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4.6 32V 240 Wagon

That looks right at home there! I drove a '99 Cobra for a while and loved the 4V for its smooth power and sound at higher rpms. I didn't realize till now that your car is a wagon. Power of a Cobra, practicality of the wagon FTW!
 
The engine is back out of the car. I'm wrapping up all the little odds and ends of the swap and spending way too much money at summit racing for fittings and hoses.

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I did get the Mark VIII shifter mounted in place. I used the original bolt holes in the front, and in the back I created a custom hold-down bracket out of the old FPDM bracket from the Mark VIII. The result is fantastic. I got the carpet out to see how it looks and I was quite impressed. I'm considering putting an accordion shift boot over it for irony.

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Also got around to painting all of the welded stuff. Here's the oil pan. I still have the rusty Mark VIII oil pan laying around, so I did a fluid capacity test with each one. When each pan had 6 quarts of water in it, the levels differed by about 1/8". Since this doesn't seem to be too big of a difference, I'm not going to run an oil cooler and I"ll just see how the dipstick behaves with 5.5 quarts to start.

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And here's current state. Mayhem. But pretty soon it won't be.

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How To Install Mustang Hydroboost

I haven't talked about this much since post 70 because I've been wanting to write a long post describing everything I did to make it work. See post 70 for pictures of the original vacuum booster next to the hydroboost.

Note: This applies to 1999-2004 hydroboost units.

First thing to do is drill holes in the firewall. Easy.

Next thing to do is look at how the hydroboost sits in the firewall and realize that it's tilted at way too high of an angle for this to work.

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There is a very large nut on the back of the unit held in by a clip. This nut attaches the firewall mounting bracket to the unit. Remove the clip and remove the nut with a punch. Then, find yourself a massive hydraulic press and start flattening the SOB. This will fix the angle at which the booster will exit the firewall.

Before:

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After:

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You also need to create an adapter bracket. Turns out the center to center bolt distance of the Volvo and Mustang master cylinders is equal. They also use similar bolt sizes, so all four holes can be drilled the same size. I will edit this post with a screen capture of the print I created to machine the part. I started it myself with some 3/4" scrap aluminum, drilled the small holes with a drill press, and had one of the tool room guys at work circle mill the 1 and 5/8" hole.

Edit: here's a screen capture of the sketch in the 3D model. This contains the dimensions I actually found on the parts, mainly the hole to hole distance and the 70 degree offset of the Hydroboost.

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And here's how I drew it for machining. I ended up taking the concave radii out since I originally planned to have this entirely CNC machined. Rectangle is more practical when you're using a drop saw and drill press.

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Now that the bracket is created, the next thing you do is realize you should have used thicker aluminum stock because the push rod is too long. Luckily, it's pretty easy to shorten it and grind it down.

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Removing the pedal box seemed daunting at first but it wasn't that bad. Steering column needs to come out for this. Pedal box is held in by four nuts and two bolts. The four nuts actually held the original master cylinder in place, so they're already out. The two bolts are up top near the wiper blade linkage. A ratcheting wrench here is key.

Once that is out, remove the pedal from the box. It's time to mate the hydroboost eyelet to the pedal.

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The approach I took was fairly simple. The eyelet on the hydroboost is 5/8" ID. The hole in the brake pedal, and the OD of the original pin is 5/16". I went to the steel store and bought 1" of 5/8" rod. Then I drilled a 5/16" hole in the center of it, cut off 0.25", and put it inside of the hydroboost eyelet.

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Next, I carefully cut a slit in the brake pedal, about 1.5" overall. It turns out that the inside wall to wall distance of the pedal is the same as the thickness of the hydroboost eyelet!...0.25".

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That tiny piece of metal I created was wrapped in electrical tape to keep it in the eyelet. I took some extra metal and tacked it to one side of the pedal to take up the slack of the original pin. Put it all in the car, bolted everything down the hardware I had and boom...working brakes. In these pictures you will see missing bolts and nuts...that's because I either didn't have them or was too lazy to install them for testing. This setup did indeed stop the front wheels from turning when the pedal was pushed. And don't mind the angle of the brake fluid. The car is on jack stands at the 2nd to highest setting.

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However, there's one thing left to do and that's address the four nuts that hold the pedal box in. What I did was bought some short bolts to work with the same nuts, had my wife hold them in place with a wench while I tightened, and tack welded each one so everything comes apart easier if that ever needs to happen again. Looking back, the tacking probably wasn't completely necessary since the box will probably never come out again.

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I'm in the middle of making my exhaust system right now. I'm a little concerned about heat given how close the driver side manifold is to the fuel lines. Furthermore, I want to run catalytic converters. There is not much room for them since there was never supposed to be converters up front. I'm thinking no matter what I do, they'll be hanging below the frame rails and that's not exactly ideal. The driver side converter also wants to live directly below the transmission switch...

Does anyone have any experience running catalytic comverters on a 240 V8 swap that has some insight?
 
Dual 2.5" aluminized; high flow stainless shell/stainless substrate cats. Used alum gutter flashing to make some heat shields above them. Year 12 of the beta test. So far so good. Side view -- everything tucked up. It can be done....just takes some planning and attention to detail.





 
Dual 2.5" aluminized; high flow stainless shell/stainless substrate cats. Used alum gutter flashing to make some heat shields above them. Year 12 of the beta test. So far so good. Side view -- everything tucked up. It can be done....just takes some planning and attention to detail.

Nice, Mike. Do you have true dual going straight out the back as well? My plan was to send it through a Magnaflow dual in single out muffler and have it exit through the passenger side. I'm considering buying IPD sway bars which would make true dual easier.

I'm doing mine in full 2.25" stainless. I guess my fitment concerns for catalytic converters reside around the converters I'm attempting to use. I have that basically brand new H-pipe assembly off of a 2003 Mustang Mach 1 (the reason I went with 2.25" stainless), which has two primary and two secondary cats. The primaries are too big to use:

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In the following picture I have what's left of the H-pipe assembly hanging off of the trans crossmember. The secondary cats are much smaller, but still a little large for what I'm trying to do. I think I will probably have to move them further towards the back of the car since I simply cannot have a catalytic converter living underneath the plastic transmission switch and cable.

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I'm hoping to work through the exhaust up to the H pipe this weekend and do a first start. All it needs is fuel lines which will be finished tomorrow.

In other news, I plugged everything in and got life from the PCM, power to the starter, and the lights that I wired to the gauge cluster all worked.

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If you want those cats to work properly - do a bit of research before you move them further back. The systems rely on getting to certain temps within a certain amount of time. The further you move them back, the cooler the exhaust stream becomes. You have more limited real estate options than I due to those cats and the tranny choice. A single, more contemporary 3-way cat on each bank will give you a lot more flexibility than trying to fit a pair of the older 2-way cats.

Yes true duals all the way back. I did a lot of fab to fit a pair of 5.0L Coyote mufflers in the stock muffler location transversely under the trunk. Pics if you want.
 
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If you want those cats to work properly - do a bit of research before you move them further back. The systems rely on getting to certain temps within a certain amount of time. The further you move them back, the cooler the exhaust stream becomes. You have more limited real estate options than I due to those cats and the tranny choice. A single, more contemporary 3-way cat on each bank will give you a lot more flexibility than trying to fit a pair of the older 2-way cats.

Yes true duals all the way back. I did a lot of fab to fit a pair of 5.0L Coyote mufflers in the stock muffler location transversely under the trunk. Pics if you want.

Would love to see pics. That sounds awesome.

Yes, you've definitely got a real estate advantage. If I swapped over to a manual, I wouldn't have as much trouble. This is a budget build, though, and the auto was free. I'm going to spend today continuing to figure out an exhaust solution. After that, it's time to add fuel and try starting it.
 
Turned these ---



Into this by cutting off the inlet ells, opening the case and turning the exit out the side using the ells, and welding them end to end. 32" x 9" x 12" -- just fits in the back with 1R mandrel bent 90's to turn the flow into the each side.



This connects just behind the H-pipe you saw in the other pic up above. It's on the floor upside down relative to how it goes on the car. Running under axle just like the stock system does. SO MUCH easier to remove for maintenance, etc.





 
I love it. Awesome muffler setup.

Bad news - I had to pull the engine and trans out after realizing there was a lot of scraping and grinding noises coming from it when I hand turned the crank. Long story short, the flex plate got bent in toward the engine, and first start will not be happening this weekend. Now here's the long story:

Long ago, one of the times I was reassembling the engine to the transmission between test fits, I pulled the torque converter out out of curiosity just to look at it. Little did I know, when I put it back in, I had not seated it all the way in the transmission. I then proceeded to mate the engine and transmission. It stayed like this for maybe a month. The next time I took the two apart, the torque converter was sitting on the flex plate by the studs. That's not normal. Basically, by not seating the torque converter all the way, I put a crazy amount of pressure on the flex plate and something in the transmission when I re-mated the engine and transmission. I thought oh crap, have I ruined the transmission pump? But the torque converter still seats properly, and when I turn it, all sounds good and healthy. I figured everything was ok.....

Back to today - I noticed the noise when I was reattaching the torque converter nuts and buttoning up the trans for real, but didn't think anything of it until I tested out the starter motor with some quick turns of the key. It sounded like something was either scraping around the oil pan, or scraping around the flex plate and separator plate. So I pulled it out and separated the two. Here's some clues:

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You can see where the torque converter nut studs were scraping against the separator plate and the little shield that goes on the bottom of the trans. Upon removing the separator plate, I noticed it was shaped a little irregularly. I thought that maybe the issue was that the plate had gotten bent over time and it just needed to be straightened. I bent it ever so slightly toward the engine side so it would be further away from those studs. I reinstalled, re-mated the trans, and the situation was remedied...except for one bolt that still wanted to make noise in one place. I then tried putting the starter in, and to my surprise, this created a lot of noise when hand cranking the engine. It was as if the starter motor gear was engaged at all times.

At this point, I knew something was very wrong and had to be related to the incorrect torque converter installation. I thought, had I deformed the flex plate toward the engine? Lucky for me, my friend who sold me my donor had a Mark VIII flex plate laying around. He measured the distance from the bolting flange area to the outside edge and got 25mm. When I measured mine, this is what I got...

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...almost 1cm deformation. Crazy. So, that's why there will be no first start this week. I still don't know if the transmission is ok, despite how everything seems to turn ok. I won't find out until I start driving the car.

So there it is. Do your research. Do not be like me and do the research after you broke something...lol. Said friend is sending me that very flex plate, so I will install it when it gets here and hopefully this is the only thing wrong as a result of this.
 
Been there but, thankfully, did not bend the flex plate. Mine was out of the car and it was obvious that something was going to bend. There are three alignment steps on inserting the torque converter into the transmission.
 
Dang...2 steps forward, and one giant leap for mankind backwards. You’re not alone in having done this - I think I’d try to reach out to others with experience with that tranny and see what the chances are you’ve damaged the tranny - before you put it back together.
 
My "new" flex plate came in the mail and I installed it. Everything went together MUCH better than it did before. Upon removal of the old flex plate it was pretty clear how it had deformed. So far it seems it was the only casualty in my torque converter installation mistake.

Engine and trans are back in the car. The engine holds 6 quarts of oil! I tried starting it for the first time and all it did was crank. Upon further investigation, I found that the PCM relay had been wired to a circuit that was only hot in "on" on the ignition switch. Looking at my notes, I had this wire noted as "hot in on and start," but clearly this was not the case. I re-wired that to a wire that was indeed hot in on and start and got some life from the engine. However, this life was short-lived, and the engine stalled shortly after starting.

In the video, the first cranking is the ignition switch going from "off" to "start." The engine stalls. The second crank is the ignition switch going from "on" to "start." It will crank with no combustion all day until you switch it to "off" and then back to "on," upon which you'll get it to start and stall again. That's what happened in the third crank. Basically, you need to turn off the PCM relay to get it to start and stall.

I believe it has something to do with the PCM and the PATS system. I purchased some software from a guy that wrote a template for the 1998 Mark VIII PCM and used TunerPro RT and a Moates chip burner to upload the tune to my chip. PATS is disabled in the tune I wrote, among other things. I intend to write a more detailed post on that later when the car actually runs.

Anyways, this video is pretty cool. There is absolutely no exhaust on the car in the video.



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Half way congrats . . .

About this time I fought an ignition switch internal issue. Voltage through its contacts but no current. Use a test light to trace rather than a VOM.
 
When I pulled the 5.0L out and put the LS in, I used a 9 volt batt and a test light to trace every wire...not enuf umph in the batt to hurt anything if I got my wires crossed, so to speak.
 
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