RandyA's Official 86 Saleen #120 build thread!

[RichV]

Just go with a 460.

How about a 4.6, 32V?? Hmmm, Go with the stroker setup your bro offered. I'd do a 331 if you have a choice. Bummer about the motor. I knew I saw a few pufs of smoke out the tailpipes THE LIMITED TIME I WAS BEHIND THE PUMPKIN. :d

[MHISSTC]

All I know is what I saw.

[RichV]

The inverted start, I remember that.

[RandyA]

Here's a few pics of the limited amount of progress made.

I've been cleaning up misc. engine parts and getting them ready to go back together. that was the plan until I discovered that the engine really needs to be gone through to make me feel better. I pulled one of the main caps and here's what I found:



Looking at one of the piston skirts gave me a little concern as well. You can"t really see it from the pics but there's some pretty good scratches on the skirt as well as in the cylinder walls:


The good news is that I did manage to get some stuff looking pretty good. I went from this:


to this:


Yeah, there's two intake's there. A stock 86er as well as an 87-93 style which should flow a little better than the 86. It was a bear scraping, sanding, and wire brushing the multiple layers of paint, grease, and grime but I think it turned out pretty decent. I really really wanted to have Lee go to town on this stuff but I'm on a shoestring budget for now!

Next up is to plan the best approach for the engine. I'm open to suggestions! At this point I'm not sure if it would be better to have someone do the block, heads, and crank for me and assemble it myself or if I'd be better off just having someone do the whole thing. Let me know what you guys think. Also let me know recommendations for a good machine shop!


more to come........

[klondike93]

I'd check out craigslist and see if there's a running 5.0 and do that, then take my time and rebuild that one.

[Evilgt]

You can get a rebuilt short block from 5.0resto for 600.

kyle

[RichV]

$699 + $135 truck freight. Still not too bad. No cam or timing gears tho. Not forged either.

[2Tone93GT]

If my stock bottom end wasn't already spoken for I'd hook ya up Randy.

[2Tone93GT]

http://denver.craigslist.org/pts/1172333703.html

[RandyA]

Ran into a snag on 120 this morning that really makes me re-think the teardown and build of this car. As a few of you know, this car was damaged in the l/f shock tower at some point in its life. It was repaired and the car has since been driven quite a bit with no issues (to include open track racing). Well, I started tearing down the engine bay to clean it up and paint it and realized what a $#itty job was done in the repair. Man I hate shoddy craftsmanship! The firewall is bent back a little and has not been straightened, the shock tower was not welded in cleanly, and the l/f strut sits just enough higher than the r/h side that it is making contact with the hood when it should clear. I feel now I MUST take this thing and have it checked on a frame machine and then I can rip it completely down to start over. I also noticed after I fixed the seat back issues that the floor pan on the d/s appears to have pushed upward a bit as if something was ran over.

I'm not concerned with the repair work as it really isn't significant to take care of it properly but now I'm again faced with thinking that I have no choice but to gut the car and simply do it right from the beginning!

L/F shock tower repair. Note the crappy welding job that wasn't even cleaned up:


This is hard to see in the pic but the master cylinder (and the booster) angles toward the shock tower rather than straight forward bacause the firewall is bent in slightly:



Contact point between the Koni and the hood:



Another angle where you can see the crappy shock tower repair:



There's no doubt in my mind that this car is repairable or that it is worth fixing properly so it will be done right. The kicker is that this most likely means It'll not be on the road this year. I'm on an extremely limited budget (time and $$) so it's gonna take a while!

I guess the next thing is to start stripping her down. Any pointers from you guys that have been through this before? Anyone know a good body/frame guy that's reasonable? I know I could just throw this thing back together and drive it but I want things done properly!

Randy