Thought I'd start one of these, guess like everyone else to keep me motivated a bit and Asa has asked me a couple times about one. Guess I'll start at the beginning.
Started off with this.
My $250 87 New yorker converted to T2, with Shelby suspension and brakes was parked at work when the guy plowing the driveway backed into it, hooked the nose on his bed, and pushed it 4ft to the side. I thought I could just slap a new nose on it (upgrade to the Lebaron 4 headlight system which is much cleaner IMO) and go. But after looking at it closer it was going require new fenders as well as paint the whole thing so I decided to pull all the good stuff off it and send it to the scrapyard in the sky.
Scrapyard gave me $120 for it, The 90 Shelby Daytona that donated it's 11" brakes and suspension years ago I got $150 for and didn't pay anything for the car (thanks DWH4784) so I'm up $20 on the car already. The insurance gave me $25xx.00 for it in the end so I think I made out pretty good.
So that was Aug 22 2014. Then began the hunt and procurement of a SL or LS. I wanted a 4 door (for the kids) with a stick or at least the easy transformation to a stick. The auto in the Yorker was fun but not fun enough. I found my left foot and right hand yearning to heel and toe downshift when coming to a stop. So that basically leads me to an Omni or a Hbody. I had a GLHT and while fun just was a bit too bare bones for what I wanted. I found 3 SL's that fit what I was looking for and finally decided on one in Reno NV. Plane tickets purchased and hotel room booked, Had to stay in Lake Tahoe since it was so close to Reno and I'd never been.
Sept 26th and we get dropped off at the airport about 45 minutes before our plane is to depart. Spokane is a fairly small airport and usually 30minutes is enough time to get through security etc. 5 minutes before we get there this happens.
The whole Eastern Wa University Football team shows up, Guess where they're going. Las Vegas, which is the 1st leg of our flight. All shoved onto a 737. I was dreading this ordeal. But they were all very nice and quiet and we had one of the smaller guys (running back???) sit in the 3rd seat next to the wife and I so all turned out good. Las Vegas and Nevada in a whole just crack me up, as soon as you leave the plane there are of course slot machines everywhere but it was the stereotypical old ladies sitting at them that I found so amusing.
Got our rental car and headed up to Lake Tahoe. It's beautiful up there, walked around the bottom of the Heavenly ski resort, hit the Hard Rock for dinner and then crashed out. It had been sprinkling all afternoon but rained hard that night. The Mountain tops got snow that night so waking up to that was very nice to see. We drove around Tahoe, grabbed breakfast and then headed for Stead, where the Air races are held (missed them by a couple weeks) to pick up the car.
So we get there and of course the car is worse than described but still ok. Runs ok, but no bottom end power, I figured the cam timing (S60 cam on a stock motor) had to be off. Made the deal, signed the papers and off we went for the 12 hour drive home. Stopped and dropped the rental car off, stopped at the airport because their bathrooms were nice, and hit In & Out because you can't go somewhere with one of those and not stop and get a double double and fries and a shirt.
15 minutes into our trip I decide to call my mom to get my Aunts phone # because she lives in Boise ID, and has a truck and trailer if we get stranded (not that any TD has ever left me stranded before). It's raining pretty hard and as I'm on the phone at 75MPH the car shuts off, oh great. We coast for 10-15 seconds and the car kicks back on and away we go. Phone # in phone I hang up and we keep driving. It hiccuped a couple more times but the rain subdued and it stopped doing it. Going up steeper hills required 4000+rpms and all the boost (cam timing had to be off) We rolled into Spokane, safe and sound 12 hrs later.
Next weekend was beautiful so I got out and washed it like it should have been.
And ordered up some fender protectors so I could work on it without hurting things. I'll be getting a couple more of these, one to display when at car shows and another to have 1 to sit on the rear parcel shelf as it fits perfectly
Checked the cam timing and sure enough, retarded a tooth. Fixing that made it so much better. After that it was time to install a BOV and take out the factory airbox setup
Went down to the DMV to talk to someone about getting the car titled correctly and registered in my name. Had brochures and internet pages typed out. A very helpful lady told me I needed to get the car inspected by the WSP to have the title changed to something other than what the computer was spitting out. So I called and left a msg, they called back about an hour later and I explained what I had and what I wanted to do. I had to set up an appointment with them to inspect the car. I was nervous. Some people here have been lucky with one car and couldn't get the other car done. I didn't have a WSO saying the car was a Shelby, I did have a certificate of authentication from Shelby and all the other stuff I had at the DMV. So I go out there after work and on the way out the car stumbles and shuts off on the freeway. Thankfully it came back on 5 seconds later. This was hopefully not a pre-cursor to how my day was going to go. I get out there and pull into their inspection bay. Officer comes out, asks my name, etc and what I want to do. I tell him. He opens the door and reads the Shelby manufacturer decal on the inside of the door. He said he didn't need to see any of the other info I brought out, walked around the car a bit and went back inside. 15 minutes goes by and him and another officer walk out. I'm thinking oh great, this isn't going to go well. He walks up and says "here ya go, just take this to the DMV" The other officer tells me it's a nice car and he bets that it being titled as a Shelby really changes the value vs just a Dodge. We exchange a couple sentences and away I go. The 2nd officer just wanted to see the car. A week or so goes by and this arrives in the mail.
Drove the car back and forth to work and that shut down started to happen more often. Sometimes hitting 3rd gear really hard from 5th would get the car to come back alive. The final straw was when I was on the side of the freeway for 10 minutes on the way to work with no idea if she was going to re-fire. She did but that was it. I had checked all the HEP wires for continuity, replaced the HEP with the New Yorkers old piece and still had the issue. Swapped LM's which didn't do much or made it different. So iTurbo was gracious enough to sell me his 88 LS engine harness he had. The J-yard happened to have an 87 Hbody that I scored the 50 pin plug out of and so began the process of converting the car over to SMEC electronics.
This is the 2nd time I've done a SMEC conversion this way (G and Hbody) and so far so good. Will this hurt the value of the car? I don't know. I think this is done right and unless you know what your're looking for you can't really tell.
The car fired right up and has a slightly tweaked 89 T2 cal in it for now. Opening up one of the LM's had water contamination in it. But the other LM where it would run for 10 minutes or so then shut off didn't show any signs of damage to it. Oh well, good riddance.
So now I have this 89 fully forged CB, ported head and other parts just sitting in my shop. Can't let that go to waste and my other car is getting a 2.5 anyway. So what to do with it. I had been eyeing a TBI exhaust manny thread where Todd Nelson posted some pics in and after a few back and forths with Todd my goal was to get one of these. Someone on TD.com had this nice piece he was willing to sell.
I had The Pope do some of the rough porting to get the shape the way I wanted with what we had to work with
I then finished everything with a 6" mandrel and a sanding roll. There was a lot of casting flash at the head side on the inside radius I was able to get out. With the sanding roll I was able to get almost every square inch of the runners. There might be a finger tip size you can't get too.
After some debating I've decided to go with a GT35R on my 16v so I had my GT30R doing nothing. So that was going on. But what to do for an exhaust housing. I didn't want to do an external gate as it's just an 8v and adds a bunch of cost and fab work. I didn't like the Ford housing as it's almost on center and then you still have to come up with a swingvalve/O2 housing setup. Thankfully Garrett offers this new piece.
And ATP has the flange to weld and bolt up a 3" exhaust with a 2" WG pipe so I ordered it.
Needed a clutch, liked the weight reduction of the Spec Stage 3 6 puck sprung hub over stock so I decided to continue that trend. Shout out to Cindy at FWDP for getting it all ordered correctly.
I had the big plenum 2 piece intake I can use but Asa came out with his fully custom setup just in time for me to order one. Aside from a couple of things this is an awesome piece. Right now I'm just getting around to figuring out how much I need to machine it and some other parts for it to get it where I want it to be. I'll post pics of the finished setup.
So now it's time to start fabbing and prepping things up.
Got the 2.2 on the stand and took off the stock head.
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Originally Posted by wheming
