10 days to go.

Wow. What a week. Thursday night 11 people stood around a car that refused to start. We threw every part, diagnosis, and backyard remedy possible at the car - and eventually called it a day around midnight. It was apparent we were chasing more than a single problem. But we wouldn't learn how many gremlins remained until Saturday...



The week began according to plan. The sting from having to backtrack and replace the wiring harness was fading. We set aside some week nights to fire up the car and make up lost time. We started the car twice late last weekend but it sure didn't sound right. Tons of valvetrain noise and misfires were present. Tuesday night Matt dove in and pulled the upper intake to survey the valvetrain and replace a fuel pressure regulator.  The valvetrain looked healthy.

Wednesday night we were resolved to run the engine for a while and let it build up some heat. The damn thing simply wouldn't cooperate. The car acted like Sunday never happened - it refused to start. Test after test added more questions than answers. Our only accomplishment was to completely drain a deep-cycle battery.

Some how Eric always looks like he's moving faster than everyone else.

That's right. If it's not working, stare at the damn thing real hard until it does.

Thursday night felt like an over-hyped cage match. Word had spread that the car was getting the best of us - and by night's end we had a packed house. Most came to help - others to spectate. Theories of why the car wouldn't start were being thrown around as fast as replacement parts. We went through 5 distributors, countless TFI modules, 3 computers, a couple of coils and plug wires, even a fuel pump. We had air, spark and gas - but they weren't coming together in synch to please the car gods. After several attempts at resetting TDC and stabbing the dizzy all indications pointed to significant errors in timing.

Thanks to gracious amounts of beer, and stubborn determination from the likes of Billy - Jupiter area mustang guru and all-around good guy - we started to get some positive action from the car. By this point we were reinstalling the distributor far from what factory settings or common sense would allow, but the car was showing signs of life. It was 11pm when the car finally started.

Scott, Billy, and Jessie.
They started out the night watching - ended up
helping us out a lot.

The car wouldn't idle - and sounded pissed off - but we were able to coax it to life. It was obvious our timing marks couldn't be trusted. We needed another used balancer to verify how bad our current part was. That would have to wait - we were all dead tired as we cleaned the shop and made plans for the weekend. The team took the night off Friday so we'd all be fresh for an early Saturday morning start. That turned out to be a good thing - Saturday was a 12 hour day.

Early Saturday we tackled all of the little tasks first. The idea was to get all the nagging stuff done so we could focus on tuning the engine. Sure it would have been more fun to just jump into engine revving - but we don't want to spend too much time on the engine and let the details kill us in the coming days. The car is mostly assembled, but we still had some work to do on brakes - it was time to bleed them and get them ready for race day.

Rod kept making vroooom noises while up on the lift and muttering "I'll get you Jimmy Johnson!"

Brakes don't count against the build budget - but it's not like we had tons of cash to spend. We pieced this stock Cobra brake system together with bits and parts found everywhere over the last 3 months. Any time you convert from pre-93 fox to post-94 Cobra setup you're going to have a handful of compatibility challenges during the conversion. Since our components were piecemeal those challenges were numerous. We now have a ton of fittings and adapters - all potential weak links. During the bleeding process we found leaks. Everywhere.

Being under the lift while bleeding the system was like recreating a famous Gene Kelley song and dance. Brake fluid was coming down like rain drops, and we were singing: "Stop pumping, stop, stop!" By the time we had fitting #1,452 checked and tight, Rod claimed we were "getting good pedal pressure," when BAM. Something blew, and there was a swimming pool of pricey brake fluid all over the shop floor. Uggh. A part of the distribution block didn't like the configuration we were running and needed a replacement fitting fabrication. Looks like the brakes weren't getting done today - so let's wheel the car out of the garage and finish off that tuning.

While half of us were doing the brakes, Matt and Eric got to work replacing the balancer. The old balancer was completely shot. The timing marks were off over 100˚. It's a small miracle we didn't destroy the engine trying to get it to start earlier. After Thursday night's small victory surly we'd hear a much better sounding roar from the engine now that it was timed AND balanced. With great confidence the key was turned, and... we spent the next 20 minutes wearing down another battery. Damn! Now it won't start again.

The constant drizzle of Saturday amplified our mood. Blech.

Well, it would sort of start. We played spin the distributor a few times and we could get it to run - roughly. But after a few short minutes of high idle the header tubes were so hot you could almost see through them! That could mean: Late ignition, Lean condition, or vacuum leak. Vacuum leak!?! Sure, right, OK, like eleven of us would possibly huddle over an engine for 36 hours and not notice a stinking... 'Hey wait. What's that?'

You guys are a bunch of idiots. I could hear the vacuum leak from here.

It only took 2 minutes once we knew what was wrong. We rotated the distributor over to the stock marking - stuck a plug in a god-awful big vacuum opening on the intake, and viola. The damn engine came to life so smoothly we almost didn't hear it running. There were wide stares of disbelief giving way to big grins all around the car. At last, maybe there's a chance to pull this thing together after all.