Fitting the 5.0

I brought the car back to the track so I could begin fabricating parts. I put a 2" block under the oil pan and the crossmember to simulate ground clearance at normal ride height then figured out how much of the firewall needed to be trimmed.

It's a little weird but with the bottom of the oil pan level with the ground, the transmission is tilted towards the driver a little, this means some mods will have to be made to the shifter and tranny mounts. The Sharpie line marks what has to be trimmed away to clear the bellhousing.

I didn't think the upper intake would fit under the cowl but it has just enough room, as long as I use bolts and not studs to fasten it down.

When it's all bolted in and running, I will hopefully get over the fact that the whole thing was designed for a V12.

Flywheel,clutch and tranny on the 5.0



I bolted the stock flywheel, Spec clutch disc and Ram pressure plate on

And the GT40 intake manifold was bolted on, too

I also attached the bellhousing and new (for me) transmission and started sliding the whole unit into the car. I could not do this with the V12 because the engine had to be in before the transmission was bolted on. I was disheartened to find that the Tilton hydraulic release bearing I bought will not work with this combo :(

There is quite a bit more room up front with this engine.

The oil filter is right where my V12 engine mount is so I may need to put a remote filter on the engine or cut the mount.

Yeh, it looks pretty good in there but I have a lot of fabrication work to do and for that I need to move the whole car to the kart track.

Rust removal

A number of nuts/bolts and parts from the 5.0 are coated in rust and the thought of going over each one with a wire brush did not appeal to me. I went to Home Depot and picked up some Zep Lime and Rust remover and soaked the parts overnight. Here is what the motor mounts look like before and after:

I put only half the motor mount in the Zep so you could see what it does. To stop the effects of the solution, I rinse the parts off with water then spray with paint or WD40.

Windage tray and oil pan

A windage tray is designed to keep oil from splashing up from the bottom of the pan and back onto the crank—, a condition that happens all too often in the rough conditions in racing. Here is a Canton windage tray bolted to new main bearing bolts supplied by Canton.

And the matching Canton road race oil pan. It holds 7 quarts and has kickouts on the side instead of just a deeper sump, this allows the engine to be placed lower in the chassis without ground clearance issues.

Here I am lifting up one of the one-way flaps built into the pan. They allow oil to move towards the pickup and not away from it.

Here is another picture of the hinged one-way flap-I'm impressed

Cleaning up the 5.0

The 1986 5.0 HO was pretty dirty so I stripped the brackets off of it and started cleaning.

It's pretty ugly

I soaked it in engine degreaser then used a wire brush on the end of a drill to get the thick stuff. Then I used a garden hose to rinse the engine off so I could take a closer look. If I found any more grime, I soaked that area with degreaser and scrubbed some more. After several cycles of degreaser-rinse-inspect I was able to go over the whole engine with brake cleaner to remove the film left by the degreaser.

Then I sprayed the whole thing with Ford Racing Blue engine paint by Duplicor

It should pretty sharp (from 10 feet away) once the shiny accessories are bolted back on.

Another engine purchased

As is typical for these kind of projects, the "free" engine I was given was actually going to be quite costly to put in the car. It came out of a truck and even though the Mustang and F150 5.0 were similar, they are not the same. The location of accessories, intake, compression ratio, camshaft, pistons, water pump and other tidbits are different so getting the same performance out of a truck engine is more costly and difficult. Fortunately, I found a complete and running Mustang 5.0 HO engine locally for $200.00 and it even includes headers. On the left is the High Output 5.0 and on the right is the F150 engine, notice that the water pumps spin in opposite directions:

First look at new engine

It took a few hours to take the V12 out of the MGB but it took a few days to take the V8 out of the vehicle it came in, I hope to never do that again. I still need to clean it up and add some bits but here is the engine that will be powering the car this season-a Ford 5.0 with a cam and ported heads.