Getting the Cobra Running....again....

99cobra302

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well, im not a baller, supermodel, engineer, or famous person of any kind....and i dont make millions of dollars a year. im not sure why i am hevent been run off SVTP in the first place.

this is a long, long post with pics. sort of a story of how the rebuild goes.

my car blew up again a year ago and i havent been able to afford to fix it until now. unfortunately this time its only a stock rebuild...nothing extremely exciting. but it does excite me since i havent driven it in over a year and i am still paying for a car that has a hole where the engine is supposed to be. and because i had to buy an alternate car to drive in the meantime (01 taurus' with the vulcan engine are slow as shit!!!)

so the story goes that i paid $750 for a used but running shortblock of a car that was local to me. it had low compression on 2 of the 8 cylinders and burned oil. no problem i thought, he boosted it, wrecked some rings, took off the supercharger and kept driving it replace some rings and be good to go.


pulled the worst slug out the night i picked it up and it looked bad. the ring seats were destroyed.
piston.jpg


good news is that all of the rod bearings look almost brand new since he did all oil changes religously with synthetic oil.....if they look that good no way am i touching the mains. i dont want to deal with buying TTY bolts for all those too.

so i call up mmr and order a new stock piston and a set of rings. it was only 40 bucks

later in the week i go back to my friends shop and pull out the rest of the slugs and find that 3 more had pieces of the ring seats missing. (but none as bad as the first one) so i call MMR back and order 3 more.

the first one arrives at my house and i find that not only did they send me a new piston, but a new rod as well.....so i call them back and order another 4 so i can have a full set of 8 new rods/pistons and dont have to worry about anything at all.


the last 4 arrive, and again i go to my friends shop and assembly starts. everything goes great until the last piston, it was damaged in shipping. damn, now i have to send it back and wait for another shipment from MMR.

MMR sent me 2 pistons to replace the 1 bad one i sent back "just in case" but this time they sent me a piston and a rod....but no caps...on either. i call them and no one can do anything because there was no management since it was sema week and aparently decisions cant be made without them in the building. i was told to call back in a few hours so a manager could be contacted by text. i called back after a few hours and was told "i havent heard from a manager but i talked to one of the guys here and they said that they werent supposed to send the rod in the first place, it was just a courtesy thing anyway so...uhhh....sorry."

guess i wont be buying anything ever again from MMR because since i wanst spending thousands on a build shortblock i am not as important of a customer. thats ok, in the future i will go with DSS since they are only 30 minutes away. should have went with them in the first place i guess.


anyway, i ended up using a stock rod since they werent damaged anyway. oh well. in the meantime my $500+ order of gaskets, oil cooler, and head changing kit came from Tousley Ford (love those guys, i will do business with them again!!)

so tonight we started with a shortblock and in a matter of about 3ish hours ended up with a long block!!


IMAG0029.jpg


FR500 Cylinder Heads
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now i just need to pick my car up from where she has been sleeping with the rest of the parts in it. and shove this baby in. i am going to do my best to clean all the grime out of the engine bay while it is mostly barren too.

i look forward to driving and just enjoying this car again however stock it may be. i will be adding progress pic as well. i hope to have the car running by next week.
 

DSGWhippedSnake

Right you are ken
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good looks man. bet youre happy to have it back almost together. bummer about the mmr piston/ rod situation though. i feel like theres alot of mixed opinions about mmr. ive never bought anything from them so i cant agree or disagree
 

99cobra302

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last nighti got my car from Elgin (where it sat at my friends place) to Crystal Lake (where my other friend works as a mechanic) and got some progress on it.

dirty engine bay...
2d98srd.jpg


clean engine bay!
21jwu9x.jpg



finally home!!!
nbao8k.jpg



that was as far as we got tonight. the trans isnt even bolted up yet, which is why its leaning so far back in the engine bay.

i probably wont have time to work on it again until next wednesday. since am trying to get this done as a surprise to my g/f. she has no idea this is happening. but next wednesday and thursday night will be dedicated to this thing and i hope it runs by the end of thursday night.
 
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