Taking a break from drilling the rivets in the door handle to ramble a bit. As per usual, it's probably all old hat to you all.
Late last week, I took the car out for its first real successful highway trip. The first one was the one driving it home from where I bought it, which was an adventure with all the stuff wrong with it. The second was my first appearance with the car at a club outing, in which I learned that there was something seriously wrong with the front
suspension. (I was too distracted with the brakes, transmission, etc. on the first trip to notice the
suspension.)
This time, nothing of note went wrong. The most noticeable issue was the third gear synchro problem, but I've got double-clutching down well enough that I rarely grind anymore going into it. Dare I say it: it drove pretty much like a normal car.
But I did discover something: the car is a bit slow.
I've taken to calling it "the beast" because it's such a torque monster at low speed, and up to last week I was babying it at higher speed, worrying about this or that. But I found that it certainly doesn't have that crazy uncontrollable feeling at 60+. It wasn't bad, especially compared to the Hondas and Toyotas I've been driving for the last decade or so. But my wife's '05 blows it away.
As it should, certainly; stock '89 vs. stock '05 should be no contest. But I'd like it to be a contest.
It seems like all the Welcome Wagon and build threads get one question right out of the gate: what do you want to do with your car? Street, strip, both? And I answered "street". But there's a whole lot more to that question, I'm learning now. My wishes for the car are changing as I'm learning more about it, especially after seeing some of the pics in the other build threads, and as the car becomes more and more driveable.
I started with the attitude "stock except where really necessary"; now I'm kinda thinking "stock-ish", with the "ish" growing louder as time goes on. Like late Fox GT-style two-tone, split right at the body moldings, but in paint colors Ford never offered. (I think I'm just tired of that gray.) Maybe Explorer heads and intake instead of stock. The Trick Flow kit seems so much easier, but could I live with the big Trick Flow logo up where the "5.0 HO" lives now? The more I think about it, especially after last week's joyride, I think maybe I could. I was committed to staying 4-lug, but it seems like there are more options for 5-lug rear discs, and am I really in love with those turbine wheels that much?
The original point of the car was that the Fox Mustang was a part of my youth, and I'm wanting to recapture that to a degree. A completely custom car top-to-bottom isn't going to do that, but neither will a car that disappoints when I drive it. So maybe the original Ford build spec isn't Holy Writ so much as "a good start".
So far, no change to the plan: get to stock for the serious driveability problems, fix up the structural rust, and only then go nuts with the upgrades. Kinda glad, too; besides keeping the bill down until I'm sure the rust won't be a deal-breaker, I'm finding I would make different choices now than I would have in the spring.