N/A Build

[TommyB]

So, I've finally gotten over my mistake (B to C Head Drama) and am ready to move forward. Knowing i won't be driving my FFR Cobra this year, the plan is to do the body work and rebuild the engine in time for next March. I would like to do a moderate effort N/A build, keeping a tight (ish) budget.

What I have already

-98 Teksid block
-Boss Rods
-Speed pro forged pistons. (stock dish)
-C heads, with 98 Cobra intake cams
-C intake lower. B Upper hat.
-Red Monster COP Conversion
-Headers with individual sidepipes
-High Volume oil pump, Billet gears.
-Composite windage tray

Goals.. 380 range crank horsepower, keeping decent torque down low. This is not a daily driver or grocery getter. Just a toy.

What I'm thinking:

Mild porting on the heads. Essentiallty a clean up and massaging the bowl area.
Clean up of all intake passages.

Would consider aftermarket cams... Any experience from anyone. They are expensive, so it would have to be worth while. What kind of gains can be expected.

Adjustable cam gears. Again are they worh while? if so What brand.

Balancing of rotating assenbly etc.

If i did find a good used Vortech or eaton blower setup i may consider that as well, but.....

That is all I can think of for now.

Thanks for your thoughts gang
Tom
Thanks all

Tom

 

[shurur]

320 RWP is ~ 380 crank hp...so you should get what you want with these add-ons.
degreeing the oem cams may get you a bit more..

NASVT recipe:
General consensus for NA ~320 RWHP with 99-01 DOHC C-Head 4.6L:
K&N filter
OEM Cams
March damper
March hydroboost and WP pulleys
Long tubes
Hi Flow Cats/Cat Delete mid-pipe
Tune (canned..more $ for real tuner tune)

This is the next level.
360-370 RWHP:
106060 comp cams properly degreed.
short runner
Tune

 

[shurur]

From what I understand, porting the heads does little.
You need to open up the exhaust (seat) valve diameter to that of the intake..I have the info somewhere.....

found it:
-Open the seat IDs to 90% of the intake valve OP and 85% of the exh valve OD.
http://forums.corral.net/forums/svt-dohc/1507401-recommended-c-head-work.html

I think porting the intake helps little for OEM RPMs..anything above OEM RPMs needs a SRI.
but I have gotten conflicting info on this lately.

NA SVT is the one to get to chime in on this thread.

 

[TommyB]

From what I understand, porting the heads does little.
You need to open up the exhaust (seat) valve diameter to that of the intake..I have the info somewhere.....

found it:
-Open the seat IDs to 90% of the intake valve OP and 85% of the exh valve OD.
http://forums.corral.net/forums/svt-dohc/1507401-recommended-c-head-work.html

I think porting the intake helps little for OEM RPMs..anything above OEM RPMs needs a SRI.
but I have gotten conflicting info on this lately.

NA SVT is the one to get to chime in on this thread.

Great info. Thanks for the replies. The cams sure are tempting.....

 

[Brutal Metal]

If your thinking for sure about adding a supercharger later I'd save the $1000+ for cams and use factory.

 

[TommyB]

10-4 on that. If i do go the cam route, the supercharger notion will be shelved.
Was looking at the Comp Cams site and noticed tthat the 106100 set might be an option.

 

[olgreydog7]

Personally, I would do the cams. I did the FR500 cams and intake when I had my heads ported, it really woke the car up. It was a lot of fun. Now I have cams in the 230 @ 50 range with a Sullivan. More fun on the rack, not as much fun daily. I'm too lazy to look up the specs for the FR500 cams, but they are in the 212 @ 50 range IIRC. Stay around there and don't be afraid of the PSR intake. Your car is light, the 4.6 loves to rev, have fun with it. Don't be afraid of compression either. What gears are you running, don't fear that either.

 

[scottydsntknow]

Ever through of a power adder to just a basic rebuild with stock heads/degreed cams/intake and upgraded rods/pistons? Termi swap with a TVS blower on it or an On3 kit won't be much more if at all than custom 4V cams/longtubes/new heads and other NA stuffs. Just something to kick around.

 

[TommyB]

I'm running 3:55 gears, which feel about right for my car. I do a fair amount of highway driving.
Yes, I think of power adders all the time. A main drawback for me is the layout of my car. The Factory Five engine bay is Very tight. Turbos would require complete custom headers. I could certainly go Termi swap or Vortech which would still require some custom intake work. I'm not afraid of that. I already custom fabricated my current setup. Speaking of Vortech, given the custom nature of my car, would a 2v setup work for my 4.6?

 

[scottydsntknow]

2V setup would work if you swapped in 4V brackets. Being a FF car you'd probably have to do all custom tubing besides that. TBTH I didn't even see the FF part of your first post. Stock freshened heads and stock degreed 96-99 cams with fresh bottom end with boss rods and your choice of pistons. Find a terminator swap and upgrade the blower to a TVS, slap a cowl hood on it and roll. That's what I'd do anyway.

If you have an aluminum 4.6L block make sure you do the Cobra Engineering dowel pin upgrade. Also for any 4V, the Cobra Engineering passenger tensioner mod while its all apart. Google them if you haven't heard of them before.

 

[TommyB]

This caught my eye. My thought are that this would work nicely.
For Sale 4.6 4V to 5.4 4V H122 kit
Would i be able to use my current ecu (stock 98 cobra wiith diablosport) with some custom tuning?

 

[scottydsntknow]

It would but the H122 is a heat soak machine just like the M112. But yeah it would work and yeah your ECU would be able to be tuned for it no problem. If you are legit going to upgrade a blower from a stock Eaton unit then its TVS or Whipple or KB or bust. My vote is TVS.

 

[TommyB]

Hmm, this thread may turn into another termi conversion thread. I can feel my wallet getting lighter already!
What are the concerns with the heat soak issue? I can assume the blower unit gets hot, resulitng in warmer intake temps and power loss. Anything else?
Thanks for all the info btw.
Tom

 

[scottydsntknow]

The eatons are called "HEATons" for a good reason, they get hot as ****. TVS blowers are way more efficient and make more power. Case in point, a GT500 with that stock H122 on it will be making about 550 to the wheels best case and after 2 or 3 runs at the track will be heat soaked to hell. Same car with a TVS and no other changes will make 700+ and run a lot cooler. You can google all about heat soak, heat soak issues with the Termi/GT500 and how the TVS and other more efficient blowers help with this. Lots of good info in this and other forums. I'd also assume that if you did get that kit and it has the adapter setup for the H122 GT500 blower then the take off TVS blower from the 5.8L GT500 SHOULD bolt right on and they are cheap but you'd have to verify that yourself.

 

[01yellercobra]

You might want to poke around the Terminator forum a bit and search heat soak. Every PD blower does it. Whipple, KB, VMP, and Eaton. There are things you can do to combat it, but it's not just one magical thing. It's the whole system. Usually a bigger trunk mounted tank, bigger lines, and a powerful pump. Basically $$$.

It seems Ford got it figured out with the GT500, but the 4.6 guys still have issues. While I like my Eaton and don't have problems as I'm not spinning it too hard if I was looking at adding a blower to a car that didn't come with one I'd go centri. I had a blast with my set ups. And I really thought about putting a centri on my 04.

 

[scottydsntknow]

Ford didn't so much figure it out with the GT500 as just go with a better blower for the 13/14 which is a TVS unit. The 07-12s still use a pretty terrible blower... They do sound good tho.

 

[trxcobra]

If you don't think you'll get the itch for forced induction down the road, I say do the cams. I am running the comp 106400 in my setup - unfortunately I do not have a clean before/after comparison since I did many mods all at once, but I will say that having a properly matched intake manifold is crucial for some of the more aggressive cams. When I finished building my motor, I bolted a stock manifold on and only made 362whp/340-ish tq. NASVT helped me out with one of his 6" ported short runner manifolds, and the result was 401whp/325tq from that one change (with a much more rev-happy powerband).

Sure, cams are expensive, but I feel like the gains are a stronger ROI than most other NA mods (assuming you match/degree them properly for your setup).

Also - In my opinion the sound is worth $1,000 by itself....

 

[scottydsntknow]

TBTH if I was gonna stay NA I'd just Coyote swap the thing.

 

[shurur]

TBTH if I was gonna stay NA I'd just Coyote swap the thing.

The coyote swap is more expensive than most folks think.

You could do all the na mods I listed, and be at the coyote level with a 4.6...and the coyote essentially runs mid length headers oem.

The teksid (93-99), wap (01-04) and aluminator (05-10) blocks can all be stroked to 5.0L..bored to 5.0L..or bored and stroked to 5.3L. The heads would need to be deshrouded for the larger bore.

Those three blocks are interchangable...with a slight water pump difference on the wap block..

 

[01performanceredvertsnake]

I hope this helps in some way, look up John kaase and what he did with a 5.4


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