My Log of living with my Turbo Mustang:

To get up to speed at how I arrived here please read the following pages: Cartech Ordering and Cartech Install

Here I will attempt to keep a log of all the crap I go through with my car.  Sorta similar to my personal mustang page.  Keep in mind that my car is cursed, so the stuff I have written and probably will write about is a worst case scenario.  For some reasons all projects on my car go terribly wrong even though I pay for high quality parts and I work on my car with friends who are top quality mechanics and engineers who know their stuff.

9-5-02:  My last entry on the Cartech install page was 6-17-02, I was pretty sure I had damaged something in the engine and I was still trying to figure out why the car was detonating at low boost and low timing.  Since then the following has occured.  I figured out that my 306 is zero deck, so instead of 9.25:1 compression I have about 9.8:1.  So that is part of the problem.  I also did a leakdown and compression test.  #5 was down on compression and also had 40% leakdown while all others were 3-6%.  The air on the poor leakdown cylinder was also coming out of the exhaust pipe, so I figured it was just a bent valve.  At this point I decided to order some heads with a large combustion chamber to lower my compression ratio.   I wanted to get some AFR185's but they just don't have the combustion chamber size I need.  So I ordered the TFS heads from Total Engine Airflow with their 185cc CNC port work.  This gives me a 67cc chamber and it will lower my compression to about 9.0:1.  I also ordered a custom turbo cam from Cam Motion because a lot of people felt my problems were partly due to the TFS Stage I cam I was using.  This new cam is much smaller than the TFS cam, in fact it isn't much bigger than stock.

So I tore my old AFR heads off and sure enough I found a bent exhaust valve.  That is good news, at least the piston and rings are ok... Right?  So I waited 6 weeks for the new heads and bolted them on about 10 days ago.  I immediately did another leakdown test right after torquing the heads down.  Shit, I still have 20% leakdown.  An improvement but not good enough.  Now I think I have broken a ring or something because all the air is going into the crankcase and that would help explain how I bent an exhaust valve with that tiny TFS cam.  I could just put it back together as is, but I don't want to risk that with a broken ring in there.

A week ago I also bought a house so I have been really busy with that.  This weekend I plan on towing the car to the house from my condo and pulling the engine.  At that point I hope to re-ring #5 and throw this stupid thing back together so I can have my own ride to work!  Yes, this POS car is still my only means of tranportation.  :-(

11-13-02:  Ok, where do I start, lots of crap has happened.  If you follow the turbomustangs board then you know about most of it.  I re-ringed 3 cylinders, put in the new cam, heads, and intake and finally got the car running.  During the downtime the tweecer also took a dump and is no longer working so I am borrowing a friends EEC tuner.  Once it was running I was having the same boost problems as before.  So I changed the reference point for the wastegate from the turbo to the intake manifold.  Problem solved.  Picked up 100 rwhp too.  :)  At the same time I also had the flowmasters cut off and I put on the dynomax ultra flow catback.  I dyno'd it before and after the same day at the same boost level.  The muffler swap netted a gain of 25-30 rwhp and torque across the entire curve and it spooled a bit sooner too!!  The car makes peak boost at 3200 rpm and it holds all the way to redline in case you were wondering. 

I also had Mental Addiction Motorsports redo my intercooler piping from the IC to the throttle body.  They did 3" all the way up and it looks really nice.  With the better piping I think I picked up some boost.  I had to turn the controller down to lower the boost from when I dropped the car off.  I had some problems blowing IC hoses apart, but I found if the pipes are lined up straight and you get the clamps tight they won't blow.  They held 15psi on the dyno as you will see below.

From there I ran into a lot of strange problems with the car.  Click here for the thread.  I was also having problems with it smoking really badly under acceleration and decel.  Turns out I was blowing the dipstick tube from the block causing oil to spray the headers.  I installed a 98 Cobra electric smog pump and used it as a crankcase evac pump.  But I was still blowing the dipstick tube out and not only that but there was so much crankcase pressure it was preventing the turbo oil drain line from draining into the oil pan.  So I swapped it back to a breather on the valve cover and the problem is solved, although I am still blowing the dipstick out so I believe I am getting a lot of blowby on this engine.  I think the best solution for relieve crankcase pressure is a mechanical pump, but that setup is more costly.  The car made 400rwhp and 440rwtq on the dyno last weekend on 9 psi and pump gas.  On race gas and 15 psi it made 525rwhp and 600rwtq.  Not bad for stock block, stock rails and stock lines.  The car was tuned in by Jerry at www.fordchip.com  I can not say enough about how great of a tuner he is.  The car is 100x better than before.  It is smoother, drives better and starts easier.  The AF ratio is also much more solid and predictable.  Now I can finally get rid of the piggyback tuners that were causing all of the problems from the thread above.

So as of right now I am very happy with the car.  I just hope it doesn't break.  So far living with the turbo hasn't been too bad, it is just regular car crap that has been giving me fits.  Spark plug changes on the driver's side are more of a PITA.  But if you have swivel sockets and a swivel head ratchet it goes by very quickly.  The car still runs nice and cool thanks to the Mark VIII fan.  The car is still my only car and it did strand me a few times thanks to that POS EEC tuner.  It is very cool to be able to gain 125rwhp by turning a little plastic knob.  You can also pull the turbo off and swap turbos in under an hour.  It is really easy, just 8 bolts and 2 hose clamps and you are done.