Originally Posted by Chris White

My favorite way of debunking the 'must have belt covers' myth is to point out that the PS and Alt/AC belts do not have covers and are located much closer to where any road debris might be a factor - and those belts do not suffer from a massive amount of failures from debris!

Uncovered belts are much better for belt cooling, observation of any deterioration of the belts and my favorite - fixing any leaks. With no belt covers I can fix a balance shaft seal leak in an hour (or less), with belt covers it takes 5 times as much time - as long as you correctly guess where the leak is coming from because you can't see it until the rear belt cover is removed!

Originally Posted by Chris White

Oddly enough my use of polished parts comes from years at the track. It is much easier to keep a polished aluminum part looking good that any other finish. Raw aluminum castings have a surface texture that just sucks up dirt. powder coating looks great to start with - but loses its finish when exposed to fuel and some cleaning chemicals. Once the powder coated finish gets damaged there is no way to fix it other than taking the part off, striping it and redoing the powder coating.

polished aluminum just takes a minute with the aluminum polish to bring it back to new.

I remember that several years ago there were a bunch of listers that were powder coating their blocks...made me cringe then and I wonder how they look now!!

Originally Posted by reno808

Oh i hear you on that, but i really think it has to do with you real mustang owners the older generation of course haha. My dad picks polished parts any day over anything i get reminded every time my dad looks under the hood.

Originally Posted by Voith

Incredible work. What kind of piston/bore did you use? Nikasil?

I had the same idea of modifying the stock cluster with digital boost controller in place of standard turbo boost gauge.

Btw: if the led numbers will be too bright to look at night, use a piece of exposed & developed camera film over it. It looks great and dims the light down so it is not intrusive.

Originally Posted by Duke

Looks great! A lot of details in there for sure. Appearance suitable for a nice looking cab and more than enough power.
But I wouldn't fire it up before putting a lid on the Variocam hole on the cam cover Oh and I would add a cam sensor too

Originally Posted by Chris White

Duke - you are '1 for 2' on picking up details!

I have to machine up the variocam cover....if you look to the right of the intake cam gear you can find the cam position sensor!

Originally Posted by Chris White

If you look close you can see that the coolant reservoir is not quite stock. It has been converted to AN fittings and the stock hose port actually feeds the turbo coolant pump and the line from the cross over pipe feeds and new AN fitting on the bottom of the tank.

Originally Posted by Scott H

Oh wow, I didn't even notice that AN fitting on the reservoir. How did you do that? The only way I can think of would be cutting the plastic back a bit so that you expose the brass(?) support and then braze a fitting onto that. Am I overthinking this?

What kind of turbo do you have tucked away in there?

Originally Posted by Chris White

SFR polished the valve cover about 5 years ago (before Lart started polishing stuff)!

Originally Posted by Chris White

...and those belts do not suffer from a massive amount of failures from debris!

Uncovered belts are much better for belt cooling, observation of any deterioration of the belts and my favorite - fixing any leaks. With no belt covers I can fix a balance shaft seal leak in an hour (or less), with belt covers it takes 5 times as much time - as long as you correctly guess where the leak is coming from because you can't see it until the rear belt cover is removed!