RPM PROJECT CAR were stalled. The Weinle sheetmetal billet runner intake looked great, and after being heavily massaged by Robert Carrasca and Jason Allen at MetalCrafters of Monmouth, it was all finished and ready to go. However, it was too tall to clear the factory hood. It was also too short to look cool poking through. Drat. We went back to the drawing board and attacked the problem from its start. Although the MSD Pro Billet distributor had performed flawlessly on the dyno, the front-mounted Ford unit had forced our hand with a tall intake with the AccuFab throttle bodies mounted up high to clear. We could try a side-driven distributor or a front-mounted unit, but Donald suggested going with a coil-nearplug (CNP) system and eliminating the distributor altogether. To do that, we needed to contact our friends at FAST and order up one of their new XIM ignition modules (PN 3013132, MSRP $802).
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3 & 4: In order to get the new billet valve covers made, we needed to send Dave Visner our existing Kaase fabricated covers. Although they look excellent already, switching from a fabricated intake to a billet one meant switching to billet covers would make everything match and look killer together. Here, Jerry Gary pulls the cover, revealing the Boss Nine valvetrain in all its glory.
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5: The FAST XIM ignition module will allow our XFI 2.0 system to operate as a coil-near-plug system, which will also allow us to eliminate the factory-style front mounted distributor. This will not only alleviate our hood clearance issues and allow the intake to be lower profile, but will also enhance performance, too.
While we were at it, we ordered a set of AEM’s new IGN-1A style smart coils (PN 30-2853, MSRP $81 each). These incredible IGBT inductive powerhouses will produce up to 40kV of output voltage and 103mJ of spark energy and are unique in that they offer high spark energy and long duration. Most traditional coil designs provide one or the other, which is why many choose to use multi-strike ignitions when running high compression, high rpm, or boost. This new design eliminates that necessity and has been successfully utilized on very high HP engines (1,500-3,000+ hp), so they will be plenty for our 1,500-horse Boss Nine. They are available with or without an internal igniter. In order to mount the coils, we ordered a billet bracket kit from Eddie Motorsports. We discovered after the coils arrived that the bracket wouldn’t fit, but Eddie is actually in the process of building a new IGN-1A bracket for release later this year. More on that in an upcoming article. The switch to a distributorless CNP system made
www.rpm-mag.com | october 2015
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