So even though they told me on Wednesday that they would have an assembly today to check the my harmonic balance and flywheel with, they didn't. So I had to leave them with them and they said they should be able to do it on Monday. They are going to ship them back to me after so I don't have to drive out there again. This sucks because now I have to wait another week before I know if I have to pull the engine out or if the hamarnic balancer and the flywheel were off. I could have either put it back together this weekend or pulled the engine and disassembled it. Now it'll be next weekend. Well at least I hope it will.

I heard back from CHP today and thankfully it was the flywheel that was off. They corrected it and are shipping it and the harmonic balancer back to me today.

Nice. That would have sucked had you needed to pull the motor back out.

Yeah, I wasn't looking forward to it if I had to. I really glad that I don't.

I got the flywheel and harmonic balancer back yesterday. Hopefully it won't rain tomorrow so I can put it all back together.

I know that's a load off your mind. Nothing worse than putting a lot of work into something and not have it work correctly.

I got the trans installed and the vibration is gone but the car still wasn't running right. I had a new set of plugs so I installed those. While removing the old ones I found that cylinder 4 had a bad plug. It ran better with the new plugs but still wasn't right. So I bumped the fuel pressure up and that helped a lot. It still isn't perfect but I think it just needs to be tuned.

Let me know when you're thinking about going, the blue car is insured now and ready to be driven on the street. We can go down there together and get em done at the same time.

So we had Brendan (Ron's Friend on here) and his wife over for dinner tonight and I took him for a ride in the Cobra to see what he thought. He's an ASE certified tech like Phil is. His opinion is that it's a balance issue. I'm going to have Phil drive it again and if Phil feels that it's a balance issue as well then I'm going to pull the engine and tear it back down to have it all balanced again.

Phil drove the car on Thursday and still thought that it's a balance issue so I called CHP Friday morning and told them that I was going to bring the car down to get their opinion. I picked Guy up and we headed down there. Eric felt it and listened to it and said that it's not a balance issue. Well at first he didn't even notice it. I had him sit in the car because that's the only way you feel it. He said that if it was a balance issue it would get worse around the 2800-3000 range. I asked him what he thinks it is and he said he thinks it's a tuning issue but I don't agree. I've not been driving the car because I was worried about the vibration doing damage but he said that even if it was a balance issue that it is so light that it wouldn't cause any engine damage and Phil agreed. So I'm going to wait until I have it tuned and see. Guy is going to talk to Steve next week when he is back at the shop to schedule and appointment and I'm going to try and see if I can come up with the cash to have mine tuned then as well.

I pulled the upper intake off and tested the injectors with a tester I made. They all worked fine. Then I pulled the valve covers and checked all the springs, rockers and pushrods and they were all fine too. So I'm going to put it all back together and see how it runs after tuning.

Here's the tester.

Thanks to Guy we will be getting our cars tuned this Friday.

:thumbs_up:
Did you prefer 9am or 1pm? He hasn't confirmed fridays time yet. If we go early we sit in traffic on the way there, if we go late we sit in traffic on the way back.

I prefer 1pm.

Sounds good

Well I have good news and bad news. First, the good news. The Cobra made 56 rwtq more than it did with the old engine even though Steve stopped the pull at 4000 rpms. He stopped it because the AFR went below 10:1 as soon as he went full throttle. So even with a very rich and short pull it still made 56 more tq. The biginning of the bad news is that the chip I have is Autologic and can no longer be programmed. So I have to buy a new chip so Steve can tune the car. Since I don't have the money to buy it now I'm going to have to wait for the tune.

The rest of the bad news is that Steve also says that the vibration is a balance issue and not the tune or a misfire. He hook up a scan tools and monitored everything and says the engine is running great. So I'll be calling CHP on Monday and see how they want to procede but the engine is going to have to come back out and torn back down.

Guy also had issues but I'll let him update them on his thread. However, Steve also made a pull on his and cut it off early as well. I think he cut it off at around 4800 when the supercharger belt slipped but by 4000 he was already making 10psi of boost. With our short runs I think he made 2 rwhp more than me and I made 22 rwtq than him.

He ran it to 4200 WOT and it kept spinning to 4500, I found out I have a throttle cable issue.

I forwarded the email I received from Steve stating that the vibration is due to an imbalance to CHP yesterday asking what our next steps are and haven't received anything back yet. I'm going to give them until noon and then I'll call them.

Interested to see what they have to say about Steve's information.

I spoke to Eric at CHP today and they want me to try a shouldered pressure plate bolt to make sure that the pressure plate is centered and not the cause of it. The reason is because the holes drilled in the RPM flywheel are just a hair too big for the factory Ford dowel pins. So when I put mine together I used my digital caliper to line the pressure plate up and then used loctite on the dowels. I let it dry overnight and then double checked and they were still centered. They think that might be the cause and want me to try the shouldered bolts first before tearing the engine back out. So as soon as I have time and get the correct part number from them for the bolts I'll pull the trans and and give it a try. I hope that's it but I don't think it is.

Not a chance.

I know but that's the next step they want to take. I already ordered the bolts from Summit so I should have them by this weekend. If I have time I'll probably pull the trans during the week.

I would just tell them you already did it, there's been enough bullshit already, why not add a little more.

Because I'm an honest person.

Yeah and they should be too. They know as well as we do that this is just a hail Mary because they don't want to stand behind their shit.

You ready to hurt someone yet?

Not yet but I'm getting there.

:thumbs_up:
You have much patience.

I got some video of the car before I have to tear it back down.

Idle and revs.

Half throttle pull in 2nd and 3rd.

I pulled the trans this morning, removed one of the old bolts and then installed one of the new shouldered bolts by hand. It lined up perfectly so I did a good job at centering the dowels. I then pulled the flywheel and installed all of them by hand just to make sure none had an issue and they all went in fine.





Since they all lined up perfectly I spent the rest of the day pulling the engine. I got it pulled and striped down to the short block. Tomorrow I'll call Eric at CHP and let him know. I need to check with him and see if they need me to take the pistons off the rods or if I can leave them on. I'm hoping they don't need to come off but I don't know. Tomorrow night I'll finish disassembling it and then take everything down to them. I'm going to weigh everything before I do and take pictures. I'm also going to check the size and depth of the holes that are already drilled in the crank so I know if they remove any material.

Dropped everything off today. They are going to call me when it's done.

What are they going to do about your outted costs?

They said that if the balance is off that they will supply me everything to reassemble the engine. I weighed all the pistons and rods and 6 were 1081g, 1 was 1082g and 1 was 1080g. I also took pictures and measured all the holes that were already drilled in the crank so that I know if they modify it. Eric said that if it's off they'll fix it and if it's not they will show me that it's not when I come back to pick it up.

So. updates?

I haven't heard back yet. I'm going to call Eric this morning.

Did your buddy make the video?

Yeah, I thought I posted it?

Where did you post it? It's not in your build thread.

I just got off the phone with Eric and he said their balancing guy has been out and is just back today. Yeah, I believe that. :laugh: He said that he is checking it now and will give me a call in about an hour.

and the verdict....:popcorn: