On this episode of HOT ROD Garage presented by Lincoln Tech
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00:00 On this episode of Hot Rod Garage, we build another car there's no way I'm riding.
00:04 It's the 5.0 MG.
00:06 And I think Tony already broke it.
00:11 [Music]
00:33 Welcome back to Hot Rod Garage presented by Lincoln Tech.
00:36 It's time to build another fast car.
00:38 Good. Yeah, fast is good.
00:39 Usually we are power obsessed maniacs.
00:41 We're jamming four, five, six hundred horsepower into everything we build.
00:45 Present. Right? Yeah.
00:47 It's fun. Good times.
00:48 Turbo and nitrous and superchargers.
00:50 There's nothing wrong with that.
00:51 Nothing wrong with that.
00:52 But you don't actually need all that much power to go fast because there is another way.
00:57 What are you trying to say?
00:58 Yeah. Power to weight ratio?
00:59 It's time to lose some weight.
01:01 I can't even ride with you now?
01:02 You gotta think small.
01:03 Small. I get to ride.
01:05 It's not a ton of power, but it's gonna be nasty fast anyway.
01:08 Perfect. It'll run every day and we'll have a good time.
01:10 I don't know about running every day, but it'll be fast.
01:12 Ready? Let's go.
01:14 [Music]
01:22 Hit it.
01:23 [Screaming]
01:25 It's got some pep.
01:26 Yeah, it does.
01:27 Okay, so we have here the 1986 Ford Mustang 5.0 five speed.
01:33 This was a hookup back in the day.
01:34 This car was the jam back in the day.
01:36 It was a pretty serious muscle car.
01:38 At the time it made 200 horsepower, 285 foot pounds of torque.
01:43 And that doesn't sound like much today, but Hot Rod Magazine drove this thing to a 14.7 second quarter mile.
01:50 And that was seriously fast.
01:52 I think we hit a squirrel back there.
01:53 We did.
01:55 Go for it.
01:56 Hit it.
01:57 Oh, the power. It's crazy.
01:59 We are currently rolling in our 5.0, so our hair can blow.
02:03 Stop, collaborate, and listen.
02:06 [Engine revving]
02:08 Dang.
02:09 [Engine revving]
02:14 Yeah, man, back in the day, you would have been the king of the high school parking lot in this thing.
02:17 [Laughing]
02:20 We're back in the shop with our Mustang.
02:21 This thing's pretty quick.
02:22 Yeah, it's a good time.
02:23 The 200 horsepower that our 86 5.0 is putting out has to push around 3,240 pounds.
02:29 That's a bit much.
02:30 So to make it fast, we need to lose a ton of weight.
02:33 I'm talking like 1,000 pounds.
02:36 1,000 pounds?
02:37 1,000.
02:38 I don't think they make enough Sawzall blades to do that.
02:40 You're probably right.
02:41 But I've got a different plan in mind.
02:43 [Music]
02:48 Instead, what we're going to do is yank that 5 liter V8 and trance out of the Mustang,
02:52 jam it into this tiny British sports car, and make a 5 OMG.
02:57 We picked up this 1964 MGB X race car on Craigslist, and it's the perfect candidate for this.
03:03 A bunch of the sheet metal has been replaced with even lighter fiberglass.
03:06 It's got some suspension upgrades, some knockoff wheels, a bit of a cage, no engine and transmission.
03:12 We toss this thing on the scales just to get an idea of how light it is as a rolling chassis.
03:17 The way it sits now, it weighs 1,260 pounds.
03:20 That means we can add 1,000 pounds of V8 and everything else we need to make this thing a driver and still hit our goal.
03:26 Can we get started now?
03:27 I'm ready to get started.
03:28 [Music]
03:31 So first things first, we're going to pop the hood on this Mustang, disconnect the battery,
03:35 open up that valve on the AC compressor, try not to breathe.
03:39 Cut a hole in my ozone layer.
03:40 Mm-hmm.
03:41 And disconnect everything that's holding that 5 liter into the car, yank the engine and trance out, get ready to put it in an MG.
03:46 [Music]
03:48 Thanks, buddy.
03:49 [Music]
03:59 It's Tony's biggest fan.
04:01 It's pretty big.
04:02 [Music]
04:11 This Mustang has basically its entire exhaust with all four cats and everything.
04:15 We're pulling it off as one piece.
04:17 I've got it disconnected from the headers and I've pulled the back hangers,
04:21 but there's this sort of complicated center hanger that's integrated into the trans mount.
04:25 [Music]
04:31 It's a fiasco.
04:33 [Music]
04:40 There she goes.
04:41 [Music]
04:43 You're doing fine.
04:44 Just go up, forward, up, and forward.
04:46 [Music]
04:48 Oh, be careful with that.
04:51 Not bad, huh?
04:52 No, it's just cake.
04:53 Yeah, piece of cake.
04:55 Came right out.
04:56 [Music]
04:59 Okay, so we've got the 5.0 freed from the Mustang, cleaned all the grime and dirt off of it, and it looks all right.
05:05 It's ready to try to shoehorn it into the MG.
05:08 Wait, you were serious about that?
05:10 Yeah, it's going to happen.
05:11 I think.
05:12 I really have no idea.
05:13 I'm not sure how this is going to go.
05:15 I'm assuming we have to move a bunch of metal around and get pretty creative.
05:18 So step one is to just lower it into the general vicinity of where it's going to sit and see how it goes.
05:23 Sawzall.
05:24 At least.
05:25 Maybe torch, grinder, plasma cutter.
05:28 Fix it with fire.
05:29 [Music]
05:34 The height of the steering rack is a little bit unnerving.
05:37 Disconcerting?
05:38 Oh, it's going to fit.
05:39 The question is, will it still be able to roll after we get it in there?
05:42 Well, front of the water pump to the back of the bell housing is 32 inches.
05:47 It's the worst that could happen.
05:49 Let's stick it in there.
05:50 This is a crazy idea.
05:52 I haven't had a laugh all day.
05:53 This ought to be great.
05:55 It's a small car.
05:56 Whose idea was this?
05:57 I don't know.
05:58 [Music]
06:02 Hold on.
06:03 [Music]
06:07 It would be nice to go back four inches.
06:09 Yeah, it's top of the transmission.
06:10 It's hitting the tunnel.
06:11 We need to cut whatever we got to cut.
06:13 Go ahead and pull it out.
06:15 I mean, it's going to be a lot of work.
06:19 My big concern is it looks like the length is going to put the front of the engine like really far forward,
06:25 getting a radiator in there and that sort of stuff is going to be tough.
06:28 So, we did a dry run slapping the motor and transmission in,
06:31 and everything looked like it was nowhere near fitting anywhere.
06:34 So, I'm going to start with the most interference that's obvious,
06:38 and that's the top of the tunnel of the transmission.
06:40 So, we're going to cut out some of that, and we'll just kind of raise it a little
06:44 and then put the motor and tranny back in and see if we can bring it up where everything works good in the back.
06:49 [Music]
07:06 Please be slow.
07:08 Okay, so I think I got to cut more floor out.
07:11 Come back out?
07:12 Yeah.
07:14 We've had the engine in and out a couple times.
07:16 We still have some interference in the transmission tunnel,
07:18 so Lucky's going to get to cut that a little more, which is his favorite thing to do.
07:21 Yes.
07:22 And I think I'm going to lower the front subframe with some temporary spacers
07:26 to give us a little bit more room there to get the front of the engine down.
07:29 [Music]
07:37 We're going to lower that subframe to give us more clearance for the oil pan.
07:41 I found these giant spacers, drilled them out to a half inch, and we're going to put them in.
07:45 These are temporary.
07:46 It will slightly change our roll center in the wrong direction, but it will be fine
07:50 because we're throwing a giant V8 in here, and we have kind of thrown handling to the wind already.
07:54 So, after lowering the crossmember here and putting the engine and transmission back in,
07:58 we're just not stoked with how this thing sits.
08:01 I think we're spending too much time trying to protect the car, preserve the car.
08:04 We've been, like, coming at this thing with kid gloves, and it's time to get serious.
08:08 Going to go full Finnegan on it.
08:10 We are going to tear out a whole bunch of metal in the transmission tunnel, the firewall,
08:13 and I'm going to probably gut this crossmember out.
08:15 Plasma cutter.
08:16 Yeah, we're going to get serious.
08:17 The goal is to move everything back four inches, and we think it will be much happier.
08:21 I'll be much happier.
08:23 [Music]
08:53 [Bang]
08:54 So, after about an entire day of cutting, hammering, and plasma torching this thing,
09:00 we have the 5.0 and T5 transmission sitting in the MG where we want it.
09:04 So, basically, the build starts now.
09:06 Yeah, so we've got to do engine mounts, transmission mount, figure out a radiator, accessories.
09:10 Exhaust.
09:11 Yeah.
09:12 Everything is going to have to fit perfectly because there's no extra space in this car.
09:15 There's so much work to do.
09:16 There's a lot of stuff to do.
09:17 We should get started.
09:18 Yeah.
09:19 [Music]
09:32 So, what we're doing here is fabricating motor mounts to put the V8 Ford motor in the MG.
09:37 This is the aftermarket universal motor mount kit.
09:40 However, we are going to take all this off, flip this over like this, bolt to the frame.
09:50 We'll have this here, and then this will bolt to the motor mount.
09:54 So, we're just making a mini motor mount for a mini car with a monster engine.
10:00 This is going to get somebody in trouble, and I think it's going to be Tony.
10:04 [Music]
10:16 Working on my tan.
10:19 So, we modified those aftermarket motor mounts.
10:21 We're getting ready to put the motor back in there.
10:23 After Tony finishes welding that stuff up, it's actually looking pretty good.
10:26 We're getting closer to making noise.
10:28 [Music]
10:34 Wasn't welding great at first.
10:35 Got back in with a wire wheel, cleaned it up a little bit better.
10:38 But this old British steel isn't the easiest stuff to work with, but it's going to be plenty solid.
10:42 [Music]
10:45 So, lucky he got the motor mounts done, and they're sitting in there awesome.
10:48 I went ahead and made a transmission mount, made up a couple tabs for the end.
10:52 It's a box tube because it was just in line with my tabs.
10:55 So, what I had to do was make a couple slugs, slide them in there, weld it up.
10:59 So, it's one nice big strong piece.
11:01 So, with this, the engine and transmission are finally mounted into place permanently, and we can get on to everything else.
11:08 [Music]
11:16 Welcome back to another Lincoln Tech Tip.
11:18 Today, we're going to be talking about power to weight ratio.
11:21 Now, power to weight ratio is a fairly simple concept, but it is, in fact, the best predictor for performance in the automotive world.
11:29 Since horsepower is a standardized unit of power and pounds are a standardized unit of weight, we can use them to predict how fast a car will go.
11:37 Two completely different vehicles, say a Mazda Miata and a Dodge Ram, can run identical 0 to 60 in quarter mile times,
11:43 and that's because they have the exact same power to weight ratio.
11:46 The Mazda Miata has 180 horsepower, and it weighs 2,100 pounds, whereas the Ram has 375 horsepower and weighs 4,400 pounds.
11:55 But on track, they're basically the same because they each have 12 pounds to push around per horsepower.
12:00 For our 5OMG project, that donor Mustang weighed 3,000 pounds, which means it was pushing 15 pounds per horsepower.
12:07 Now, when we've got that into the lightweight MG chassis, we've got the whole thing down to about 2,000 pounds.
12:12 That means it's pushing 10 pounds per horsepower, which is a huge difference,
12:16 which will take it from about a 15-second quarter mile on the Mustang to a 12-second quarter mile on that MG, and that is a monster difference.
12:23 Power to weight is everything.
12:25 Lincoln Tech can teach you how to have a career working with cars.
12:29 See lincolntech.edu.
12:31 Hey, you might notice a couple of interesting details that are changed on the 5OMG,
12:41 most notably these demolition derby headers.
12:44 These are my favorite.
12:45 We discussed getting these, ordered them up because there's just nowhere else to put the exhaust.
12:49 So we're Americans, right?
12:51 We'll stick them right through that Union Jack hood on this MG.
12:55 See, I was on the East Coast road killing with Finnegan, and Lucky has been a busy beaver in the shop getting a bunch of stuff done.
13:01 Yeah, while you were gone, though, I got the steering handled.
13:03 Which was, I'm sure, a nightmare.
13:05 Basically, we had a cylinder head in the way of the steering column.
13:09 So now it's broken up with a couple of different universals on it.
13:11 I see that.
13:12 We've got an Edelbrock manifold on there because we're going to convert this thing to carburetor,
13:16 and our remote oil filter system is in place.
13:19 He's got the ignition wires made.
13:21 I see he's pushed the rack forward.
13:23 Yeah, pushed the rack forward to ruin the bump steer and all the geometry that you worked so hard to keep back.
13:27 I'm sure that'll feel good.
13:28 I'm there for you, buddy.
13:29 Drive shaft is made.
13:31 Hydraulic clutch is functional.
13:33 Brakes are good.
13:34 We're really close on this thing.
13:35 Yeah, we need to do accessories, cooling system, carburetor, distributor.
13:39 There's a lot left to do, but Lucky laid us down a nice base.
13:42 Together, we'll knock this out and get on the road.
13:45 So the next big thing we have to tackle is getting this thing to stay cool.
13:49 And I found, I think, the only radiator in the world that is right for this setup.
13:54 It's a Griffin 770035.
13:58 You go, David Freiberger.
13:59 It's for a Ford Falcon.
14:01 It's three inches thick.
14:02 It's just about the right length.
14:03 And it has the outlets in the right place.
14:05 But even with this radiator, there's almost no room between the water pump.
14:10 Luckily--
14:11 And the car.
14:12 Tony saw that and ordered a shorter water pump.
14:15 I saw it in my mind's eye.
14:17 Can you believe that? In your mind's eye.
14:19 So let's get a water pump and pulleys on first.
14:21 Okay.
14:23 [Music]
14:37 What we're doing now is just making enough space in sort of this whole grill area to fit a radiator laid down.
14:43 Like an AC Cobra.
14:45 Yeah, it's going to be cool.
14:46 Tony.
14:47 What's up?
14:48 There's MG in the way of our engine.
14:49 [Music]
15:01 This is a very delicate operation.
15:03 We're going to need that.
15:06 [Music]
15:13 Tony is fabricating up some radiator mounts right now.
15:15 So while he's doing that, I'm going to drop in this distributor from MSD.
15:19 It's pretty simple.
15:20 We set the motor at top dead center on the compression stroke.
15:22 Tap it.
15:23 A little one.
15:25 That's right at zero. Good job.
15:27 So when I drop in the distributor, I just have to make sure the rotor is pointing at the number one position on the spark plug wires.
15:32 [Music]
15:40 While Lucky is finishing up the ignition, our buddies at Holley sent over a Street HP 650 CFM carburetor.
15:46 Lucky like.
15:47 That will handle our fueling just perfectly.
15:50 So apparently they're making these full bodies on the Street HPs in aluminum for an even lighter carburetor setup.
15:56 We're still getting this cooling system figured out and we decided to ditch that short water pump that we found because it spins the wrong way.
16:04 Turns out all the Serpentine era Fords, which are like I think '84 and up, have water pumps that spin the opposite way of the engine.
16:11 So what we did was go out, get a full length water pump off a '65 Mustang 289, and then we can use our V-belt system.
16:18 [Music]
16:30 Tony, it's like it was made for it.
16:32 [Music]
16:35 So I'm sitting in the 5OMG for the first time.
16:37 It is a tiny little car.
16:39 I never thought I'd say this, but this car looks big on you.
16:41 Yeah, it's ridiculous.
16:43 We've got the motor and trans sitting on the proper mounts that we made.
16:46 We struggled and worked our butts off on the radiator and the alternator and the accessory drive.
16:50 This crazy exhaust system and stuff just has no space to go anywhere.
16:54 We've got it crammed in there and it's about ready to fire up.
16:56 No, it's ready to fire.
16:58 Here we go.
16:59 Hold on, I'll be over here.
17:00 Okay, see ya.
17:01 Fire in the hole.
17:03 [Engine starting]
17:06 There it is.
17:07 [Engine revving]
17:11 Okay, so we got it fired up.
17:12 It sounds awesome.
17:13 We've got to fill some more fluids up, pull the seat in, put the wheels on, lower this thing down.
17:18 We're going to take it right out on the road.
17:20 [Music]
17:39 [Engine revving]
17:57 So, I'm out here in the 5OMG, one of the Malibu canyons, and this thing is a handful.
18:04 Whoa, whoa.
18:06 It's really tail happy and the brakes are non-existent.
18:11 This is a death trap of a car.
18:14 Holy.
18:15 Whoa.
18:16 Man, this thing is out of control.
18:19 It's like a little go-kart with a V8 in the front.
18:22 Man, this guy is fast.
18:24 [Engine revving]
18:32 I think I hear him.
18:33 This thing is way too fast for having 250 horsepower.
18:37 [Engine revving]
18:45 Dude, this car is insanity.
18:48 Brakes are on fire.
18:49 Yeah, it is a death trap.
18:51 Honestly, foot to the floor on the brakes, almost nothing happens.
18:55 It is terrifying.
18:57 And the upside, nothing leaks.
18:59 Everything looks great.
19:00 So, we did our job.
19:01 Yeah, sort of.
19:03 Perfect.
19:04 [Engine revving]
19:10 There we go.
19:13 Woo.
19:14 250 horsepower, I never felt so insane.
19:18 [Engine revving]
19:45 So, that's it for this episode of Hot Rod Garage presented by Lincoln Tech.
19:48 The 5OMG was a total success.
19:51 OMG is the perfect name for this car.
19:53 I cannot believe how fast 250 horsepower feels like when you jam it into a bathtub with wheels on it.
19:58 If we made this thing handle and stop, it would just be a track machine.
20:02 Yeah, we need to get you out of the sun, buddy.
20:04 Anyway, don't forget to check us out on social media between episodes.
20:07 The show is Hot Rod Garage Show on Facebook and Instagram.
20:10 On Instagram, I am Tangelo96.
20:13 I am MobileTechLucky.
20:14 We'll see you guys next time.
20:15 See ya.
20:16 You want to go for one ride?
20:20 No.
20:21 You can drive though.
20:22 There's not enough seat there for me.
20:23 I'm a grown ass man.
20:24 Yeah, you are.
20:25 You were a grown ass man 30 years ago.
20:27 [Laughing]
20:28 [Engine revving]