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Project Great Pumpkin Mustang: Floor Patching, Subframe Connectors, And More!


Project Great Pumpkin Mustang: Floor Patching, Subframe Connectors, And More!

It’s been six months since we put up any kind of word on the Great Pumpkin, our 1980 Ford Mustang Ghia, and that’s actually a good thing for the most part. The car didn’t die and hasn’t been rotting in a field somewhere…it’s been in occasional around-town use, awaiting the day we really tear into the car and give it the powertrain it truly deserves. There’s been no forward progress on the 5.0L and 4R70W overdrive automatic that we snatched out of a rolled-over Ford Explorer…they sit in the garage, waiting for some work, and we’re looking into what to do with the perfectly reliable but utterly gutless 4.2L V8 and C4 automatic currently in the car. But there has been a pressing issue that has needed to be addressed for quite some time: the floor.

Tears in the metal around the seat mounts is a common Fox Mustang issue, more so in the 1979-1983 cars. Thin metal, a flexible unibody and the weight of a driver combine to prove that Ford’s engineers should’ve added some thicker metal in certain places. Given this Ghia’s known history, it’s actually kind of surprising that the tearing was limited to the area of the left-rear driver’s side seat mount. We found the issue early this year, but we just hadn’t gotten around to actually addressing the problem, because we wanted to put subframe connectors in at the same time we stitched the floor back together. So, the end result was to only drive the Mustang on clear, warm days that we could keep the windows rolled down (carbon monoxide poisoning isn’t a fun prospect) and to move the seat forward as far as I could tolerate. We also had to keep the car under 65 miles an hour, because anything above that and the whole car would go into an oscillation, mimicking a major front-end issue.

The breaking point came a few weeks ago, when I took the car out just for a cruise. It hadn’t been run in a couple of weeks and the temperatures had dropped to early autumn levels (where the 4.2 is happiest, it seems). The Mustang was driving great and running strong, right up until I hit some kind of bump on the way home and the seat mount finally pushed through the floor. That settled that…it was time to get the Mustang fixed up. A set of Stiffler’s subframe connectors was ordered from National Parts Depot and KingSpeed Race and Repair in Bowling Green performed the hard work. (Hey, I’ve only welded thin sheetmetal up to this point. I wanted this done right!) The subframe connectors set me back $169, and KingSpeed charged labor and materials to install them…nothing out of the ordinary for anyone looking to do this to their own car, and not that expensive of an upgrade.

We picked the Mustang up yesterday evening and brought it home, and the difference in the way the car drives is night-and-day. The oscillation is gone…the only perceptible shake coming through the car is due to the crappy tires on it right now, and that’s barely noticeable. Given how far sunk the driver’s side seat had been, it was a new experience sitting in the correct position. According to Mike at KingSpeed, the connectors weren’t a completely perfect fit. A little bit of massaging was needed to get them lined up, but nothing too out of the ordinary. Some of that might be due to the condition of the Mustang’s undercarraige…this car has been a daily driver most of it’s life, and while it is a one-family car, many members of that family have used it for different reasons and in different driving styles over it’s 37-year history on the Earth.

With the drive home completed and yours truly much happier about spending a little money on the car, a few assessments were in order and a plan is being made for further work on the car. I’m genuinely looking forward to using the Mustang as a daily driver for a bit…the Angry Grandpa Chrysler needs a rest, for sure, and the Mustang needs to get some use. Plus, it’ll be nice to daily drive a car that isn’t on a premium fuel diet for a bit. There is more work to be done for sure, and there are more parts waiting, but for now, check out the rest of the pictures and captions:

It’s a bad shot, I know, but it’s what I can get done with a dying shop light near midnight. These are the full-length connectors from Stiffler’s I ordered from National Parts Depot. They come ready to weld in and have a seat mount brace system.

Here’s a better look at the seat mount bracing system. This takes the strain off of the floor’s sheetmetal. And if you’re noticing the wire attached to the fuel line, that’s part of an old-school add-on cruise control system that is no longer on the car.

It ain’t pretty, but it’s no longer perforated. The green paint was my idea, since I didn’t want bare metal out in the air long…I just grabbed the nearest rattlecan and sprayed the cleaned-up area. The bolts are beefy 17mm units, a damn sight better than the 1/2 inch studs originally installed in the seat tracks. The front mounts are untouched.

So what’s next for the Pumpkin? Well, I see a coolant flush in my near future…the thermostat is acting like it’s sticking and the car is puking this pond-water looking crap all over creation. It’s not overheating, but the 4.2 doesn’t need to die from sludgy antifreeze. Not clearly in the picture is the other mess this thing makes easily: it has a power steering pump leak somewhere that is epic in scale. We need to address that.

Another purchase from National Parts Depot is fresh cut-pile carpeting for the Pumpkin. There really wasn’t anything wrong with the old, 1980 orange shag carpeting…except that it was old, shag, and would require deep cleaning like none other to look ok. The color matches the Caramel interior color to a T…which is amazing and baffling, all at once, and for $139, it’ll be a small price to pay for making the interior a nicer place to be. Some Dynamat I won from a Holley contest a few years ago is being diverted from the Imperial to the Mustang as well, so once I get around to putting the interior back together, it will be quieter, cleaner, and less disco-y. All good points!

And yes, the 5.0L is still in play for the car. We still haven’t made the call between aftermarket EFI or an aftermarket carb and intake tuned well, but the overdrive automatic is going to happen come hell or high water. In the meantime, we will put some miles on the 4.2 and get an idea on it’s fuel consumption and overall usefulness. Who knows, we might go ahead and find a home for it, too. It’s not a powerhouse and there’s no real way to bolt-on build one, but it’s dead-nuts reliable as the day is long and might be neat in a little pickup or the nearest cast-aside Fox shell.

Oh, one other thing. Remember a while back, I mentioned something about fixing, of all things, the key buzzer on the car? It’s one of those strange kinks…if the key buzzer works as it should, it makes me think that the car is closer to good than bad. It’s like a sign of non-neglect. Or maybe it’s because it reminds me of my mother’s car from when I was a little kid. Or it makes me think the car is better than it is. Either way, it’s a detail that I obsess over in any car I own. I’m probably the first person to openly admit that I fixed the buzzer in a Fox Mustang. Love it or hate it, the damn thing works. Here’s the proof:


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