UD
LUZ UD
LUZ
The new Novi 2000 combo !!!
The first time out with the new combo at Knott's on 4/09/2000. It was warm sunny So. Cal. day, we met lots cool people, and had a great time.
The new motor made the 160 mile round trip without a hitch, oil pressure held at 70, and water was 180 degrees the whole trip.
72LB injectors, a 342, plus a NOVI huffing away, and it didn't miss a beat. Not bad for a "race car." Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too.
____________________________________________
Hello, and welcome to my little spot on the web, dedicated to my hobby the 5.0 Mustang. I do love all American Muscle Cars, no matter what the make. I’ve been messing around with performance cars since the late ’80’s. Since 1990 I have been playing with 5.0 Mustangs. While I was in college I was lucky enough to land a job in a speed shop, and I was able to see many different combinations. I was able to see which combo's worked and more importantly which ones didn’t.
The shop I was working at campaigned two Mustang's in the Firehawk road racing series, an ‘86 LX and an 87 GT. Because of the shop's success with the 5.0's in road racing, I was somewhat biased towards the 5.0 from the start. It made an impression on me right away, it seemed to have so much potential. The only real problem was that in the late 80’s and early 90’s aftermarket parts were still fairly expensive, but hey today it’s 2000 and the 5.0 is surely one of the best values out there. It’s a blast to drive, and can make ton’s of horsepower.
Click Here for --> Time Slips. This is with the old Vortech motor. I haven't taken the new combo to the track, since my local track requires a parachute for cars over 140MPH in the 1/4. I refuse to put a chute on my car, it's a street car.
I've owned four Mustang’s, here's a short list :
1. 1988 LX Hatch / White on Gray - My first Mustang, had it for about 4 years. I'll always remember this car because it won the MM&FF burnout contest. Click here to see the pictures.
2. 1991 LX Coupe / Regatta Blue on Gray - Never did much with this one, spent about a year driving it.
3. 1996 Cobra Convertible / White on Saddle - Fun car, but sold it after a year.
4. 1988 LX Coupe / Yellow on Black - This is my current car (pictured below), I’ve owned it for almost 5 years now.
My priorities when building this my new combo for 2000 were:
1) Reliability
2) Excellent straight line performance
3) California smog legal.
First I should explain "we," I use it a lot and it refers to myself and my brother in law Jim Caferelli, without whom I'd probably still be working my car rather than driving it. Jim, and his business Jim's Custom Cars in Fallbrook, CA, are responsible for the killer PPG organic yellow paint job. Plus many other things he help me with along the way.
This project started in May of 1999 when the stock block finally let go after years of abuse. Three rods gave up, and I ended up selling all the parts from my old S-Trim combo. The Vortech was a great piece, it never let me down. But when it came time to make a decision about a new power adder, the Vortech company was not very helpful (one person I spoke with was down right rude). So the S-Trim was sold.
In the rebuild process we took the car down to the shell and lightened it as much as possible. While we've never had it on a scale, our best guess is that it's about 2750 - 2800LBS right now. We do plan a K member later in 2000, with coil overs and other lightweight front end parts to hopefully take another 125LBS out of the car. I'd like to get it down to about 2600LBS.
For the new combo we started with the drive train of course. I purchased a new A4 block, stuffed it will a steel crank, good rods, and 8.5:1 pistons. The bore was kept at 4.0, and with the 3.4" crank the motor displaces 342 inches. The cam is a small .510 / .520 cam from Luanti, a blower grind of course, with the exhaust bias. I decided to keep my TFS TW heads, had some bowl work done on the intake and exhaust sides, and the exhaust runner received a nice port job. Nothing radical, just small things that I knew would pick up the heads enough to make the power I was looking for. The intake is an out of the box Holley System Max, with a 70mm T/B. This is not an inexpensive combo, but I feel almost anyone could build it if they really wanted too. It only took me 10 years to get to this point :-).
We topped everything with the wonderful Paxton NOVI 2000 blower. The fuel system is the stage II setup from CarTech, and we run 72LB injectors with no FMU and a custom chip from Powertrain Dynamics in Huntington Beach, CA. The headers are MAC 1 3/4" long tubes, with two straight pieces of 3" tube we bought from Summit that terminate in 3" MAC Flowpaths with dumps. We made the exhaust system at home in my driveway. No fancy x pipes or anything here, just straight 3" tubing.
Between the body, engine, interior and lots of other little things that came up it took almost a year to complete the car. Not long by most people standards, but I really wanted my car back, and a year was long enough. We ended up changing the interior too, switching to lightweight Corbeau seats, and taking out the back seat. We added carpet to the floor where the back seat had been and made a nice cover to hide where the seat back was usually located. The armrests were taken off of the doors, and the door panels recovered in black. I decided to delete the center section with the ashtray and armrest altogether, and it turned out very nice by just laying the new carpet in place.
I racked up about 400 miles on the car before taking it to the dyno session up at Powertrain in Huntington Beach. You can see the dyno results below. The car made 686RWHP and 650RWTQ. This was with a very conservative tune. Only 24 degrees of total timing and the car still had quite a bit of fuel in it. In addition the car had two bad plugs. One where the porcelain had totally fractured off, and another plug with a badly cracked piece of porcelain. We have since added 2 degrees of timing, replaced the plugs, and fixed the bypass problem I was having. How much power does it make now, I have no idea. I would guess 2 degrees of timing are worth 15RW on this combo, and now that the plugs and bypass are fixed, it's at least that again. I think it's safe to say that the car is over 700RW now.
Click above for Dyno Results
The next change to the car is actually already in progress, the NOVI kit is being swapped out for a drivers side renegade setup and should done be very soon. We plan to add the K member along with a powerglide tranny by the end of 2000 beginning of 2001.
The renegade brackets also allow the possibility to run a NOVI 3000. The addition of the NOVI 3000 will require 150LB injectors, along with an extra fuel pump, a serious set of heads / intake, and a real solid roller cam. Probably start this swap about September of 2001. But first I really want to get the car dialed in with the renegade kit, and the auto first. By 2002, I expect I will have a nice little 342 with the NOVI 3000 and the glide behind it. That's it for now keep stopping by to see how this project continues to evolve.....
