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89 lx convertible summer driver project.

mustanggarage

Active Member
I am going to resurrect this thread this summer. I have some more plans for my little fox. I have been driving my 94 a lot lately since I bought it from my Dad, and this winter I have been working on my jeep. so next month I am ordering some parts for the 89 stay tuned for more exciting adventures in spending money on things I don't need, just because I want to.
 

John2002

Guest
Yep, I did it again....talked myself out of spending 700 more dollars on the car...lol...took of the rest of the pollution/air pump/ stuff off and was thinking of get ceramic long tube headers....they weren't in stock when I was looking but they also needed a mid pipe to connect up with the exhaust...after a few more things I thought of doing...injectors and a new upper plenum gasket...1200 dollars was at the bottom of the American Muscle cart...
Well I'm glad I didn't sell the old headers and H pipe that are only 4 years old....Got a buddy of mine welding up that tube that supplied exhaust from the back of the headers. I was able to get that smog pipe off that runs out the back of both headers. If we get a few days in the 60's Ill get out and screw in the two plugs for the back of the heads and maybe sit down and order the injectors...Accel EV1 19 lbs #150819...know it by heart....then put the old ceramic shortys, down pipes, O2"s back on and then fire it up and hope its all works like it did before I should of left it alone...
 

mustanggarage

Active Member
so I just ordered this last night. I am excited. It wont be here for a couple weeks and I won't be able to work on it until the 23rd or so, but I had to tell someone lol. it is a vortec si trim v-3 supercharger. I decided I wanted the self contained version. I have the kind that you have to use engine oil feed for on my 65 and it is ok, but I had some issues with oil leaks etc. so I decided I did not want to deal with that, and I did not really enjoy punching a hole in my oil pain anyway. this should give me 8-10 pounds of boost and really wake this car up a bit. I am probably going to have to work on the rear suspension next.
 

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broncojunkie

Well-Known Member
Well, that sure looks like fun! Hope you'll be posting some pics of the install. I've never really messed with power adders. Are there any concerns about compression ratio when going this route?
 

mustanggarage

Active Member
Well, that sure looks like fun! Hope you'll be posting some pics of the install. I've never really messed with power adders. Are there any concerns about compression ratio when going this route?
thanks. yes I plan to take some pictures of the install. When I built this engine I had always planned for a supercharger. I built it with dished pistons for a 9.3:1 compression ratio. forged pistons, forged rods and forged crankshaft. I also had a custom cam shaft made and let them know a supercharger was planned. I put the cobra intake on it because I like the looks of it, I always knew between it and the low compression my 331 stroker would not reach the potential of the rest of the engine, but I figured the supercharger would basically eliminate that concern. I am already running 30 pound injectors and I put in a 255 lph fuel pump at the time of the build so most of the additional things needed to install this are done. I will need to mount and hook up the FMU, and I probably need to look into some ignition upgrades soon, but this engine should handle the boost just fine.

as to your question, a stock 5.0 is really begging for a supercharger in my opinion, but I would recommend only running 5-6 pounds of boost on a stock engine, and obviously the engine needs to be in good shape and tuned well before you add the supercharger.
 

John2002

Guest
LOL....that sounds like the list will never end....if you paint the living room then you have to get new furniture and if you get new furniture then you have to get new drapes and if we get new drapes.........good luck...I wasn't able to get both plugs in last weekend...let same I hope I didn't cross thread the port on the drivers side....I went to Ace to get a 1 X 5/8 bolt to try and get that seated in the port before I try the plug ( I means new plug) again....The passenger side went in great after I loaded the port up with brake cleaner and used a small wire pipe cleaning brush to clean out the carbon in the threads....I did the same to the other driver side , finger started the plug and got it in as far as I could with out using a wrench but as soon as I got a wreck on it it twisted and I blow UP!!!
 

mustanggarage

Active Member
I started working on my 89 convertible again this week. first the heater core was leaking after I put the new engine in so I just bypassed it and it has been that way ever since. in order to replace the heater core you have to pull the whole dash and it is best to disconnect the AC so I had to take that to my good buddy Rick's place and have them do that job. I also had a leak in my AC system which I had them fix. so now the HVAC system works. unfortunately now my gauges are wonky. my oil pressure gauge is not reading, and my temp gauge is only going up to about 140 so I assumed there was a connection issue in the gauges. so I pulled all that out and could not get it to work right. I don't know maybe there is a kinked sending wire. anyway while I had it out I cleaned it up a bit and put in some LED bulbs. I still don't like it, I want some white face gauges. and since I am going to be putting the supercharger in I want some real gauges to keep track of things. The stock ones are never very accurate so after piddle farting around for hours trying to put white face gauge stickers on, and get the stupid LED bulbs to work and trying to get the oil pressure gauge to read I said to heck with it and ordered what I really wanted a nice new set of autometer gauges with an aftermarket pod that will replace the entire gauge set. I am not sure if I want to do that before, or after the supercharger install. anyway it is on the way and it cost a small fortune so it is getting done. oh and while I had it out I installed a boost gauge for when the supercharger is installed.




next I really like the sound of my flowmaster exhaust in my 65, but in this convertible it has a really annoying harmonic that just kind of grated on me. I love the sound my magnaflows make on the 94 however so I bought a set of magnaflow mufflers to swap in and replace the flowmasters in my american thunder cat back exhaust system... yeah right, like anything I do is ever that easy. as it turns out the american thunder cat back system has a small piece of exhaust pipe that comes out of the muffler to connect to the tail pipe.

and yes, I forgot that little fact when I bought my new stainless steel magnaflows, and no my new magnaflows donot have that. so I found what I thought was the perfect solution. these pypes intermediate tubes.



they look like exactly what I need, again not so fast. they are about 2 inches too short to fit, so after struggling for quite a while dropping the muffler on my head and getting two pretty nice gauges in my forehead where the muffler clamp hit me, I went to oreillys and got some 2 1/2 id to 2 1/2 od adapters. a couple more exhaust clamps and some universal exhaust hangers and I got it bolted up. not exactly beautiful so I tried to avoid that area in the picture lol.



but it sounds awesome, and that little extra extension allowed me the flexibility I did not have before and I got rid of an annoying rattle that had plagued me. now I am just waiting for my supercharger to get here.
 

mustanggarage

Active Member
ok. well I have a bit of progress to report. but unfortunately I have not had much time or motivation this week. so first you have to remove the battery and battery box, then the fan and shroud. then the alternator and its bracket. I already deleted the smog pump.



then you have to move the charcoal canister by angling it and attaching it with one bolt like this.


then since this is an SI trim unit it comes with a new lower pulley.


I don't have a good picture of it, but since I deleted the smog pump you have to install this air pump delete pulley in its place in the supercharger mounting bracket. everything is loosely installed here.



if you can see that bolt sticking through from the back with the nut on it you will probably think that might be a problem. the instructions make it look like that is the way it goes, but that bolt protrudes through to far and it is too close the belt for my comfort. of course I decided that after i had it all together and the fan and everything back in. like I do a lot of times I end up doing things 3 or 4 times till I get it right. so anyway I had to pull everything back out and put the bolt through from the front. and of course getting everything lined up and back together was even harder this time lol but I got it back together. since I am going to be increasing the air in significantly I need to increase the fuel also so I have the FMU installed, but I need to recalibrate it for the new 47 pound fuel injectors I installed. of course installing those requires removing the intake manifold.

once I got all that done. i discovered that my air pump delete pulley was interfering with bolting up the supercharger. so I had to massage it a bit.





and finally the supercharger is sitting in it's new home.


I also had to send the MAF meter back to Pro M racing to have it recalibrated for the new 47 pound injectors and the relocation to behind the air filter. I will have to wait to get that back before I can do much more. because the air filter assembly and intake have to go on before the discharge tubing. tomorrow I will try to get the MSD ignition box hooked up. anyway slow progress.
 

John2002

Guest
I forget about the camera every time I start something on the car....not on the ground yet but I was able to get the new fuel injectors on and all the smog plumbing off. I bought my smog pump delete pulley 4 years ago....not sure how I remembered where it was for the last 4 winters...It gave me a little head ache when I went to put the old BBK shorties back on....and of coarse , I had to get another set of exhaust headers gaskets after getting it all back on and finding out that the piece of dried out header gasket I found under the car wasn't from the last gasket I scraped off...this will be the last time I do anything to this car, one more interior repair and then the oil change and wheels back on then back on the ground....It fired right up but I had to adjust the timing because it was below 8 degrees BTDC...After setting it to 10 degrees BTDC it ran fine...I"ll battery up the camera and snap a few pictures .....spent most of last Wednesday just getting some tools I don't need to step over anymore off the floor...
 

mustanggarage

Active Member
I decided I needed to get an anderson power pipe so that I could run the air intake out into the fender. that arrived earlier this week. to install that I had to cut a bigger hole in my fender. unfortunately the large hole that was already their was situated a bit to high for what I needed so I had to use that as the top of my hole and make it bigger than I really wanted. but I got it cut out and the pipe installed.



I also modified the radiator hose.



My Maf sensor had not arrived yet and I knew I was going to have to clock the power pipe to get the maf and filter to fit in that small space but I was not sure what angle I needed. so I had to wait. to install the rest of it. their is a small pop off valve that comes off the blower discharge tube that then ducts back into the power pipe. I needed to wait to plumb that until the maf arrived as well.
UPS finally delivered my MAF sensor about 4:30 this afternoon. so I tried to install it, and found as expected I needed to clock the power pipe a bit to get it installed.
so I kicked back watch some netflix, or tried anyway,



and waited for my maf sensor to arrive.



UPS finally arrived with my parts about 4 this afternoon. we spent some time this afternoon and got the MAF installed. it barely fits, what a pain it was getting that inner fender liner back in. then I plumbed the pop off valve. then we spent a lot of time figuring out how to install the MSD ignition box, getting it wired up, and plumbing the vacuum lines to the pop off valve and the MSD box.





but we quit for the night at about 1100 tonight. all I have left to do is wire up the boost retard adjustment switch, and fill the radiator. then fire it up and see if the stupid thing will start.
 

mustanggarage

Active Member
finished installing the boost retard switch, filled it with 50 50 antifreeze, cycled the fuel pump twice and it fired right up, no problems, no leaks that I can see. the exhaust smells like it's running pretty rich right now. I plan to have it dyno tuned as my happy birthday to me present. I have that set up for May 22nd. but it is together, I don't see anywhere that is rubbing, the exhaust sounds good, new back tires on it , fixed the issue with the fuel line being too close to the exhaust. I need to drive it a bit to make sure nothing goes wrong once it is on the road, but so far it looks good. I am going to drive it like this for a while before I tackle the instrument cluster upgrade. I will probably start pre wiring the cluster but I am going to at least wait until after the dyno is done before I start wiring the cluster.
 

mustanggarage

Active Member
update. I test drove it and had a problem, the thing started making a thwacking sound. stopped, popped the hood and saw the inner edge of the belt had shredded itself. one rib basically stripped off. so I carefully drove it home and tried to figure out the problem. I ended up pulling the supercharger and looking things over. My Dad came over to help me out because I needed someone to watch the belt while I started the car. He figure out that the new sve smog pump eliminator pulley was out of alignment. i had to add 2 washers behind the pulley and locktite it back in. that fixed it. so I put it all back together, and took it for another test drive. it runs awesome. I built a monster in a box AOD for it when I built the stroker, so while it might not be quite as fun as driving a 5 speed would be, it was still a lot of fun. I was driving in front of walmart just puttering around breaking everything in, not hotrodding or anything, and this camaro took off pretty hard next to me, my competitive nature took over, I was going about 20 so I pressed the accelerator, I didn't floor it, just pressed down on it planning to just keep up with the camaro, anyway the car downshifted squealed the tires and surprised the heck out of me. later i was driving and decided to test it a bit more because it seemed to be running well. so I floored it from 25 and the thing took off like crazy shifted and chirped the tires at 50 mph! i did one launch from rest and it just fried the back tires left some nice marks on the road. so it has not been dyno tuned yet but already it is running great. next monday I take it to the dyno guy!
 

broncojunkie

Well-Known Member
Man, that sounds like fun! Glad to hear you got it together already! And although I love driving manual shift, a boosted car really needs a good auto in my opinion. I know that's what I'd do, anyway.
 

mustanggarage

Active Member
Man, that sounds like fun! Glad to hear you got it together already! And although I love driving manual shift, a boosted car really needs a good auto in my opinion. I know that's what I'd do, anyway.

true, and if I want to drive a 5 speed, I have my 65



or I can finally get around to getting my Dads 94 coupe back together.

 

John2002

Guest
Winner winner , chicken and ribs for dinner!!!! It most be a wonderful feeling when something up planned to do works...I still haven't found out what I did to mine : ( After the new injectors, loss of all the smog plumbing, I still can't get a decent idle after the car warms up. New IAC, TPS and new gaskets all around the plenum/EGR/throttle plate....I had it to 2 shops and they didn't find any vacuum leaks or other things I might have done wrong. The problem is, after it warms up (190 degrees) and I'm sitting at a red light, I can see the rpm start dropping. ....and then bottom out at about 600 rpm's and then the car runs like it wants to die out. The only oops I did was after I removed the trans tube to get at one of the thernactor ports was lost about a quart and half of trans fluid. I noticed Tuesday that I had over filled the trans passed the XXX parts on the dip stick. I syphoned out a quart that night but haven't gotten the car back up to operating temp to see where the level is at for the trans fluid.. Did I fry he trans??? Like I said after it warms up I loose the idle and it runs like it wants to die out. after shutting the car of and restarting it, it runs fine for a few minutes at then does the same....I should be able to run it a few minutes today, big storms rolling through today so no wy of getting it out till Sunday....
 

John2002

Guest
LOL.....I got the car up to temp and the trans fluid level was below the 2 dots (normal level) The bottle I drained the fluid into was at plus 24 oz's mark. It was an old oil quart bottle with the scale in oz's and liters marks on the side. I ran it for 5 minutes in gear with my foot on the brake. it held idle the whole time. I added 8 more oz's of trans fluid to bring it up to the first dot then ran it for 5 minutes with the car in gear and my foot on the brake. It held idle again....I added 4 more oz's of fluid bringing it up to right in between both dots and ran my test again....it held idle...I only have about 12 oz's of trans fluid left in that quart bottle so that extra 12 oz's was the problem???? I also at my last trip to the gas station only added 5 gallons of 89 octane fuel. The last 5 gallons was 87 octane. I was trying to flush out the old fuel but waiting till the tank got to low fuel warning before I added fuel again.... My last fill up was in September and added Stabil and 5 oz's of Lucas fuel Injector cleaner....I know gas doesn't last for more then one month now and I didn't want to fill the tank till I knew the rest of the 8 month old gas was gone...My next fill up will be a full tank of 89 octane and a bottle of Amsoil PI...Still lots like rain the rest of the day, I still have to wash it and get one more interior part replaced....I hope we don't get another wet spring and hot summer again...the last 2 years were bad ones to own a convertible....
 

mustanggarage

Active Member
I finally got the ol 89 over to the dyno shop yesterday. We knew we needed to swap to a cooler spark plug, but we did not know which one to choose, so we were not surprised to hear that on the first run it had some detonation at WOT. also I should have drained the fuel tank before I started this project, but I didn't. I had over a quarter tank of 87 octane in it when I finished the install. I filled it with 91 but I know the fuel is a little low on octane. it still made right at 400 hp at the wheels on a mustang dyno. he said he had to take quite a bit of timing out of it to prevent detonation, so I am sure it would do a bit better with race fuel, or even pure 91. regardless I am satisfied. with the AOD, and the mustang dyno I would guess I am already getting dangerously close to 500 hp at the crank and this is a stock block engine. so I am pretty happy with the results. It was also cool to see another foxbody guy this close to me. he had several in the shop undergoing some pretty major modifications










 

mustanggarage

Active Member
I finally decided to tackle the gauges. man have I mentioned I hate wiring. well I bought this gauge package because it had this nice plug and play harness that plugged right into the stock wiring harness. I get the gauges and they sent a universal wiring harness. not happy. I called and talked to them. apparently they stopped making the plug and play harness, but still advertise it with those pictures. that is pretty dishonest if you ask me. they did offer to take them back and refund me, but all the other instrument clusters for this car also just come with a universal harness so I while I would get the satisfaction of not giving them my money, it would not help me out any so I decided to keep them. I am going to give them a scathing review however. anyway I finally decided to tackle it. there instructions suck by the way. they tell you how to wire up the universal harness to the gauges in the cluster. gee thanks all the gauges come with instructions then the instructions literally say to use an electrical tester and probe the wires and wire the vehicle side wiring to the correct wires. :eek::eek::confused: no pinout diagram no help at all in figuring out wich wires go where. I finally found a decent diagram on line to help me get some idea what wires go where. I did a bunch of research to make sure where the wires go. I ran new wires for the oil and temp sending unit. after buying the setup and reviewing the wiring for the electronic speedometer I discovered that wiring an electronic speedometer to this car frequently causes problems with the cruise control since this car had a composite speed sensor/speedometer cable unit. so I decided heck with it and bought a gps speedometer like what I have in the yj. then I just cut the speedometer cable off at the sender and left the speed sensor in place so that should not affect my cruise control or my idle because the computer uses the speed sensor in adjusting the idle as well.

so once I figured out all the wiring I test fit the cluster.



then I decided since I have the dash apart and my stereo never worked the way I thought it should. ( I always had to open my phone and push play on my phone to get the blue tooth to play instead of just pushing play on the remote, and the microphone for the hand free calling never worked) I decided to swap the stereo and the front speakers. so I waited for crutchfield to send me some new speakers and stereo. crutchfield stuff is always good. the speakers fit perfectly, but for some reason the wiring harness adapters would not fit onto the new speakers so I had to cut the positive connectors off and put new ones on, but no big deal.


then I wired up the new harness adapter for the stereo. pretty straightforward, all plug and play pretty much. the wires are even the same color, so not hard. plugged it in and it worked fine first try yeaah.

ok. so after that I decided I should test all my connections on my instrument cluster and everything worked except my gauge lights. I had forgotten to hook up the instrument light wire. no big deal just pull off four screws, find the correct wire and t-tap it in. turned on the light switch and it worked, adjust the dimmer, it dims and brightens just like it should. then I started the car and the stupid instrument lights came on. they are not supposed to do that lol. It was getting late. and I was aggravated. I tested the wires, couldn't find anywhere that I had a crossed wire, no reason that there should be any current going from my 12v to my dimmer circuit. but there was. I decided to work on something else for a while and so I started modifying the housing to fit the new cluster. that was a major PITA as well. once I finally got it to fit reasonably well it was late and I quit for the night.

Oh I almost forgot. I also was told by someone I should get a wide band o2 sensor since I had the supercharger on there so I got one and wired it and my new matching boost gauge into the new pillar pod.

so I was talking to my Dad at supper tonight and we were discussing the light issue, and he asked me about the stereo install. I did not really think that was the issue at first because while there was a dash illumination wire on the wiring harness adapter, the new stereo did not have one so I just left that wire unconnected. but that got me to thinking when I wired up my pillar gauges there was a t-tap attached to the dimmer switch so I just pulled that tap and wired my new gauges and that wire together and plugged them back in. I did not look to see where that original wire went. it turns out it was a park brake wire. when the old stereo was installed apparently they bypassed the park brake by running a wire to the dash illumination wire. when I plugged the new wiring harness in somehow that wire was still connected to something so I just removed it. now everything works properly.







 

mustanggarage

Active Member
a couple small things. these cars apparently have a circuit that runs through the instrument cluster that monitors the alternator. if you do not complete that circuit the alternator exciter will not engage. so you have to run a switched 12 v wire to the alternator exciter wire, the light green with red stripe wire. in the wiring diagram i used that wire is in the right hand connector, but on my car it is in the left hand connector, but other than that this diagram was what should have accompanied my gauges imho.
 

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chad mcccance

New Member
I have had a bad couple of months with this car. first of all the car was running great, but I burnt up the first gear clutches in the AOD. I had some shifting issues after I rebuilt this transmission, so I took it to a local shop and they told me the first gear clutches were too tight and swapped in some different ones, and they replaced the governor. after that it ran fine, but apparently the first gear clutches they used were not up to handling all the horsepower the car is putting out now, I did not want to go through rebuilding this transmission again because there was some damage in the case, so I decided to buy a megamonster transmission from monster. they sent it to me and I swapped it in. I have done this so many times now I can swap the trans in a couple hours. put it in and since this one does not have the constant pressure valve body I decided to take it to a transmission shop to make sure the tv cable was adjusted perfectly. I did not want to deal with another problem. so I trailored it over there, and they checked it, thought it was adjusted fine, took it for a test drive and said it would not shift into overdrive. I hemmed and hawed and called monster to decide what to do about it. I did not want to void my warranty so I had to wait for them to decide what to do about it. of course during this time the hurricanes hit. anyway to make a long story short they decided to have my local shop drop the trans and see if they could figure out what was wrong with it. it was not difficult. the input shaft had sheared off. with less than 10 miles on it. I decided to buy a hardened input shaft from another company and monster warrantied the whole thing, thankfully. so they put the trans back in and I am up and running. it is running great. it still idles faster than I would like so I may have to take it back to they dyno guy next summer. but it is running great, it has tons of power and overall is a lot of fun to drive. next project will be to tackle the suspension. I am considering going with an air ride suspension just for the fun of it. I will see what next summer brings.
 
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