1971 Mercury Comet Gt

groberts101 submitted a new car to the Garage :

1971 Mercury Comet GT

Read more about this garage here...

 

Well you finally did it, took the plunge and entered the Garage good for you. I/we will be watching and reading as time goes by.

 

Thanks Mike. My car strives to be much like yours for a couple years.

Seems like there is a 10 picture limit for the garage's gallery?.. so I will just have to put most pictures here I guess. Like one big long build discussion thread with random pictures mixed in.

I had already bought some parts planning on using my nascar 3.3" stroke crank on this mule motor but then I chickened out after my buddy/s kept teasing me about being really sorry when the stock block eventually broke and took my fancy crank with it. So, just saved that one for the future aluminum block speciale' and back to ebay I went. Quickly lucked out on an incorrectly listed(underpriced) Scat forged lightweight pendulem undercut internally balanced 3" stroke crank. Freshly turned.. $261 bucks to my doorstep.

Here's that crank after I got carried away with it. If you look closely you can see the hand radiused oil feed holes on the main and rod journals. ALMOST had it turned down to Honda Journal dimension like the other nascar stroker crank but the rods were way too spendy for a mule motor and good sense prevailed this time around. Was still worried about having to add more weight once it was on the balancer(mallory is EXPENSIVE!) so to allow more wiggle room towards the crank being more towards the heavy side for my 484 gram pistons, I profiled the outermost portion of the rod pins and thinned the cheek thickness. Just to nip questions about this in the bud early on.. this material removal doesn't weaken the crank due to being far outside the cranks index thickness, which is the measured overlap thickness between the main and rod journals when looking from the sideview. Shorter stroke cranks have plenty of margin to play with in that regard and hopefully my extra lightening effort pays off so it doesn't end up costing me $800 bucks to balance the thing.

Before and afters...

 

Wow! I dont even give my slot cars that much love. Nice.

 

Block porting, deburring, and oiling mod's....

1/2" main galley with ported radius intersects


1/2" oil filter pad with ported radius intersects


1/2" oil pump pad with ported radius intersects


Rear lifter galley crossover with ported radius intersects


7/16" ported radius oil returns


Main bearing saddle with ported radius intersects


Main bearing saddle with ported radius intersects


Radius entry bearing mod's


Radius entry bearing mod's


Radius entry bearing mod's


Main saddle radius and deburring


Full crankcase


Look closely and you can also see the ported water pump passages. And yes, I'm already fully aware that I have a serious chronic porting problem. I just figure if it's too little, rough, or has a sharp edge.. I can "fix it".


PS. to fully enlarge the main passages to full 1/2" diameter also requires drilling/tapping the sending unit passage shown in the lower right hand corner of the block adjacent to the oil pump pad in that last picture. That passage is the main intersect point for the oil pump feed into the main galley and entire engine. The little Windsor motors have decent oiling but there's also a reason that aftermarket blocks use larger passages. And regardless of the block used, fluids don't like to move around sharp edges. This is just low budget stuff aimed at bridging some of that gap between stock and aftermarket and hopefully keep me from "blowing my junk up". It's little, so I'm gonna have to "spin it a little more".

PSPS. have to excuse the lack of effort on the lifter valley smoothing was done almost 20 years ago when low on grinding supplies. The bulk of the oil shedding effect was already achieved so I left it alone for nostalgia and a little added humility.

 

I am guessing this is the motor where nothing is left "on the table," not even a crumb. You will send the "mouse" motors home without dinner. heheheheheh. Thanks for sharing all the pics!

 

My question - the car came from factory white w/red trim or white/blk trim? I like the third pic w/ full red roof if that is a rendering of final exterior. Plan to have it operational this season? Lot more fun rolling than on jack stands!

 

Engine porn, I could look at it all day

 

Actually this is more like a "mule motor gone wild". All started snowballing out of control when I broke a cast piston trying to drive out the pressed wristpin. New pistons, now needs rebalanced but why put cash into a stock crank with excessive clearances and now I need bearings but why would I recondition 1 out of round factory rod and replace the ARP bolts when the aftermarket is full of better stronger rods that already come with even bigger fresh bolts now I can spin it and will continue on overkilling the topend of the motor as well... and.. and.. and. Oh well, keeps me out of trouble for now. At least until there's 400+ stampeding horses under my right foot. Red racing stripes and loud exhaust usually makes it even tougher to remain inconspicuous too.

Yeah, Everett.. it's a factory red top/red interior GT but only came with black GT stripes/hood. Red stripes/hood was not an option. Supposedly only 36 made this way. Will post up the Marti Report when I have time to search for it. Searching too many computers/hard drives is like sorting through invisible filing cabinets.. hard to see where the heck anything is.

We hope to drive it to the Car Craft Summer Nationals in St. Paul, MN on July 14-16 to run it on the chassis Dyno. We talked about going to the roundup in Dayton but would need another support car for added piece of mind. My wife has absolutely no tolerance left when it comes to breaking down with me in obnoxious looking hotrods. Plus, no AC so she's allergic to it when it's too warm out.

Mike, I feel like a gynecologist.. seems like once you've spent years looking at the same parts and gotten your hands dirty so many times, it's no big deal. Big ones, small ones.. they all start looking the same.

BTW, I have way more jokes than that but I will be good and stay on topic for once in a great while.

 

haha.. typical me. I left off with a gynecologist joke in my last post.

Not much final install progress but I did get a few more parts to keep the mockup process moving along between all the other projects. Nice to finally see some of my hard earned cash stacked and bolted together in prettier un-boxed arrangements too.







Redid a new furnace in my garage too. Pretty proud of myself but don't ever call me to help with HVAC work. Ever.

 

I see a lot of nicely radiused and polished internals, looks like you are going to go with header evac system. Nice to see some progress

 

Yeah Mike.. header evac setup combined with an adjustable pcv valve.

Bill Jenkins did something similar many years ago. Also plan on trying to design the evac tube running dead center between the primary tubes inside the collector that extends deep and falls just short of the merge collectors minimum choke diameter. Essentially placing it near the mimimum choke cone to create more venturi effect around the evac tube. Know a gent who ran that same design in the engine masters challenge and pulled 8" of vacuum in the crankcase up to the 6,500 rpm limit.

Don't exactly know where it'll all fit under this chassis but may end up nixing the x pipe to get a better collector and evac design. Good old balance tubes will have to work well enough, I guess.

Kinda banking on figuring the evac out, even if it takes louder straight thru mufflers to do it, since I have pricy steel gapless rings with medium tension 16lb oil rings sitting on my shelf waiting to be sized per bore.

 

Yeah I tried the header evac but my stab at it was a total failure I know of others that have used it and had great luck, then I thought about an electric vacuum pump and could not get it to pull enough to make it worth it so I just bit the bullet and purchased the GZ Motorsports belt driven pump I had to tone it down a bit as it will pull more than enough at idle and risk pulling oil away from the wrist pins I have an adjustable valve on one valve cover. I really need to put a gauge on it . One issue I have not figured out I changed from reverse manual valve body to a regular valve body with enhanced shifting and it does not like to shift on its own, I figure it is because it never sees a drop in vacuum only increase. The plus side of it is a few more hp