I'm starting to hate, hate, hate my Mustang.....long rant

[LastDeadLast]

OK.. in the past month, I've come closer to burning my Mustang than ever before.. Just for reference, I'm running a 331 stroker with EFI.. I've never got it running at 100%.. maybe 90%.. but there's always been something that keeps me from being truly relaxed when driving it...

The latest nightmare has been a part throttle miss, which started when I changed the spark plug wires.. so I took the new wires off.. checked them with an ohm meter.. they all checked out... so I re-installed them.. no change. I put the old wires back on.. no change... at this point I pull the codes on the ECU.. no codes.

I started to change the spark plugs.. just to see if that would help and noticed that I had oil dripping from the throttle body... Nice. So, I checked the PCV system.. it all looks good.. other than being drenched in oil. I do some research and find out that maybe I should put a oil separator on the PCV line. I order one and install it. It fills up in a matter of minutes. Great.

So at this point, I'm getting a little worried that my engine building skills suck, just to be sure, I do a cold compression test. It all came back good.

I also read that my particular intake manifold (Holley Systemax) can be particularly vulnerable to letting oil up through the PCV. So just to make sure I have the little splash shield on, I remove the intake manifold.. of course the splash shield is on.. so I modify it a bit to try to keep oil from getting up in there... also.. since I got anti-freeze down the engine.. I had to change the oil.. and since I have a 9qt oil pan thats a nice chunk of change.. not to mention the gaskets... all in all about $200 to get her back on the road.

After a test drive.. the oil consumption is even worse... I'm talking BAD.... like a quart every hour... and it was smoking like crazy...

Now I start to really worry.

So after more research, I decide to make a large oil splash shield out of aluminum... So I fabricated a shield that covered about 3/4 of the bottom of the intake manifold... complete with drains and everything... So I had to change the gaskets again.. along with 9 quarts of oil and antifreeze... another $200 down the drain.

So I just took it out for a ride.. no oil consumption now. bj But I still have the miss.. although it doesn't seem as bad as it was before. I suppose I'm back at square one again with the miss, but at least I'm slightly ahead of where I was before.

Why didn't I just get a carb?? I always have to do things the hard way.

Oh.. and I also changed the dizzy cap.. that didn't help either.

Thanks for letting me vent.

-Shannon

 

[B67FSTB]

Two things comes to my mind when reading this.
First : Don't you have too much oil in the engine.Maybe the crank splashes in the oil when rotating ???
Second : Does your electrical system operates on a voltage > as + 12 volt ??

 

[LastDeadLast]

B67FSTB,

Well... it could be too much oil. It's a 9qt road racing pan that's baffled.. I know this because it takes for-freaking-ever for all the oil to drain out. I did think about the possibility of the quantity of oil being the problem.. But then (in my head), I discounted that theory because the oil pickup is only going to pick up the same amount of oil, no matter how much is in the pan.. and I would think the baffles would keep it from splashing around too much. But I could definitely be wrong about that; Any feedback on that topic would be appreciated; better to fix the problem than mask the symptom.

I'll have to check out the voltage point.. good thought.

I also found an article on how to test the TFI module. I'll look at that too.

Thanks for the ideas!

-Shannnon

 

[Horseplay]

Before installing the pan did you fill it with fluid and see where the level was compared to the baffles? Having oil slosh around is one thing having it rise above the baffles is another. If it is close, acceleration and braking may cause it to rise over and coat the crack and rods. If you have the correct pick-up that extends deep enough you could simply reduce the amount of oil you put in and see how that affects things.

I am curious and not following the bit about the Holley intake being the cause of the oil problem. Can you elaborate on how that happens?

 

[LastDeadLast]

Before installing the pan did you fill it with fluid and see where the level was compared to the baffles? Having oil slosh around is one thing having it rise above the baffles is another. If it is close, acceleration and braking may cause it to rise over and coat the crack and rods. If you have the correct pick-up that extends deep enough you could simply reduce the amount of oil you put in and see how that affects things.

I am curious and not following the bit about the Holley intake being the cause of the oil problem. Can you elaborate on how that happens?

No I did not fill up the pan before assembly, but your idea to fill it up with less oil sounds like a good one... still I wonder how all that oil could get up to the lifter galley through those small holes?.. even if it's splashing around crank. OK I could see how a little more could be splashed up through the oil drains..but then get splashed up into the PCV pickup? I'm just having trouble wrapping my brain around it. But then again, this is my first engine build so to say that I'm anything close to an expert is a joke.

I did check and re-check the pickup before installing the pan. The pickup and pan were both from Canton:

https://www.cantonracingproducts.com/product/15-630/15-630----302-FRONT-SUMP-RR-PAN/

Honestly, the main reason that I installed this particular pan is because with all the 5.0 accessories and intake tubes, I couldn't find an easy way to route the dipstick if it was mounted in the timing chain cover... this particular pan has a built in dip stick mount.. so that alleviated that problem

As far as the Systemax being the root of the problem, I found a number of google searches that spoke of having similar issues after installing the Systemax, some people entirely forgot to install the shield, which I could absolutely see why they would get an excessive amount of blow-by. Others had to create some elaborate PCV systems to fix the problems. I also know that Ford issued a similar "3/4 oil splash shield fix" for the 5.0 Cobra engine..and it's that shield that I patterned my design from.

The new splash shield seemed to work for the time being. I'll be checking periodically to see if it holds up.

Any other feedback is appreciated.

-Shannon

 

[68EFIvert]

Are you running a standard volume pump? I ran a HV pump and ran into over oiling issues with my car.

 

[LastDeadLast]

Are you running a standard volume pump? I ran a HV pump and ran into over oiling issues with my car.

Yes.. I'm running a Melling m68 standard volume/pressure oil pump.

-Shannon