Chapter 4
Option C

by Ryan King
Edited by Patricia Kalin
1/07

As Patty is so fond of telling me, when asked whether I'd prefer option A or option B, I usually opt for C.

The situation I was left in when a Mustang parts house sold me a bad engine (and told me it was my problem) was no different. With two bad engines and no money to fix the problem, it looked like my options were to rebuild what I had for $1,500 or try to find another low mileage motor.

After the fiasco with the last engine, trying to find a good running motor didn't sound too appealing to me (see Chapter 3 for more details).

Some deep contemplation and soul searching lead me to the decision that I needed a plan if I was going to make the best of this situation. That was when I remembered a magazine project car I had seen some time ago and went in search of it (a welcome distraction with the choices I was facing).

It was a teal '90 LX Sedan with a 5.0 and a five-speed that had gone head-to-head with a Buick Regal T-Type in a bolt-on contest to see which car would turn the quickest quarter.

My research revealed that, some time after the bolt-on article, it had a 347 stroker installed in it. That combination intrigued me, which got me to thinking: Since I was going to take it in the financial shorts with this one, why not have something I wanted? After all, I missed the way my first car (the Original 351) drove, and a 347 in a 5.0 Sedan was at least close to the cubic inch/weight ratio of the that car. Couple that with the fact that I had already been abstractly considering a larger motor for the car at some point and the idea quickly grew on me. Which, as many of you car enthusiasts know (as well as the significant others of car enthusiasts), that growth looks like a large, car-shaped wart growing on your head. I'm sure many of you also know, the only way to cure one of these growths is to make it a reality.

Like any other medical condition, when you put it under a microscope, you'll see it's made up of lots of tiny parts. This one looked like this: The shortblock was a Nowak-built 347 with a stock roller block and main girdle with dished custom forged pistons matched to TFS Twisted Wedge heads. The crank was a forged FRPP piece and the rods were Crower 5.4” steel.

The valvetrain used a Crower hydraulic roller grind that spec'd out at 222°/228° at .050” on a 112° LSA and .496”/.512” lift with the Crower 1.6:1 roller rockers. The Crower rockers pushed on Crower 2.02”/1.60” valves.

The heads were TFS Twisted Wedge and the intake was an Extrude Honed Edelbrock Performer. The intake was fed with a BBK 70mm throttle body and metered by a Mark VIII 80mm MAF controlled by a custom Drivetrain Dynamics chip piggybacked onto the stock computer.

The exhaust also had Edelbrock 1 5/8” shorty headers a 2.5” Mor-Flow cat-equipped H-pipe and a Flowmaster catback system.

The engine was backed up by the stock T5 and a stock Traction-Lok 8.8” rear end with 3.55:1 gears.

The suspension consisted of BBK drop springs, stock control arms, Tokico struts and shocks as well as Hotchkis strut mounts.

The brakes were Baer disc all the way around and the wheels and tires were '93 Cobras with 245/45ZR17 Goodyear's.

Oh, and it had bolt-in FRPP subframe connectors.

Now that I had a functional model from which to formulate a plan, I could move forward.

Hang on, in Chapter 5 I delve into the “plan” for my own stroker notch!