The installation kit Edelbrock supplied is very complete and more than adequate for most installations. Of coarse nothing is that simple on a car like this. The supplied wiring harness is designed to install the ECU on the other side of the firewall. Well there was no way that I could do this without cutting a hole in it to pass the large ECU plug through. I spent way too much time bringing this firewall back into a presentable condition (replacing sections that had been butchered years ago to install the brake/clutch master cylinders on it). Besides the other side of it is where you put your feet. I don't think using the ECU as a foot stool would be a good thing. I was concerned with how far I could stretch the wiring harness before I might run into troubles. Longer wires are more susceptible to external influences and I though I might have trouble with the sensor inputs. I considered installing under the floor pan on the passenger side. I rejected this idea because of the proximity to the exhaust system. The header pipe would be just below the only spot available to mount it. It is a nasty environment down there. I also considered mounting it under the passenger seat but getting the rather larger wiring harness through the body pan and floor board along with the fact that there wasn't much room under the seat smashed that idea. The only other place that made any sense was in the electronics bay between the seats and the trunk area. This is where all the stereo amplifiers, remote CD player, AM-FM radio, remote console to control all this stuff and various other electronic items found their home. It was dry (as if I drive this car in the rain every day) and in a not too harsh of an environment. I was a little concerned as to how hot it was getting back there so I added a circulating fan. At least I'd be moving the hot air around ! As it turns out there is enough fresh air entering the area that it wasn't too bad. So with a mounting location for the ECU identified I could start in earnest.
The Wiring Harness....
The first order of business was going
to be figuring out how to route all those wires and make it look nice.
Hanging over the rather oversized fenders of a '34 Ford is not the best
work environment so I mounted another block to the engine stand and used
it as a mule. I bolted on the new heads and intake manifold to this
block so I could get a good view of what I needed to do. I tried
several scenarios out on how to route the wires which there are many.
Also there are quite a few splices inside of the wiring harness which added
to its bulk. The harness was intended to lay between the valve covers
and the intake runners under the injectors. Figuring a way to try
to dress them in this position just wasn't going to work. Just too
many sensors coming from too many directions. I finally came up with
a scheme to route them upwards and tuck them under the base of the air
cleaner. The natural direction of the wires coming from the injectors
is upwards so this minimized how much wire was exposed. The MAP and
TPS sensors wiring would also tuck up under the base nicely.
The original position of the MAT sensor was at the back of the manifold
along with the IAC connection so they wouldn't be a problem. The
Coolant Temperature sensor is towards the front of the manifold but it
would dress out nicely. The biggest problem of routing all the wires
up to the air cleaner base is that it makes it part of the wiring harness.
Once I wired it in it would be there to stay. After routing and mounting
the harness to the base I gathered all the wires together and and routed
them down at the back of air cleaner so that they tucked in nicely behind
the air valve, down under the distributor, and then down the backside of
the motor over the scatter shield. I had to blow apart the harness
quit a bit because of my different routing most pairs of wires took a different
radius than what was original designed in. This made some leads too
long and others too short. This necessitated cutting the common splices
and re-splicing them at a new location more conducive to the new flow of
the harness. I then extended the harness approximately another 6
feet to get it back to the ECU at the rear of the car. I used shielded
cabling on the high impedance sensors and signals and took care in choosing
heavy enough gauge wires for the higher current devices. I wasn't
sure that I might not have trouble going this far (I wasn't sure how far
is too far) but time has shown that it works ok.
Ignition....
Edelbrock supplies the necessary parts
to convert either an early small cap aluminum distributor or a later large
cap HEI style distributor. Well there was no way a large cap was
going to fit the so the only choice for me was the small cap variety.
I scrounged up an old aluminum distributor, rebuilt it, and added the supplied
Hall Effect Sensor and shutter wheel necessary to drive the ECU.
I had some concern that the PCB that the hall effect sensor was mounted
on might move and strike the shutter wheel. On the small distributor
only one screw mounted it the the housing. I made a small brace that
picked up another screw hole. This added much needed support to the
PCB. I spun it on a lathe to take off the rough edges and added an
MSD rotor and cap. It now looks like a new billet MSD distributor.
Now I had to figure out where to mount
the coil and the supplied Ignition Amplifier. There was no room behind
the air valve to mount the coil. I did Not want to mount it on the
firewall nor drill a hole through it and mount it inside the cab. I spent
a great deal of time resurrecting this badly damaged firewall and tacking
something on it was not what I wanted to even think about. Also where
was I going to mount this Ignition Amplifier (a bright red box about 5"x3"x1").
I looked at several locations down the side of the engine close to the
frame rail as possible mounting positions. The heat from the headers
and running a 2'-3' primary ignition wire alongside of the main EFI harness
ruled out mounting them down there. I couldn't figure out what took
so much room inside of this ignition amplifier. Couldn't get a good
enough view into it to determine what kind of electronics I was dealing
with. I finally bit the bullet and drilled out the rivets that held
it together. Well inside of this big red box was a stock 6 wire GM
ignition module off of a 80 up HEI ignition system. I have to admit
that this red finned box looked impressive ! Well with no place to
mount this stuff I turned back to the poor air cleaner base again.
I mounted the coil on its side so that I could run the primary ignition
lead out the air cleaner base between the throttle linkage and the IAC
motor straight to the distributor cap. I built a finned aluminum
heat sink for the ignition module and mounted it to the base. I tossed
the original 3" element and an installed a 5" K&N element to give me
some more room.
The Fuel System....
I am sure the supplied in-line
fuel pump would have worked ok but several items kept me from using it.
First it used hose bibs. Rubber hose and hose clamps was not what
I was looking for. I wanted to plumb everything with 3/8" aluminum
fuel line (both high pressure and return lines), AN-6 fittings and stainless
braided hose where needed. Next the electrical connections were way
too close to the hose clamps (I really didn't want to use it so any excuse
I could come up with was a good one). And one of the biggest problems
was mounting. On the carburated setup I was using a Holley electric
pump that mounted by a side bracket. The hard point where this pump
was mounted was already in place on the powder coated frame. Mounting
an in-line pump wouldn't have been impossible but it wouldn't have looked
good. What I ended up using was a Mallory Comp-110FI pump.
This pump has a larger more dependable motor than the Holley, probably
the in-line also as the motor is larger than the whole in-line pump.
It mounted in the same fashion and used the same holes as the previous
pump. It was quieter under pressure than both the Holley and the
in-line. I used a Mallory 150 series filter in front of the pump
to protect the pump and a Mallory series 160 filter after it to protect
the injectors. I took the hose bibs off of the fuel rails and used
AN-6 fittings. I used hard-line (both high and low pressure sides)
routed towards the front of the motor and down the front side where it
attached to a bulkhead on the alternator bracket. From there to hard
points on the frame I used two 8" of stainless hoses to tie the fuel system
together. On the driver's side rail I removed the starred valve and
installed a liquid filled pressure gauge. I used the the original
fuel pickup tube to feed fuel from the tank. On this car the filler
neck is only slightly higher than the tank. In fact to completely
fill the tank fuel would just about be coming out of the filler.
One of the problems I always had was with the vent system. A full
tank would syphon fuel from the tank and cornering would vent fuel also.
I tried sever fixes but none of them where satisfactory. Being I
had to pull the tank anyway I fixed the vent problem once and for all.
After completely cleaning the tank I welded two 1/4" pip bungs to the highest
point of the tank, one on each side. I then used a combination of
AN-4 stainless hose and 1/4" aluminum tubing to plumb the vents to the
outside world. This plumbing was mounted on the trunk's floor pan
(the highest point above the tank) so that the left tank vent vented on
the right side of the car. Just the opposite for the other side.
This guaranteed that one of the vent tubes would always see vapor and the
one that had liquid in it would have to fight gravity to get to the outside
world. Experience has shown this setup to be the correct solution
because I now have zero venting problems. I used the tanks original
vent bung to route the fuel back to the tank. I welded a 5/16" steal
line to a 90 degree fitting. This tube went to the bottom of the
tank on the opposite side as the pickup. EFI setups and instruction
always recommend to get the return line away from the pickup. Seeing
the amount of vapor and bubble (can see it through the filler neck) around
the end of this pipe when the motor is running I can see why.
O2 Sensor....
I mounted the O2 sensor a few inches
back from where the header collectors met the header pipe. It is
a heated Bosch sensor used in Fords so placement is not as critical but
the closer to the common point where all the exhaust gases meet the better.
Welding the bung into the pipe forced a re-coating of the header pipe,
so of coarse I had to change the mufflers at the same time (more can't
leave well enough alone). I took the Cadilac Eldorado mufflers off
and installed a set of three chamber Flowmasters. Made two big mistakes
here. One is that I should have installed a crossover pipe at this
time (it would have saved me from doing it the following year - huge resonances
around 2500 RPM, and I sent them to HPC again to be recoated. You'd
think that after sending the exhaust system on several trips back to these
clowns that I would learn that the guys can NOT successfully package and
ship anything farther than three feet from their front door. Every
time I've sent something back there I received them back trashed !
Never again will HPC get a dime of my money.
PCV and Vacuum....
There was only one vacuum port on the
air valve as supplied from Edelbrock. I needed one for the PCV system
and another for the power brakes and a couple other vacuum accessories
(license plate retraction and reverse lock-out motors). The hose
bib on the front of the air valve was the most logical for the PCV vacuum.
The problems here once again was another hose bib and even more of a problem
was its proximity to the fuel pressure regulator. You would have
to bend the hose close to 90 degrees almost immediately to get it to clear
the regulator. It most likely would collapse and certain lay and
scuff against the regulator. I pulled the air valve off the manifold
and twisted the pressure fitted hose bib out of it. I then
jigged it up on the drill press so I could accurately target the hole so
I could drill and tap it to 1/4" pipe thread. I then installed a
90 degree AN-6 fitting into the hole. This gave me a clean 90 degree
bend that pointed directly to my PCV valve. I pulled the hose bib
off of it and taped it also for an AN-6 adapter. I now had a nice
clean straight shot from the air valve to the PCV valve.
Other Problems....
The last thing I had to deal with
was the alternator mounting. It originally mounted on bracket that
shared a couple of intake manifold bolts and one water pump bolt.
Besides the slightly different shape of the manifold (could have modified
the bracket) the alternator was placed in a location where the new fuel
lines needed to be. The high pressure side went straight into the
right side fuel rail and the return line came off of the regulator base.
I needed to move it up and out over the valve covers more to clear these
hard fuel lines. Luckily I was installing new Edelbrock heads at
the same time. These heads have four (4) 3/8" taped holes on each
face. Theses faces (the ends of the heads) are machined and a square
to the main mating surface. This gave me a great location that was
parallel to the crank and water pump pulleys to mount a alternator bracket.
A 1/4" steal plate, a few large holes, and some machined aluminum spacers
later and I had an alternator bracket. One more brace from the alternator
to the water pump and a few more hours making a slotted adjusting brace
and the alternator found a new home.