Progress Thread The Northwoods Notch

[Cheapskate207]

Upper Reinforments are in and ready for a few stitch welds. I let my girlfriend run the impact on the right side while I held the bolt underneath the car. She sucked the floor down pretty good! I don’t think it’ll be a problem though.

The lower reinforcements don’t fit. I have an email to LMR.. gotta figure that out. I have a separate thread going.

 

[Rdub6]

That we are man @Steel1 . This was a huge wake up call. I shared it in hopes that others learn from my experience and be more conscious of safety . I had never had anything like this happen before.

Glad everything is alright! And thanks for sharing....... you’re right, we all need a refresher on safety every once in a while! It’s easy to get complacent!

 

[Cheapskate207]

Got some parts in. I ordered a SS fuel line from American muscle because it was on sale for 160$. It said the brand was OPR but it came in an classic tubes box. Cool.
Got the console from @95BlueStallion , thanks man!

Currently waiting on upper control arms, bushings, and poly coil isolators from Maximum Motorsports. Looks like the isolators are back ordered for another week. I ordered a FMS speedo/cluster after seeing @Mustang5L5 ’s. It’s currently in customs because it came from Canada (eBay). I got a great deal on it, but it’s for a 87-89 car. Not sure if I’m going to use it, store it, or flip it. My car has a 87-89 column and cluster surround so I may see if I can repin my connectors to get it to work. I’ve found some info on it and I think it’s possible. Then I’d need new autometers to match though. Hmmmm.

Im probably going to bite the bullet and order new carpet. Then I’ll have everything to reassemble the car.

 

[Cheapskate207]

Not much to report, just waiting on parts. So I thought I’d share this. My GF had this banner made for me for Christmas. She’s a keeper

 

[Potomus Pete]

Nice job with a GF instead of W

 

[Cheapskate207]

I calibrated my tach today. I’ve been wanting to do this for a LONG time but hadn’t gotten around to it. The high side was way off. 1,000 to 3,500 is spot on and 5,500 is spot on. 4,000, 4,500, and 5,000 are only off a very little amount.. a hundred or so rpm low. My car only makes power to 5,500 so I calibrated the high side to be exact at that specific point. I’ll attach info on the thread I used for reference and a screen shot of correct frequency vs rpm.

Last pic shows how much the tach is off between 3,500 and 5,500 rpm. Here’s the link to the corral thread I used:

How accurate is your stock fox tach? results inside...

Grumble, grumble. I took apart one of my spare clusters and no dice. It's different than the later clusters. I'll have to so some reverse engineering of the circuit if this tach is way out of calibration. Ooooh, rocking a Tektronics o'scope. Very nice. ;)

www.corral.net

Oh, and peep that orange needle

 

[Mustang5L5]

I really need to do this now. The timing is spot on, only thing is I lack the equipment to do so. Maybe I should hope on ebay and see if I can find one cheap.


BTW, I think the 87-89 tachs only have one pot for adjustment. That's all I saw on the one I looked at this weekend

 

[Cheapskate207]

Yes, that’s true. I’ve read that later ones are much more accurate because of it. While messing with it I could see why.

This was just an old frequency generator we had at work. Looks like you can get cheapies on eBay for 20$-100$+. For audio work those would not be ideal. But for something like this they’d likely work just fine.

EDiT: more info. The mentioned thread says the tach accepts square and triangle wave. The generator I used outputted sine and it worked fine.

 

[Mustang5L5]

Let me see what I have at work.

 

[HemiRick]

oh I have a picoscope it can output square wave of any freq I choose. I do have a way to do this, thanks.

 

[General karthief]

I can vison a CT in there.

 

[Cheapskate207]

So... this came in. It’s for a 87-89 car but I got a deal I couldn’t pass up. I’ve read that you can repin the cluster connectors in the later cars to make it work. Which is convenient considering I have an 87-89 column and bezel in my car. Looks like I’m faced with a decision. I’m actually really digging my white faced gauges now that I’ve installed the new lens and painted the needles. They match my auto meter gauges well. If I swapped to the 87-89 cluster I would need to get new autometers. Hmmmm

Oh, and I ordered a 90-93 cluster too. One of those deals where I was watching it on eBay and the seller sent me a good offer. I was thinking it wouldn’t be bad to have around because my white gauges are the entire face, not just an overlay. I might just resell it though.

 

[Boostedpimp]

I would honestly moth ball the 160 cluster, ebay cluster and rock the white face gauges for a while until you make a decision or eventually want to jump to the 160mph cluster.

 

[Mustang5L5]

I literally had the same white cluster and autometers in my car, so i'm gonna be hypocritical and say store that 160MPH cluster and use the white setup. Only reason I say this is because of having to rewire the cluster to do it.

Pretty sure i have the exact same brand BBK white faces on my old cluster too. I liked it, but it lit up at night like crap, which is what made me decide to go back to a standard cluster. At least the 160MPH speedo made going back to stock more unique.

There's also these overlays....
https://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-...0001&campid=5335821607&icep_item=380474491930

Or you can sell the 160MPH cluster and put the funds towards this. If you hop on the Saleen FB group, there's a few guys selling Saleen 90-93 170MPH clusters in the same range as well. Spendy I know, but they have been going up. Even 87-89 140MPH speedos seem to have jumped up in price now.

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-...0001&campid=5335821607&icep_item=284140764130


PS: I see your dash has the typical broken upper guage pod mounts. LMR now has a repair kit for that. One of my spare black dashes is broken this way. Got lucky and got an entire new dash, but i was about to try this repair kit on it.

Mustang Instrument Bezel Repair Kit (87-93) - LMR.com

Repair your broken dashboard with this instrument bezel repair kit for 1987-1993 Ford Mustang from 5.0 Resto!

lmr.com

 

[Cheapskate207]

yea the rewiring is a deterrent. Honestly, I considered selling the cluster.. I just don’t wanna regret it cause it is a kinda rare. I all but stole it, comparing to others forsale on eBay. I think I’ll store it for now until I come up with something. I was, and still am, happy with my current cluster. I only bought the 160 and stock one because they were good deals.

I agree, @Mustang5L5 , they do light up poorly at night. I have one of those dash repair kits sitting on the bench

 

[Potomus Pete]

Im considering the white. How easy is it to break the needles off when changing the panel.

 

[Mustang5L5]

They just pull up and off by hand. If one gets stubborn you can lay a thibk sheet of cardboard on the face and use a fork to carefully lift up. They also sell tools for needle removal

 

[Cheapskate207]

I got a few hours of much needed garage time today. The torque box reinforcements bolted and welded in and there were no fires in the the process I'm starting to figure out this flux machine, finally. I should disclose that I am a fair welder at best. I'm self taught but have quite a bit of experience on nicer machines. Even though these welds a satisfactory for me; I have done better ones consistently in the past. While I was there I welded the two small cracks in the floor and the rear seat back support.

After that I got a lot of my interior painted using LMR crystal blue. I mostly did light coats just to freshen it up. I should've taken some before pics. All the panels were different colors of blue. I'm excited to see how this interior comes together. Dash corners, dash pad, center console, cup holders, glove box, and panel under the steering wheel done. I don't think I'm going to do the kick panels or sill plates as they are high wear items. Undecided about the rear panels.

Yes, my house reeks of spray paint now. Yes, my GF wasn't happy. Atleast my new HF respirator worked well. OH.. almost forgot. This came in:

I laid it on the old carpet and it looks like it'll fit well. I went with the mass backed version. I also decided to try the noico 80mil sound deadener. It'll be here Monday. As will my order from Maximum Motorsports. Those two shipments are the last pieces of the puzzle. Idk what I'll do after that... I've already blown the winter budget

 

[Boostedpimp]

I've used the noico 80mil silver stuff in a car before.. good stuff you'll like it

 

[Maddene]

nice work on your torque boxes! If you decide to sell the other cluster I would be interested. Thanks