Chapter 4
One Tired Pony

by Ryan King
5/06

Stage 2 is here, but its arrival leaves something to be desired.

After a final summer of intermittent race outings this last year, the clutch was slipping pretty badly and the throwout bearing was making some gnarly grinding noises. With 107,000 miles of cruising, commuting, traveling and of course racing on the odometer, it was time for the GT’s first major drivetrain repair.

At first I wanted to go straight into Stage 2, but I had a problem: I didn’t have the money to do it because of the Project LX fiasco (see Project LX for more information).

A cooler head prevailed when I mulled over all of my options. There was more than one problem that posed a substantial obstacle to completing the second stage I had planned for the Project GT Mustang. The most important of those secondary issues was the lack of another reliable driver to take the GT’s place for the time it would take me to save for and then complete the project. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that as my only car capable of being a daily driver at the moment, I obviously needed to wait for a better opportunity to start the GT’s second stage. So instead I chose to order up a Ford Racing King Cobra clutch kit and get the GT back on the road.

The process was pretty straight forward, get the car up off all four tires, remove the shifter handle, which I ended with me breaking an invisible and unmentioned (in the factory repair manual) plastic clip on the shifter bezel while removing that part and disconnect the driveshaft.

After that the H-pipe fought Patty and I for everything we were worth, but it was great to have Patty’s help with it. We got that undone and moved onto the transmission. The transmission came out much quicker than the H-pipe and it also provided the clue to the horrors that waited within the bellhousing. The input shaft bearing retainer had a thin black film on it that looked like wet clutch material but I couldn’t quite make out the problem without the bellhousing off.

Once the bellhousing came off, there was no question about what the problem was. The front seal on the transmission had blown and covered the inside of the bellhousing with a gross concoction of transmission fluid and clutch material.

Oddly enough, the throwout bearing appeared to be fine, leading me to entertain the thought that it might have been the fluid causing the bearing to make some odd noises...as well as causing the slipping clutch.

Ultimately it didn’t matter really, the clutch material was only a 32nd of an inch or less from allowing the clutch disc rivets to make contact with the flywheel and pressure plate, so it needed to be replaced anyway. The real problem, however, was what the transmission seal failure might be a symptom of.

So there I was with a dilemma: I’ve got the parts to fix the clutch, but not the transmission. If it were only a front seal, that would be one thing, but that front seal could be a symptom of a deeper problem that may only be revealed once the transmission is back in place. To add another level of difficulty to the decision, the transmission is on its way down hill. While still drivable, it’s starting to stick in and fight me into 3rd gear as well as whine in all but 4th and 5th gear. I didn’t have the money to rebuild it, which would require all new gears to cure the whining as well as allow the new synchros to last a reasonable length of time (once the gears wear out, they will ruin new synchros quickly), and I definitely didn’t have the money to replace it with a brand new one.

What the situation boils down to is that I’ve got a GT that will cost me well more than a grand to put back on the road, the lack of a reliable driver to back it up and no money to do anything about it.

Without much in the way of resources I was forced to wing it and pull the rapidly dying Project 351 out of storage and drive it while I put together the money needed to fix my problem.

Thankfully a solution to my transportation problem was waiting in the wings that will be less expensive than repairing the GT and keep me from wasting time and money on a repair that would only have to be undone for the second stage I had planned: Put the newly purchased Project LX ‘93 Mustang (the reason for my financial difficulties in the first place) on the road as my daily driver. Since I needed to put the new Mustang on the road anyway, it would ultimately make the repair to the GT just that much more of a waste of income.

Now this leads me to the fun part: What exactly is Stage 2?

It’s more power, more displacement and more fun. Basically I’m putting a DSS/Bud’s Machine 347 in her backed by a Tremec TKO600 5-speed, connected by a Centerforce Dual Friction clutch and routed through a Ford Racing aluminum driveshaft to a 1996-1998 Mustang Cobra 3.27:1 rear end with a beefed up factory differential.

The engine itself will use the factory MAF (because it flows plenty of air for a mild motor, even a stroker), the factory inlet tract with the factory air box and K&N air filter already in place. The computer, however, is a different story. I’ll be piggybacking a TwEECer R/T to it and starting with the tune from a ‘95 Cobra R for my base. Since the engine’s specs are very, very close to a factory Cobra R 351W, it should be drivable as is if not close to optimum. That kinda gives away the rest of the motor’s specs, but not all. It will have a Ford Racing 65 mm throttle body backed by the Ford Racing adapter routed to a Trick Flow Street Heat intake directing the air through a set of Ford Racing GT-40P heads. A Crane 2031 cam and spring kit will control the valves through Crane 1.7:1 aluminum roller rockers. The compression should work out to roughly 9-9.5:1 and the exhaust will exit through Ceramac coated MAC 1 5/8” GT-40P shorty headers. The factory quad-cat H-pipe will be replaced by either a MAC cat-equipped 2.5” H-pipe or a Bassani Stainless Steel X-pipe and muffled by any one of several cat-back systems: MAC Flowpath, Dynomax Welded Ultraflo, Magnaflow Stainless, Borla Stainless or Flowmaster American Thunder. All in 2.5” diameters.

The fuel will be supplied by a 190 lph Ford Racing fuel pump and plumbed through Ford Racing 24 lb injectors and ignited with the stock ignition.

I’m sure there are questions as to why this combo and why not something more aggressive? This is why, I have most of these parts as leftorvers from other builds and they will work ideally together. The gearing chosen for the rear end is based upon accurate gearing for the engine/tire/transmission/weight combo of this car to peak the motor in third gear through the traps all the while providing comfortable cruising. A different gear like 3.55:1 or 3.73:1 will cause more shifts (lost time), run through the traps far shy of peak rpm (not giving the car as much exposure to the engine’s optimum power output as possible during the run, thus reducing the quartermile time), increase tire spin (reducing time) and spin higher on the open road. In order to run the quarter correctly in fourth gear, this combination would require 4.30:1 gears and I don’t want to use those gears for this car, it’s just not necessary for optimum performance.

So that’s it in a nutshell.

I’ll have more info and updates in future chapters. Hang on, it’s bound to be an interesting ride!

Click image for Chapter 4 Work Photos.