Hi Everyone, If you've been following along, this is like week 8 of the follow-along progress of my car on the HAMB posts, with about 5 weeks left of my goal to get this thing running and driving to Biletproof Detroit '06. The show is June 3rd. I'm sorry to those of you who follow along on my website for the history of my build, but I have not had time to sit down and upload/write commentary on anything new since making the rear body mounts, which admittedly was a year ago. There has been a lot of progress since then. Changes in direction, additions, deletions, etc. With the magnitude that this project commands, there has no doubt been changes of plans along the way, mostly to suit my personal taste. I assure you, in the coming weeks, I will update the website as well, so that there is ONE all-inclusive source to see what's been going on at the "Bump and Grind" garage. Again, I can't thank Marc (Stickylifter on the HAMB) enough for his work and dedication towards getting this thing going. He came by about 11 AM this past Saturday, and we put in another solid 7 hour workday this weekend on the Lincury Project. Highlights: Firewall has all missing patches tacked in place. Some odd shapes here and there no doubt, but at least it's complete. This truly tested our figurin' skills. A lot of: "Put this here, see how it fits"; "no, try this";..."I think this piece will work here"; "how about this one?"; "yeah that looks right...tack it and we'll bend it to fit..." My goal for the upcoming week is to grind it all down, fill as neccesary, and shoot it in the same copper color as I painted the engine. Speaking of which... While Marc worked on the firewall, I putzed around on yet more detail bits of the engine. It's pretty complete now, waiting basically to be bolted in and fired up. I still have a couple more issues to resolve, but the block itself, and everything neccesary to make it fire is in place. I also spent time converting the electric in-tank fuel pumpand pick-up over to a more conventional mechanical fuel delivery pick-up setup. I took the stock pump out of the old tank, and ditched the electric motor. I noted the supply line, bent up a matching new pick-up tube from some brake line I had laying around, and joined it to the original fuel intake with fuel proof hose and hose clamps. I measured the length to be sure it would sit on the BOTTOM of the new tank, and attached the original "sock" to filter debris. It was surprisingly easy. The pictures below show what I did. Overall: The first pic is of Marc working on the firewall. The second & third pics is how all the patches came into place around the trans tunnel, which was the hardest transition from new to old to make. Complicated angles and poor foresight on my part created this monstrosity. It was like a jigsaw puzzle. We got it all spot welded in and now it's waiting for finish grinding/welding. The last pics are of the electric in-tank fuel pump to mechanical fuel pump conversion I worked on. Hopefully it will work out okay. I see no reason why the stock 1979 Cougar mechanical fuel pump, driven by the cam eccentric, can't suck 7 pounds of fuel thru this converted setup, to feed my 1979 Cougar 2bbl carb. The best thing is, I didn't have to modify the sending unit to the point that if in the future I decide to go back to fuel injection, I can basically undo what I did and make the factory setup work again. Until next week- the progress continues! Mercman Here's a link to last week's post so you can catch up: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=106066
Looking good! I think you will be fine with the fuel pump conversion. I actually went the other way on my '68 Polara wagon, but the schmoe who put in the electric pump did NOT use fuel proof hose and the hose melted all over the pump and filter sock creating a nice mess for me to clean up a few weeks ago. Dumb question, but I assume even though it is a fuel injected engine you are starting with that the fuel pump eccentric is on the end of the cam shaft anyhow? That would be the only thing I can think of that would stand in the way of your "reversal."
Dumb question, but I assume even though it is a fuel injected engine you are starting with that the fuel pump eccentric is on the end of the cam shaft anyhow? That would be the only thing I can think of that would stand in the way of your "reversal."[/QUOTE] On the 302, the fuel pump eccentric is actually bolted to the big cam gear. The stock cam gear in this engine wouldn't allow me to use an eccentric, but I happened to have a new double roller Napa chain laying around, so I used that instead. Then I had to pay 13 bucks to get the fuel pump eccentric as part of a "Misc. Engine Parts Kit" from summit, because I didn't have an eccentric to begin with...and on top of that, the later FI engines no longer had the mechanical fuel pump boss cast into the timing covers, so I needed a new one of those as well. It was actually about as much work to figure out the bits to de-fuel injection-ize this setup as it would have been to convert a non-FI car over to FI...
That's what I was wondering. Guess I missed you mentioning that you had already been across the front of the engine to get that worked out. Geesh, what a mess! You'd think they would have tried to save themselves engineering time and just left the eccentric off, bolted on the block off plate and left it at that. For all the stupid stuff they don't change sometimes when they should and then all this work for something they didn't have to....go figure those Detriot engineers sometimes....
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