Sorry fella's I have been slacking on the updating of this thread...
Update Day 2:
Well day 2 was fun, I wasn't able to find the time to work on it till after my bro came in town.
I finished prepping the Kenne Bell head unit and also deleted a few things.
First thing I deleted was the EGR system which includes the EGR tube coming from the passenger-side exhaust mainfold, EGR solenoid front mounted on passenger-side head, the DPFE sensor which was mounted on the back driver-side of the original intake and the EGR sensor itself which I made a plate to block off which went onto the back of the upper plenum of the supercharger.
I also deleted the dual knock sensors that our Explorers have. You can see them in my pictures with the intake off, they are the two black things in the piston valley there. After those and the DPFE and EGR were off; I electrical taped over the ends of the connectors real good for a weatherproof seal.
The bosses that the knock sensors were mounted in will stick way too far into the area where the intercooler will sit. They will need to be ground flush to the flutes in the block. The new coolant tube that goes from the water pump, underneath the intercooler and out the back of the piston valley area will be a PITA and I reccomend that you ensure that it is touching the bottom of the valley for its entire length and centered except the back part which curves up. Special bending and fitting will be required.
My brother helped for a little while but then was too tired to help. I had to heft the heavy thing into and out of the engine bay more than 5 times all by myself. I am getting pretty good at it and it sure makes things easier when I am sitting inside the engine bay! hehe. I do warn people that if they try this that they be careful as it is a very heavy and awkward object to be lifting around.
Another relevant piece of this project is all the vacuum lines that you will see as compared to the normal Mustang GT's. My advice there is to really take a look at where things go and where they come from and soak in where things are located and then tackle it all from there. I also believe it to be pretty much mandatory that when disconnecting all lines that you label them in as much detail as possible as to what sensor they came off of.
Well enough of my blabbing. Here are the pictures and video from day 2. Enjoy...
Kenne Bell Project Day 2 Video
Update Days 3-4:
I started tackling the COP's, vac lines, and heater lines the last few days along with some of the idler pulley, clutch fan delete, and alternator relocation stuff.
There are a few things worth mentioning that were noticeably different from the Mustang kit installation yet again. First and foremost is that our alternator will not work with the clutch fan with the way it all has to mount(not enough room). No problem, I was planning on going to a dual electric fan assembly anyways. So I ordered some Flex-a-lite 210B's to keep this thing cool.
Now that cooling and spacing was out of the way I decided to mock mount the alternator anyways to get a feel for how much space I would have. Turns out that our alternators are cocked the wrong way to work with the relocation bracketry. It would be a fairly easy fix to fab some bracket extenders but since the auxiliary electronics like the engine fans, possible pusher fan(if overheating occurs later on), and IC fans need more amperage than I believe our stock 130 amp alt can put out I opted for a custom built 170 amp alternator from PA-Performance with the wire upgrade kit as a bonus.
Now I get to what has so far been the biggest PITA of the project thus far. The vacuum assembly. As far as I know there aren't any detailed blow-aparts of the engines or engine bays of our Explorers so things went meticulous and slow. I will keep it short by saying that ALLOT of vac lines got deleted with the EGR/DPFE deletes and some were added and Tee'd with the boost bypass/FRPT/PCV and so on so forth. If I do ever decide to start offering these in an Explorer kit form I will definately reconfigure the vac, boost, heater, and IC stuff to make it easier on us! Whew!
On a few more positive notes. It looks like the front drive accessories will line up perfectly. No nosedrive modification needed at all going by the test fit and eyeballing. Another great thing is that the Kenne Bell will easily fit under our stock hoods with tons of clearance left over.
TB and IAC went on in a few minutes. Too bad the TPS and IAC harness connections will have to be lengthened. I hate electrical work! Another thing I noticed is that our TPS reads .75 ohm's when closed instead of the 1.06 that it is supposed to read according to KB. Being that I know the truck is programmed to run off of the setting from the stock TB I transferred the TPS over to the new TB and set it back to .75 ohm's. All stock throttle and cruise control cables went on without modification or problem.
The following pictures have allot of hoses routed everywhere but once I get things worked out and everything is perfect I will be ordering all blue hosing and prettying things up under the hood. I would still really like to be able to fit the stock engine cover on top of the KB to keep its sleeper look. With all the clearance i don't foresee that to be a problem.
Still waiting for JLT CAI, PA-Performance Alt, and the Flex-a-Lite Fans...
Well that is the latest update so far. My paid leave from work ended today so I will not be able to put allot of work into it for a while now. Hopefully I will still be able to finish it by the end of the month by just tinkering here and there.
lol. Thanks for the nice words. We will see how everything turns out.
