Of course, never leaving anything alone, I decided to try to figure out the really bad thumping when the car was warmed up and moving the steering side to side at low speeds. Never above 30, but always once she warmed up. Turns out the passenger side motor mount was broken. Not sure why it only made thumping when warmed up, but I went and bought a set of mounts from TBird and Cougar Parts: https://tbirdcougarparts.com/
Getting the stock mounts off the k-member was very tedious. On the drivers side, the big nut came off easily, but the smaller bolt was so close to the oil pan, even jacking up the motor, that it literally took an hour to remove it a fraction of a turn at a time with a wrench. The passenger side, well that was an frigin pain. Again the big nut came off easily, but the smaller one was rusted to the kmember. Hours of heat, chiseling, wrenching it finally came out. The damm bolt:
Then I tried to install the passenger side mount and found the k-member side didn't fit. It sat at least 1/2" too high for the bottom bolt to line up. Heath and Andrew were great and sent me a new design of the plate with a longer bottom to get to the hole. In the end I still had to widen the kmember hole for the big bolt so it would 'sit' fully down, but that took about 30 seconds with a good bit.
Back to the exhaust manifold. Once I remove the turbo I looked at the gasket and panicked a little. I have a REALLY bad feeling I put the one that was on the T3 back on when I upgraded. So I reused something that wasn't supposed to be and it blew. So I upgraded the studs, had the manifold resurfaced and bought the Felpro gasket.
In a previous post I showed the hack I used to get the wastegate actuator to reach with the new turbo. That was pretty half-a**ed so I went and bought a correct actuator with a bend it in:
Next, since it was 'winter' here in Atlanta, I went through the list of things that had been bothering me about the car. Top of the list: TDC. After I had the engine in the car and couldn't get it to start (years ago), I learned about finding TDC, how it is easier with the head on etc. Since I never did this I wanted to check it. Following the advice over on TurboFord I made a nice 'tool' and found TDC. And it turns out I was off by a couple of degrees the whole time.
I'd already done the 'e-bar' method to get the cam figured out so I didn't need to do that again.
Final engine work: moving the IAT to the FMIC tubing and just before the throttle body. One of the issues from last fall was the idle was really messed up once I'd been driving for a while and the logs showed the IAT was heat soaked. So I moved it. A little bit of wiring extension and a pipe plug and it's done.
I put everything back together, got the car on the ground and started the next set of projects.
Seat Belts. I really wish I'd done this back when the interior was apart. The stock belts turned out to not do very well. They'd lock up at weird times, wouldn't lock up, wouldn't retract etc. So I bought a set from LMR, including the sleeves. Changing the actual belt and retractor required taking the interior mostly apart, including removing the rear seats. Once I got it out I installed the new retractor and found that the new sleeves didn't fit. The 'outer' part was impossible to push the belt through and the 'inner' piece was longer than the stock one (and the inner belt was shorter, so the combination didn't work at all.) I ended up reusing the stock ones, which were still in good shape.
Next was purely for fun. Last Christmas my wife bought me a bluetooth amplifier, a Kenwood KAC-M1824BT. This amplifier can stream music from a bluetooth source and is very small. I mounted it underneath the passenger seat and ran the wires behind the stock stereo. When I rebuild the car originally I installed much better speakers, so they were easily attached. Now the stock 1984 AM/FM push button radio doesn't do anything, but still looks cool. Note if you buy this and only use it with your phone, you need to connect the blue signal wire to the yellow power wire so it will power on. Once I got it working I started cranking some Led Zeppelin in the driveway and my lovely wife had to laugh. This isn't as loud as the stereo I had in my Capri in High School, but she asked me to turn it down. (Yes she was in the first Capri cruising with the Cassette music)
Last change for the Spring so far, which I won't be able to take advantage of for a little while, is I wired in an electronic boost controller to the PimpX. Confirmed it works via test mode then put everything back together. I need time to figure out how to set it up and tune with it, but it is ready when I get there.
If all goes well, I'll be setting the timing, tuning the idle and then going for a ride this weekend. I promise to stay away from other people.
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