12/26/06
Mustang Motor IX

Even through the Holidays, I managed to sneak away to get a little more of my engine assembly done. It’s really starting to look like an engine with the heads, timing chain cover, water pump and harmonic balancer installed. Speaking of the timing chain cover, I sent the old cover out to weld up some holes that had been stripped by the previous owner. The welder filled the holes with aluminum weld, so I filed and sanded the excess off, and tapped new holes for the two oil pan bolts that screwed into timing chain cover. I was so proud of my work, and took pictures of the whole process, but when I tried to load them to my computer, the camera lost all the pictures!? I’m not exactly sure what happened, but all my hard work is now hidden by a coat of black engine enamel!

Don’t worry, I’m going to paint the rest of the engine. I’m just waiting to finish closing up the whole engine, so I can mask it off and paint the block for the last time.

The replacement rockers came in the mail, and I had them installed on the heads about 10 minutes after they arrived.

These rockers no longer have the clearance issues like the previous set I bought. The new rockers have a normal spherical fulcrum just like the stock rocker arms, but feature a roller tip where they contact the top of the valve stem. These offer a little less friction compared to the stock set up where the tip of the rocker simply rubs itself against the valve stem. The cost was the same the stock replacements, so I had nothing to loose.

I’m still working on porting the intake manifold to match the new aluminum heads, and that’s going to take a few more days, especially when I want to keep the noise in the shop to a minimum. The die grinder uses a lot of compressed air, and forces my air compressor to run the whole time I’m working on the manifold. All that noise makes it up into my house, so in wanting to keep the peace, I try to grind away at the manifold when no one is around.

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