This coming week is going to be just awesome, like Christmas around my house. The UPS and FedEx guys will be my new best friends (like they weren't already!) as a flurry of parts will start arriving Monday from Forte's Parts Connection, Summit Racing, Breeze Automotive, AmericanMuscle, and Factory Five.

Fuel tanks, cooling systems, distributors, intakes, oh my! Lots of engine parts on their way, plus some other much needed items, including some awesome wheels and tires, 4 into 4 headers, a new oil pan, and lots more. Can you tell I'm excited?

I've been concentrating more on the engine side of things for about the last week. It's a little out of sequence, but since I've been waiting on steering and suspension components to proceed to the next build step, it's worked out fine. The engine it pretty well torn apart now, and today's fun will be finishing up the job. I'm going to pull the harmonic balancer, timing cover, and get the cam out, ready for the newly donated (thanks Glenn) B303 Ford Racing cam to go back in. I also spent some time cleaning and doing a minor porting job on the GT40p heads. Rather than go all out and do a full port job with the exhaust gasket match, I decided to play it save and remove the EGR bump only and polish the ports on the exhaust side a little. Nothing fancy, but it should help things flow better.

Some more cleaning and polish, and as of this time next week, the engine should be basically ready to bench fire.

My other big project going on is finishing up the Ford 8.8" rear end. I had a local shop do the gear swap for me, just more involved and too many speciality tools to do it. So, now I have the brand new 3.55 gears in it, up from the 3.08 stock ones, and all new bearings. Just need to do some work on the axle seals and I'm ready to go. Unfortunately, the c-clips that hold the axles have gone missing, so $8 and special order from Ford, and we'll be back in business.

One of the biggest purchases this week was wheels and tires, and I feel like I got a great deal from AmericanMuscle. I'm going with their Anthracite Bullitt wheels with Sumitomo HTR Z's on both the front and back. I decided to go 17x9 in the front with 255/40-17's and 17x10.5 in the back with a whopping 315/35-17 set of meats on them. Nothing says manly like a wide set of rubber.

Some pics of the wheels and tires:










More pics later of the progress with the engine build!