my 89 Mustang "back in the day" street / track day car buildup

[fast Ed]

Late last year I started thinking about something else to use as a track day car instead of the crapper Taurus SHO that I have been running for the past while. The SHO has been fun, and a good performer, considering the relatively small investment, but I found myself missing both RWD and torque.

I had been looking at the 2011 V6 Mustangs a bit last summer, thinking that one of those as a used car in a year or two could make a fun track car, but it would still take more money than I wanted to spend for this. A bit more pondering led me back to what I know, Fox Mustangs. If I did a mild build-up, being careful not to get crazy with the engine, suspension, or brakes, I could probably put something together that would be reasonably quick, reliable, and most importantly, fun!

Driving a friend's nicely modded Fox at the annual "Mustangs at Mosport" for a short session a few years ago reminded me how much fun these cars can be with the right mods. So a few months ago the search began in earnest for a car that would suit my needs. I was hoping for an 87 LX 5.0L hatchback, for a few reasons. First, the hatchback body style is much more practical for a track day car that is being driven to (and hopefully from) the track, even with a cage in these cars you can still load in a mounted set of tires, a tool box, some parts, and your gear and helmet bags. Secondly, an 87 would be old enough to be exempt from the biannual emissions testing here in Ontario. And thirdly, that was the year and model of my old race car that had started off as my brand new street car, almost 25 years ago now.

But to be realistic, I had to widen my search parameters a bit, so I would have taken anything from an 86 to 89 LX hatch or GT. I had also been considering a return to wheel-to-wheel racing, but with Canada's vintage race association, VARAC. They have a very strict no-contact rule, and are more about the fun and sportsmanship of racing than they are about a win at all costs attitude.

This would be a nice step between the lapping days that I have been doing for the last 10 years, and the LeMons and Chumpcar races that I have competed in a few times. 1989 is the newest vehicle that is currently eligible to use in VARAC's Group 70+ category, and even then, it has to be prepared to the regulations of a race series from that time period. So that means all of the fancy stuff the young whippersnappers love that has been introduced for the Fox cars in the last 10-15 years, the coilover spring kits, the torque arm rear suspension, the tubular K-members and control arms, would not be permitted if I wanted to race in that series. It would be restrictive for the build, but it would also keep me from getting carried away with the budget as well.

So after scouting around on Craigslist and kijiji for a while, my wanted posted on a local Mustang forum netted a response. The car was about an hour north of me, sitting up on stands in the backyard of the owner's mother. The owner had bought the car from a friend minus the engine and trans as a project, but a new job in western Canada took him away before he could get much work completed. He had dropped in a low mileage longblock from a 90 LX, and started to change the car over from AOD to T5, pedals were in place already.

I made arrangements with his cousin, also a Mustang enthusiast who still lived in the same city as his aunt, to take a look at the car. It was a black 89 GT that showed less than 100,000 km on the odometer, but it had a bit of body damage on the cowl and roof from a hood flyup incident at some point. The interior was in very good condition, unfortunately it was also the dreaded "porno red" version. People who reside in the south and western U.S. would take this for granted most of the time, but underneath the car was almost unbelievably clean. I had to think that this car had never seen in any salty Ontario winters in its life, which is getting tougher to find these days in a 20+ year old Fox.

The previous owner had tried to sell the car last year at $1500 with no takers, which I though was a reasonable price considering the state of it, but he told me that he would take $1000 to get it out of his mother's backyard, and see it go to a good home. So I committed to the deal, and just had to be patient to wait for the snow to melt down enough so that we could extract the car from the yard. The last few weeks we've had enough decent weather in southern Ontario that the snow was pretty much gone, and this weekend promised clear, cold, but sunny weather. I made arrangements with a friend to borrow him along with his Super Duty pickup and tandem axle car trailer to get up there on Saturday afternoon to bring the car home.

Here is the car as it looked a few years ago, the photo supplied by the previous owner:



Loaded up on the trailer, ready to head home:



Unloaded in the greenhouse behind the shop at home:



The engine bay as it was:



Left side shock tower / firewall:



Right side shock tower / firewall, those are dead leaves behind the tower, not rust:



The porno red interior:



Rear view, already has the Saleen style wing that I wanted to get:



The past month I have been collecting parts for the build, found some here, some on the local forum, some on Corner-Carvers. The idea is to build the car as it might have been done in the late 80s / early 90s, with parts that were available at that time. If I were to make the step to run in VARAC vintage racing, the car could be presented as a Saleen Mustang, similar to the ones that ran very successfully in the SCCA Escort Endurance series through the late 80s. That will require changing the bodywork from GT to LX, which I am prepared to do later if I decide to go racing with it. The beauty of this approach, is that much of this stuff is available at very good prices on the used market, since it is not as desirable as are the more modern goodies now on the market for Fox and SN95 Mustangs. Would like it to end up looking something like this:



Some of the pieces already on hand ...

16 x 8 (rear) gold mesh style Saleen wheels, 4 in good shape, 2 a bit tougher:



16 x 8 5-spoke gold Saleen wheels, 2 only:



Set of 16 x 7 and 16 x 8 5-spoke grey Saleen wheels, will sell the pair of 7s and combine the other 2 to make a full set of 8" wheels with the gold ones ... haven't decided whether to do them all in gold or grey (probably grey):



Maximum Motorsports revolved Bilstein front struts:



H&R Super Race front springs, these and the Bilsteins are a bit newer than I should be using, will probably switch to Koni Yellows at some point, have an old pair for the rear sitting around from years ago:



FRPP aluminium radiator, also a bit newer than the era of the car, but I couldn?t pass it up for $100 (which ended up being $50 at time of pickup because it was very dirty by the seller's standards:



Old FMS 140 mph speedo with only 60 miles on the odometer:



Cleaned up lower intake and old school FMS 65 mm throttle body:



FMS 1.72 E351 bolt-down roller rockers and FMS air pump eliminator pulley and bracket:



Tilt column, will make it easier to get my older, less flexible body in and out with the race seat in place:



OMP race seat that a friend is lending for the project, already has some Mustang sliders on it:



Will continue with some shots of the progress that we made on Sunday ...


cheers
Ed N.

[fast Ed]

It's not going to be anything too fancy, just good common sense parts selection I hope for a nice package when it is done. Rather than using the SVO / Saleen rear brakes and axles, I'll likely go with 94-98 SN95 Mustang stuff for lower cost and easier availability.

For reference here are a few shots of my old 87 from the early 90s:






cheers
Ed N.

[fast Ed]

So yesterday (Sunday) my friend Greg Judge, who does some Solo I and track days with a Fox, came over to check out the car, and lend a hand with some wrenching. I think that he's at least as excited about the build as I am! LOL

Anyway, we didn't do a whole lot, just chewed the fat for a while, discussed the plans for the car, and then decided to get the engine out and up on a stand so it could be diassembled for inspection. It had been sitting in the car for an unknown period of time with no intake in place, so who knows if any critters decided to take up residence in the cylinders, or worse.

The spare (86) engine that I had picked up just in case the 90 engine in the car was going to take too much work to become operational quickly:



Engine bay of the car as received:



A/C compressor and P/S pump out of the way, ready to come out:



The engine was just sitting on the crossmember, not bolted down, and no trans in the car, so it was quick coming out:



A few more detailed shots of the engine bay, look how clean that firewall and trans tunnel are:





Up on the stand, ready to be dug in to:



Even has some new urethane engine mounts ready to go:



Up on stands, waiting to have the suspension and brakes blown apart:





Super clean floor pans, already has some bolt-on frame connectors installed. Haven't decided what exactly to do with them yet, may just leave them as is for now rather than welding them, in case they are going to cause a hassle for the vintage race rules:





The greenhouse behind the shop where we put the car to work on it ... was a beautiful sunny day, even though it was around freezing outside, in the greenhouse we were down to shirtsleeves, almost felt like ants under a magnifying glass ... quite nice on a cool spring day actually:




I'll post some more up when I get the heads off the engine this week. Hopefully it is going to be useable, we'll see how it goes. I have a freshened set of stock heads with good valvesprings coming from a guy off the Corral.


cheers
Ed N.

[fast Ed]

Well, this weekend I got back at it a bit. Spent yesterday down at my brother's place helping him yank the engine and trans from his 68 GMC pickup.

So today I wanted to get the heads off the engine that had been sitting exposed in the car. Needed to find out if it was going to be useable after having sat outside with the intake ports open. I was hopeful, but prepared for the worst.

I got the valve covers off, in there was pretty clean, looks to be a low mileage engine as the previous owner had said:





So off came the rocker arms and pushrods, and got the head bolts cracked loose OK, ready for the moment of truth:



Bad news, things don't look very tidy in the cylinders:



#5 cylinder has some corrosion on the bore:



Unfortunately the other side isn't looking any better:



Cylinder #3 looking even worse than #5.



So I guess those were the two cylinders that had the intake valves open, makes sense since they are the 2nd in the firing order for each set of 4. Too bad it was left open, I guess even if the rocker arms had been loosened to let all the valves close, it might have been OK.

Now comes the decision as to how to proceed. Do I try to accomplish a quick cleanup on the affected cylinders with a honing tool, or is that just asking for trouble? I'm thinking that the best course of action to keep the project moving forward, is to go to the 86 HO engine that I bought as a spare. It was higher mileage, but a recent runner. If I take it, clean it up, and swap on the extra set of E7 heads that I have, I could get the car going as a runner that much sooner. Not really looking to spend the money right now on a full rebuild of the 90 engine that was in the car, this is supposed to be a budget buildup as much as possible.

Comments, suggestions?


cheers
Ed N.

[fast Ed]

Was busy this week with work stuff, and getting my crapper Taurus SHO ready to participate at the Solo I instructor school on Saturday, so no further progress on the car itself. But I did make a decision with regard to the engine to move things forward.

An acquaintance from the local Mustang club was selling a clean 87-92 style OEM forged piston shortblock that had an F303 cam swapped in for what I thought was a reasonable price, $400. The big F cam won't be of use to me, since peak HP is around 6,000, I won't have the heads, intake system, or gear ratio to support that. So the plan is to pull the F303 cam and resell it, recoup some of the money spent for the shortblock, and replace it with the stock cam from the engine that came with the car. Then I can bolt on the cleaned up E7TE heads and 1.72 FMS rockers with no P-V clearance issues, and keep the 86 engine as a complete, known good runner in case a backup is needed temporarily at some point to keep the car going.

Repainting the balancer will definitely be on the "to do" list, looks like a fairly new water pump on it as well:



Nice clean guts:



The seller even threw in an almost new stand from Princess Auto, which is sort of a Canadian version of Harbor Freight, and my 67 Beetle in the background:



Tomorrow hopefully I can get back at it, give the new stove a good looking over to prepare to bolt things together to make a complete runner. Still have to finish taking parts I want to keep off my first SHO and get that car hauled away, I don't want to have too many cars hanging around when my landlord returns from wintering in Florida a few weeks from now.

Also got a few more "old school" acquisitions this week. First one was from a person on the Corral, a nice brand new in the box FMS adjustable brake prop. valve, the old cast body Kelsey-Hayes M-2328-A unit that was included with the older FMS disc brake kits. Actually got a used one from a guy on Corner-Carvers as well, and then a few days later the brand new one was offered, so I jumped on it too, $40 shipped. This will look much better to suit the theme of the car underhood than a newer billet block prop. valve would:





The other item I got, from a friend who is a service engineer at Ford of Canada (Oakville Ontario head office), was another old FMS piece new in the package, the M-61120-A dead pedal footrest kit. I could probably have found a stock one out of a later Fox, but this is cool to have, and was $20. He even had the invoice from 1996 when he bought it from a now defunct Toronto Ford dealer for $23. Told him that something else would have been a wiser investment. LOL



I'll post up some more as the engine starts going together.


cheers
Ed N.

[old5.0]

Love the build, especially the "nostalgia" part. I've been tossing around the idea of doing an early 90's vintage Pro 5.0 style build, complete with early Trick Flow intake, cast iron Trick Flow/Will-Burt Street Heats, etc. Keep up the good work, and please keep us posted.

[fast Ed]

Thanks Tony, I was wondering if anybody here gave a shit about this project. LOL It's certainly not as awesome as some of the stuff happening, but it should end up being a very straightforward and functional track day car. My old 87 was at its best when it just had some mild power bolt-ons, and basic suspension and brake upgrades. I could pound on it all day at the track with no issues, and drive past many cars that were higher dollar units.

Is that Grebeck's old SAAC car in your avatar?


cheers
Ed N.

[John Joyo]

Ed, I agree with Tony. Please keep us posted. My best friend in high school had a Fox body 5.0. I've always loved them.

[old5.0]

Thanks Tony, I was wondering if anybody here gave a shit about this project. LOL It's certainly not as awesome as some of the stuff happening, but it should end up being a very straightforward and functional track day car. My old 87 was at its best when it just had some mild power bolt-ons, and basic suspension and brake upgrades. I could pound on it all day at the track with no issues, and drive past many cars that were higher dollar units.

Is that Grebeck's old SAAC car in your avatar?


cheers
Ed N.

Yep, that's Steve's old car. SAAC #XD1. I've been hunting for it for awhile now, but no luck so far.

[PurHell]

I like seeing what everyone is working on.. should be a ball...

Buddy had one that was a ex-Florida Highway Patrol.. nasty.. dark brown, dog dish caps..fast.... really stood out when everyone else had a red or yellow one with funky factory aluminum wheels...