Another FC 5.0 "race car" thread!

[Skervey]

Glad you got all this figured out before it went in the car! Also you shouldent have to take the whole car to the drive shaft shop. If you get both ends for the drive shaft and give them really good measurements then they should be able to build you one if they are any good. Also its a good idea to have it balanced just so you wont have any vibrations in the car when its done.

[Zach Thomas]

Thanks kaclaytor!

So motor was going to go in today or tomorrow, but I'm gonna have to wait til after the new year to do that I went to swap out the tailshaft on my transmission (since the one on there was destroyed where the output shaft bushing and seal goes) and ran into more issues. The shift shaft is bent pretty badly. If I still had my oxy torch setup I'd have already bent it straight, but my bottles disappeared while they were at a neighbors shop years ago so initially I was too excited to care, plus the trans had shifted fine when I'd played with it before. But while reassembling I could not, no matter what, get the shifter block to line up properly due to the bent shaft. So within the next week or so I'll be ordering a good used part off eBay and then the motor can finally go back in.

The nice carnage on the old tailshaft



And where it will sit until I get a new shift shaft



Really, really hoping that this trans works good once I have it all together and in the car. The guy I bought it from claimed it worked fine but I didn't notice the clapped out tailshaft and he also was selling the trans because he parted out his foxbody since he lost his license from driving like a jackass too many times....guess we'll see. The gears looked okay and the shift forks look fine, not many metal shavings either so I'm hopeful still.

[kaclaytor]

Love the progress so far. Can't wait to see the finished product. Motivation for my swap.

[Zach Thomas]

Having done build threads for a few other cars in the past I will fully admit I have failed at keeping this interesting oopsie. Anyways, some minor progress from the last few weeks

First off, painted the headliner black and installed it. Turned out pretty good but the headliner wrinkled a bit in a few spots which I think was from me applying entirely too much fabric paint



Thank you S5 for taking horrible pics even for a cell phone :/ The pic above shows only the headliner but I also spent about 5 hours (or more, I don't remember) piecing together my sunroof from about 3 different sunroof assemblies. I ditched my earlier idea of an easily removable bolt in panel and just went back to stock. Very happy I did, it works pretty good minus the fact you have to push up on the back of the panel sometimes to get it to open properly (apparently a common issue on FCs).

Also threw in my sweet hella USDM grant gt steering wheel that was originally gifted to me by my wife years ago to put into my 71 nova project (which sidestory, is up on CL for 10K and I want it back but the guy won't take the 4k I offered him which is really all its worth...anyways). I think it looks great in the FC though to be honest, especially once I put in my silver faced autometer gauges which were also originally intended for my Nova



Then started finally assembling the 5.0 now that I have the gasket set for it! New timing chain set was installed, and I did a half ass lapping of all the valves since I already had to pull the heads apart to do the valve stem seals.







That's where it sits as of now. I need to go buy some replacement bolts for the lower intake that I lost/broke before I bolt it on. Then need to find someone local to polish my foxbody valve covers. Engine and trans would be back in the car right now but found out the tailshaft housing on my t5 is destroyed so waiting on a good used housing from eBay. I've had little time to work on the FC because my wife's miata has needed a good bit of maintenance recently, my truck needs tie rods and door hinge pins, and my "quick" side job of fixing up some stuff on a family friend's e28 has turned into a miniature but major pain to deal with.

Plan for the rest of the month is hopefully bolt engine and trans in (for real this time ) and possibly begin ordering parts to make my fuel line. AN Ford EFI fuel rail adapters to an AN fuel barb adapter most likely. Hoping that early next year I can bring the car to a local driveshaft shop to get that taken care of. Then everything major (swap wise) should be done at that point, minus the exhaust.

Old total $2910

T5 tailshaft housing $50
Grant steering wheel adapter (used one meant for an NA miata) $20
VSS, T5 output shaft seal, timing set and gasket set $100 (yay rockauto!)

Current total $3080

[Skervey]

Slave cylinder looks good! One thing I did different is I threaded the holes in the bell housing so I could take the slave cylinder on and off along with the bracket. Made life a bit easier when I went to rebuild the trans. I also did another video for the car! Check it out on youtube!

[Teeson1111]

niiiiiice

[Zach Thomas]

Haha "But I'll be fast(ish)" love it! I keep saying that to myself to! Took mine for a drive yesterday to check everything and make sure it was ready for the exhaust shop. It was fast but I have such short gears im always shifting (3000K rpm at 60...). A guy at work just finished a SR20DET swap into his 240. He is running a bigger turbo and other bolt on parts but it feels much faster then my RX7... But then again I really haven't gotten on my RX7, I don't want to blow it up yet. Trans only has about 3 miles on it so I need to let that break in first.

Man, sr20 s13s with just a modest (around 300-330whp) feel incredibly fast to me. I almost traded my 04 wrx with 300 whp for an s13 coupe with 330whp and it was soooooo much fun and so powerful but I couldn't afford to straight trade for it and 3k at 60 would be fine with me, but then again I'm used to dailying a miata now and it's around 3k at 60. My wife also has a miata and we did 80 mph from my house (north of Seattle, WA) all the way to Reno to visit friends. I think it was about 4k.....that little 1.6 couldn't have ran better than it did that trip and get that exhaust done and post some pics on instagram, I'm pretty certain I'm stalking you on there!

Trx 400's are some of the most fun quads I've ridden. Bullet proof and easy to ride. on that note, stop riding and start wrenching! haha

Lol I really don't have a ton of riding experience, but I've ridden multiple banshees, a couple 400ex's, a couple yfz450s and a few trx450r's. I'm totally happy with switching over to a trx450 But riding hasn't gotten in the way as much as house projects have, staining my fence is killing my free time. And putting in some OT hours to help pay for house projects and the FC is mostly just making me have no time to work on anything and somehow still not have any extra money



You can see my kind of weird driveway setup that I scrape coming down everyday in the miata. Also, that part of the fence went super fast for the staining. But since I procrastinated and the weather is getting bad I can only do bits and pieces at a time. But I also managed to build a Teeson111 clutch slave cylinder mount:



Not the greatest pic, obviously I still need to build an adjustable pushrod for it. Also need to reinforce it a bit and build a backing plate. But the process is started.

Also ordered up a plastic abs sheet to start building my gauge cluster. I'm using some leftover autometer ultra lite gauges that I never used on my 71 Nova project. Still need to order a tach and speedo to complete the set, and possibly get a different fuel gauge but I think they'll look pretty good. The grant steering wheel and autometer don't normally belong in a Japanese car in my opinion but with the 5.0 I think I'm allowed to do it

[meech]

Trx 400's are some of the most fun quads I've ridden. Bullet proof and easy to ride. on that note, stop riding and start wrenching! haha

[Skervey]

Haha "But I'll be fast(ish)" love it! I keep saying that to myself to! Took mine for a drive yesterday to check everything and make sure it was ready for the exhaust shop. It was fast but I have such short gears im always shifting (3000K rpm at 60...). A guy at work just finished a SR20DET swap into his 240. He is running a bigger turbo and other bolt on parts but it feels much faster then my RX7... But then again I really haven't gotten on my RX7, I don't want to blow it up yet. Trans only has about 3 miles on it so I need to let that break in first.

[Zach Thomas]

Looking good! Ready to get mine on the road and start with finishing touches! I need to try and get my sunroof working. Im going to wait and build a roll bar at the same time since I will have to take the headliner out of the car.

Your car is looking good too! Have fun getting the sunroof working....I changed my mind on doing a manual one (realized my idea for it sucked and also realized I want to open it and close it while driving) and then bought a whole nother sunroof assembly since I trashed mine taking it apart. Soaked the cables in oil for a few days and they were still rusted stuck. Ended up breaking them You can't get the cables from Mazda either. Most FCs cables are rusted out, so just be careful when you start messing with it.


My update game is very weak, been busy on house projects and trying to make this POS miata a more solid daily: Miata. It burns oil like a 2 stroke and has some water leak inside the car that I have yet to track down. It's basically been consuming all my time in the garage but thanks to seeing the posts in this thread, and the fact that over the last week I've been itching to keep on with the FC I'm going to order a gasket set for the 302 this week along with a timing chain set. Also should be getting my welder back from a buddy this weekend so I can build my hydro clutch bracket finally. And by that I mean completely copy what Mr Teeson1111 has done!

Slow reassembly has begun in the last couple weeks





I'm so happy how the clutch master turned out, not that it was entirely difficult or fancy but I just like that it fit so easily to the firewall and mounts more or less like stock.



Went overboard and sprayed the centers of the rotors, completely unnecessary but figured why not when I already had the paint out. Also started rebuilding the calipers, this one is done. The rest are pulled apart waiting their turn. BTW, the caliper piston dust boots are a garbage design on FCs in my opinion. Or maybe its just the Centric parts I used, but they don't hold on very well. Hopefully I don't have to redo them anytime soon from losing a boot.

Also got rid of my 2 quads for one....you guys probably think I'm some serious rider or go out every weekend or something but really I'm a novice who just goes out when time allows lol. But this should require less of my attention than my Banshees did




I deleted my Rockauto order for the new master cylinder and caliper rebuild kits, but that combined with a few odds and ends was around $100 I believe. So the running total is up to $2910. Pretty sure I'll be into this for around 5k without paint (if I ever do end up doing that), probably without wheels (and I'm not ashamed to rock cheap wheels lol) and with a basically stock 5.0. But I'll be fast(ish) and low(ish) so oh well!

[Skervey]

Looking good! Ready to get mine on the road and start with finishing touches! I need to try and get my sunroof working. Im going to wait and build a roll bar at the same time since I will have to take the headliner out of the car.

[Teeson1111]

any updates?

[Zach Thomas]

Alright, this poor hacked up little RX7 is finally (albeit slowly) starting to look a little better. Just finished painting the bay today, got dat Teeson111 treatment with some shaved holes and gloss white rattlecan paint!

I spent all week after work welding up holes, grinding, finishing my radiator mounts, bondoing (what a stupid idea that was on my part), sanding, etc just to get the bay done. I'm happy with how it turned out, but I severely underestimated the amount of time I ended up spending on it. I also truck bed lined my inner fenders, which turned out very good in my opinion! Also bought a new in box full black carpet set, hopefully that will go in within a couple weeks.

First had to pull the engine back out, took all of 30 minutes since none of the bolts were more than hand tight



Then I was left staring at this



Before going any further I finished up my radiator mounts



Then after a number of hours that I would rather not disclose nor think about I got this



And theeeeeen all white and fresh (for now)



Also, the prepped the inner fender vs finished





Also, cause I'm a dork I noticed this on my VIN. Not quite "5.0 HO" but close



All in all I'm happy to be back to making some progress on this car. Hopefully within the next few months I can order up gaskets, oil pump and timing chain set for the engine plus the seals for the trans so that they can go back into the car. In the mean time I need to paint the subframe, steering rack and mounting kit. Hopefully it won't be long til the next update.


Old total: $2750

Carpet kit - $150
Rattle cans and seam sealer (bondo was on hand, free!) - $60

New total: $2810

EDIT: this $800 dilapidated CL special was what had stolen my time for the last few months. I bought it needing a full rebuild, so I kryloned everything and rebuilt the engine fully (first full rebuild, 2 strokes are easy though). It ran excellent down in Oregon a few weekends ago, I didn't have to touch a thing (knock on wood). Its still about as ugly as can be, but it was an awesome learning experience and the feeling of breaking in an engine that I rebuilt was amazing.

[Skervey]

Looks good I think I looked through your thread a long time ago but I can remember... You are still a bit ahead of me but I am leaving the interior stock for now witch saves a lot of time.

Its funny how fast the cost adds up don't it!

[Zach Thomas]

3 months and no update....oops. As always I've only made some small progress. I've been distracted with another new side project, a second quad. It's another Banshee that's a bit of a heap. That will be receiving all the extra time/funds for a little bit until it's ready to ride.

Anyways, picked up a Koyo radiator and radiator brackets for $150 from a guy who turned out lived not even 2 blocks away! It's not mint, but it'll do I think.



Which allowed me to start mocking it up. It's a stock FC radiator, but the 5.0 doesn't allow you to keep it in the stock location. So I started cutting away some metal....

No room to spare, even with no crank pulley or rad fan



So I started cutting



Here's what it looked like after cutting (driver side was similar, just shaped differently)



And then I started cleaning it up



Here it is all cut out




So next chance I get I will be finishing off the panel I tacked in, then do the same for the other side. Then I can actually reweld on the radiator mounts. I'm probably spending significantly longer on it than necessary, but I really don't want to just slam it together since I'm hoping to properly paint up the bay before I do the final assembly of this car. We'll see if it actually turns out OK or not.



So not the biggest update but I'm just knocking out some of the small things that have been sitting waiting to be done. After the new quad project gets completed I'll hopefully be back at it on the FC. And I have been (and still will) be doing lots of tinkering that's not update worthy. Which in the end is really all the little things that get this car closer and closer to completion.


Koyo radiator + brackets $150

New total $2750