87 Mustang GT Build - Budget Build

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My cousin and I went to Arkansas to pick up this car from a buddy of ours. We left at 2am and got back about 12 hours later. This car was going to be my cousins project car, but a few days after we got the car to his house, he decided he wanted to try finding a notch instead, so I ended up getting car from him.

The car is just a roller, but the body and paint are in good condition, so is the interior.

The car does have some mods done to it. Below is a list:

Adjustable Upper Control Arms (unknown)
Lower Control Arms (south side)
Drive Shaft Loop
New Shocks
Drilled Rotors (unsure of brand)
Sub frame Connectors (some beefy home made ones)
Jacobs Ignition Box
Jacobs Coil
Tach
3 pod Pillar Gauge
Efan
Racing seats (came with stock seats - racing seats are going.)
Racing wheel (it's going - getting replaced with Capri 3 spoke)
Battery relocated to hatch

I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of other stuff, but you get the idea.

Bring here home


The Car is a burgundy/blackish/brownish with a good bit of flake in it. Clean and in the sun the color is awesome. The roads still had a good bit of salt on them, so the car got DIRTY on the way home... I'll get some good CLEAN pictures hopefully tomorrow.




I'm putting the original seats (great condition) back in. You can see where I pulled up the car a bit, was seeing how the floor pans are. Later I jacked up the car and the floor pans, shock towers, hatch, and all the other common rust areas are PERFECT. The underside is CLEAN!


Future plans:
Stock Short Block (with stock cam)
GT40p Heads
GT40 Intake
Modded Explorer 65mm TB
Explorer 3 Hole Injectors
CAI
Headers (need to do some research to see what all works with the gt40p's
O/R H-pipe
Flowmaster or Mac Cat Back
T5 Transmission (might just find a good 4cyl one)

[projectcarforum]

Scored a set of flowmasters with turn downs - $30 bucks.

[projectcarforum]

The plans have changed, big time!

Bought a wrecked 91 gt parts car that was hit in the rear for $400 bucks.

The car has everything I need.

Stock h.o

CAI

Headers (not sure of the brand)

140 mph speedo

Pony wheels with OK tires.

Plan is to use whatever parts that I need to get my car running, then part out the rest... and after all the good stuff is off, I'll just scrap the body.

[projectcarforum]

Got a bit of a lake start this morning... It was about 20 degrees and snow when I left the house at about 8:30am... By time I drove out to the shop and got it warmed up to acceptable temperature (low/mid 70's), it was about 9:15am.

First things first... plug in salamander! God I love these things!


Then build a nice warm fire.


Start pulling all the little crap out of the way.


Pull the Shifter (which turned out to be a hurst short throw - SCORE!)


Pull the complete exhaust (turned out the h-pipe wasn't a h-pipe, it was just two separate pipes) Need to find a o/r h-pipe)

[projectcarforum]

Pulled the transmission from the bell housing.


Hopefully this is a good sign.


Then I noticed something else was missing...


There it is... Pulled the motor and bell housing together.


And here is the car that donated her drivetrain so that another car to live... lets take a minute in her honor.


I came back into town to drop the flyweel off (it's getting resurfaced), and to grab some lunch... some how I got talked into watching my boy while the wife ran to the store, so I figured it would be a good time to post up an update...

About to go pick the flywheel back up, along with a new clutch kit and rear main seal... then I'm heading back out to clean up all the parts and maybe hit them with some engine paint... hope the fire is still blazing pretty good!

More pictures tonight. :D

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Well, I decided that I'm not going to convert the 87 to mass air because.... when I went to swap the computers I saw this


So I opened the hood and seen this...


And then I did a little of this.... :shock: :D

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I was hoping to get the motor and trans at least sitting in place today, but I ran into some issues.

First thing I did was get the explorer hung up way back in the woods - took two 4wd's chained together to get it out. lol

Then a buddy of mine came out and pulled the brake lines and fuel lines for his project. He gave me a gt40 intake for them... and now the gas tank is out, so when it comes time to haul it to the scrap yard I won't have to worry about pulling it.

Cleaned up the engine bay, hit it with a scotch-brite pad, then rattled canned it black. Came out nice. This fall I'm going to pull the motor back and do a budget build on it, while it's out I'm going to weld up the holes and give it a decent paint job... but the rattle can job turned out pretty dang good for the time spent.

Tomorrow I'm going to go out and slap the engine and tranny in. Should be tomorrow (monday) evening. Wish me luck!

Here's a crappy picture of the engine bay. It was hard to get a good picture with the car being in the shop...

[projectcarforum]

Hey look! It almost looks like a car again.. The engine, tranny, tranny cross member, radiator, all the hoses, and most of the wiring is done... just need to button a few little odds and ends in the morning, and hopefully she'll be running by noon!!!!!


This will still be an ongoing project... Still LOTS of stuff I want to change, but at least she'll be a RUNNING project... hopefully!

[projectcarforum]

Hey, guess what? The roller is now a DRIVER! Well, almost... I went to hook up the clutch cable to the clutch pedal and the quadrant was missing... so I'm going to have to try and find one tomorrow so I can drive it.

Most sounds GREAT! Fired right up! Here a quick video - my camera does NOT have good sound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfU4cRHxhJE

[projectcarforum]

One of the guys from the local mustang forum called me up this morning and said that he had one I could have for free. It's just some ebay special, but whatever, it got the job done...

I put a few miles on her this afternoon, she runs great! Pretty quick for the few mods that it has...

It's going to be like 60 degrees this weekend (it's been in the 20's), I'm going to use that time to detail her up and do a few small upgrades... and get her licensed!

[projectcarforum]

Went out and took a few pictures of the car... It started raining again so I only got a couple. You can see how the back sits up really high, has some sort of drag springs on it.

I'm thinking I'm going to do 4 cyl springs up front, and v8 springs with like a half a coil off them in the rear.

Anyways, here's the few pictures that I managed to get.

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[projectcarforum]

Picked up the following parts this afternoon.

BBK Catted H-pipe - $75 bucks (not the best deal ever, but I needed it like NOW)
3 spoke Capri Steering wheel - Traded for the racing wheel
A/c Bypass... Traded a stock a/c bracket for it.

[projectcarforum]

Walked outside this morning and was greeted by this sight.... and wouldn't you know the stupid doors was froze shut!


Finally got the door open and decided to check out the clutch cable.... and was greeted by this $h*t! The little plastic ties broke and the water pump bolts decided to eat a bit of the fan cover... Oh well, used some zip ties to remount it and added another thing to the "fix it" list.


After my anger got back down to a reasonable level, I went back outside and stuck this on the car. Pretty sure it added some where close to 30 hp.

[projectcarforum]

So I'm going to do some work on the car tomorrow (switch out the gas tank, rear springs, then give it a good cleaning.) With that said, here are some "before" pictures... The "after" pictures will be posted tomorrow evening.

The interior is missing a few little odds and ends, I have it all saved from the parts car, just haven't gotten around to installing it... Tomorrow that should change.