For just about all of us Winter is here in full force and that means the streets are wet and the tracks are closed. However, hopefully, somewhere in a warm garage is your project car getting warmed over for a new year. This is certainly the case for our Project '67 Mustang. We're not hibernating this winter. Nope. In fact you can bet we've already snuck away from a neighborhood Christmas party or two, spiked eggnog in hand, to turn some frigid wrenches.

We have some big plans for our flagship project car in 2006, and we've already gotten a jump-start on them over the winter holidays. We want to make the car an all around performer, while still maintaining the 500+ small-block horsepower we achieved this year with the supercharger. We still felt however that the car was a bit crude, lending itself to nothing more than short cruises or dragstrip duty. The combination of carburetor, high-compression and a blower was just too raucous and unpredictable. The low-hanging headers, drum brake rear end and drag oriented suspension made it too clumsy on the street. All that is going to change. What we want now is a street machine. A car that is a blast to drive any day of the week for any distance. It must have superb tunability and driveability. It must brake and handle as well as a new vehicle. And of course it must be even faster and stronger than before. That's our New Year's Resolution, and we're going to achieve this with the vehicle equivalent of an extreme make over. Here's a preview.

Extreme Makeover - Step 1
A few month back we analyzed Dart Engineering's new Pro-1 210cc CNC ported cylinder heads (see "Bulls Eye".) The heads were impressive right out of the box, flowing 292cfm intake and 214cfm exhaust at .600" lift. More important was the stellar mid-lift flow numbers; 210cfm at .300" for instance. We immediately knew this head would be a great upgrade for supercharged 331 motor in our Project '67. Many of you will recall our efforts to tune the blow-thru carburetor and Vortech S-trim combo (see "High on Carbs"). While we were able to pump out over 516 horsepower at the wheels with under 6 psi of boost, the air-fuel ratio was so lean it made the Olsen twins look fat.

We knew from the moment we embarked on supercharger idea that we were on borrowed time with the motor due to the 58cc World Windsor heads and resultant 10.3:1 compression ratio. This sort of cylinder pressure, even with a measly 6 psi and 110 leaded fuel, is just simply boost unfriendly. So this is where the 60cc Dart Pro-1 heads and a set of .060" Cometic head gaskets come in. We'll end up with a resultant 9.4:1 compression ratio and a much stronger gasket than the OEM replacement Fel-Pro we were running.

Here's the first part of the extreme makeover. Dart Pro-1 210cc heads and Cometic head gaskets.	We cleaned up the sharp edges around the spark plug hole to avoid hot spots which may lead to detonation.
After a thorough cleaning of the block surface and head-bolt holes, the Cometic gaskets are placed down. The open water passages in the gasket go at the end of the block.	The Dart heads are placed on the block.
If you've ever been tempted to reuse head-bolts, here is a reason to just chuck 'em and spend $50 on a new set. The lower bolts sit in coolant passages and will corrode over time, especially if you run mostly water like we do.	The intake ports on the Dart head are cut to the bigger Fel Pro intake gasket (PN: 1262.) The Cometic head gaskets do not have tabs for the intake gasket to lock into therefore we used gasket adhesive to hold the gasket to the head.
We're using Crane's QuickLift shaft rocker arms. The rockers offer incredible strength via the shaft design, but also claim power increases as a result of the innovative geometry of the arm (See "Rock Steady.") We'll put these to the test on a dyno once the motor is running. Since there is no stud, adjustment of valve lash or preload is made by turning the pushrod cup. The cup can only be turned up to 2 turns off the seat, otherwise the oil hole alignment will be off. Therefore determining exact pushrod length is critical.	As with any rocker arm it is critical to obtain proper roller-tip to valve stem alignment. The roller wheel should be slightly inboard of the valve stem centerline when the valve is closed. The roller tip should travel slightly outboard at mid-lift and back towards center at full lift. On a shaft rocker this geometry is affected by multiple variables on the cylinder head, including stud mounting hole centerline to valve stem centerline, valve stem length, and pushrod length. Fortunately Crane has engineered a variety of kits specifically for the types of aftermarket small block Ford heads available. You'll only need to perform the geometry check and make some minor corrections if needed.
To achieve the proper rocker arm geometry we could have milled the stud mounting pad, changed to a longer valve, or use valve stem lash caps. We opted for the caps as they were the easiest option.	The lash caps fit right over the valve stem and effectively create a taller valve. This positions the shaft rocker arm properly in relation to the valve and pushrod.