different shifter(again).
But wait, there's more! While figuring out my speedo calibration last year, I discovered the T45 I had was in fact not original to the '97 GT donor. It was from a Cobra. This explained the fits I had getting the speedo to read accurately because the Cobra units were fitted with a different VSS drive gear. I also learned that for 96-98 Cobra T45s only, the mount was shifted further back on the tailshaft housing; the tailshaft housing which I had built custom crossmember mounting locations to match. Whomp whomp whomp.

I'm not cutting those mounts out and moving them. The new location would foul both the tabs I built AND the original Tbird tabs. Plus I built the exhaust around this crossmember location. So, I took some measurements and laid out a tab to weld onto the crossmember, reaching forward to the TR3650 mounting location.

Glad to see the BlueBird again!

Dig this build.  I see literally no TBirds of this era around.  I always dug on them them back in the day.  My bosses wife had the cool Cougar XR7 Sport back in the day in pearl white.

Finished the trans crossmember extension, and am nearly done putting all the parts back where they belong on the car.

Still need to fill the trans, install the shifter, and sort the new speedometer interface. Should probably recheck my driveline angles as well. Now if winter would kindly berkeley off, that would be great.

I have summer projects which will be enabled by this car being roadworthy, so I may hold off on this other thing I have for it, or not...who knows?

I see not one, not even two or three, but FOUR boosty things on the bench. What fun!

Put the transmission in, take the transmission out. Put the transmission in, move the shifter all about...

Sometimes buying parts from an acquaintance doesn't save any heartache vs a stranger on FBMP. 3650 in and figured out all the synchros were junk on the first test drive. Tear it apart, all new synchros, shift keys and springs. Got it buttoned back up this week and drove it to work today.

It feels good when others appreciate your efforts 

In reply to gumby :

I made it through! This is a great build Gumby. 

Cool Stuff!

Always glad to see an update here.

Weather has finally turned the corner enough to wake this car from hibernation.

Late last week we used it for a date night, and I drove it to work 4 days this week. Was really nice to pull it out of the garage after a whole winter of setting, and find zero fluids on the floor!

Wednesday after work included a few errands which took my homeward path directly past the dragstrip. Realizing it was TnT night, I dipped in to get a bit of redemption from '21.

I put 14.5 on my tech card, made a complete pass, and continued on my way home.

So, with my dyno numbers and trap speed now known, a little math says this car weighs ~3800lbs all dressed up with me in it. I'm not interested in taking out weight, or really chasing ETs at all, but 14.5 is not a satisfactory number. Time to get serious about installing the Kenne Bell.

Glad to see an update. Looking forward to more.