alan91z28

For his 16th birthday almost 2 years ago we gave our son an 87 Formula 350. It was a Florida car so the body is in great shape but with 101K miles on it when we bought it the drivetrain is getting tired.

As you can imagine he has been having a great time during the warm weather months here in PA and enjoys driving it to school etc like any teenager would.

One thing he really wanted to do was to have a manual transmission vs the standard 700R4 and with the original 350 running well but having the typically smoking on start up etc, I told him we would do a drivetrain upgrade as our winter project.

While this thread won't break any new ground, it will be fun for us and also provide good documentation on this type of swap

alan91z28

When he first got the formula on his 16th birthday in June of 2014 the 9 bolt rear end was giving signs of wanting to fail... it had some pretty good screeching occasionally going around sharp turns and you could hear the axle bearings whining as well.

Knowing that we were at some point going to upgrade the drivetrain, we decided that summer to upgrade the rear end.

The rear end we went with was one of Hawk's new at the time 8.8 Ford with Baer PBR type rear disc brakes.

This rear end has been great and we will of course be retaining this, however at the time we chose to keep the existing rear axle ratio the same as the original 3.23 so at some point in this thread we will be upgrading it to 3.73

alan91z28

With winter on the way in PA, we put the formula on our 4 post lift in our work garage the week before Christmas.

During the week between Christmas and New Year's we got at it with disassembly.

We have a pretty good garage and tool set so this went pretty smooth

One tool I will call out is for this tear down and build I upgraded my front coil compressor tool to the OTC - 7045B type. While it is a little expensive it works great and is much, much safer than the hook type. This tool utilizes full plates that can not slip and made getting the springs out a snap even without the engine in the car

alan91z28

Once we got the disassembly pretty much done, the next weekend was all about cleaning the underside

While his car is very clean and body in great shape, since we had it all apart, we decided we would paint the underside.

First thing was to get it really clean. For this we used our Hotsy hot water pressure washer with some Ripper 1 cleaner and after that it looked pretty much like the day it shipped from the factory.

That was about all we were able to do last weekend as we needed it to completely dry before painting

alan91z28

So this weekend which was a 3 day one for us we focused on getting the underfloor painting done from the firewall back.

For our painting we went with Eastwood products. This included their Pre formula for one last final clean wipe and then their Chassis Black Primer and Paint.

We put two separate coats of primer on with 24 hr between each coat. Then after 24 hrs we today put on two coats of their Chassis Black Satin top coat.

It went on really well with our gun and is now left to dry

This stuff is quite fuming when you spray it so like anything else make sure to where a respirator!

alan91z28

Also today after getting the painting done, we worked on the modification to the torque arm axle mount.

We are going to be using a Spohn torque arm and T-56 conversion tranny mount.

The supplied bracket on the torque arm will not fit as - is to the 8.8 rear end. A slight adjustment cutting off the one back hole on the bracket is necessary as shown in the photo

A little chassis black rattle can and it should be good to go when we begin re-assembly of the rear components

five7kid

iTrader: (14)

Would you consider adopting me???

I've used 3 different aftermarket torque arms, and every one of them needed to be modified to fit on the rear axle mount. Not sure what's up with that.

alan91z28

well i don't know if we could spend enough quality time together with you being in Colorado and me in PA

Yes torque arms are an interesting bunch. I think the key issue is that the rear end cases just have so much variation between types and even within types depending on who makes them.

I have to say as long as the mount comes with the holes available to use i don't mind cutting them to fit. This one only took me about 15 minutes as i have done enough of them i just make a template against the differential case with paper and then make the cut

NowhereFast

3.23 in a t56 car is gonna be painful to drive. Even the 3.42s in my car are too high a gear, sixth is pretty much useless.

MoJoe

iTrader: (5)

You would be absolutely correct for the 3.08 1st gear in a 700r4 auto. But, the story changes on which T56/what gearset you have...
93 V6 = 3.36, 2.07, 1.35, 1.00, .80, .62
93 V8 = 2.97, 2.07, 1.43, 1.00, .80, .62
94-97 = 2.66, 1.78, 1.30, 1.00, .74, .50

A 3.73-4.11 rear gear is suitable for the 94-97 (2.66 1st) and produces a 10:1 or 11:1 first+rear ratio. Meanwhile the 93 model equivalent would use either a 3.34-3.68 (2.97 1st) or 2.95-3.25 (3.36 1st).

For reference, a T5 had a 2.95 1st gear, and that does well with 3.23s or 3.42s for the "performance" option... just like the 93 V8 gear ratios (2.97). The shorter 2.66 1st gear needs more rear gear, as does the 0.5 overdrive.

alan91z28

thanks guys for the thoughts on the gear ratios... we will be doing the swap to the 3.73

over the past couple weeks we made some good progress

a couple of weeks ago we got the back end all put back together with it all now repainted.

we installed a new fuel tank, walboro 255 pump, fuel sender assembly, etc... the gm lock ring tool makes installation easy. the fuel tank went up without much issue, we did do a little light rubber mallet work on the seams to seat them

after installing the tank we re-installed his hawks 8.8 rear end, we will do the gear swap later

we installed new springs from eibach pro-kit, and the drag bags are air lift #60774 kit, kyb agx 743019 adjustable shocks. for the panhard body brace we installed a tubular one from sw racing, this allows better clearance for the 8.8 to avoid scuffing the back cover against the gm stamped brace

alan91z28

this weekend we focused on the tunnel cut-out for the stick shift, clutch master cylinder cut-out, and pedal install

after removing all the seats and center console we got to work cutting the center hole. from prior experience I cut the tunnel using the two large dimples in the tunnel hump as the locator. drawing a line across the bottom of the dimples the dimension for the cut-out I use is a rectangular cut-out that is 160mm front to back and 100mm side to side with the passenger side dimple right edge as a side to side indicator, I go 20mm to the right from that edge... UPDATE - To accommodate other shifters that have an overhang on the passenger side i now make the cut-out 120mm vs 100mm side to side with the offset of 35mm vs 20mm to the passenger side dimple's right edge, still 160mm front to back

for the master cylinder / pedal install we decided to just take out the steering column... this is actually quite quick to do and gives you then easy access to do a good job. from prior experience I have a doubler plate for the firewall master cylinder made up that locates on the stud previously utilized for the auto shifter to column cable and also the hole for the cruise control cable.

installing this against the firewall and bolting it down allows accurate and easy drilling of the 2 7/16" mounting holes and a 1 3/4" hole for the cylinder rod assembly along with a nice and stiff firewall.

after drilling that out the new pedal assembly went right in with the following modifications... open up the top driver side hole on the pedal with a 7/16 drill and I also make my own top mounting tab as the supplied 4th gen one does not work. I make my tab out of a 2X2 3/16 angle

alan91z28

over the past several weeks my son and I have been very busy on his project

one of the things we got started on was the new engine

we got a crate engine from Pace Performance. the engine is a ZZ5 and so we needed to begin to get it ready for TPI treatment

for the intake we are using a SDPC vortec TPI intake #3816.

alan91z28

in addition to the engine work we also have been busy on the front suspension.

I bought a new plate style coil compressor and it works very well and is much safer than the "hook" type I use to use

for the front end we used new "LS1" type brake set-up from big brake along with new eibach front springs and adjustable kyb shocks.

the steering linkage we used is all brand new from spohn and is a very nice kit

for k-member, a-arm, and upper strut mounts we used all UMI pieces which I have used before and like a lot

1MeanZ

iTrader: (9)

Sounds like you are going to keep the TPI, what are you guys planning to do for a tune?

alan91z28

yes we are sticking with the tpi... for the ECM we are converting to EBL and will tune it ourselves. that is what I did with my 1988 Camaro rebuild I posted on last year

the EBL is great and eliminates the troublesome MAF (which actually is great in concept, just not great in the form factor and output, and scaling limitations of the TPI computers)

we should be able to start with the tune I developed last year for the my '88 as it is basically the same spec

if you haven't tried the EBL I would consider it

I like tuning and burning proms is not too bad, but the whole data communication on the '165 ecm is too frustrating for me anymore so I pretty much am an EBL believer!

thanks

alan91z28

last weekend we finished getting the engine prepped and ready for install. the Chevrolet Performance front end accessory kit is great... it is basically the 1988 up 3rd gen serpentine belt set-up. as we need to keep emissions we used our smog pump in place of their pulley delete, but other than that it is pretty much complete right out of the box

a couple of details on the tpi set-up

- Fuel Injectors are the Bosch III type 32 lb/hr from Southbay... Did not install any additional O-rings on the type that they sent this time (on my '88 I installed a 2nd o-ring on the bottom of the injector)
- Fuel pressure regulator is Holley Adjustable FPR 512-501... it has a nice big adjustment ****
- For Intake hardware we used the ARP 134-2002 vortec kit, gasket kit Fel Pro 1255... note on the back passenger 2 bolts we used 5/16"-18/24 studs (Trick Flow TFS70000100-71) so we could mount a new coil bracket we made up. Used 5/16-24 nuts to secure our bracket to the studs
- For TPI component mounting we used ARP 134-2104 kit and gasket kit Fel Pro MS93160
- We deleted the IAC coolant loop using the IAC plate from TPIS IAC001

install went pretty smooth, although I should have removed the windshield wiper motor cover prior to installing as we cracked it dropping the motor in so that will need to be replaced. other than that it went really smooth

- For engine mounts we used GM 22188497
- Engine mount to engine hardware is 7/16-14 5" grade 8 and corresponding washer and nut, we used armor coat bolts from McMaster
- Engine lift eyes were GM 12363238 mounted with ARP 3/8-16 hardware 654-0750

alan91z28

for the clutch set up we went with Spec

The Spec 4th gen 94-97 LT1 clutch / flywheel setup we are using is SC423F and SC85S

For flywheel bolts we used the ARP 330-2801 kit

Pilot Bearing GM 14061685

The bell housing is a stock 4th gen LT1. To attach to our SBC we used ARP kit 129-0901 which are 3/8-16 1 3/8 flange head bolts

1MeanZ

iTrader: (9)

You've given me some good food for thought. Especially on the 2 383s I have that appear to be maxing out MAFs at 3600rpm. Yes you can scale around it, but I'd like to get that out of the intake duct completely....

SRKLEGIN

Where did you source the rear end?

alan91z28

Bruce Hawkins, Hawks Thirdgen, see link

http://www.hawksthirdgenparts.com/ha...-end-assembly/

alan91z28

over the last several weeks, especially during the Easter break we made some real good progress...

one of the key items was swapping out the rear end gear ratio to the new 3.73 ratio.

first thing was to get the rear end all apart including getting the panhard bar out of the way, disc brakes off the car so the axles can come out, etc

on the hawks 8.8 the axles are held in ford 9" style, ie disc brake end caps hold in the big 3.150 bearing vs center c-clips

alan91z28

one of the critical measurements in setting up a rear end is pinion depth measurement which is the measurement from the end of the pinion face to the centerline of the differential (ie center of the diff bearings)

this measurement will help establish a pinion end spacer shim which needs to be set as the pinion is installed so getting a good measurement helps avoid some of the repeated in and out of all the components to get the set-up right

to get this measurement you really need a good reference tool. we initially tried the ratech tool that is relatively cheap and references from the end of the pinion to the differential bearing machine point with a calibrated gauge.

we did not find this tool to give confidence as it could wobble and seem to skew the measurement on an item where thousands of an inches are important

TTOP350

iTrader: (8)

I like to use ford motorsport gears in the 8.8, set up many of them through the yrs.
They seem to be the easiest to set up and are very quiet. Haven't noticed but do you have a balanced aluminum Driveshaft?

alan91z28

to get a good confident measurement and since I like to have tools that work well that will last I did end up getting a real good depth tool

the one I got was from Randy's Ring and Pinion TLSD02... this will work on many rear ends and is very will made and allows very repeatable measurements as it gauges right from the centerline

with this tool we were able to confidently determine the shim needed (in our case 0.026 vs 0.030 in the base set-up, which probably would have been fine to re-use but I like to know what is going on)


one thing to note is that there are two different inner pinion bearing types used on ford 8.8. our ford racing set-up kit had the "wrong" one, ie it needed a shim that we did not have, while the ratech set-up kit that I bought had the right one. just pay attention to the parts!

alan91z28

we ended up then install the ring gear on our press also using the prescribed Loctite between the ring gear and differential

in the end we achieved good backlash at 0.010 right in the middle of the target and a good pattern

put everything back together, including adding inner axle seals (moser msr7S151 or SKF15142) vs just counting on the ball bearing seal (note this needs to be the thin seal style as the wider national seal can cause the wedding ring to bottom on it)

added 2.5 quarts of Lucas 80-90W SAE gear oil and should be good to go... no friction modifiers as this has a Detroit Tru Trac in it

alan91z28

yes we used a Ford Motorsport set. In the end we probably could of just swapped the 0.030 shim that was on the original Ford Motorsport 3.27 pinion and be done as they are pretty consistent but I like to measure things

On the driveshaft we haven't installed it yet but yes we are using a 3" aluminum from the driveshaft shop

thanks

TTOP350

iTrader: (8)

Looks great, very well done!
Looking at the pattern, the .030 would have worked and moved the pattern to the center veeery slightly.

LiquidBlue

Wow Alan. Your a great Dad! Hope my kids don't see your post. You're making me look bad!

snakeshooter

I'm so jealous!! This is going to be an awesome ride! Everything is top notch!!!

86CamaroDan

Loving this thread! Lots of goodies and attention to detail!

alan91z28

thanks guys for all the nice comments. this has been a great project for my son and myself. kids grow up so fast before you know it they are through high school and then life changes fast. my son will graduate from high school this june so I have really tried to make every weekend count this past winter with him

so here are some updates... with the transmission in, you can see the hawks short through shifter fits great through the hole we cut with the dimensions given earlier

for the console mounting plate we went with hawks new production piece. they make a 6 speed emblem to get that in you need to cut from the bottom and then the 5 speed emblem drops out, put the six speed one in, re-glue the lens plate and you are good to go

for the window and mirror switches cut out markings are on the back. I drilled a hole in the center of each and then used an air body saw to cut most of it out and then used a hand file for final fit

alan91z28

over the past couple weeks we made good progress finishing everything up, I will post up some more details in later posts on what we did, but here is the finished engine bay and a shot of our first start

while we did not need it (and of course you never think you will!) a good electrical grade fire extinguisher is always something good to have handy

we made sure we had the water pretty full, initial power steering fluid, etc

it fired right up on the first crank last Saturday and we quickly had the base advance set to 6 degrees... a good start!

alan91z28

But, we did have some issues that quickly surfaced that kept us busy over the last week...

1. We were getting a squealing sound from the clutch area with the clutch depressed...
This turned out to be the T-56 fork was crashing into the pressure plate, more details in next post


2. We would get some no cranks after the engine was warm...
This turned out to be not appropriate shimming on the starter... we are using an LT1 starter and for some reason I had it in my head with that starter I shouldn't need a shim, obviously that is wrong. After proper shimming and getting ~.023 gap between flywheel tooth to starter gear root no trouble

3. The idle was high ~1400 rpm
This turned out to be a vacuum leak. I saw the computer (EBL) was command zero IAC and we could hear a sucking sound so knew we had a pretty good leak... long story short I mixed ~91 plenum with '87 runners and the driver side plenum doesn't have the material where the air inlet is for the cold start (which we deleted due to using EBL). dropping back in the '87 plenum quickly corrected this. I was originally using a ~91 plenum for a nice way of mapping the EBL MAP sensor

alan91z28

So we needed to take care of the clutch to fork pressure plate issue

After doing some searching I found this problem occurs more commonly than I would have thought

After pulling the transmission back out we quickly found where all the aluminum shavings were coming from with a good rub on the Spec pressure plate with clear markings on the fork

In addition to doing some searching for issue/solution I also called Bruce (Hawks) and got his advice as well.

To resolve I ended up notching the fork for better clearance. I made a 3/16" notch 1" long in the fork with good radius edges.

In addition to the fork notch I also re-adjusted the master cylinder pedal for a little less throw.

I debated shortening the "t" that holds the fork to the transmission but decided against that as I didn't want to change the fork arc and pressure curve

alan91z28

We needed to get the tranny re-installed and I also wanted to double check the clearance once mounted up

While the Spec pressure plate could have been cleaned back up I didn't want to take any chances in my son's car so we took a quick road trip to Summit last Sunday after church and picked up a new Ram HD clutch set and installed that

To allow us to double check our work mounted up in the car, we made some temporary spacers at the same height as the slave mounting cover and mounted the slave up

While the pic doesn't show well, we then took an inspection camera borescope and stuck that up in the housing as my son actuated the pedal

this confirmed all was good and should not have any more rubbing

alan91z28

So results are encouraging... my son had off school yesterday so I took off work and we got everything back together and took for a first drive and everything felt good

Today we ran around quite a bit (~75 miles) and while we aren't laying into it as we are giving everything a chance to break in it feels good and strong as my son drives and I monitor the EBL ECM with the laptop with everything looking good

We have a slight water leak (seep?) on the front... at first I thought it might be the water pump bolts as it is leaking down the timing cover edge, I think it might actually be the water temp sensor or somewhere in that area... it isn't bad but we will track it down

More details on the build to follow, but bottom line is we had some pretty good excitement over the past week!

alan91z28

over the past two weeks we have pretty much gotten his Formula in good shape and running well

the water weep / seep turned out to be a couple of items... first off no issue with the water pump area, it actually was coming from two different areas and would usually only do so with it fully warmed up and usually at more than idle speed

- a casting porosity seep from the front face of the intake manifold near the coolant temp sensor / heater nipple area. for a while we were thinking it was leaking around the threads but after we watched it we could actually see coolant very slowly seeping through the casting ever so slightly and would eventually form enough to cause water dripping onto the timing cover and down... after some careful consideration this we fully solved with a treatment of the GM Coolant Sealant Tablets

- we had a second occasional leak around the intake seal to head. we rechecked the manifold bolt torque (which is a very low 11 ft-lbs on the vortec manifold) and the bolts were all able to tighten up more with the torque wrench back on it at 11 ft-lbs... the 1255 gasket must have taken some amount of set... next time we are going to use the MS98000T gasket

anyways it took a good week to really track this down but with those two actions we have been completely dry.

the GM Coolant Sealant Tablets need to be used only it the prescribed amount, but I have to say it seems like the really did an effective job. within the first 20 minute idle then 20 minute drive the casting sealed right up

coolant issues with the SBC intakes are definitely one of the issues that the LS motors have really made improvements too, but old school is fun too!

alan91z28

here are a couple pictures of the underside of his Formula showing the exhaust...

the exhaust we used was the Magnaflow Direct Fit Dual Cat Stainless Steel #23479 and then Stainless Works cat back #829239

This set-up mated up to the stock manifolds. In the future we might do something different, but I wanted to go stainless and with all the other changes we were making wanted to make sure we got it back on the road this spring so we kept it pretty stock like

No real issues with this set up other than the Magnaflow set-up is a little strange at the manifold interface
- passenger side does not seem to use the manifold spacer piece
- for sealing they supply "donut" gaskets, there part number 101135... I used this on the drivers side, but on the passenger side we actually used a walker 31391 donut and also a 31307 flat gasket as this side is going against a flat surface since the manifold spacer is removed

we also used stainless lap band clamps to connect the two systems and made an exhaust hanger that bolted to a bolt on the tranny frame bracket and then through a strap to the Magnaflow cat bracket

also on the passenger side we added an O2 bung for a wide band that goes to an Innovate MTX-L AFR gauge we mounted under the dash that also feeds into the EBL ECM we are running

alan91z28

Of course with the LT1 T-56 we needed to make provisions to correct the speed signal to be compatible with the speedo and ECM

For this we utilized the Dakota Digital SGI-5E interface box

The "E" version is a lot simpler to pre-tune than previous generations

This box worked really well after we figured out a couple of things mainly being the AC signal to and from the Dakota box is prone to pick up noise

So to make this a non issue this is what we choose to do

- For the speed signal coming from the T-56 we used twisted shielded wire and ran it up through the tunnel hole where the auto cable use to go down and had a good shield ground (one end only)... this provided the shortest run of the cable and good shielding

- We originally where just going to have the Dakota box translate the AC speed sensor signal into a compatible AC signal to go into the yellow buffer box. However based on the potential for noise we went a better route and just eliminated the buffer box and direct drove the speedo and ECM speed signal from the Dakota box this also simplified the wiring

Wiring ended up as the following on the Dakota
1. GND input - Connected BLK/WHT from original buffer box and also the Speed Sensor output ground YELLOW from the twisted shielded pair running from the speed sensor
2. PWR input - Connected the PNK/BLK ignition source from the original buffer box
3. Signal input - Connected the Speed Sensor output signal PURPLE from the twisted shielded pair running from the speed sensor
4. Out 4 - Connected to the Speedo drive signal GRN/BLK from the original buffer box wiring to produce a 4000OC and drive the speedo
5. Out 5 - Connected to the ECM drive signal BRN from the original buffer box wiring to produce a 2000OC and drive the speed signal for the ECM

The twisted shielded shield I grounded on the Dakota side to the dash support


This completely replaced the yellow buffer box and was very easy to wire up as all the wires were right there from the buffer box wiring other than the twisted shield pair I ran from the T-56 speed sensor... This has worked very well with no issues

Now for calibration... We figured out the calibration ahead of time and were very close on the first trip... This is what we did

- The original system is looking for 4000 pulses per mile for the speedo drive and 2000 pulses for mile for the ECM... the old 700R4 and T-5 set-ups produce this right at the tranny tail shaft sensor

- The new T-56 has a 17 pulse per drive shaft revolution signal

- So to figure out what scaling we need we can use a little math

- 26.0" tire diameter * 3.14 = 81.64" circumference

- 5280 * 12 / 81.64 = 776 tire revolutions per mile

- 3.73 gear ratio * 776 = 2894.8 drive shaft revolutions per mile

- 17 * 2894.8 = 49211.9 t-56 speed sensor pulses per mile... So we need some scaling... Hence the reason for the Dakota Box

- Set the Dakota box Output Mode to H-L, this automatically scales Out 4 (our 4000 pulses per mile OC) to 1/32 of the input and Out 5 (our intended 2000 pulses per mile OC) to 1/64 of the input

- So from there we can true up our final calibration by taking 49211.9 / 32 = 1537.9 pulses / mile would be what is coming out of Out 4... we need 4000 so we go 4000 / 1537.9 = 2.6... 2.6 is what we set our calibration to

This resulted in a speed signal that was very close... in the end after driving and observing with a GPS we actually adjusted it to 2.52