by Ryan King
5/08
When I was mired in the middle of this project, I was starting to think I’d never get to this point. I was patient and driven to be sure, but it was taking a good long time.
By that I mean the weeks stretched into months and the months eventually added up to nearly two years. In that time I’d changed the direction of – or at least paired down – Stage 2, purchased the ’66 GT that would precede both the Project 351 ’66 Mustang and the Project GT ’95 Mustang, and gone through two jobs.
As luck would have it, my perseverance paid off and in April of 2002 my cousin Derrek and I were dropping the engine and transmission into the car.
To get to that point from where I left off in Chapter 7, I had to get the transmission bolted up to the engine. Incidentally, that sounds a lot easier than it is.
With the engine off of the engine stand I had to install the clutch inspection plate, flywheel, pilot bearing, clutch and pressure plate. That was followed by the bellhousing, clutch fork and throwout bearing. The difficult part came next, the transmission.
At this point in my life, I’d installed a couple of transmissions…none had been anything remotely close to “easy.” I was hoping that because this was a manual with an all aluminum case, it was going to be easier than the other two I’d done. It was easier…but not exactly as easy as I’d hoped. Due to my inexperience, it took several hours to figure out how to get the input shaft through the unstable throwout bearing on the end of the clutch fork while align the splines on the input shaft with those in the clutch disc and get the nose of the input shaft through the pilot bearing…oh, and the whole assembly moved around because the engine was hung from an engine hoist.
It did finally go together and on a Saturday, Derrek and I wrestled the assembly into the car.
That left me with installing some ancillary components such as the engine accessories, distributor, upper intake, throttle body and so on. That was when I discovered two problems…I had forgotten the oil pump driveshaft and that the matching drive in the bottom of the distributor shaft was machined off center.
If you’ve never installed an oil pump driveshaft in a small block Ford, then I’m guessing you aren’t aware that there is a stop on it which keeps it from falling out while the engine is upside down, which also means it can’t just be dropped in from the top, it’s supposed to be done while the oil pump is off the engine. I wasn’t going to yank the engine to install the driveshaft, instead, I removed the stop – which is a sprung sheet metal cup – and dropped it in place. This wasn’t easy and took several tries, but I eventually succeeded.
The next problem, the improperly machined distributor shaft, showed itself when I tried to install the distributor. When I’d installed this distributor during the engine regasket in Chapter 2, I didn’t notice the problem because although it did seem tight, it went in. In this circumstance, the driveshaft wasn’t centered in the hole because that cup was missing. It made the fit almost impossible and while I did manage to get it in, when I ended up needing to yank it later, I wasn’t so lucky and ended up replacing the distributor all together.
Believe it or not – and for reasons I no longer remember – it took another four months to install all of the remaining engine components. I wasn’t able to fire it up until the end of August at about 11 in the evening. I was expecting a much more rowdy motor, but wasn’t expecting it to rattle the windows in the house across the street.
That was with the exhaust fully hooked up.
The next day I took it out for its first drive and I was really impressed with the way it drove. Even though it had a stock intake, throttle body and 3.08:1 gears, it had pulled with enough power at part throttle to easily break loose both 225/60ZR15 tires on the rear.
Too bad that wasn’t all that was discovered during that first drive. My Mother – who was on hand for the momentous occasion – noticed I was burning a lot of oil…and it was coming from under the car. After crawling around under there, I discovered it was leaking from the back of the oil pan and coating the catalytic converters.
I wasn’t very happy with that, I had a pretty good idea what the problem was and low and behold, I was right. After pulling the transmission, bellhousing, clutch assembly, flywheel and the inspection plate, I discovered the rear main seal was leaking. Well, actually, the rear main was leaking, because I had forgotten to install the rear main seal.
Fast forward another month. It was the beginning of November now, the car was finally ready to drive. At least the engine and clutch were ready to be broken in. I was pretty excited to get that accomplished because my first drive showed a lot of potential for the new engine and I wanted to see what it could do under full throttle.
Derrek’s brother – Brandon – and I were out finishing up the break-in when I experienced the full performance potential of the newly installed 347 for the first time.
It was late, around Midnight, we were in the right lane that was merging into the left shortly. There was a brand new 2003 Mazda6 in the other lane. The Mazda and I were doing 35, side-by-side, when I tried to pick up speed and get around it. The other driver floored it. My response was to drop it from fourth to third (not exactly the optimum gear, which would have been second) and open up the 347. Brandon and I were shoved back in our seats as the motor – which started at a sedate 2000 RPM – responded instantaneously and rocketed relentlessly to 5500.
When I let off the gas the speedometer was buried and all I could see in the rear view mirror were the two little dots of the Mazda’s headlights – about an eighth mile back.
At that point in my life, I’d never felt a car respond and accelerate like that. Even looking back on it with more experience, it really did drive like a monster – and well beyond anything I had intended to achieve at that time.
I wished I would have gotten some performance data on the combination, especially with the results I got after I modified the car in Stage 3, but regardless I was both pleased and impressed.
Keep a lookout for Chapter 9 as I get started with Stage 3 and finally turn the Project LX Mustang into the car I had planned when I’d started with Stage 2!
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