I would really to be able to drift this car, so in preparation for that I installed new shims in the center diff.
I got some new rotors for the front brakes as well. I could find only rotor with the correct outer dimensions that used the same rotor hat bolt pattern and unfortunately the rotors were quite a bit thicker than the old rotors, 1.25″ vs ~.9″. The additional thermal mass will be nice, but the dynalite calipers I’m using are quite narrow and already required a good deal of material to be removed from the brake pads before they would fit. With the new thicker rotors, I had to remove about 30% of the total pad material to fit them. When you consider that the pads costs $120 new, that’s almost $36 straight down the drain…
Anyways, the new rotors were only available in plain. I wanted some sort of slotting – if for nothing other then aesthetes. Getting plain rotors gave me some creative freedom to slot the rotors however I wanted. It took me a while to decide, but in the end I decided on copying Brembo’s ‘type III’ slotting.
It looks like the slots on the bottom of the rotor extend beyond the edge of the disc, but that’s just an optical illusion.
Not wanting to spend $200 on JHM’s shifter upgrade, I purchased a Heim and some misalignment bushings. I opted for a PTFE lined Heim that shouldn’t ever need maintenance. The misalignment bushings guarantee that the bushing will sit far enough away from the linkage to not bind. I turned an interior sleeve for the misaligment bushings to snugly fit a M8 bolt. The total cost was $58 shipped. For those wanting to do the same, the part numbers are: QA1-AIB10T & QA1-SG10-84.
I got a ‘lite’ single mass flywheel from TTV for the B7 RS4 clutch. Considering the LUK 02050 B7 RS4 clutch kit is only $175, the whole clutch setup was quite cheap. Hopefully it holds up to the power I’ll be making.
When I first tried to fit the PP to the flywheel it looked like the dowel pins on the flywheel had been incorrectly placed. It turns out that the holes on the PP were punch and were at a bit of angle. I used some longer than stock bolts to pull the PP down evenly, and the dowels self clearanced.
I spent almost 3 days rehabbing a decent condition harness I found at a junkyard – way too much time considering how well it came out in the end. In the original harness, almost every wire had cracks, or chunks of missing insulation. The wires in the new harness were in much better condition, but the loom was quite hard and brittle, so the majority of it I replaced. I integrated the new 4 wire ignition coil connectors and broke out pin #4 to ground to the valve covers.
I’m using 0 280 158 298 (Ford DR3Z-9F593-A) injectors, which have an angled spray pattern (Bosch calls it the gamma angle) of 11º. This is perfect for the 2.7t engine as the intake runners are angled (13º I think). To make the injector spray angle align with the intake runners, the electrical connector needs to orientated 90º from the factory position. Unfortunately, you can’t get the injectors into this position with an EV1 -> EV6 adapter, and a lot of EV6 plugs are too tall. I integrated lower profile connectors into my harness. Why go through all this work? Injectors spraying onto the wall of the intake manifold will lead to a build up of fuel on the intake runner, which will combust at a slower rate, and in an erratic manner, as compared to fuel that hits the intake valves. Dealing with this is a huge pain, and usually results in a rough feeling motor at times.
