Modifications
And now the important stuff...
Parts on car:
-Renegade Racing NPI Heads
Testing the heads on the bench. Test was conducted by Mr. Eric Larson (pictured), who is one of the lab technicians at the Academy. We rigged up a holder to mount a dial gage to monitor the movement of the rocker arm to determine how much lift we had. Then, we took a aluminum beam and drilled some holes in it to mount it to two holes in the sprocket of the camshaft, which was rotated until the gage read the desired lift. The heads did great, and were topped off with Comp's mid NPI grind, Comp springs, and titanium retainers to hold the stainless steel valves.
These tests were conducted at 25" H2O
As you can see, Jim's CNC work from Renegade Racing was top notch, definately a great set of heads.
-C&L Plenum
This piece bolted right up in about 20 minutes, but, it did not have the correct size or number of vacuum lines for the Cougar. The port on the rear is 3/8" when the stock is 1/4" and there are only 2 3/8" outlets on the front instead of 3 like the stocker. So, I managed to drive to Pep Boys without any power brakes to get some vacuum line parts. I routed all of the vacuum lines to the existing holes, then tapped and hole for a 3/8" barbed hose fitting for the brakes to use. Pep Boys also had an adapter to go from 1/4" to 3/8" hose to changing the size of the rear port was not a problem. The setup worked well and no leaks resulted.
-BBK 75mm Throttle Body
This was the part required for a 1998 GT. It went on easy but the only modification needed here was to drill out the hole where the throttle cable goes to 19/64", if I remember right...
-Custom Intake Tube
I fabricated this part from 2 3" mandrel bends with a 4" radius. I also made the vacuum ports on the lathe and finished it off with a AFM Filter, 2002 GT MAF, and silicon transitions from Hosetechniques.com.
-SCT Chip and #24 Injectors
Daniel of Triangle Speed Shop in Orange, Texas did a great job of tying everything together with the combo to make it run. Autolite 103 plugs and a 180°F thermostat were installed.
-99GT Torque Converter and Mark VIII Flexplate
The work was pretty straight forward when armed with a good shop manual. But, never never never buy a car from the Great Lakes area. They still use road salt there and that rusted my exhaust system solid on this Cougar that I found in Chicago. We had to break so many rusted bolts loose that a planned 8 hour job took twice that long. After crawling under my brother's 95 while on vacation, working on his was much easier since there was no rust on the New Orleans car...every bolt came out the way it was meant to, and unlike my car, no doing pull ups off a 18" breaker bar was required. Needless to say, after everything was taken apart and the work was done, the car was put back together in 2 hours.
This flexplate is required to take a 11" TC and connect it to your 6 bolt crankshaft.
Me, Alex, and the tranny.
-3.73 Aluminum Trac-Lok, Dynotech Engineering Driveshaft
Got an aluminum housing from Mark VIII and had it loaded with a set of 3.73's and a Trac-Lok LSD. And, because the stock driveshaft is so crappy, I went ahead and replaced that while I was in there. Many thanks to Johnny Langton for helping me time the new cams and install the differential.
-Custom Exhaust
Since no shop in the state of Colorado would fool with my catalytic converters, I decided to fabricate an exhaust system. I purchased a Magnaflow muffler with 2 1/2" inlets and a single 3" outlet, six 2 1/2" mandrel 90 degree bends, 2 high flow catalytic converters, and 4 oxygen sensor bungs for $330. So, I started cutting and welding the system together and after 15 hours of measuring, cutting, and welding, we had a finished product:
I brought the car back to the shop where they put the 3" slash cuts and the rest of the system (from the muffler to the tips) on. They only charged $150, brining the total project cost to just short of $500, and I thought it was worth it to make sure the tips didn't come out ghetto. The car sounds awesome. It's not too loud, but not too quiet. Startup sounds nice and when cruising, there is no drone at any speed (unlike my friend's Ram with 40 series Flowmasters), even though the sound is there. The muffler makes itself known inside the car, but does not drone and is not over powering. But, when you step on it, the exhaust is definitely noticeable.
I really need to thank Alex Hanna and Keel Geheber for helping me out since I was only given 2 hands to work with. These guys are awesome and stuck with me through many hours of shop time to help wrap this exhaust system up.
-Results
Track times are pending....