The Not A Build Thread, Build Thread - no carb yet but other stuff happening - Page 6

Vettn71

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Jan 3, 2014
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I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but all the pictures are lumped together, with the last ones inserted at the top. Anyone know how I can move these around so they're in the rights locations?


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I've posted some information on the 1985 Mustang I "inherited" from my youngest son. This is an ex-show car, featured in Mustang magazines at the time. I even see pictures of it show up on websites, such as LMR.

At first glance, it looks great and has a lot of really custom work done on it. 2004 Cobra front bumper molded into the 1985 top bumper, 1993 Cobra side skirts and moldings, rear 93 Cobra bumper, 1998 Cobra interior, T3550 transmission, 3.55:1 8.8 rear, aluminum heads, shorty headers, FI Tech Go EFI 8 fuel injection, the famous B cam, stock block 302, LED lights, 3" rise hood, Saleen rear spoiler, custom rear seat delete with 10" woofers and amp, wire tuck in engine compartment which has been smoothed, MSD ignition, full 5-lug conversion using SN95 parts, 4-wheel disk brakes, USB adapter for input to the stereo, aluminum radiator, HID headlights; the list goes on and on. Really a very cool car.

A couple things it no longer has; the air suspension and the FR500 wheels. The air suspension quit working and my son put on coilovers. The FR500 wheels were confiscated by my son, so I put my OEM Bullits on it.

However .......... the car's been passed around from owner to owner and maintenance has been, shall we say, lacking? Initially, the car ran good, as my son (the last owner before me) had put $70 spark plug wires on it with high temp plug wire sleeves. Due to the configuration of the header tubes, within 30 days (not driving it very much) three plug wires had burned through. Not wanting to buy plug wires every month I bought a set of Accel porcelain wires. Problem solved, or not. The second wire on the passenger (right) side would not go onto the spark plug. I found this out as I drove it to work the first time and by the time I reached the office it was barking and puking like it was just going to go toes up.


I decided (incorrectly it turns out) that that if i sanded down the porcelain end of the plug wire that I could get it onto the plug and drive home in peace. Not a chance. I spent my entire lunch hour trying to get that plug wire on the Accel shorty plug I bought. "Shorty" is a bit of a misnomer. I'm certain it is somewhat shorter, but not by much. At the end of the day it was no go. I resigned myself to driving home on 7 cylinders.

On the way home I bought a 90* plug wire for that cylinder, put a high temp booty on it and called it good. I don't want to dimple the header tuber to get things to fit. I'll just run one odd wire.

Once I started taking a hard look at the car I noticed several things that weren't quite right. First off was the parking brakes. They didn't work. The handle acted like it was working, but I found a rear cable bound up. I replaced all three parking brakes cables, using an adjustable FRacing cable on the front. Thanks to LMR I now have parking brakes. Actually, I need to buy stock in LMR, I've been buying so much from them.

Somewhere along the way the quality bucket seats were replaced with cheap crap seats. My arse ached after just a few minutes driving (not that I've got much left). Someone also installed horrid three-point harnesses. I had a set of 2004 Cobra leather seats and decided I would give the old buns a break and install them. Whoa, cowboy! Not so fast. In order to get rid of the three-point harnesses and install the seats I had to remove the entire interior! The headliner was wrinkled and dirty, anyways, so I decided to do the full-meal-deal. I stripped the interior of all the body panels, seats and carpet. I then installed a three-layer sound and temperature control system. I started with FatMat covering about 50% of the body panels. This was to reduce resonance. Then a full layer of closed-cell foam mat to reduce road noise. In between those layers was a layer of thermal blanketing. I installed the FatMat on the roof, as well as the thermal layer.

I'm going with a black interior, as opposed to the grey/black one that was in there. The dash has some cracks in it, so I have another dash to take its place. This won't be a simple swap, though, as it will have to be trimmed to fit the 85 shape. Some of the rear interior panels had stress cracks in them, probably from other people taking them off and putting them on incorrectly. I used some panel bond to fix them, sprayed with vinyl prep and painted. The best color seems to be a mat black, instead of satin. The satin is just too glossy. I did find rattle can paint that has flex agent in it, so I tried that as opposed to dye. We'll see how that holds up. When I can find them I'll replace both rear panels. They look pretty good, but have been beat down to parade rest.

TBC

Jim
 

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The most serious problem I found was rust under the paint at both body-side corners of the hatch. Talk about ugly! I wire wheeled it to bare metal, which turned out to be sound underneath. I treated it with rust converter, followed by rust encapsulator. I did discover that the rust was under the "original "red paint, not the grey paint. I think this indicates there were repairs made prior to the rebuild. At this point I just left it in the rust encapsulator. There's some other small areas that need attention, so I'll wait and take care of all of them at once.

I found a really nice set of 84 GT350 seats. Nice cushions, very nice upholstery, but they're porno red. I'll have to do what davedacarpainter did with his seats and paint them. I put a set of black seat belts in the car, which fit and work perfectly.

Originally, the woofers were in a set of enclosures sitting loose in the hatch area. I removed them from the enclosures and installed them into the false deck. I think they look a bunch better that way. I'll need to get some covers to prevent them from being damaged.

Since my son removed the air suspension, I bought a 2004 spare tire and jack, putting them into the spare tire well. This wasn't possible with the air suspension in, as it was located in that spare tire well.

I managed to recover the headliner, after taking my wife's advice. She went to a fabric store and found the exact headliner material, including the foam backing. I used 3M Super Heavy Duty Adhesive to secure it. Seemed to work well. I need to either find a way to recover my sun visors or replace them. They are raggedy looking. I'm missing the left A-pillar molding and need a new interior windshield garnish (metal). It looks like someone beat on it with a hammer.
 
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I guessed wrong as to where to put it. Off to "general" it goes!

I haven't had any new information come in. Not sure what steering rack is in it, but probably a SN95 unit. There's a lot like that. If something craps the bed, I'll have to guess at what it is.


Come to think of it, it needs a heater core, but I don't know if it's a SN95 or a Fox

Jim
 
Cool Jim! I look forward to updates.

As for the pictures, I just upload all the ones I want for the post I’m making, right the post and then insert them individually where they go. Are you uploading yours in a different manner.

Custom built or stock, they all need maintenance, hui?
 
I guessed wrong as to where to put it. Off to "general" it goes!

I haven't had any new information come in. Not sure what steering rack is in it, but probably a SN95 unit. There's a lot like that. If something craps the bed, I'll have to guess at what it is.


Come to think of it, it needs a heater core, but I don't know if it's a SN95 or a Fox

Jim

If you have a Fox dash, you have a Fox heater core.
 
@Davedacarpainter, I insert the photos from my iPad, which is like using a baseball bat to cut open peaches. When I go to edit mode I still can't move the photos.

Reddevil91, the 84 coupe is sitting in my garage. I traded my son that and my 96 that I had just finished. It may have been a mistake, but he needed some help and, being the soft, mushy guy I am, felt obligated to help. I agree about 4-eyes staying 4-eyes, but this car was built in about 2008 from what I understand.

Noobz, it has the SN95 dash, so it could be either. I'll probably have to pull it to find out.

The car was very leading-edge when built. If I were to build it I might do some things differently, but maybe not as well. A lot of craftsmanship went into the original build. I think it makes a statement, but I'm a more sedate kind of guy. My coworkers look at me like I've lost my mind, but being cookie cutter has never appealed to me.

The car is at a local Mustang shop called Gearheads to be tuned. The owner (and guy that does all the tuning) isn't too certain about the FI Tech throttle body injection unit. He says you usually can only make rough changes in the tuning with the controller. If he can't get the software I may look at going to a different computer, maybe out of a 93 Mustang. I do really wish I had a wiring diagram for this car, but a look under the dash shows it's got a bunch of splices. This may have been done over the years; just hard to say.
Jim
 
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I forgot to mention that using the adjustable front parking brake cable has created a new issue. It's so heavy and long that it bounces off the driveshaft as I drive down the road. Since the console is still out I'm going to take a 1/4" eyebolt, drill a hole in the transmission tunnel and stick the heavy end of the bee atch through the eye. I'll adjust it from there to get it tucked up out of the way.

I should also mention that in the trade my son did give me some parts to go with the car. 2004 dash with a good air bag (the one in he dash now looks like it is coming apart, center console (I hate for drinks to tip over when I'm driving), steering wheel air bag and a couple other assorted parts. When I get the car back from Gearheads I'll take some more photos of how it sits right now.

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So, the spare tire well was filled up with air suspension stuff originally. Looks like nice stuff, but many parts, such as the compressor and manifold had been changed out over time. I went around and filled all the screw holes from the stuff that had been removed in the hatch area, which were dozens. Didn't want to have rust issues. I also filled the rear quarters with foam to hopefully reduce resonance there, as I couldn't get to it with the FatMat. Time will tell.


The bottom picture shows the gauge pod that was in it. Because I removed the gauges I now don't have a left A-pillar molding. If someone has one, let me know, please.

Sorry about the sideways picture

Jim
 
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Well, I did good today, as they say. Bought both rear quarter trim panels, the trim around the headliner, the A-pillar trim, two Fox speedos (one a 140), a black passenger side dash insert with both air directors ( or whatever they're caled, the metal trim across the rear of the headliner and two sets of hatch rear trim ( across the back of the trunk area, all in black.

@Davedacarpainter , I won't need the pieces we talked about.

Nothing else really going on with the car. It's been down Gearheads the last two weeks waiting to get a tune. The car runs and drives, but not like it should. We'll see what it does after the tune.
 
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Thank you, 98BlueStallion. It is a cool car. It's a long-term project to get it where I want it. Finding some good interior pieces to replace the damaged ones at a good price really helps. I'm thinking the next project on this car will be working on the exhaust. It has an SLP stainless steel system, but it rubs against the frame. Right now I've put some leftover heat blanket material between the muffler and the frame, but it still makes noise. There's a local muffler shop called Kinney's that does custom work. He does really nice work and is no more expensive than chain shops.
 
Thank you, 98BlueStallion. It is a cool car. It's a long-term project to get it where I want it. Finding some good interior pieces to replace the damaged ones at a good price really helps. I'm thinking the next project on this car will be working on the exhaust. It has an SLP stainless steel system, but it rubs against the frame. Right now I've put some leftover heat blanket material between the muffler and the frame, but it still makes noise. There's a local muffler shop called Kinney's that does custom work. He does really nice work and is no more expensive than chain shops.

I have a local chain where one of the locations has an owner willing to let his guys do that also. Its always great to find a shop you can count on for some things. I am considering wrapping my plastics in leather or suede, to hide their age. Ever considered something like that?
 
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I'm a 200 level judge with the NCRS. Always did Corvettes until my son got me into a Mustangs. I like stock best, but that's not going to happen with this car. I'll probably just fix what it has the best I can, while trying to keep its original flavor. I would like to replace the quarter windows with the 85 style.

Jim
 
I used to love when folks swapped in the newer quarter windows, but have come around the liking the oirginals best as well. I breifly owned an '86 T top GT with the newer windows, and saw first hand how they dont fit the car that well.
 
Yeah, at one time the aero look was the big thing. I personally like the 4-eyes best. Now I own an unFox-Fox, sort of like the title of this thread. I do appreciate the craftsmanship of the original build, but hate to see what others have done to it. Not being a man of unlimited means, it's going to take some time.
 
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I think you'll fit in here just fine. I dont know anyone in here with unlimited means to just blast through a project, although a few of us dont mind suggesting how you spend your money! Watch out for @Noobz347 , he is set on getting someone to install guns on their car.