I want to make something clear as a bell: when I said my goodbyes to the Imperial and welcomed in a Fox Body Mustang with open arms to replace it, the idea was that I was finally getting a project car that wouldn’t fight me or cause me pain along the way. In the case of the Rough Start Fox, the 1989 Ford Mustang LX project that showed up as a $600 orphan about a year ago now, loving this car has been akin to giving a hug to a teddy bear. Erm, sorry…I meant “teddy bear cholla”. Very distinct difference between the two. And it’s a difference I know first hand. I thought I knew what being a prick was all about, then I got stuck with one of those spiky bastards and the better part of the Sonoran Desert heard me at full volume as a friend of mine ripped barbed spines out of my fingers. But that’s life, I guess.
In the last RS Fox update, we showed you the teardown of the T5 transmission that we scored on the cheap from a soon-to-be-crushed V6 Mustang that NMRA racer Adam Cox cleaned up and tricked up for us. And that was pretty much it, because after that, things got weird around BangShift Mid-West and the Mustang took a backseat to a few things….
For starters, there was the floor that had to be rebuilt from scratch. Again.
There was the work we did to get the Great Pumpkin Mustang, the other Fox body, back on the road, which was worthy of eating up some time.
There was a whole lot of arguing that, for once, didn’t involve what was being made for Christmas dinner…though, in truth, we’d have rather listened to drunken rantings about turkey versus ham over this nonsense.
But mainly, the issue that kept work from happening with the red Mustang boiled down to one major screwup on my part: the transmission selection. In my hurry and excitement to score an SN-95 trans, I failed to read up on any issue involved with an SN-to-Fox conversion. And there’s plenty. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Follow along as we catch you up to speed on the work that has gone on with our pet hatchback, from the fitment trials and our first start issues to the reason why we have paint fume headaches lately…
For the third time, the dash has come out of the Mustang and the third…and mercifully, final…set of pedals got swapped in. There’s no question that these will work, as these were sourced from another 1989 Mustang LX. In fact, to be honest, it was the car that I was hoping to buy about three or four years ago.
So…to the main event, the transmission. All of the flywheel and clutch components that American Powertrain sent bolted right up, no questions, mostly no qualms (we will address that in a bit). The V6 bellhousing bolted right up to the 302, so that wasn’t a problem. What was a problem is that bellhousing and transmission would not completely mate up. The bolts would thread in, but a roughly .25″ gap was present. A Quick Time RM-201 spacer did the trick.
Problem #2: the rear mount is different between Fox and SN-95. This will be rectified with a plate that bolts to the Fox crossmember (in this case, the adjustable Ford Motorsport-style crossmember) and the transmission mount.
A couple of weeks ago, I finally got sick of looking at the roasted blue fender. It pissed me off. So I spent the money on a cheap sander and a bunch of 40-grit discs and stripped it down to bare metal, then shot it in primer before having Premier Auto Color in Bowling Green mix up two spray bombs’ worth of 2H Cabernet Red, the color I believe the car was supposed to be. I’m not 100% on the process…I want to color-sand that down a little, but overall, not bad for a rattle can. I might have to shoot the whole car if I like it.
The shitty six-piece headlights that were falling apart in a light breeze got trashed in favor of these one-piece Spec D units. They’re DOT legal and look pretty decent…in my opinion, anyways. There is some trimming I have to do before I go through with altering the electrical connections to fit the bucket-specific sockets, but the trial fitment sold them. Money well spent, in my eyes.
And that brings us up to the final point: starting the 302. In short…that hasn’t happened yet, with one good reason. After getting the mini-starter for the 1992-up Ford transmission port and re-wiring the starter system for the mini-starter, we tried to light the fire on this car. The bendix kicked out, the fuel pump came to life, but the starter did not engage the flywheel at all. Which, from where we sit, means that the transmission is coming back off, the bellhousing and clutch are coming back off, and I get to start counting teeth. Lucky me. I’m also going through the process of cleaning the interior up properly, knocking the dent out from just in front of the driver’s side taillight, and just to make sure I’m having fun, I will have to replace the quarter-windows, since the outer trim is paper-thin and flaking away, allowing water inside. Major annoyances, but easy fixes once I can gear down to get them done. The question now, though: will I? Let’s see how long it takes until the next update!
Fox flywheel doesn’t work with v6 sn95 bell housing. I think you need the one off F-150? Has to the larger, and 50 oz, so V6 will not work. Look up 50Tussin he put one in McNugget.