You’ve seen some of my favorite pics from this odyssey. Here’s a shot of my favorite surprise… Ever since I picked out the parts to build my first engine, I’d wanted full roller rockers, but always had to settle on roller tips because to have both roller tip and roller fulcrum was always too expensive. Jason got this engine from T&L and I don’t believe we specified which rocker arms we wanted. So, when we had to swap the old valve covers for the new, I was beyond the valley of elated to discover a tiny little dream of mine had come true without any effort on my part. Notice the immense glee…

Once again, I have no idea what Eddie was doing, but my neighbor, Jay, and I were putting on the valve covers, getting ready to get the show on the road.

Here’s a bonus shot. I don’t know why I was so thrilled with the Dart heads at this point. I mean, it was their fault I had to do all the grinding on the headers.

Although, those heads are probably responsible for a lot of the new power I’m driving. My car gets a lot of attention (well more than it used to, at least) when I pull up to stoplights or cruise through parking lots. It’s not only louder, it’s got the old Ford firing order and sounds meeeeeeeeeeeeeean. One of these days, I’m gonna get Jason into the Viper or the Corvette and see how my dinky 347 measures up. My guess is that there’s still no replacement for displacement, but holy-gas-mileage, Batman, I’m driving one hot little go-cart.

Here’s where I need the most help, so I called in reinforcements. Obviously, Jason was on my team, but between the two of us, not only did we need an engine hoist, it’s always better to have another car guy helping.

And for us, that car guy is Eddie… He’s been Jason’s best friend since junior high and he was the Best Man at our wedding…plus he’s pulled and dropped more engines than both Jason and I combined.

While I’m dinking with the new engine, Eddie’s dinking with the old one. (Notice the Viper doubling as a Mustang hood holder in the background. We’re obviously not the kind of people who get freaky about stuff like that. I’ve known too many guys who actually keep a cloth diaper on their person just to stroke down the car if it gets a speck of dust on it. I will NEVER be that kind of car chick. And you can even watch this blog through the years to see if I end up eating those words. I sincerely doubt it. I’ve yet to eat the fact I swore my car would remain an automatic…and never have a big block…and that I’d never sell it.)

For the following to make sense, you just gotta know Eddie… Okay, so it doesn’t make sense to me either, but still, I think everybody needs to know and have a friend like Eddie.

Jason handed off the camera and got into the fray…I love his shirt. I found it at a thrift store for 99 cents….

“I think. I can.” …And doesn’t he look as happy as I did a few posts ago?!

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I had to get new headers and being the girl that I am… If I gotta grind on a set of headers, I wanna grind on the pretty ones. As you can see…these are the pretty ones and good golly, they were worth all the metal shavings embedded in my skin after this adventure.

This next pic is self-explanatory. It’s from the day after all the grinding when we finally did the swap:

The old engine coming out and the new engine still resting on the stand, waiting to go in.

Pulling an engine out is easy. Putting one back in…well…You’ll see in the next post or two…

The adventure continues…

And good golly, look how happy I am!

So happy, I’m ready to dive in and remove the carburetor… I love working on my car!!!!!

So happy to dive in and even get a little dirty!

This was Jason’s view when I asked him for a 9/16″ socket. (He got to be Toolwench’s tool wench for a little while!) It’s also one of my favorite pics of the entire adventure:

He was marvelling that I fit so easily under the car without having to jack it up.

I really, really, really, really, really love working on my car. Really. I do. Ain’t it obvious yet?

It was nothing but fun… Okay, so there was some hard work involved… and a few broken nails…

In this next pic, there’s a few things to notice. You can’t really tell what I’m doing, but I’m installing the water pump bolts on the new engine. Of note, there’s my hubby’s Corvette. (Well, it’s mine, too. I just don’t drive it as often as he does. Hell, half the time I want to take it for a spin, I discover that he’d already left with it!) Also, notice the box that clearly reads “Hooker”? I had a bit of an oddyssey with those headers.

‘Cause y’know… I’m just a dumb girl. I dunno anything about cars.

According to the catalog, they’d work on my new engine. (I’ve got Dart heads.) But when Jason and I pulled them out of the box, he noticed that they didn’t match up too well. The ports on the heads were wide while the ports of the headers were tall. I ended up taking the headers back and bringing a template of the head ports. The guy behind the counter pulled out three sets and none of them fit right. Some were coated, some were painted, but no matter what I chose, I’d have to do some grinding in order to make them fit.

And…well…the girl in me told me to get the pretty ones. They happened to be Hedmans. You’ll see them later…and me grinding on them.

Look at how dainty and pretty my hands are… I use a special mixture of lotions… called antifreeze, oil, grease and dirt!

And I hadn’t even gotten underneath the car yet!

This was only the first day, but I’d made a lot of progress for only having worked an hour or so.

ot that I’m new to the whole engine swapping experience, but this was the first time I’ve ever taken pictures during the process.

So, without further ado, here’s the “Before” shot of the engine compartment of my 1968 Mustang (which I’ve had for about 13 years and plan to keep forever–maybe even be buried in it!)…

There’s not much to say about it other than when I’m done, it’ll look almost the same–only much faster!!!!

Remember, my car is not a show car. She’s a plain Jane daily driver and therefore, I need not wear a lab coat and sterlize everything. Hell, I can accidentally scratch paint, leave wires out of looms and use bolts that don’t match if I want to.

Of special hinky driver note, yes, there’s a rag plugging one of the holes in the firewall on the right hand side. It’d be plugging both holes, but it has fallen. No, this is not stock and yes I prefer the rag…otherwise, I’d have to get off my lazy ass, measure the holes and hunt down grommets–waaaaay too much work for a driver! I’ll bet there are several car enthusiasts fuming right now. Sorry guys, I’m just a dumb girl. I dunno anything about cars.

This was day one and my hands were still clean:

I dunno why I put the bandana over my hair. It seemed like a good idea at the time even though I had yet to be in a position to need my hair covered. Whatever. I was working on my car, for goodness sake, not going to a gala.

It was my job to get everything off of the engine so that it’d be ready to pull over the weekend. I started easy: Disconnect the battery, the ignition, pull the alternator and set it aside, empty the radiator, pull the heater hoses, pull the radiator hoses…and most importantly, try not to make too much of a mess because I was going to end up crawling around under the car at some point and there are few things worse than automotive fluids to get in your hair…thus perhaps why I put the bandana on my head prematurely.