Creature from the Black Lagoon

Dyno day is approaching rapidly, in fact it's tomorrow. In preparation for dyno tuning, I thought it would be good to get my cooling system in order. Running an engine on a dyno, especially at high load steady state conditions, puts a lot of stress on a cooling system. I'd read somewhere that a significant portion of a dyno session can be cooling time and dyno time is not cheap. So not only does it make sense from a performance standpoint to have a good cooling system, but also from an economic standpoint.

Since this engine has a cast iron head and block it can accumulate a fair amount of rust inside it. In the past couple years, I've kept straight water in the system because I didn't want to deal with sticky coolant every time I had to unhook a coolant hose. Living in Southern California, it never freezes so I can get away with this. On the flip side, this created even more rust in the system.

mmm iron hydroxide!

I knew that there are a number of rust removal products but I searched for quite a while before I found a product I wanted to try. I settled on Thermocure, made by EvapoRust. They claim it dissolves the rust and suspends it in the water. I had tried standard EvapoRust on a bunch of old bolts and it worked like a charm. The evaporust turned black, and the bolts came out clean. ThermoCure seemed to have good reviews and was a reasonable price, so I ordered a bottle and added it to the radiator.

The instructions say to let the vehicle run for four hours with the product in the coolant. I'm not sure I ran it that long, but I let it go through several heat cycles and sit for a couple weeks. I drained both the radiator and the block and got this nice dark brew. 

Not quite convinced that all the gunk was out, I filled the system with pure water, heat cycled it, and drained again. This turned out to be a good idea because as you can see, there was still a bit of sediment left in the engine.

At this point I called it good and filled up with a 50/50 coolant mix.

This time tomorrow I'll be heading to the dyno. Hopefully my tuner (who is NOT Matt Happel) doesn't subscribe to the Matt Happel School of Tuning. Wish me luck!

PS: I never put in my HP bets on the last post so here goes. 91: 280HP / 300TQ  E85: 340HP / 360TQ

Return of the Hobo

In a previous installment, you read about my glorious triumph installing a flex fuel sensor. I had taken a flex fuel sensor from an old Ford Taurus in the junk yard and fitted it to Grace, and everything was awesome. Turns out it was all a lie. 

Granted, I didn't know it was a lie at that point. I installed the sensor, built a circuit on the ECU board and it was reading the ethanol content of the fuel, or so I thought. I soon found that while out driving, the engine would suddenly run really rich, almost to the point of dying. And then with no indication, it would go back to normal. I took a couple data logs, and found that the ECU was showing a fault on the ethanol circuit and would go into a sort of limp mode, and when ethanol percentage read 1% without any fluctuation, that meant the sensor was not reading correctly.

Lies. ITS ALL LIES!

Data logs, AKA my lifeblood. I spend most of my days at work looking at data logs not unlike this.

 I felt fairly confident that the old junkyard sensor was bad, so I set out to find a new one. After wasting half a Saturday to find one in a junkyard (a new replacement sensor costs a minimum of $300) I gave in and bought an sensor I found on eBay. I had high hopes for this new sensor, but was grateful that it came with a 30 day warranty.

New old junk: another 1st generation metal body ford flex fuel sensor

New old junk and old old junk side by side.

I installed the new old sensor and viola!, same result. By now I was suspicious that maybe I had done something wrong. I checked my ECU several times to make sure that my circuit was right, I checked my wiring, I asked on every forum that I thought might have some knowledge on these sensors. Of all the advice I got, the best piece was this: make a sound card oscilloscope. I needed to look at the signal coming from the sensor to determine if it was toast or if I had screwed something up on the ECU side. 

A sound card oscilloscope uses a bit of free software on your PC to read electrical signals coming through your sound input jack. I had to build a very simple circuit to reduce the voltage of the signal in order to protect the sound card itself, though that was a pretty quick job that cost essentially nothing. Normally a good o-scope will cost hundreds of dollars, but if you just need to check a low voltage signal occasionally, a sound card o-scope can be the perfect tool.

A couple wires, a couple diodes, a resistor and a potentiometer. Behold: the sound card oscilloscope.

I probed the circuit right at the ECU so I could make sure that I was seeing exactly what the ECU was seeing. It was a very clean signal, coming in at 39.9Hz. I had found an old Ford spec sheet for this specific sensor.  Its nominal range is 50 Hz at 0% ethanol and 115 Hz at 85% ethanol (or 125 Hz at 100%). The chart also showed a tolerance band of +/- 10 Hz, which meant that my sensor could theoretically read as low as 40 Hz and still be within range. This seemed to indicate that the sensor was dead.  I still wanted to know for sure, so I ran a small amount of denatured alcohol through the sensor. There was no response in frequency of the signal, so at that point I gave in an ordered a new GM style flex fuel sensor.

1st Generation Ford (Siemens) flex fuel sensor range

39.9 Hz signal = dead sensor

The whole reason I had avoided the GM sensor from the beginning was because of its quick release style fittings. I wanted to have -AN fittings throughout the entire system. It was kind of a silly requirement, but sometimes I get it in my head that something needs to be a certain way and then I'm unreasonably stubborn about making it that way. My wife wouldn't know anything about that... (unrelated side note: planning a house remodel is strangely like planning a wedding. You are required to have an opinion on many things, and once you finally come around to having that opinion, it's wrong ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) Anyway, I ended up finding a fitting that made me comfortable with using quick release style fittings in my fuel system. Russell Performance makes a fitting that is a very solid piece for adapting -AN to quick release, and it's actually pretty reasonably priced. I did what I should have from the start and picked up two adapters, a GM (made by Continental) flex fuel sensor, and a new wiring connector.

This two piece adapter fitting threads together to prevent accidental disconnection.

Ford flex fuel sensor connector on the left, GM connector on the right

After way too much fiddling around with sensor location and hose routing, I got the mounting sorted out. When I fired up the ECU and enabled the flex fuel circuit, it instantly started reading right around 14% ethanol. I then realized the Ford and GM sensors have different ranges (GM is 0% ethanol = 50Hz, 100% ethanol = 150Hz), so I  corrected that and it read 11% ethanol, which is a very reasonable value for the E10 pump gas here in California.

About a week ago, I called someone on the phone that I had been meaning to call for some time. I set an appointment with Church Auto Testing to have Grace tuned. The moment of truth is approaching. This Friday we will know how much power she's got. I'm actually far more interested in the shape of the torque curve than I am the maximum power figure but since it's a fun game to play, let me know in the comments how much power and torque you think she'll put down. I'll be doing a 91 octane pump gas tune and hopefully also an e85 tune, so be sure to specify what fuel when you add your guesses! 

The Froot Loops of Safety

Sometimes when idiots like me build cars, they don't get everything right and the cars self destruct. One of the many dangerous ways cars can self destruct is by spitting out a driveshaft. This can happen when a driveshaft or U-joint breaks. 

Sometimes a driveshaft will break because there is too much torque going through the drivetrain. I don't think this engine will make so much torque or the tires will be so sticky that the driveshaft will tear itself in half, but it's possible that the angles aren't just right, or the shortened driveshaft isn't balanced right, or there is a welding issue... any number of things could be wonky. In an attempt to contain the driveshaft should things go haywire, I've installed a driveshaft loop.

NHRA rules require a driveshaft loop on any vehicle that runs the quarter mile quicker than 13.99-seconds while running slicks or quicker than 11.49-seconds on street tires. Since this car isn't built to be a drag racer, it's not likely that either of these situations will happen, but I do want that peace of mind. So like usual, I bought a kit and immediately started slicing and dicing. The rest is pretty self explanatory.

Just the other day I decided it was finally time to reinstall the old Grace-face. She's been without it since May of 2013. That's almost four years exactly. A lot has changed since then. A whole lot. I had barely just started the project. I was still single. I hadn't even met my wife at that point. I hadn't started getting fat yet. There was still a Backyard Steve. Man, I sorta miss Backyard Steve. I'll never forget one time when I came home from work and while chatting with Backyard Steve I noticed two thick scabs on his knee. He could tell that I was staring at his knee so he volunteered an explanation. "Oh yeah, that..." Backyard Steve said "I was doing business with a guy and he tried to cheat me, so I pulled my gun on him. It's a .22 pistol. While I was pulling the gun out I shot myself in the knee." He pointed at the scab above the kneecap "The bullet went in here", he then pointed at the scab below the kneecap "and went out here. It's ok though, I clobbered him with the butt of  my gun. Cracked his skull." Who knows if the story was true, but life was more colorful back then.

May 2013

May 2017

Anyway, Grace has made a lot of progress since those days. I'm not sure if I have, but my wife would at least tell you I wear much nicer shoes than I did in my bachelor days. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Boxes of Torque (part dos)

Did you know that dogs and cheetahs can be best friends? Well they can, and I saw it. It has nothing to do with my car, but its cool.

For reference, here is part one: http://ironhydroxide.blogspot.com/2017/04/boxes-of-torque.html

Today in Boxes of Torque (part dos) I make a passenger side torque box. Having already made and installed the driver's side, the passenger side went much quicker. I copied the patterns I had made for the other side and verified that they would fit. Then like Da Vinci with his paintbrush, I set to creating fine art with my angle grinder.

scribing the bend line makes it possible to bend thick sheet metal without a brake

In this shot you can see the S-bend in the tail of the torque box end cap. This tailis drilled and then plug welded to the inside of the lower rocker panel flange.The gap between the tail and the bottom part of the torque box is then filled bya weld 

One of the main attachment points for the torque box is inside the passenger compartment. A slit has to be cut in the floor sot hat the tab can pass through and be welded. I also added a spacer (which can be seen in the middle of the photo) to take up some space between the weld tab and the inner body structure.

With the exception of the welding burns on my arms that are still healing, the second torque box went in very smoothly. This brings us back to the original question. Did the torque boxes change the natural (or resonant) frequency of the subframe / rocker interface, thereby reducing a disconcerting vibration in the body structure when the engine is around 3800 RPM? The short answer is Yes.

I test drove the Falcon briefly and took it through the RPM range a few times. When I hit the problem RPM range, there was still more vibration than at other RPM ranges, but the amplitude was greatly reduced. While is still more than my ideal situation, but I have to remember that this is a shaky old engine in a shaky old car, and that it will likely improve once sound deadening materials and an interior are installed. My initial feeling is that my DIY Falcon torque boxes are doing the job I hoped they would do.

I had a request or two for the patterns of my torque boxes. I'm posting them below with a couple disclaimers. These worked for me. They may not work for you. My car is a 1962 Falcon 4-door sedan and I can't make any claims about any other configurations. I used 3/16 mild steel sheet to build these boxes. I'm sure there are better ways to stiffen a chassis (before you say subframe connectors, I already have subframe connectors) but this has seemed to work for me. Both patterns shown below will work on driver's and passengers, but the main body will have to be bent different directions to be used on different sides. I haven't included a plan for the main body truss. It's a funky quadrilateral that you are just going to have to figure out yourself because you are a big kid now.

Torque box end cap

Torque box main body

I'll be back soon with another episode but until then, stay cool and charge hard.

REAL MEN OF GENIUS

Boxes of Torque

For reference, here is part two: http://ironhydroxide.blogspot.com/2017/05/boxes-of-torque-part-dos.html

If you are weary traveler, searching the corners of the internet trying to find some information on Ford Falcon torque boxes, you are in the right place. Welcome to Ironhydroxide, a place where we tell stories about building an old econobox Falcon into the kind of high performance car it was never intended to be. If you are a regular, you already know this and you are probably just here for the gifs and youtube links.

What is a torque box? This is a question many a classic Ford owner has asked himself and most have not received a satisfactory answer. Today that is about to change.

In the late 1950s, The Big Three realized that they were about to get their butts whooped by the same group of schnitzel-eaters that they had whooped only 15 years earlier. Volkswagen, the brainchild of everyone's favorite fascist had grown powerful and was going for round two in world domination. The Beetle, known to the Germans as the Käfer, was steadily marching across the globe and even into the driveways of red-blooded Americans. Robert McNamara, who went on to become John F Kennedy's Secretary of Defense, recognized this creeping threat to the security of the good people of America Ford Motor Company. In response, he did something drastic and led Ford into battle with what was the smallest car they had built since the 1930s. This car was the Falcon and it was a massive success. It was cheap to build because it was a unibody construction, meaning that they no longer had to manufacture a frame and body.   After the first two years of production Ford had sold one million Falcons. For perspective, Toyota has sold about 400,000 Camrys each year for the past decade or so.

Now that the Americans were on the offensive they could now start to do what Americans do, that is, shove V8s into everything. This was 1963 and America couldn't wait for the Mustang to give them a little V8 car. America needed it now, and the good engineers at Ford obliged by shoving a V8 into the Falcon. These same engineers soon found that the unibody of the Falcon had the structural rigidity of mom's spaghetti and that became a real problem once had to deal with more than 100 horsepower. The solution to this problem was the Torque Box.

So this brings us full circle. What exactly is this miracle of engineering, the torque box? In the diagram below, you can see some of the main load bearing components of a unibody structure. The engine and supsension mount to the front subframe. Forces applied to by the engine or suspension on the body go initially into the front subframe. The red arrows shows the forces that would be applied by driving over a bump. A torque box, shown in pink, creates resistance to the rotation of the front subframe by tying it together with the rocker panel.

Ford unibody torque box diagram

Mustang passenger side torque box

While the torque box found its way into Falcons, Mustangs, Fairlanes, and just about every other unibody Ford, that doesn't mean they all had them. My car was definitely in the "no torque box" camp. (WARNING: ENGINEERING JARGON AHEAD) This means that all the twisting forces  and vibration at the back of the front subframe are being transmitted through the floor and firewall of the car. Long time readers may remember my vibration issues, but long story short, there is a nasty vibration that permeates the structure of the car when the engine is near 3800 RPM. I suspect that the resonant frequency of the interface of the front subframes and floor/firewall is around 63 Hz or some multiple thereof, and the engine at 3800 RPM (63 Hz) is exciting that interface. I theorize that if I can stiffen this interface, it will move the resonant frequency out of the range at which the engine can excite it.

Translation: I think adding torque boxes to Grace may eliminate a stubborn vibration issue in the body structure. 

So naturally I wanted to know how to install Falcon torque boxes. I spent hours using the google machine, trying to learn all I could. Boiled down, I learned this: Nobody knows crap about Falcon torque boxes. A few people know a few things about Mustang torque boxes. The misinformation is deep. Mustangs and Falcons are similar, so Mustang torque boxes should work... right? Wrong. 

I figured the only way I was going to learn what I needed to know was to spend some sweat and dollars, so I started by removing the fenders and ordering a set of torque boxes. 

Not having any clue what might fit in my Falcon, I ordered a set of torque boxes for a 1965-68 convertible mustang. I knew that convertible Falcons had torque boxes, so maybe these would be the same. I soon learned that all unibody Fords in those days had a drastically different rocker panel than hardtop cars, so I ate the massive cost of return shipping on those parts. Lesson learned. Convertible torque boxes DO NOT fit on hardtops.

Mustang convertible driver's side torque box side view

Mustang convertible driver's side torque box top view

The other thing I learned with the torque boxes in hand and fenders off was that the early Falcons had much shorter rocker panels than Mustangs, and that they were not designed to have torque boxes at all. In the picture below, the blue line represents where a torque box would go, and the red line shows how long the rocker panel would need to be to effectively transfer torques and forces from the front frame rail and torque box into the rocker panel.

At this point I was not sure it would work, but I went ahead and ordered torque boxes and rocker panel extensions for a 1965-70 Mustang Coupe or Fastback. When they arrived, I mocked them up and found that these parts were not interchangeable with Falcon.

Because the Falcon is the Mustang's progenitor, you'll often hear that they have interchangeable parts. This is a bunch of crap. There are not enough directly interchangeable parts for this to even be a useful myth. I found myself in the familiar position of building my own performance parts for the Falcon out of cardboard. From here, the pictures do most of the talking.

If you've taken the time to look carefully at my design you may notice a few things. First, this torque box is quite a bit smaller than the Mustang boxes. This is on purpose, the front end of a Falcon is shorter than a Mustang, so Mustang sized torque boxes would interfere with the wheel if they could be installed on a Falcon. To compensate for this and make fabrication easier, I built them out of thicker steel than the Mustang boxes. Second, the rocker panel does not extend over the outside of the torque box. I do have concerns about this. Without that extra length in the rocker panel, stiffness will not be as high as it could be. If I feel the stiffness is lacking, I will find a way to lengthen the rocker panel about 4 inches.

(Disclaimer: this information applies only to round body Falcons from 1960-63. I have no idea if it applies to 64-70 Falcons. I believe minor changes were made to the chassis in 64)

Now that I've done one side, I'm hoping the other side will go quickly. I am anxious to see if my engineering theory was correct, and a stiffer body will eliminate the vibration issues. In the meantime, enjoy some cars I found in my neigborhood while on a Sunday walk. It seems I'm not the only one in town with a Falcon...