Billy C's 72 Ford Gran Torino Big Block 521

Billy C · Post by **Billy C** » Thu Jan 03, 2013 3:03 am

Hey all. Just ordered my Megajolt unit after doing lots of research. Have new coils, EDIS module, sensors, connectors, and a few other bits and pieces. Going to design the trigger wheel on AutoCad and then have it water-jetted. Don't have dimensions for it yet but I am doing like 1000 things at once, so I will get there.
Short history of my 1972 Torino..

Bought it in Jan 2010 with 33xxx mi on it.

did a quick, back yard, frame off restoration of the car the following summer...

Did basics, cleaned, painted, suspension, brakes, sticky tires, mostly just freshened up the OEM stuff. Learned some lessons and that pretty much broke the bank at the time. Never even rebuilt the motor at the time. Just did a little freshen up. Been driving it regularly on the weekend ever since doing small upgrades here and there limited by time and money.

Over the past year or so I have been getting ready to put a Ford 521ci Big Block (Stroked and bored 460) together. The car has a 460 in it now. Planning on going to a Tremec TKO600 5speed behind the 521, it has a c6 Auto in it now. Going to put some 3.50 gears with a locker in the ford 9", stock open in it now.

Also redesigning suspension geometry and stuff, all a work in progress.

Just finished going over to rear disk brakes in the rear a few months ago.

Don't plan on finish painting it.

Anyways, tore down a donor 460 block.

Had it all blue printed and machined, full rotating assembly, forged pistons, forged rods, cam, bearings, high flow custom build oil pump, gaskets, everything ready to go together on the short block. have all the bolt-ons like intake manifold, water pump, carb. Going to have the heads done soon. I will be happy if I can get a good 550hp, 600ft/lbs, and years of tire burning out of the final combo.

I love the idea of the EDIS driven system. Cool way to change timing digitally and not go to FI.

I will be hopefully posting everything involved in doing the EDIS/Megajolt swap.

The big things that I still gotta design for the EDIS system are the trigger wheel and whatever I am going to use to replace the old distributor because on the Fords (and lots of other old pushrod V8s) the distributor gear also drives the oil pump and I am keeping the wet sump system. If I am getting rid of the distributer I might as well make something that doesn't stick 4 inches out the top front of the engine.

I have a project thread over on the GTS forum
http://forum.grantorinosport.org/billy- ... c5080.html

And my photo album on Google+
https://plus.google.com/photos/11518821 ... 4684432577

More to come

Later...

Post by **brentp** » Fri Jan 04, 2013 2:26 pm

Awesome! can't wait to hear how it runs. Would love to see some before and after dyno comparisons pitting distributor against crank fired on an american V8.

Keep us posted!

Billy C · Post by **Billy C** » Sun Jan 06, 2013 1:26 am

Thanks! would be cool to have a comparison. We'll see when things come together if it would be an easy back and fourth kinda thing..

Honestly if the spark power is equal or better than the distributor setup, then the control and ease of tuning with the MegaJolt setup will make it the winner. In order to dial in the best timing curve on a distributor you gota change springs, counterweights and stops. It's a real pain.

Billy C · Post by **Billy C** » Mon Jan 07, 2013 5:19 am

got the crank wheel modeled in Solidworks. Made a .DWG in Auto CAD first. I modeled a quick pulley in solidworks. Probably not the correct dimensions for the place the belt rides and stiff. The dimensions of the grove that the pulley fit into on the trigger wheel should be right. The pulley I am using is from a mercury something or other and I didn't want to deal with adapting a trigger wheel from that car although it did have one. I am also going to a serpentine belt setup so this will make the pulley and trigger wheel one bolt on piece that will fit on to the harmonic balancer.

Probably going to have the trigger wheel CNCed or cut out with a Water Jet. Then I will put it on the lathe and cut the grove for the pulley to fit in. then I will weld it all together.

Billy C · Post by **Billy C** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 3:54 am

So I have done a few more things since I last updated.. I actually haven't finished the new build yet or gone over too the mega jolt but I am building a new wiring harness right now so that is soon(ish) to come. I figured with all my wild custom designed parts I kinda want to do some "cycle testing" anyways before I slap it all up to a 10k build. I designed a serpentine belt system along with the trigger wheel. Also went to a newer gen alternator... Kinda killed 3 birds with one stone kinda thing. So far it's spins like a top. 5,500rpm easy with the new setup. I was worried about the trigger wheel being slightly off balance. I guess my static balancing in sw and care in setup yielded good results because I had a local machine shop check the balance and they said it was all good. I also machined the water pump pulley out of a round billet of 6061. Not the prettiest thing from this shot but it's light as a feather and gets the job done.

Here is the best pic I got of the setup.

Since then I painted all parts, got new hardware, and redesigned the cooling system.

Billy C · Post by **Billy C** » Sun Sep 07, 2014 5:33 pm

Got most of the wiring in and the crank sensor all setup.

[/img]
at this point I basically have the entire serpentine setup modeled in Solid-works.

The setup turned out great!. The crank wheel has multiple bolt patterns 15* apart. The bracket has 13* of adjustment for the sensor. Since there is a small offset adjustment in the software there is no way to screw it up.

Hopefully within the week I will have the motor running with no distributor.

Billy C · Post by **Billy C** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 3:59 am

So, motor runs... I'm having trouble getting my laptop to stay connected to the MJ. I keep getting a "Runtime timeout" error message. It seems like when I can get it to connect, I can quickly upload my map onto the MJ's firmware and it communicates with EDIS to do the timing. I just ordered a new USB to serial cable. I have two laptops on the ready to test with. One with XP 32bit and one with Win8.1 64bit. I really need to see what's going on smoothly in real time with no issues dropping in and out.

Billy C · Post by **Billy C** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 1:10 am

Got it all up and running nice and smooth. Gota finish some other stuff before I can drive it though.

http://youtu.be/3hu7x7j7iz4

Also want to control the radiator fans with the MJ. When I run a relay in off of one of the out puts it does some strange stuff.

First and most obviously when it gets to the desired temp it just clicks back and fourth a bunch because it is trying to regulate it. I'm probably going to build a couple second delay circuit for it to eliminate the repeated cycling of the relay when at the threshold point. I wish that was feature in the MJ. Something like an "on at this high temp, off at this low temp" thing would be great.

Second is that when supplying the relay coil +12 with a constant and connecting the ground to the MJ user output the MJ constantly stays powered. Maybe I messed some wiring up but I don't think so. Seems like a strange thing to me. I'm going to have to look further into that.[/img]

Alex B · Post by **Alex B** » Wed Sep 17, 2014 3:25 pm

Are you sure that the MJ is completely powered up? The user ouputs become conductive once power to the MJ is switched off. The plus side to the relay must be hooked up to a citcuit that only has current with the key in the engine-on and start position.

Alex

Billy C · Post by **Billy C** » Thu Sep 18, 2014 12:36 am

Alex B wrote:Are you sure that the MJ is completely powered up? The user ouputs become conductive once power to the MJ is switched off. The plus side to the relay must be hooked up to a citcuit that only has current with the key in the engine-on and start position.

Alex

Ah, yes, slowly figured out that was happening. The harness is basically from scratch so a few bugs are to be expected. Had a hell of time chasing down some windshield wiper issues today.

bmcdaniel · Post by **bmcdaniel** » Mon Sep 22, 2014 1:33 am

Good to see another American Ford V8 using Megajolt. You're gonna love it!

Billy C · Post by **Billy C** » Mon Sep 29, 2014 2:14 am

It's incredible so far.

bmcdaniel · Post by **bmcdaniel** » Mon Sep 29, 2014 4:10 pm

Do you get on the SpeedTalk forum? Your screen name sounds familiar.