Hemikiller's 71 Mach 1 upgrade thread

[cjstaci]

Sounds great!

 

[Fabrice]

Starts on 1/4 rotation and idles perfect, no back fire, no exhaust leak, no engine shaking, good vacuum, super sound, perfect install.
Man these vids are boring!

 

[c9zx]

The super turbos sound great to me. Chuck

 

[Hemikiller]

Sorting out the dash now, having to remember where I left off on certain projects, find needed parts, stuff like that. I did finish "restoring" the deluxe dash and glove box panels, used the Molotow 4mm chrome pen and Duplicolor Low Gloss black engine paint. Looks pretty darn good for the few minutes it took to do the job.



Did a test of the gauge pack back in place. Fitted a cheapo tach as an experiment, it works and suits my purposes. I have a shift light, so the tach is just for reference. I had refinished the interior of the housings with gloss white paint, and replaced the melted diffusers with ones in better shape. Cleaned all the connections and used all new #194 incandescent bulbs. No LED bulbs needed here, and it'll be even brighter when the engine is running. Only issue is my BRAKES warning lamp doesn't illuminate in self test, will have to probe the circuit for power.

 

[Fredensborg]

Cleaning up my dash and getting my lights brighter are on my list as well, man that looks good!! I'm jealous!! My interior looks like this…

 

[tpj71mach]

Cleaning up my dash and getting my lights brighter are on my list as well, man that looks good!! I'm jealous!! My interior looks like this…

It's a really easy upgrade just remove panels prep and scuff then spray with Bulldog adhesion promoter and then paint with landau black interior paint and then use the chrome pen to "re-chrome" the trim. The chrome takes the most effort and concentration but well worth it. It will make the world of difference right from the drivers seat where you can best appreciate it.

This is how mine looked before and after.

 

[Hemikiller]

Spent all day Saturday putting the dash back together and running wiring. I had made up a dual speaker for the factory mount with decent speakers, not the junk that's available.




Finished the dash up Sunday AM, washed the car and discovered I had misplaced my chamois, so hopped in and went for a ride to blow dry the exterior. Put about fifteen miles on the new motor and trans in the 85+ degree temps, Ran at a solid 200° with no issues at all. Had a mild heart attack when the oil warning light popped on, but the gauge was still showing 75psi. Disconnected it so I didn't have to look at the light, have another switch coming. Speedo stopped working, not sure what's up there, hoping the cable popped off the back of the speedo head as it did give me a little trouble. Took a quick snapshot of the three toys lined up.

 

[Hemikiller]

Little update from a couple weeks of work and thrashing. Drove the car to work on 6/29, and it died leaving at 5pm. Just a sudden, hard stop that I knew instantly was either a sheared distributor gear pin, or the gear itself. Not the first time it's happened to me, so I pulled the distributor and found that most of the teeth on the gear were MIA,



Dragged the car home on my trailer, and got it into the garage for the evening.



Emailed Howards in the morning as I had bought everything from them, and they told me which gear to run. Obviously, something wasn't quite right. Turns out that they had subbed a billet steel core for the usual SADI core, but failed to put a tag on the cam stating as such. They recommended an iron gear, which the part # calls for, but it needed a melonized steel gear. Crap.

Pulled the pan off the motor on Saturday, found all sorts of fun stuff in the sump.







Pulled the #1 main cap and breathed a sigh of relief, as the bearing looked great. Pulled the valve covers and there was nothing in the heads, so it looked like the filter had done it's job.





Filter caught all sorts of crap. Thank you Wix for making an excellent product!




Plan was to flush the motor with some cheap 5W30 by running the pump with a drill. Bolted a cleaned up used pump, new pickup and a stock pan back on, Threw five quarts down the distributor hole to flush anything off the cam gear and distributor boss, then spent the next hour and a half running the pump, moving the crank 45°, run the pump, rinse and repeat. Drained the pan, then quit for the evening so the engine could drip into the pan and not in my hair, face, clothes etc. The next day I got all the correct parts back in place, lowered the engine back down into the mounts and got everyhting bolted back up. Went to put the bronze gear I had on the shelf onto my backup distributor, and turns out MSD had packaged a 302 gear in a 351C labelled box. Crap.



Took a quick drive to a local speed shop to see if they had an melonized steel gear in stock, got very lucky. Went home, installed it on the distributor and fired the motor off. Sounded good, so I put about ten miles on it and dropped the oil. Everything looked clean so I refilled it and will do another change after 50 miles or so.

 

[Mister 4x4]

Wow - dodged a large caliber projectile there. Good for you!

 

[Kilgon]

What a bummer. I would be billing Howards for my time. They should at least sent you a distributor gear free of charge.

 

[Hemikiller]

What a bummer. I would be billing Howards for my time. They should at least sent you a distributor gear free of charge.

They did send me a gear, and he offered to replace the cam if that gear was damaged. I'm on the fence if I need to hit them up for a set of lifters, I have one or two that will tick a couple times, then it goes away. I'm going to run through and adjust the valves this week sometime and then see what happens.

 

[basstrix]

Great recovery on the distributor gear. Were there any score marks in the oil pump? You've taken a disciplined approach by checking things out.

 

[Hemikiller]

Great recover on the distributor gear. Were there any score marks in the oil pump? You've taken a disciplined approach by checking things out.

The rotor and scroll in the pump had some marks on the tips which I assumed were from the debris passing through. Not wanting to take any chances, I bought a new M84A pump from O'Relly's, which (A) had it in stock (shocked) and (B) was only $60 (double shocked). Their prices are normally bonkers, so I usually don't shop there.

 

[mrgmhale]

Little update from a couple weeks of work and thrashing. Drove the car to work on 6/29, and it died leaving at 5pm. Just a sudden, hard stop that I knew instantly was either a sheared distributor gear pin, or the gear itself. Not the first time it's happened to me, so I pulled the distributor and found that most of the teeth on the gear were MIA,

View attachment 65634

Dragged the car home on my trailer, and got it into the garage for the evening.

View attachment 65641

Emailed Howards in the morning as I had bought everything from them, and they told me which gear to run. Obviously, something wasn't quite right. Turns out that they had subbed a billet steel core for the usual SADI core, but failed to put a tag on the cam stating as such. They recommended an iron gear, which the part # calls for, but it needed a melonized steel gear. Crap.

Pulled the pan off the motor on Saturday, found all sorts of fun stuff in the sump.

View attachment 65635


View attachment 65636


Pulled the #1 main cap and breathed a sigh of relief, as the bearing looked great. Pulled the valve covers and there was nothing in the heads, so it looked like the filter had done it's job.

View attachment 65637

View attachment 65638

Filter caught all sorts of crap. Thank you Wix for making an excellent product!

View attachment 65639


Plan was to flush the motor with some cheap 5W30 by running the pump with a drill. Bolted a cleaned up used pump, new pickup and a stock pan back on, Threw five quarts down the distributor hole to flush anything off the cam gear and distributor boss, then spent the next hour and a half running the pump, moving the crank 45°, run the pump, rinse and repeat. Drained the pan, then quit for the evening so the engine could drip into the pan and not in my hair, face, clothes etc. The next day I got all the correct parts back in place, lowered the engine back down into the mounts and got everyhting bolted back up. Went to put the bronze gear I had on the shelf onto my backup distributor, and turns out MSD had packaged a 302 gear in a 351C labelled box. Crap.

View attachment 65640

Took a quick drive to a local speed shop to see if they had an melonized steel gear in stock, got very lucky. Went home, installed it on the distributor and fired the motor off. Sounded good, so I put about ten miles on it and dropped the oil. Everything looked clean so I refilled it and will do another change after 50 miles or so.

Yikes! Thank you for sharing. Sorry you had to go through that grief...

 

[Marks1]

The rotor and scroll in the pump had some marks on the tips which I assumed were from the debris passing through. Not wanting to take any chances, I bought a new M84A pump from O'Relly's, which (A) had it in stock (shocked) and (B) was only $60 (double shocked). Their prices are normally bonkers, so I usually don't shop there.

Holy crap Hemikiller, you really got lucky there it seems. I would have been just like you, having to take it apart and see WTF happened. No comparrison really, but when I used to live in Ellington, I was riding my sled across the Schnipset Rez one night wide open and all of a sudden lost 2 cylinders out of 3. Limped it home the 5 miles on the one good hole and even though it was already 11PM, I pulled the motor and stripped it down, Pistons, cylinders and crank all wiped. guess I was running her a bit to lean LOL

 

[Hemikiller]

Took the Mach down to the Cars N Coffee in Guilford this morning. Everything seems a-okay, so I'll do one more oil change this week, and pull the distributor for another inspection.