Oooh boy! Me and the buddy with the Mustang went to the track tonight and both of us were hardcore drooling over the cammed cars . . . some kid had full exhaust and a cam on his 3.7 V6 mustang Sumbitch'd scoot pretty good though! It sounded good at idle too

Thanks Pageracing

 

I will post up an idle vid of my truck next week once I have finalized my exhaust setup...

 

I can tell already once I hear yours I wont be able to resist! Haha.

 

Don't make it sound so easy to do them yourself either, Page! I wasn't able to resist doing long tubes when my buddy did them himself and I heard . . . I don't want it to happen again!!

 

Yeah putting headers on 2005+ mustang s compared to f150s are way different. I put them on a 2006 mustang one week and ordered the headers for my truck a couple of days later. I expected it to be a breeze after the mustang.

 

Both are still a B*tch though, in different ways. It took us like 3 days to do the Mustang, but I didn't help as much. Which do you feel is harder?

 

I have to admit its an addictive sound lol. I got a ton of compliments today when I drove it out town. Nobody expects a truck like ours to be sitting there shaking and camming. I plan to put trickflow or ported pi heads on mine next year but to have stock heads and to be a 2v it pulls HARD.

 

It really is a simple job that any mechanically inclined person can do themselves. Just for the heck of it I called a local mustang shop and they wanted to charge me 18 hours of labor at $65 an hour! I was like yeah right lol. They were going to pull the engine just for a cam install. I put them in myself in my driveway using common tools in just under four hours taking my time. I made sure to mark the cam gears and chains in several spots before unbolting the cams. I oiled the new cams good and wore nitrile gloves while handling the cams to keep it all clean. I didn't even use a timing wedge like ford and afm makes. I just held the chain and gear up tight and lined up the key ways so the new cams were installed dot to dot like the factory cams. There is no need for adjustable cam gears. Even Bart at hitech suggests using the stock gears. If you install them one tooth off expect to bend valves, two teeth off expect catastrophic failure...
The hitech Motorsports stage 2 cams I went with are the largest cams that fit without ptv clearance issues. Also you can use stock valve springs as long as you keep the rpms at 6400 or lower. I'm thinking of retrofitting an hps hardballer intake to add another 20 hp. I'm also going with either a circle d or Hughes lockup converter in the 3000-3500 rpm range. The truck came with 3.73 gears so I will probably leave those as is even though the heavy 20" wheels and tires knock the gears down a tad.

 

The f150s are definitely harder to put headers on took about 4 hours on the mustang (but I had a lift). But the truck took way longer (didnt have a lift) I don't think it would have made a difference if I had a lift.

 

A labor quote over $1,000 for a cam install is actually consistent with what I've heard, but I didn't know the hour break down. Hard to understand where they got 18 hours from if you did it in 4 though! But yeah, little errors causing big damage is what would scare me away from attempting it myself. And shouldn't you change the valve springs anyway to avoid any issues and be to safe? How much work would it be to retro one of those intake manifolds? I guess it can't be too far off from fitting. Big wheels look good, but they never play nice with performance haha. And with as much time and money as you're throwing at it, running 4.10s, or maybe even 4.30s, would still be worthwhile imo.

 

That's what I would've guessed. Another buddy put headers on his C6 Vette in about 4 hours and he had no idea what he was doing and doesn't work on his car very often. The rest of us were pissed haha

 

On the trucks you have to pull the inner fenders for access to the bolts. You have to jack the motor up also. But a Stang is a pita as well. A lot less room and a big pita on the stangs but same things involved. Jacking the motor up for each side etc... At least the stangs don't have have the bolt breaking issue lol.

 

I didn't have to jack the engine up on the truck when I did headers. But I did o the mustang.

 

Jacking up the passenger side of the motor isn't too bad though, neither is the fender removal, they're just annoying! The Mustangs are a little more cramped in some places, but the front passenger of our motors are the worst. But the entire driver side takes no more than 1 1/2 hours to remove the old and have the new bolted up cause there's all the access in the world on that side haha. I would have to think both would have issues with studs snapping though, can't imagine Ford having used different studs for the Mustangs

 

Yeah it is annoying just the stud removal is the major issue.