Installing the Kenne Bell 2.2L - 1995 Mustang GTS

[Darren5.0L]

Spring leave has begun and has my next mod.
Finally, two years after purchase, my Kenne Bell 2.2L Flowzilla is finding it's way onto my GTS.

I've got lots of time to play at this, and a few eager sets of hands to help along the way, so progress will be gradual and methodical.

Call this an install Blog if you like.

Starting off, here is last season's Engine; 180000km's, Trickflow Twisted Wedge Heads, Typhoon Intake, and a ZEX 75 HP wet nitrous kit.

Stock Cam, Throttle Body, MAF, and Injectors.

Final Numbers were around 330 RWHP on a MD-600 and I managed a 12.8 @108-109 on Street tires.

I had the 100 Hp Nitrous Jets but never put them in as I figured I should leave well enough alone.

My Datalogs showed the 19 lb/hr injectors were running at 97% Duty cycle during the upper reaches of 3rd and 4th gear. So to anyone following along, heads and intake require upgraded injectors if you want to run for any length of time.

March 21-08
Shawn and I set about tearing down the various components to clear the way for the twin screw "upper intake". After a leisurely hour we had reached this point:

The Bench:

March 22-08
Another hour spent had the ported GT40 lower intake manifold in place and Torqued to spec.

And for a little perspective here's a comparison photo of the old BBK CAI airfilter, next to the K&N replacement that will be hopefully adequate for the appitite of the Kenne Bell.

That's all for now, hope to update daily so stay tuned!

March 24-08

Today seen about 4 easy hours of work which included the following;
IAC harness was lengthened,
180* T-stat and elbow installed,
Injectors and Rail installed,
Fuel Pressure regulator clearanced,
Heater lines installed, and some minor clearancing to the Kenne Bell

Due to using a non-factory header I must mod the coil reloaction bracket and will likely put the coil on the passenger side, this will require adding about 24-36" of harness but is the only availiable piece of real estate.

And for a little personal interest I did a mockup with the KB assembly, here's a sense of progress.

Again, thanks for following along!

March 26-08
Spent about 1/2 hour cutting and rewelding the supplied coil bracket. As the Kenne Bell one was designed to mount to the factory header stud I had to make ssomething work with my setup. For now it resides near that spot by mounts to the valve cover bolt. It's kind of tight there but I'll try it for now.

Also my Lightning 90mm MAF showed up today 2 weeks late, now I can get my CAI fabricated. I also have to figure out with pins go to what for swapping the MAF harness, I'm sure I'll find it online, anyone here know?

Also my Fox Throttle Cable arrived to complete the FOX TB swap, along with a PCV for a Supercoupe (boost friendly) and a new Clutch cable.

So a bit more soldiering and building them I should hopefully be ready to bolt this thing down.

 

[Darren5.0L]

March 28-08

Today seen a lot of progress

Here's shot of the shop:

I drained out all of the contaminated oil from the Intake Manifold swap, as well as installed a new FL-1A filter. A fresh loadout of Mobil 1 topped everything up.

Next the SN95 Throttle cable was changed out for a new Ford Fox style one (details on that later) as well as a new clutch cable to replace the tired old one.

The Lightning MAF harness was spliced into place of the factory one, and finished with split looms.

Next the TPS connector was changed over to Fox style using directions I found here:
How To Convert To a Fox Style Throttle Body - Mustang Forums at StangNet

Here's what it took make my FPR clear:

And this my fuel return line, it had to be bent down to clear the bypass.

The vacuum lines were routed, ensuring the PCV was hooked up, as it would be impossible to access one the blower was in place.

At this point I was ready to install the Kenne Bell. To allow for the mounting flange to clear, I had loosened the two retaining bolts on the passenger side fuel rail. Make no mistake, properly guiding the supercharger into place is a two person job, it’s heavy and dropping it could damage some expensive components. Thankfully, Shawn was happy to lend a hand.

I had to remove the snout support bracket as well.

Once the blower is properly seated the real fun can begin, tightening and torque the manifold bolts, luckily Kenne Bell only decided to use 6.

In the back are two studs with ½” bolts, the passenger side one is accessible with a wrench, but the driver side one is not easy.

I was able to reach in from the passenger side and place the nut on the stud. While I had Shawn stab a screwdriver in from the top to keep it from falling off. From here a little tricky work with the fingertips gets the nut loosely seated.

To tighten the nut is a different story.
In short I sacrificed a cheap 1/2” box end wrench and Shawn did some serious cutting/grinding to make a stubby, super thin, low profile, “Kenne Bell Manifold Bolt Wrench”

The middle driver’s side bolt was placed with a magnetic pickup tool, and tightened with a swivel socket.

Torquing, the fasteners was a joke, 4 out of 6 were torqued to spec, and you guessed it, the back two got the German torque spec; Goodentight! We figured it would be difficult to far exceed the factory spec, with less than 2 ½” of lever while pulling with two fingers.

From here, we turned to the Throttle assembly.

A few portions of "ready-rod" were used to make new TB bolts as the studs KB supplied were much too short for the Fox conversion.

Once we connected the throttle cable, things stopped going smoothly.

First the throttle cable hit on the heater hards lines which then to be massaged out of the way.
Next the cable bracket needed to be clearanced to clear the same hard lines.

Once that was all sorted, the next one presented itself while checking throttle operation.
For some reason we could only open the throttle blade 80%.

I'll save you the description of 30 mins of trouble shooting, but turns out that my brand new Throttle cable is incorrectly manufactured and only allows 1 1/2" of travel. We checked Shawn's fox and his cable has over 3.5" of travel. Checked the part numbers and they appear correct so, we're at a bit of a standstill until that gets figured.

Called NAPA, and they don't seem to carry them, suggested dealership (where mine came from) or a junkyard.

Here's the big kicker, it looks like the entire S/C has to come off to change the throttle cable. Unless I get really lucky.

And to top it off my snout bracket doesn't align with the former coil bracket.

To figure out what to do about that I contacted Kenne Bell's express tech line; Posting a thread in their Vendor forum on SVT Performance. Usually takes a day or two, but it's quicker than phone/email.

So that finished off last night and I'll see where I stand in next couple of days.

I was looking at firing this thing up on Monday, but setbacks are setbacks.

As always, Thanks for reading, and I'll keep you guys posted.

April 01-08
So I’m sure some of you have been wondering what’s been going on, has he given up? Is it on Ebay? Gone mad? Well, only one of the above applies here.

So I last left you at a cliffhanger, stuff wasn’t fitting.

The easy one was return the New cable and use one we had from another car.

The tricky one was still that blower bracket.

I contacted Kenne Bell to inquire if perhaps I had the wrong bracket as there are 2 kits for the car. They told me there is only one bracket for my application, common to both kits.
That idea dead, we moved on to checking the blower to valve cover clearance.

Turns out that when I did the mockup last winter I didn’t use the VC gaskets, so my slight airgap of clearance no longer existed. The blower was slightly resting on the diecast Fox Valve cover.

Some research into Trickflow’s Head specs dictates that they have elevated the valve cover flange 0.35” for rocker clearance, which essentially would take up any clearance engineered for the kit.

I ended up clearancing the valve cover as it is much less expensive than the blower housing. It's isn't pretty under there anymore but the blower hides it.

It is now close enough that I can grind out the 1 snout hole to match up. The left one now lines up on it's own.

This valve cover mod wasn’t gentle, or small I removed material with a grinder fitted with a flap wheel, to give you an idea there is perhaps 3 oz of aluminum dust in my garbage can now.

I did have break through the thickness of the top of the cover and asked Shawn if I should continue. He told me if I could make it fit, he could make it seal.

So now I have what you might call a composite valve cover. Aluminum cover, Loctite grey epoxy and plastic to stick it to.

Here is the fist bit of work to the valve cover, it should be completely finished, sanded, and painted in the next couple of days.

Now I can see the skeptical eyebrows heading for the ceiling already. Let me explain.


This particular type of epoxy is somewhere just short of JB weld for strength and has been used in my passenger side VC for over a year now. Shawn assures me that this is a durable solution and has employed it when swapping V8’s into things for offroad racing
for a number of years. Lastly, a valve cover is just a splash shield, not a load bearing part, the 4.6L’s have been using plastic ones since day one. So, all that said I’m willing to go for it.

For anyone else who might ever plan on mounting a Kenne Bell to a 5.0L with Trickflow heads and anything that isn’t a stamped steel cover. I suggest the purchase of a manifold spacer to stack the blower up to clear the VC. This will require fabricating a mounting plate for the snout support bracket, and may cause other clearance issues. If you search the internet, this is the most common solution. For me the only spacer I can find on less than 2 weeks notice is a FRPP one, but it is $60 and I would still need another gasket.
Should my approach for some reason fail, this is the backup plan, in the mean time I’ll do the cheap-as-free solution.

So that brings you up-to-date.

April 04-2008

Lots of progress today, or over the last two days.

Firstly the valve cover, finished, the epoxy cured, sanded and painted. Looks just fine in pictures, of course until you see the side profile;

I even laugh every time I see this pic:

Like I said before, this wasn’t the nicest thing to do, but I challenge anyone to look under the Kenne Bell and see any of the work.

Moving onwards.

The snout support bracket went in with about ¼”-1/2” oblonging of the mounting holes. I used a couple of washers to help distribute the load, and everything works fine now.

I then tackled the next bit I call Kenne Bell’s sick joke, the replacement upper radiator hose. There is nothing obviously wrong with their supplied hose until you see that the hose outside diameter is the same as the outlet on the radiator.

I installed it, here’s the trick for the home mechanic’s (maniac’s perhaps is more fitting) following along.

Step one
Heat end of hose by immersing in boiling water.

Step two
Fail to have hose fit

Step three
Spray inside of hose and radiator outlet with generous amounts of WD-40.

Step four
Slide and stretch hose over outlet, don’t forget to have hose clamp on already.

Step five
Tighten hose clamp

Step six
Repeat steps two thru four until you win.

Footnote:
Kicking, shouting, and profanity are required for success.

Here’s where a montage would be handy;
The belt was routed, dizzy dropped in, oil added to the engine and KB.
Electrical connections made, fuel lines hooked up, battery reconnected, and generally everything required to prepare for initial startup.

Fast Forward:

Later on, Shawn dropped by to build the next challenge, the Cold Air Kit.

Somewhere, some Diesel guy is missing a chunk of exhaust.

This is a mandrel bend 180*, 4” diameter, that’s right 4 inches.

We were wondering if it could be made to fit, and as some of you have seen, success!

It took Shawn roughly 1 ½ hours to chop, cut, fit and weld this CAI into existence.

Using a chop saw, bench grinder, hacksaw, and Mig welder this turned out better than expected.

Here’s the cost break down:

4” Mandrel bend - $40
Huge K&N Filter - $30
4 X Vibrant 4 ply silicone couplers - $11 each
5 X 4” hose clamps - $1 each

-------------------------------
Total - $ 116

Perfectly acceptable considering I got to dictate where the MAF went and it’s 4” throughout. It will be powdercoated after the car is tuned.

So what’s left?

Buy 2 more hose clamps I forgot
Purchase a K&N breather for the Valve cover vent
Set Belt Tension
Load Baseline tune.
Set Timing
Burp Cooling system

And it should run.

Hope to have it fired tonight.

As always, stay tuned and thanks for reading!

 

[Darren5.0L]

08-April-08

This update has been awhile in coming as I've been sorting out a few minor issues, which needed to be isolated and understood before I just randomly posted "my stuff isn't right."

I fired the car on Friday using a base tune provided by Matthew.
It started right up, idled nicely etc.

It builds about 5 psi just flipping the throttle in the garage. Kind of cool.

First road test didn't go very well, it would over fuel at anything past 3 psi under load and run very rich.
Also I had a small collant leak from a heater hard line which was fixed with a bit more "righty-tighty" on the nut.

After a lot of patient work over the phone from Matthew, sent me back to switching out the TPS and clearancing it so that it would read proper voltage.

I also hooked up my LM-1 and took a measured look at the AFR.

I did my first successful WOT pull (s) yesterday afternoon. It was a pretty fun ride, seen about 11-12 psi of boost. A little more TwEEC-ing and it should be very ready for the run down to Tecmotion.

I might get some videos up later on, but it wouldn't be anything fancy or very exciting until after it hits the rollers.

Big thanks again to Matthew for his hard work and patience while I sorted out componet issues.

More to come.

10 April 08

It's all ready, just waiting to hit the rollers on the 18th

 

[99MustangGTman]

Awesome man, that thing is gonna scream!

 

[Darren5.0L]

13-April-08
It's patiently awaiting Friday.

 

[Darren5.0L]

19-April-08
As we approach the 1 month mark on this project from start to nearly finished I look back with a great sense of satisfaction. Although I have not yet been completely successful I am confident that with the right amount of effort (and money of course) that this should be ready for the summer season as I planned.

Here are the details of the April 18th dyno session at Tecmotion in Calgary.

I planned to depart Edmonton on the 17th at 5pm but after picking up my wife Stephanie, a problem developed. The rear of the car began to emit a metal on a lathe sound that was matched to speed and not engine RPM. I had a problem somewhere between the driveshaft and rear axles, thoughts of diff trouble, and axles delaminating really had me worried. I limped the car home to the shop and called Matthew to let him know I may have to cancel.

I got the car in the air and a visual inspection revealed my double adjustable upper control arms had, well double-unadjusted-themselves. This had set the pinion angle to excessively high, allowing the driveshaft to ride on the parking brake cable brackets, hence the lathe sound. Shawn dropped in and we measured and reset the pinion, with more German torque spec applied to the jam nuts. A quick road test and we were good to go.

7:30pm seen us picking up the Anthony Henday to bypass Edmonton and we arrived in Calgary around 11:30pm. The cruise down at 100-110km/h out of boost seen excellent fuel consumption numbers, I’ll gather my receipts and post the MPG later.

Friday morning we loaded the car on the rollers and started testing.

We had to shut the runs down at 4400 rpm due to the ignition breaking up, that and a few other little things to tinker with and it should be ready for a proper run at it.

The ignition problem caused trouble, but Matthew worked with the car for the entire session anyway, making improvements to overall drivablilty as well as fuel and spark delivery. Here is the dyno sheet of the day’s work:

MD-600
321.5 HP @4400 RPM (Red Line on Chart)
380 TQ @3800-4400 RPM (Dark Blue line on Chart

TQ never dropped below 304 and Avg was 356.6

As you can tell from the slope of the HP graph, it's still got room to go before it will plateau.

For reference, on this particular dyno, the operator tells me a stock 03/04 Cobra Pulls 315 RWHP.

As you can see, very decent numbers and the HP has not begun to plateau yet. Once the ignition thing is sorted I am very interested to see what this will do. If I were to be chasing huge numbers there is still at least 8 lbs left in blower capacity, (10 lbs current boost) an additional 15mm of throttle body (75mm TB currently) but I would be certainly be beyond the expectations of the factory shortblock for durability.

Overall I am very happy with the results of the session and the overall experience, and again a huge thanks to Matthew.

The run home that afternoon was interesting, but not impossible, here’s a shot taken at Gasoline Alley in red Deer

When I got home I discovered the fabled Ice pony riding on my car:

Sadly he didn’t survive for long outside of his natural habitat.

Here's a Video, it's been almost a year since my last video production so it's not up to my normal standards, but it gets the point across.
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwNcInffmqU]YouTube - Darren 5.0L's KB 5.0L on the Dyno[/ame]

Thanks for reading.

 

[Darren5.0L]

Updated video for those still following along:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnSEzyBvKOM"]YouTube - KB RTN[/ame]

 

[99MustangGTman]

very nice man, i hope you washed the car since then!