Resources that go far beyond the average toolbox.Īm I happy with the results? Absolutely. Seriously, this took a tremendous effort, and couldn't have been done without my friends, former shop & storage space, a MIG welder, a cherry-picker, metal-cutting bandsaws, grinders, cutoff wheels, air tools, spring compressors, etc. I've got a LOT more information regarding restoring this car, and hundreds of pictures of the process, but since this os an engine forum, I tried to stick to the engine installation only. All that was left was to cut, fabricate an aluminum plate, weld, file & paint. This would tell me how much of the valve cover I could safely cut away. I then pressed the cover down upon the rocker arm assembly. I used a piece of foam to fill the upper volume of the valve cover. Every quarter-inch counts in this project!Įxcept for the Valve Cover hitting the Brake Booster. Once I test-fit the motor yet again, I'll be able to see how much room the control arm needs, and weld in some thin sheet metal stock to cover the window. So my thoughts were to cut a window in the flat stock in order to accommodate the control arm. Removing the curved sheet metal and replacing it with flat stock has yielded me a bit of space between the headers and the shock tower, at the expense of losing any breathing room between the control arm and the shock tower. Cutting away the offending area in the shock tower reveals the back side of the upper control arm. I needed to create some room in an area where there is no room to be given. If you scroll back up and reference my second photo, you can see the header tube impinging upon the area in question. The hard part was, and still is, the flat stock added to the shock tower to the rear of the upper control arm mount. The easy bit was the round notch in the rectangular "frame rail". Now there's plenty of clearance for the headers, but I'm not done yet. Also note the welded walls to add strength.īoth sides done. Here's a detail of the welded "floor" I inserted to fill the gap. Let's say that I'm glad to have lived through it!Īs long as I'm here, I may as well paint & lube. Little did I know how difficult, not to mention DANGEROUS, this is. So I decided, with much help from the forum (thank you all), to do this:įirst off, pull the suspension to make life easier. I'd like to point out that much of this is a repost, but, for others who have not seen the original post, here we go. Let's get crazy! Edelbrock this, Comp that, Mallory the other thing. Through a favor from a friend, I was the proud recipient of my 428. At the time, I thought it might be "fun" to restore my 'bird, and beef it up a bit engine-wise while I was at it. Long story short, out goes the 390 from my '65, and into the '58 it goes. That, and the failure of the 352 in my girlfriend's 1958 T-Bird. I'd love for those folks to share their stories as well, but, for now, i tell my tale. This has been my experience, and I'm sure others that chose to do this have come to entirely different solutions. Individual results may vary, due to subtle changes due to the year of manufacture of the model, or due to the condition of the vehicle. What I hope to do is give everyone a (sort of) definitive go-to guide as to the steps of installing FPA headers into your Flairbird. Well, through much difficulty, time & money, i'm proud to say that I've done it, with LOTS of help.įor the benefit (or detriment) to anyone out there who is interested in going down this path, I would like to share my experience along the way. I've been reading several T-Bird forums for some time, and one thing that always comes up is installing headers (usually those made by FPA) into a Flairbird.
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