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61K views 298 replies 21 participants last post by  Gbeck 
#1 · (Edited)
I've reached a major milestone today. I have this coupe kit in my garage for a bit over three years, and I've finally got to the point where I can take off the body.

What better time to start a build thread!

This video should explain why it took so long to get here ...


And here are a few pics to back it up ...
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmdxz4E2

Enjoy!
 
#110 ·
Transmission Mount ...

Continuing with the drive line mock up I added an extension to the bracket to support the transmission mount. Now that I see it, there's no way I'm going to trust it. The mount is a full 7 inches away from the cross member.



I guess I'll be fabbing up a cross member!
 
#111 ·
Under car exhaust ???

You might remember that that I welded tubes through the center cross member to serve as pass throughs for the under car exhaust. They are made from 3-1/2" OD, 1/4" wall tubing. This week I extended them a few inches to serve as anchor points for a removable transmission mount. I can only weld a little more than half way around, but I'll gusset the free end to the main 4" tubes. It should be plenty solid for holding the rear of the transmission in place. This is all just tack welded for now.



Also, I received a set of headers from Sanderson, and I think these are very close to working for me. They look a little unusual because the left and right sides are entirely different. The right side tubes go straight back and join in a collector just above the starter. From there the pipes will have to bend about 30 degrees around the bell housing and downward to get between the 4" main tubes.



The left side tubes go back, then straight down behind the motor mount and end in a collector just inside the 4" tube. From there the pipe will have to make a 90 degree bend in about 3-1/2".



It's pretty tight on both sides. Sanderson seemed agreeable about making some adjustments. But before I go that route I want to get a few expert's eyes on it. More later.
 
#112 ·
Under Car Exhaust!!! And a few odds and ends.

This was a big moment for my build. I asked our friend Mark Dougherty aka "The Traveling Builder" to come by to assess the feasibility of him doing under car exhaust for me.

I think my build is unique in that I don't know of anybody else that has done under car exhaust in a Type 65 Coupe with a Coyote engine. I've been following the threads of other under car exhaust cars (SBF) and have made the mods to the frame that Mark did on other projects. I also followed the posts of SeattleDad for his installation of a Coyote in a Gen 2 coupe. With all of this guidance ... and the discovery of the Sanderson exhaust manifolds I was hopeful that I had found the right combination of mods to get this done.

Mark studied the situation for a few minutes and declared that he could do this! The left side collector will need to be modified and we will need to make a bit of clearance on the right side. But it's all doable. We will take this project on after I return from a road trip later this spring. I can't wait!!!

In other news, I mounted my eBrake lever. I got this eBrake lever for a 2006 Mustang on eBay. I got it mounted with a little bit of cutting and fitting. What I like about it is that most of the lever is below the transmission tunnel cover. Only a few inches of it will be visible. It should make for a nice tidy installation.




I mounted my brake fluid reservoir. This is a three pot unit from Tilton. I was kind of annoyed to find that the hose size for this reservoir is not the same as the hose size for the master cylinders. I found these 90 degree adapters that make for a smooth run for the hoses. What do you think?

 
#113 ·
Catching Up

It's been a long time since my last update, mostly because my wife and I took an epic cross country trip that took all of April. Not to belabor it here, it had little to do with my build, but it was an amazing drive! PA to San Francisco, then PCH to Spokane and return to PA. Details on my "Team Limer" FB page. We live in a big, beautiful country. Get out there and enjoy it!

Back to the build, my main focus lately has been on the wiring. My goal is to get all of the chassis electrical functioning before setting the body in place. It's easier to get to things with the body off and I can package everything neatly. I'm not finished, but I can see some light at the end of the tunnel.

As usual, I went a bit off the normal path with my electrical work. Here's a brief run-down ...

The Ron Francis wiring harness is really nice! I routed it a little bit differently than most because of other stuff I've done to the chassis. For example, the rear harness is routed through the cabin to avoid heat from the under car exhaust.

I'm using 7" headlights that include two sets of amber LEDs. I'm using one for parking lights and the other for turn signals. There are LED side marker lights that have two elements and they are used the same way. I'm using the Ron Francis headlight switch, Russ Thompson's turn signal system and a headlight controller from Ididit. With this arrangement I have a real turn signal stalk with a push button that does flash-to-pass when the headlights are off and toggles high and low beam when the headlights are on.





In the rear I'm using the 4" round LED tail lights that I described in a video a while ago. These are trailer lights so I added a box to convert from three-wire to two-wire. Side note ... while testing this with my Power Probe the converter did not work consistently. After much frustration I found that there was a voltage drop because of the long leads I was using for testing. When I manned up and connected the battery it worked fine ... and the magic smoke did not escape!



I'm using a parking brake lever for a 2005 Mustang. I like the way the lever bends so that most of the lever will be under the tunnel cover. It includes a switch for an indicator light, so I wired up one of those too. It took a little fabrication to mount it, but its pretty cool.



I hung the door frames and roughed in the wiring for the power windows and the door poppers. The door poppers are activated by relays that are triggered by a signal from a wireless remote control I got from Electric Life. It has 12 channels ... lots more to play with later.

The dash in the car now is temporary. I have some ideas for a custom dash but I'll save that project for later. For this reason my dash front panel is completely removable. I can easily lay it down to work on the back side or flip it up over the cross bar into it's normal position. Moving the dash as often as I did proved to be a problem for the accessory and ignition toggle switches ... the heavier wires put enough strain on the switches to break them. So I changed this up. The wires that went to these switches are now connected to relays that are triggered by smaller gauge wires from the toggle switches.



Speaking of relays, I added a bank of relays under the dash. Some 60 amp relays for the accessory, ignition and start switches and some 40 amp relays for the door poppers.

Finally, I added two fuse panels. Each contains six fuses and each is protected by a 50 amp breaker. One of these is battery power from a master cutoff switch. The other is accessory power from an 80 amp relay triggered by the accessory switch. The master switch is accessible from the engine side of the firewall.

 
#117 ·
Wiring Diagrams

The Traveling Builder suggested that I do some wiring diagrams to help out with troubleshooting down the road. I thought they might be worth sharing, so here they are, attached, in PDF form. They incorporate ideas I picked up on these forums over the years from many contributors; CJBergquist and edwardb come to mind.

Disclaimer ... I believe these to be accurate ... but, you know ...
 

Attachments

#118 · (Edited)
Under Car Exhaust ... For Real! Thanks Traveling Builder!!!

One of my goals toward making this kit into a road car was to run the exhaust under the car. I've been following the work of the Traveling Builder as he did this on a few small block Ford coupes, but I knew that my Coyote build was going to give us a few extra challenges. With the help of a friend I did the exhaust pass through tubes and notched the cross member at the IRS cage (T-bird / Lincoln) cross member. I used the foot box sheet metal that 2BKing had designed for the roadsters. And I built custom motor mount pedestals to set the engine forward about 3 inches from the normal mod motor spot ... a different take on the work of SeattleDad.

With all that I still didn't know what sort of manifolds I would need to get the pipes around the engine and down between the frame tubes. The stock Mustang manifolds ran right into the frame tubes. And some "block hugger" headers did pretty much the same thing. The answer was a set of headers from Sanderson. They are made for a Coyote engine in an F-150. The driver side seems pretty conventional with the tubes gathering to a collector behind the motor mount. On the passenger side the tubes run rearward gathering at a collector above the starter to allow the pipes to run down along the bell housing. Sounds strange. But it's real close to being a perfect fit for the coupe.

Mark and Matt were able to modify the manifolds and build the exhaust system in the space available. One down tube has to be relocated just a bit. The pipes run high so not hang below the frame anywhere and they clear the rear suspension in full droop with room to spare. Things are close enough that I'm going to need some heat insulation in a few areas. I'm very happy with the result!


Here are some pics and a video ...

The mufflers are tucked in on either side of the fuel tank. A bit of reflective insulation will be needed here. I'm not sure what I'll do about a tail pipe. A lot depends on where the muffler sits relative to the body.



After passing under the lower control arms (with about 1 inch clearance at full droop) the pipes go through pass through tubes that we welded through the cross member.



The manifold was extended down along side the bell housing to a V-band clamp where it meets the exhaust pipe. This view is from below.



And this is the view from above looking down to the V-band clamp. The manifold runs rearward above the starter then downward behind it.



Here's a look at the passenger side manifold.




A video to wrap it all up ...
Untitled by Team Limer, on Flickr

This has been a long time in the making and I'm very happy with the results. Thanks, Mark and Matt!
 
#119 ·
Glenn,
That looks really good. You could terminate the pipes behind the banana vents and no one would know they are even there. Then mount the side pipes for a stock look.
BTW no video just a pic.


John
 
#120 ·
Thanks for the heads-up, John. I fixed the link for the video. My other videos were hosted by You Tube but this one is on Flickr. Please let me know if there are any problems with it.

I misspoke near the end of the video. I meant to say that to my knowledge this is the first Type 65 Coupe with a Coyote where the exhaust runs under the car.

Yeah, I'm not sure what sort of tailpipe I'll end up with. We'll see what would work when the body is back on. I've had a few thoughts about it including running it through the kidney beans (or bananas or whatever). Venting all that exhaust gas into the Kamm cove would probably mess up the aero. But I won't be racing this thing anyway.
 
#121 ·
Yesterday I pulled out the engine and transmission. They were only installed for mock-up. Soon I’ll do final assembly of the engine, clutch, bell housing and transmission.
Meanwhile I’ll do some patching and painting on the firewall. Also, I’ll soon be spending the wad for the Coyote Control Pack and study up on installing it.
My buddy Bob came by today to finish weld some of the stuff I had tacked in place over the last few months ... motor mount pedestals tweaked for a little more space between for the oil pan, transmission mount done and parking brake mount done.
We also made plans for some support structure in front of the driver side foot box for a toolbox. Hopefully that will be the last of the grinding and welding. It makes a mess of the garage!
 
#122 ·
While the garage is a mess ...

My power window solution required that I cut up the doors, jambs and rockers, then put the parts together differently to make the doors deeper and longer. I made similar adjustments to the hood and the pontoons so that the parting lines would match the doors. All of these parts are just bonded together with 3M HSRF for now.

I plan to reinforce these seams with fiberglass on the back side. I've been putting off the prep work for a long time because its such a dirty job. But the garage is a mess today from all of the grinding a welding we did on Saturday, so I figured I'd tackle it now.

Messy chore done! Now to clean up the garage!
 
#123 · (Edited)
I took time out from the build for one of my favorite activities ... a charity road rally with Rally North America. The route took us from Erie to Ithaca, Poughkeepsie, Concord and Old Orchard Beach ME. Our final checkpoint was at the site of our beneficiary, Camp Sunshine.

My 2006 Mustang served me well on some very spirited laps on Watkins Glen and a few runs on the quarter mile at New England Dragway. I hope to have my coupe on the road and sorted out for next year’s event. Running in one these road rallies has been the vision from the start.

BTW, one of the participants spied a Daytona driving by the Vanderbilt Mansion In Hyde Park the other day. Was it somebody here?

Now, back to the build!
 
#124 · (Edited)
Noodling around ...

I ordered up some materials for treating the drive line components before final assembly. I intend to use SharkHide for the bare metal surfaces of the engine block, bell housing, transmission and the differential. I'll be coating the exhaust manifolds with Eastwood Hi Temp paint. Satin Black will be in keeping with the color scheme I have in mind. We'll see how well that holds up.

I'm considering adding a bump-out in the driver's foot box that will let me sit a little more straight in the seat. As it is my feet will be aimed outward and I'll have to twist to the right to face the wheel squarely. Most likely the bump-out panel will have to be removable to the inside of the cockpit to allow access to the header bolts. (See first attachment)

Rearranging the roll bars into an X-brace as i did gave me some areas in the ceiling that will never be used for headroom. So I'm thinking about using that space for some overhead storage, radio, dome lights, etc. I taped up some craft paper to get an idea what this space might look like. For starters I'm pretty sure I'll put a bluetooth speaker/microphone up there somewhere. I'm not sure if I'll be able to hear anything or if anybody will be able to hear me. We'll see how that goes. (See second attachment)
 

Attachments

#126 ·
Odds and Ends

I've been doing a lot of odds and ends in the last few weeks.

I added a bump out on the inner side of the driver side footbox to give me a little more room down there. It includes a removable panel that gives me easy access to the exhaust manifold fasteners. With this extra space for my right leg and foot I might be able to straighten my seating position a bit. BTW, I still haven't settled on seats but I'm considering the Procar Rally seats. I hope I can find one somewhere to try it on for size.

I installed some DEI Gold heat reflective sheet to the sides of the fuel tank and secured the edges with aluminum tape. The mufflers are only about 1-1/2" from the sides of the fuel tank, so I figured some protections was in order.

I rely on my phone for navigation and audio in my cars. I rarely use the radio, even in my daily driver, so I plan to do the same in the coupe. I'll mount my phone to the dash (The units from RAM Mount work very well) and I'll be mounting a bluetooth speaker/microphone on the roll bar above the center of the windshield. I ran the radio wire up there to power the speaker and my Radenso radar detector.

I wired up my interior rear view mirror and license frame with backup camera. These are from Master Tailgaters and have all the bells and whistles, including a 4.3" display for a backup camera.

I finished installing Dynamat Extreme in all of the chassis interior except a few places where I might be doing some more work. I have some DynaLiner and DynaDeck on hand for the future.

I ran AN-4 stainless braided hose from the clutch master cylinder to the area of the hydraulic throw out bearing.

I reinstalled the door frames and tested the wiring for the power windows and door poppers. I also have a turn signal wire going to each door, just in case the mirrors that I settle on include a turn signal indicator.

More of the same to follow while I wait on some assistance assembling the clutch and transmission to the engine.
 
#127 ·
Just a brief update. This summer's activities limited my coupe time, but I managed to make some progress.

With the help of a friend the clutch, bell housing and transmission are assembled to the engine and dropped into the frame for what might be the final time. I found that the cover for the access hole in the bell housing will interfere with my exhaust pipes, so I fabricated a simple aluminum plate to cover the opening and provide some protection for the hydraulic lines for the throw out bearing.

The chassis wiring is all done and tested. The engine wiring will have to wait until I get the Coyote Control Pack. It's on back order. Ugh.

I've been considering my seating options for a long time. Because of the changes I made for power windows my cockpit is a little different from most. I was able to borrow a couple for seats from a friend and found that, after a simple mod, the Corbeau GTS II is a really good fit. The seat back is rather narrow so it can slide back and even recline a bit with me in it. The Procar Elite has similar dimensions. Some times it's good to be a little on the short side!

Now I'm studying up on the wiring and plumbing of the engine with the Coyote Control Pack and the Ron Francis wiring harness. It's gonna take me a while to wrap my head around all this! The Factory Five and the Ford Performance documents are helpful and I really appreciate Edwardb's build thread of his 20th anniversary roadster! My experience will be a little different as the engine is not a crate engine. It's a pull from a 2015 Mustang. There's a lot to deal with here. One bite at a time, right?
 
#128 · (Edited)
Radiator, Fan Shroud and Duct

With the engine in place for the final (I hope) time I decided I should get ready for some plumbing. I got a fan shroud from Breeze, realizing that I would need to trim it to fit in my Type 65 Gen 2 frame. Because of interference with my fan shroud and sway bar I had to do some serious trimming to the duct, too. I'm going to leave it in clecoes until the hood is in place so I can finalize the position of the duct.

Here's the fan shroud after trimming and mods.
Modified shroud. by Team Limer, on Flickr

Here's the assembled radiator, shroud and fan.
Radiator with fan and shroud. by Team Limer, on Flickr

Here's the ductwork installed temporarily. I did some trimming at the bottom of the duct to clear my shroud and allow access to the sway bar bolts. I may need to move the duct to align with the hood opening. I'll finalize that later, add something to create a new duct floor, stiffen up the bottom edge and attach it to the frame.
Untitled by Team Limer, on Flickr

Untitled by Team Limer, on Flickr

Thanks, Glen (gsides9) for the Face Time consultation!
 
#129 ·
That's a good addition Glenn.
Just did that myself too. Looks like you will have to fab a custom bottom piece. Not necessarily a bad thing as my cavity was very narrow due to the power steering tubing on the rack. Because of that I had to mount my fan inside the shroud.

John
 
#130 · (Edited)
I can't do much more in the engine bay until I get the Gen 2 Coyote Control Pack. It's still on back order from Ford. Ugh.

Meanwhile I installed the heater core, fan and AC evaporator unit behind the dash. Its the unit from Vintage Air that Factory Five supplied with the Gen 2 Type 65. Because of my firewall mod I'm able to install it in front of the 2x2 cowl cross member. It should leave room for a glove box in the dash, and the heat and AC hoses will route conveniently toward the side of the car and then through the front of the passenger foot box.

It's time to tackle a job that I've been putting off for a while ... aligning the rear suspension. I'm using the Thunderbird-based IRS in this car. The suspension members are adjusted by means of the rod ends at their inner ends, so each joint must be disassembled to make an adjustment. I did the initial settings according to the manual when I first installed the suspension. But the toe and camber are visibly out. I guess I have some tedious knuckle-busting work ahead!

I did a crude alignment on the front end ... as good as I can do with a level and a tape. Then set the ride height to 4-1/4" all around, figuring that the additional weight of the body, glass, interior, etc will bring it down to about 4". Tomorrow it'll be going back up on jack stands to set the track width and get on with the alignment.
 
#131 ·
Still nibbling at the chassis

I have the suspension pretty well buttoned up. I fine tuned the ride height and did a pretty good alignment of both the front and the rear suspension. It ain't perfect, but it will certainly serve to get it on the road. I also mounted the stabilizer bar and lubed everything. The boy-racer in me wants to dial in a little more camber!

I modified the eBrake cables to work with my 2005 Mustang eBrake lever that's mounted on the top of the tunnel. The cable ends needed to be replaced to work with this lever and the cables also needed to be shortened. My measurements must have been spot on because it all works. But I'm not impressed with the amount of grip.

Some weeks ago I borrowed some seats and tried them on for size. With my 5' 6" height it's comfortable but a little snug. To get some more headroom I've been looking at the drop-seat mod that The Traveling Builder did on another Gen 2 coupe. I think I can get what I need without cutting out quite so much material. But I can't know for sure until I have seats and sliders on hand.

There were some posts quite a while ago about relocating the lower steering shaft bearing to make the steering wheel align better with the dash. It doesn't look like this would be difficult to do. It might provide a little more room for an electric power steering unit and could work better with my seating position. More later.

Coyote Control Pack still on back order. No worries. I'll keep nibbling away at the chassis.
 
#132 ·
Another Update

I finalized a few things this week. It's getting to be exciting!

I installed the AC Condenser to the radiator. I wasn't confident in the provided brackets so I made my own. In the end, the condenser, radiator, shroud and fan make a very solid and tidy assembly. I'm calling this done and ready for plumbing!

The heater and AC evaporator, controls, wiring and vacuum lines are done. I'll figure out a vacuum source, control valve, a trinary switch and hoses soon. Some of this will have to wait for the Coyote Control Pack to arrive.

The big accomplishment this week is that the exhaust system is DONE! You might remember that I'm running the exhaust under the car. Mark Dougherty, The Traveling Builder, modified my headers and fabbed my exhaust pipes and mufflers a few weeks back. Since then I pulled the engine to install the clutch. Now that the engine is back in place for final I installed the exhaust manifolds, connected them to the exhaust pipes and aligned it all. Nice and solid and no rattles!

I took measurements for a drive shaft and figure I'll call Denny's soon to get that going.

While I'm STILL WAITING for the Coyote Control Pack to arrive I'll start to plan the plumbing for the cooling system, heater and AC.

Would I be jinxing things by thinking about a First Start and Go Cart on Black Friday?
 
#133 ·
Windows v Apple

I've been a bit of a slacker on pictures lately. I made an effort to catch up yesterday and realized that I got caught up in a file format SNAFU on my iPhone. It seems that Apple introduced a new High Efficiency file format (HEIC) some time in August and I (dummy) chose to use it.

Not to get into the details, but I have about 600 pictures to convert from HEIC to JPG (ugh) so that they are compatible with the non-Apple world.

I managed to convert a few pics that show a couple of my recent mods. Here they are:

I added a bump out to the driver's foot box to give me a little more room for my right foot. It's removable to improve access to the exhaust manifold fasteners. Here are a few pics of the mock up:

The area to be cut out is marked:
The cut out seen from the inside by Team Limer, on Flickr

The view of the mock up from the engine bay. It will give me more than an inch more room:
Mock up the bump-out by Team Limer, on Flickr

Lots of foot room!
Mock up from then inside by Team Limer, on Flickr

I added a transitional pieces to the floors of the driver and passenger foot box to make it a little bit more livable.

Before:
This transition is a real heel-catcher by Team Limer, on Flickr

After:
Smooth floor transition by Team Limer, on Flickr
 
#134 ·
I thought that I had plenty of seating room ... until I put an actual seat in for a test fit. Now I'm scrapping for every bit of space I can get!

I borrowed a Corbeau GTS 2 for a test fit. It looks like I could consider the dropped floor mod that The Traveling Builder did on Mike Moen's coupe!
Corbeau GTS 2 Seat Fitment by Team Limer, on Flickr

This relief cut in my striker plate will let the seat move back an extra inch!
Seat Relied Cut Clecoed by Team Limer, on Flickr
 
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