MEANXBCOUPE engine build up.

[RAREV8]

Those clips are a bugger....I was more pleased to find that clip still in situ when i bought the P5 than anything else....it was the first part that I robbed from it too!

[XRLENC]

Hows it goin' MEANXBCOUPE? Just read through your feature article in street machine for the second time and love your car and all the engineering you have performed on it. Now for the questions. Im currently rebuilding the front of my xt falcon ute. I have unpicked the front radiator support, front tie bar, radius rod brackets and also one of the side panels between the shock tower and radiator panel.What i want to know is, whether you can post a few pics of your radius rod brackets as i wish to custom make some similar to yours as mine are damaged severely. I assume they are made of box section (correct me if im wrong) but was just wanting to be able to see the design youve used.
On another subject, you say in your article in street machine that you made a machine to roll the edges of the inner walls of the engine bay. Was this used to do the beads in the centre of the panels as well as the edges or did you get someone to perform those beads. If you did use your machine, any chance of a couple of pics of it as weell.
Once again your coupe is beautiful and you should be very proud of what youve created, and any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Lachy

[MEANXBCOUPE]

Originally Posted by lach01

Hows it goin' MEANXBCOUPE? Just read through your feature article in street machine for the second time and love your car and all the engineering you have performed on it. Now for the questions. Im currently rebuilding the front of my xt falcon ute. I have unpicked the front radiator support, front tie bar, radius rod brackets and also one of the side panels between the shock tower and radiator panel.What i want to know is, whether you can post a few pics of your radius rod brackets as i wish to custom make some similar to yours as mine are damaged severely. I assume they are made of box section (correct me if im wrong) but was just wanting to be able to see the design youve used.
On another subject, you say in your article in street machine that you made a machine to roll the edges of the inner walls of the engine bay. Was this used to do the beads in the centre of the panels as well as the edges or did you get someone to perform those beads. If you did use your machine, any chance of a couple of pics of it as weell.
Once again your coupe is beautiful and you should be very proud of what youve created, and any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Lachy

Hey Lachy,
Used the machine to do both, i dont have a photo, so next time in the garage, if i remember ill take a shot or two.
The radius rod brackets were made from 75X50X1.6 RHS (box) section. they were cut to fit after the radius rod brackets were removed. As for the design, youll need to work that out for your own car as there is an inch or two difference in the length and width of the chassis between XT and XB. Also keep in mind that my car has a custom x member ans a double A-arm front end, no radius rods, so youll also need to work that out too.

Hope this helps.

[XRLENC]

Thanks for that MEANXBCOUPE. Any chance of some pics of your double wishbone setup? What type of coilovers are you using on them?

[MEANXBCOUPE]

Quick update.
Motor is in as previously seen, it now runs and has done for a few weeks now. One small hiccup though.
First off it wouldnt start, that was traced back to the back to base alarm, all sorted. Motor started first crank after that. idled great and had no other issues. Took her for a spin around the block a few times, put maybe 5 miles on the clock. All good.
Did a quick tidy up of the car over the next week as I had a photo soot the week after.

At the shoot, i was given the wrong adress for the studio, as i had the car tilt trayed to the studio and he had since left, i drove the coupe, literaly, 4 houses down the street to the correct location. As i pulled up to the roller door of the studio, she coughed through the carbs and stalled. Weird.
Anyways 1/2 hour latter went to move her in, and wouldn't start. Cranked and cranked, nothing, except for a few coughs and farts.
Checked a few things. Grabbed the rotor button and it spun freely. Damb it sheard the roll pin on thedizzy drive.

Got the car home after the shoot, next day took the blower off and removed the dizzy. only half came out!. The drive shaft had snapped in two..

Long story short, when i swapped engines, stoopid me forgot to check the hole size for the dizzy. Put a small dizy in a large size block, allowing vibration to break the drive shaft.
Anyways all sorted now after i made a new shaft, its up and running well now. Photos to follow..

[DJR-351]

Originally Posted by MEANXBCOUPE

Hello people!
Welcome to my new thread.

I thought that I'd do a thread to cover the build up of the new motor for my '74 XB Coupe. First I'd like to thank Col and Dave for helping with the positioning of the thread.
I dont frequent the Clevo site too much, where it really should have been before the openning of this new build up section and prefered this thread to be in the Coupe Club section any ways. Got a soft spot for the club you see.
Thanks guys........


OK, so a few people may have seen my car in Street Machine presents, Australias toughest Fords.

Cover car, yeah.


The photos and artical were taken back in June last year.
I attended motorex in July, about 2 weeks before the issue hit news stands.
A few weeks later I attended the NSW All Ford Day at Warick Farm racecourse, but, with a dark secret..... (play suspencefull music).

The week previous to the All ford day, The car was back at my workshop for a few adjustments, panel gap wise. It was a Friday night and a barby wasput on at work for the boys, we were packing away customer cars for the night. Mine was the last put away, so a burnout was in order!. Long story-short. Im now bulding a new motor after I struck water.

Truth be known, The car was sounding off before the " testing" started, maybe a small ignition issue or something, so ive got only myself to blame.

Motor before big bang



So now you know, It had a blown motor in more ways than one!! That explains the tilt tray.


Anyways, Im going to follow the progress of the new motor build up and post any updates here for your enjoyment. I dont pretend to be a gun engine builder but over the last 18 years Ive allways done my own work. This is the first catastrophic failure to date. Yes ive broken down and stuff like this but never lost a motor before.
That was probley my biggest worry before the motor was pulled down, did I screw up??? What did I forget to do???. Now I know.

The car came back to my house after All Ford Day, where it has remained since.

Dont get the idea Ive slacked off and waited 9 months to fix it, Ive been busy you see. Early September seen the arrival of my first born, Lachlan, and gotta say, Both Tracey and I have not stopped (or slept) since. The coupe has taken a back seat for a short time till we settle a bit with Lochie.

OK, nuff of the dribble. Motor got pulled from the car in late December.

Empty bay. :



Here we see an engine block, You may notice a hole, this is bad, bores should not have holes!!!. Check out the wall thickness. Measured in at 0.032", good ad for sonic testing. FYI other side of bore measured at 0.250", Core shift.



Number one cylinder.

Here is a picture of the crank and rod!


And piston and rod!



Basically, too little wall thickness plus 0.030" bore plus 10 pound boost = a total loss of motor.

I kept the following parts.
Rocker covers
Manifold
Blower
Carbys
Water pump
Pulleys
Dizzy ( although its bent the shaft its custom made so I'll need to fix it.)
Sump ( 7 holes in total, kept it for the above reason, custom)

The block is stuffed ( and now land fill) Allready 030" over, no point sleaving it. Number dont match anyway and isn't a GT block
Crank is bent, wouldnt rotate in the block.
One piston shot, it "fell" into the hole in the bore, jamming it snapping off the rod.
Rods, junk.
Cam, broken in thre places due to the broken bit of rod beating the crap out of it.
Dizzy, bent drive shaft due to the cam twisting in the block putting pressure on the shaft, I'll fix it as said.
Heads, not too bad, but a few bent valves, we go into this latter.

Any way thats it for now.
Hope you follow the journey!!!
Cheers Gary.

Hi Gary,

Congrats, motor looks like its coming along nicely, this has to be one of the best engineered Coupes i have seen bar none.

Question: do you know if back issues of the Street Machine Fords mag featuring your car are available, we moved house recently and for the love christ i cant find it (and a few others) : would appreciate your help if you can.

Cheers
John

[MEANXBCOUPE]

Hi john,
Thanks for the kind words. Wait till i show you the new motor.
As for back issues, i have no idea, contact ST. Machine and ask.
try 02 92639729. and ask for back issue dept. issue 12.
Might not be any left, with that car on the cover! hahahaha!!

Also will be on the cover of extreme mag in Janurary.

Gary.

[DJR-351]

Originally Posted by MEANXBCOUPE

Hi john,
Thanks for the kind words. Wait till i show you the new motor.
As for back issues, i have no idea, contact ST. Machine and ask.
try 02 92639729. and ask for back issue dept. issue 12.
Might not be any left, with that car on the cover! hahahaha!!

Also will be on the cover of extreme mag in Janurary.

Gary.

Thanks for that gary, i will call them tomorrow.

Looking forward to seeing the new motor

John

[MEANXBCOUPE]

not really engine build up shots but heres a few.
We're moving house this month so, after the move and we settle in ill get the car rego'ed and all will be better..










Fun on Sunday...

[fatasslandau]

top pics gaz when do we get to see those pics of the coupe in clouds of smoke... from the rear not the front

[MEANXBCOUPE]

Early in the year. :eclipsee_
Still need to raise the exhaust a bit and sort the wipers out.. again. not parking. stoopid wiring, should have used the factory plug to stop screw ups :nutsycuck :nutsycuck

[MEANXBCOUPE]

oh ive got to replace the bonnet cable too. broke, whilst the bonnet was shut. What a ....

[homegrown]

hi meanxbcoupe, i know you might get this alot, but absolutely awesome car.
i really enjoy reading your threads they're detailed and the ideas you have are new and individual.
i hope to be able to see your coupe one day.

[MEANXBCOUPE]

Originally Posted by homegrown

hi meanxbcoupe, i know you might get this alot, but absolutely awesome car.
i really enjoy reading your threads they're detailed and the ideas you have are new and individual.
i hope to be able to see your coupe one day.

Thanks for the kind words homegrown...
Unfortunatley, because of cost of moving, we not going to the summernats, where I was hoping to catch up with a few people from AFF down in Canberra, but there is always next year.....

I think that people should be individual in building cars, if we all built the same way, life would be boring!... : :

Gary.

[homegrown]

hi, this might be abit off topic but im in the process of dressing up my engine bay and i want to hide the radiator overflow bottle. the idea is to put it under the fender aswell but was advised not to, because of filling up and keeping an eye on it would be hard. but it looks like you've done the same thing. any chance of getting any pictures of what you've done? thanks.

[Geez Louise]

Originally Posted by MEANXBCOUPE

Thanks for the kind words homegrown...
Unfortunatley, because of cost of moving, we not going to the summernats, where I was hoping to catch up with a few people from AFF down in Canberra, but there is always next year.....

I think that people should be individual in building cars, if we all built the same way, life would be boring!... : :

Gary.

You will have to make sure you have it ready for Echuca in Sept 09 Gary

[MEANXBCOUPE]

Originally Posted by homegrown

hi, this might be abit off topic but im in the process of dressing up my engine bay and i want to hide the radiator overflow bottle. the idea is to put it under the fender aswell but was advised not to, because of filling up and keeping an eye on it would be hard. but it looks like you've done the same thing. any chance of getting any pictures of what you've done? thanks.

Dont find it an issue. Open radiator cap. fill with coolant. drain overflow.
It may be an issue if you have a recovery type system, where you fiil at the overflow bottle.

[MEANXBCOUPE]

Originally Posted by Geez Louise

You will have to make sure you have it ready for Echuca in Sept 09 Gary

First ive heard of it.. would love to attend, seen some photos from last year(?) and it looks to be a great event.
So yeah I hope so..

[Geez Louise]

Last one was held in Sept 2007. Big weekend with coupes coming from everywhere. The next one is already shaping up to be a huge one. Keep your eyes on the Events section. More info will be posted in the New Year.

[Hrdtop75]

:hihi: That FATASS is all talk :baby bott

Great pics Garry

[MEANXBCOUPE]

wow it been a while since i last up dated,
Life has been tuff this last few months, first we moved and then christmas, then i lost my job in January.
I start a new job on wednesday, but the savings account(?) has gone.
While ive been off i got a few things done, first i sorted out the wipers, they were slow and noisey and only had one speed. Over to fatass's place and took a few reading on the multi meter.
I had removed the plug for the wiper motor, so i could feed the wires through a small hole, this left me with four spade terminals to get on the right connector. when the car was mocked up it all worked fine, (wiper switch is EB Falcon), but i had swapped two wires, running the motor backwards!
So i got home and changed them to the correct way, the blew fuse after fuse. Arrrgh...
Pulled the wiper motor out and had a look inside, found the braided copper wire to the brushes on the motor was caught under the chrome cap. sorted this and re installed. All good now.

Next item was the blower belt idler pulley bracket. i had made this from 12mm billet alloy plate in 6061 series. this had worked fine but on some testing i had found that it was flexing when the motor was on boost.

i was getting the same sound as a pinging motor, so i knocked off some initial timing, then some more and finally more... it was now at about 7 BTDC and didnt want to idle. Thats when i noticed the bracket flexing and the belt jumping on boost. put the timing back to 16BTDC, idle improved.

I brought some 20 mm thick alloy plate, machine grade (5801 i think from memory, first ive used this grade) and made a new one, its yet to be polished, but it works great, ive also intergrated the alternator bracket so there is now one less bracket to install. Photos to follow once i take some!

Also upsgaded the thermo fans. I have run two 10" jobs since the original build, but they were cheap and nasty ones, so i got a sweped vane Spal 16" fan. it is rated at 2800 cfm and is super quite.
Of course, this required a new fan shroud! Now this is the third one, i over making shrouds!!

The first was on the car when i ran a single 14" fan, the second was more of a cover for the top of the radiator when i ran to two 10"'s.
Once again, ill post fotos when i take some...
This fan worked great while the car was not running, quite ect. to i ran the car for the first time in a month and a half, as soon as it temp came up the fan cut in then stopped : . Anyway it draws over 20 amps on start up and 11 running. i had a 15 amp fuse installed for the two 10's. No big deal really. Exept the fuse is under the center comsole! Seat out, false floor out then stereo and monitor then the console can come out..
It all works good now, but im going to move some wiring and fuses to under the dash, just to make life easier. it all looks neater now, but is a pain to work on.

One last mod was to reposition the exhaust. it was a little low at the rear, just before it goes over the diff, so i cut and welded for the day. This was done to help for rego. it diidnt bother me much, but it hung just below the legal limit at 92 mm. probley the car has settled a bit since all the weight has gone into it as i was above 100mm on mockup.

So i know you guys are photo happy!. here are some shots i took (on the phone) during the shoot for extreme mag. Its on the shelf now for another week or so. this was back in September i think.

Cheers.

[MEANXBCOUPE]

sorry about the photo quality.

[gossy]

WOW!
That is the best coupe I have ever seen.
Great job mate.
You don't happen to have any build pics at all do you?

[MEANXBCOUPE]

not electronic. all on film im afraid, well all the fab work is.

[cowboy]

Wow, just found this thread and am blown away by your work and by the fact that you do almost all of it yourself. Congrats on the cleanest coupe I have ever seen. I will find a coupe one day!

[MEANXBCOUPE]

it's been a while since the last real update.
Why??


well, lots of reasons really.

First off, im flat out at work (job one we'll call it) it is arvo shift but we do 10 to 12 hour days 6 days a week.
Second is i have a second job, part time in the mornings, building cars fro customers, we only do the metal work, no bog and paint work.
Thirdly is this laptop crashed and has taken a while to sort out. lost all photos taken from janury on...


OK, what been doing with the coupe???

Early in the year i fixed a few issues with the fans and idler pulley as said in an earlier post. No photos to post up as they were lost in the crash.

since then, i pulled the car down for a massive detail for all ford day. Then it rained on the day and i chickened out (hail scares me)

Then a quick cleanup saw us show the car at Motorex in sydney, in july
Big shout out to Uncleraggy, who i caught up with out there.

Then the next thing on the calendar was (is) Echuca.
This is also running in parralel with getting the car engineered for full road rego.
So the list of mods for rego is as follows;

Noise (exhast and induction)
Height (95mm ground clearence at the moment)
No hoses to heater box ( therefore no working demister)
No brake fail light on dash board.
Brake pedal pressure too high ( stops well, but you gotta push hard)
Only a two seater (my boy came along 2 years after the interior was completed)
lastly, carbies though th bonnet.
Some other minor issue are,
Ive got a cheap set of air horns the need to be swapped out for rego, the clip that holds the secondary wiper arm on was missing and the hoses to the washer jets were cut ,they are now on the bonnet, for the last photo shoot ( those shot were never used but : : )

So where am i up to.

I made a sweet set of stainless heater hoses and topped that off with a hand made billet heater hose tap. These are sattached solid to the motor and i used earls line to the heater box.
This brings up a few problems]
1 you cant buy stainless steel weld on fittings for the earls line.
2 you cant buy an adaptor to the heaterbox tubes that is neat
3 i had no idea if the heater box core leaked ( didnt think to pressure test it before the interior went in)

So i made some weld on fittings out of 316 stainless for the hard line and some brass ones for the heater box!!
Im thinking of making a few sets of the brass ones and selling them.
They solder onto the copper pipe that goes to the heater, look better than just hose or braided line with a hose clamp. Will probley come out to $20 to $22.50 each.
i'll get some photos up as soon as i can.

I chopped the copper pipe as far back towards the fire wall as possible to make a neat install. this , of course, ment that the heat box needed to come out, so i could get the oxy in to make a good solder joint. This ment the console had to come out to get the heater out, wich ment the flat floor needed to come out and the passanger side seat as well because there are no fasteners holding the console and floor in, only a very tight fit and the seat frame!!!
Few!!... im not even going to mention the amount of wiring need to be moved!

so i pulled the heat box apart pulled the heater core out and silver soldered the new fittings on. Next thing was to pressure test the heater core ( dont want coolant and rust on the interior, eh!)

D'oh. the core leaks....
Couldnt get a good second hand one, so $200 later i now have a new old stock core and some nice fittings. at least it doesnt leak.

in the process of putting the new hoses in the car i took the dizzy cap and button off to help gain access to the block, (it needed to be tapped out to acept the new screw in fittings for the lines). I broke the rotor button. dont ask how cause i dont really know.


Now this didnt seem to be a big issue at all, untill i tryed to buy one.

This seems a good place to stop. ill finish the story latter. Does any one want to guess how we got around the problem ( ecept fattass, he already knows)????

[Bearman]

I'm curious. Bloody hell, you've had some hassles that's for sure.

Realy looking forward to seeing your coupe at Echuca!!

[BlueKoop]

Im def interested in your header brass line adapters. Awesome to see a progress update mate!!

[74xbkoop]

You seem to know my friend Murphy!( murphy's law) He hangs around me a lot 1 step forward and about 5 back at the moment with my build. Looking forward to seeing your coupe at echuca.

[fatasslandau]

for those of you that havn't seen this car in real life you are definatly in for a suprise. the amount of work and persistance that gaz has put into it is to be commended .the quality and gary's abilility is freakish. all those attending echuca will know what i mean