89 lx convertible summer driver project.

[mustanggarage]

Hello all. I am new to this forum. I am a member of several other forums but I was looking for a dedicated fox body forum and found this place so here I am.

first of all a bit about me. I am 48 years old. My job is totally unrelated to cars, I have no formal training on mechanics etc. My Dad is a retired mechanic also self taught and we both love tools and tinkering on cars. Dad is less brand specific than I am. I am pretty much just a Ford guy. I can appreciate a nice vehicle of another make but probably won't own one lol. I got my first mustang when I was 19 it was a 65 coupe. I still have that one. I drive it occasionally and take it to shows.

I like building and tinkering with cars as much or more than driving them I think lol. I have spent a ton of time and money on my 65 but right now I am in the process of building a nice semi daily driver out of my old 89 lx convertible so that is where my interest currently is. My Dad bought this car a few years ago and he was going to fix it up, but once we got his 94 running he lost interest in this car and gave it to me. I decided it was never going to be a show car, but it could be a nice daily driver, and so I started working on it.

here is the only picture I have of it when Dad first bought it.




in the background you can see my Dad's 94 and my 65

 

[mustanggarage]

well as is probably the case with a lot of these old convertibles the top frame was broken and the top was a raggedy mess. the interior smelled horrible and was pretty ugly. But it ran great. drove nicely and was a fun little car. so I started working on it. We found some replacement top frame parts from Hydro-e-lectric and replaced the top. this was before Dad gave it to me. He wanted a white top for something a bit different so that was the first thing we did to it.





the engine was complete but it was a mess so I spent a lot of time with a pressure washer and engine degreaser. I have a little eastwood powdercoater that I love so I powdercoated some parts and basically neated up the engine bay. no real money involved just elbow grease. Dad had bought a cold air intake so we through that on there too.


oh and Dad also thought that a mustang ought to have a pony in the grill so we did the cobra conversion on it. also before he gave it to me.



then I bought a flowmaster cat back exhaust and put on it since the exhaust was rotted out. through some seat covers on it, licensed it and drove it for a while.


I replaced the cracked weatherstripping on the doors.


I decided it was a fun little car but I really did not like those wheels. I have always liked the look of these lx convertibles with the cobra style wheels. so i bought a set from american muscle and that really transformed the car. in my opinion.

 

[mustanggarage]

the brakes looked like heck through those nice wheels so I bought a set of slotted and crossdrilled rotors and high performance pads. used some caliper paint and caliper decals to detail them a bit put a new set of rear drums and shoes, and powdercoated the drums.





at this point I really thought this was a pretty sharp looking car.

 

[mustanggarage]

I also put on some new shocks.

at this point my wife still would not ride in the car however because it still smelled "like moldy old feet" lol, and I was disliking those seat covers more all the time. so I decided to do something about it.

ok some before pics.





during:










after:







I also repainted the console two two toned and got rid of the billet thing around the shifter replaced with a stock one.

 

[mustanggarage]

As is the case most of the time with me, I look at the car. something bugs me about it and I fix it. then I move on. at this point I was bugged by the hood. it had been dented before we got it, we had fixed a bit and repainted it and it looked ok, but I really was not all that fond of the way it looked. I did not like the shape of it, it seemed to rounded, I was looking on line and I found an svo style hood that I really liked so I bought one from cervinis and painted it and put it on.









then I replaced the broken taillights

 

[mustanggarage]

I drove it for a while like that, then I started getting an itch to do more to it. I had never really wanted to modify it to much but I just can't leave things alone. so I bought a set of 3.73 gears and put in there. then I did the throttle cable modification with cable ties and those two things really woke this little car up. made it a sporty little rig.

 

[mustanggarage]

just a little teaser about the next installment.

 

[mustanggarage]

the only complaint I had about this car at this point was that it kept leaking oil all over my garage floor. I had two problems. the worst seemed to be a leaking low oil sensor gasket but I also had a leaking rear main seal and possibly a leaking front seal on the transmission. there was so much oil under the car I could not tell for sure where it was all coming from.
I must now come clean. I have a terrible incurable disease called while-I-am-at-it-itis. I decided since I had to pull the engine or the transmission to replace the rear main seal I might as well freshen up the engine, it did run fine but it had 130,000 miles on it. then Dad and I were talking and since we had never built a stroker engine we thought that would be fun so...


my new ford strokers diy 331 stroker kit.




lots of cool stuff have been showing up lately.










so the first thing we did was to file all the rings to fit. .024 on the second ring .020 top ring.




we like to put the cam in first since it is easier without the crank etc. in place.



the cam retainer uses these special bolts because the timing set I got uses a torrington bearing.



---------- Post added at 04:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:35 PM ----------

then the main bearings are checked for tolerance and the main caps torqued.



pistons and rods installed.



the cam is degreed.



the timing cover harmonic balancer and waterpump all installed at once to make sure they all seal well.



---------- Post added at 04:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:51 PM ----------

new AFR 185 heads.



new ford racing roller lifters.





comp cams ultra gold 1.6:1 roller rockers. and comp cams hardened pushrods. I used a trick flow adjustable pushrod to measure for the proper pushrod length.



lower intake manifold.





---------- Post added at 05:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:56 PM ----------



those are not the valve covers I plan to use. they were just left over from another project. I am going to use the valve covers that are currently on the engine in the car.


I have learned a lot since I started planning this engine build, many things I would have done different, but I learned as I went and sometimes you wish you had done things differently in retrospect. first when I do things they always seem to spiral out of control. initially I wanted to fix the rear main seal leak and it turned into this lol.

I bought the intake first because I wanted the look of the cobra intake to match some of the other things I did to the car. I was not and am not building a drag racer. this is just a little hotrod for fun. I did not want a car I could not drive to work every day. so I thought well a cobra intake and gt 40 heads on a rebuilt engine would make for a nice cruiser. so I bought the intake. then Dad and I were just kind of b.s.'ing and thought it would be fun to build a stroker, we have never done that. so I decided to buy a stroker kit. I wanted to build it so I bought this diy kit that had most of the stuff I needed for what I thought was a reasonable price. I ordered a 331 kit because way back when, the last time I built an engine they had found that the 347 engines had trouble with using oil etc. etc. well after I ordered the kit I started reading more about strokers, getting ready to build it. I discovered 2 facts fairly quickly one, the 331 vs 347 battle has been largely won by the 347, most of the problems plaguing the early strokers have been addressed. I already had the 331 on order so I will have to live with it. I think it will still be a nice upgrade for me. second I learned the gt 40 heads would not work well with the 331 they would severely limit my potential. fortunately I had not been able to find a set of gt 40 heads for what I wanted to pay so I had not bought them and decided on the AFR 185 heads. third the gt 40 intake you either love it or hate it. personally I like the look of it and while it may not give me the best possible performance from what I have read it will give me good performance up to about 5500 rpm which should be adequate for my needs. I can always swap the intake later if it is enough of a hindrance.

finally building a fuel injected engine is a "LOT" more expensive than building a carbed engine. I still have a lot of parts I need to get I am going to use 30 pound injectors, I plan to get a bama 4 bank switch chip and properly calibrated maf sensor when I get it dyno tuned. the fuel filter and fuel pump obviously need replaced. I am going to use the stock distributor and I don't plan on upgrading the ignition at present, that may change.

at this time I believe I have a strong bottom end. I used main studs, and head studs with forged rods and pistons all high quality parts in the long block so if I need to upgrade any of the ancillary parts it will just be bolt on's which can be done later.

 

[mustanggarage]

in preparation for the new engine I put some sub frame connectors on.



after this picture was taken I painted them with eastwood chassis black.

 

[broncojunkie]

This project is awesome! Loving everything about it! Quick question for you: Did you find some replacement seats, or did you just buy new covers for them? If you re-covered them, how difficult was it? Did they fit ok? Any details would be great. I know many of us fox owners have seats that are getting tired and worn, and our cars look so much nicer with some good fabric!

 

[mustanggarage]

This project is awesome! Loving everything about it! Quick question for you: Did you find some replacement seats, or did you just buy new covers for them? If you re-covered them, how difficult was it? Did they fit ok? Any details would be great. I know many of us fox owners have seats that are getting tired and worn, and our cars look so much nicer with some good fabric!

yes the seats themselves were in decent shape. the back wasn't broken, the foam was in decent shape, even the power lumbar still worked so I just bought some vinyl seat upholstery from cj pony parts and replaced it. it really is not that hard to do. these seats are more complicated than a 65 mustang but if you pay attention how you take them apart so you know how to put it back together it is not that bad. also one tip I learned from Gearz tv is when you are doing the headrests and thigh bolsters if you put them in a plastic sack, like a walmart sack and hook your shop vac up to it, it sucks it right down and the plastic is slippery so it slides into the upholstery much easier. a good set of hog ring pliers and some sharp side cutters and basic hand tools are all you really need though.

 

[mustanggarage]

I have been working on the car a bit when I have some time away from work and I can afford to get dirty. with my job those two things don't happen all that often. anyway since I have never done any work on 5.0 engine and neither has my Dad. so I had this old label machine that I bought for my office that i no longer used. I decided to use it to label my lines and connectors as I took them apart.



I also did a couple video's to show the engine I pulled was running great. no problems just had a few oil leaks that needed fixing lol.





then I bought a box of ziplock bags and a sharpy and put the bolts from each small section of work into an individual ziplock so I would not have trouble figuring out where the bolts go. each bag then went into a box set on my workbench. and pictures were taken as I took it apart.

first step drain the fluids. water and oil

then remove the battery and battery tray.

then the fan shroud was removed and slid onto the fan.
then pull the radiator.

then pull the belt.

then since the front accessory brackets are always a pain to figure out how they go back together I took pictures as they came apart.

alternator wiring.



powersteering and ac bracket


alternator bracket


outer powersteering bracket removed. powersteering pump and ac pump moved out of the way and wired up where they would not be in the way. this is the back bracket for the powersteering pump.



then pulled the intake manifold. this is how the vacuum etc goes on under the manifold.




I had already disconnected the throttle cables and the egr, tps, and iac connectors and carefully labeled them.

then I removed the fuel lines and rails. I had a heck of a time getting the fuel lines apart. I had the correct tool but I did not realize you had to twist them and pull pretty hard after releasing them with the tool. but I got them loose.

then pulled the starter, exhaust, bellhousing bolts, dust shield and torque converter bolts.

then made sure everything was loose and pulled the engine.

 

[mustanggarage]

while I had it out I spent some time with a pressure washer and some engine degreaser although it did not really look like it after I got it back in the shop sadly. this thing looked good from the top but underneath it was a greasy mess. anyway. after I cleaned it up as good as I could, or rather until I got sick of working on it, we pushed the car back inside. then we replaced the front seal on the transmission and put a quart of atf in the new 2200 convertor and put it in to the transmission.
so we pulled off the stuff we needed from the old engine and cleaned it up a bit




in that picture you can also see the mechanical oilpressure gauge in place so we could make sure everything worked right when we spun up the oilpump and preoiled everything. I also had the valve covers off so we could see the oil coming up into the valvetrain.

then we put the new thermostat in place.

this rubberband trick makes that a lot easier.



then we dropped the new engine in place.

I do not know if this is typical for this car because I have mostly worked on classic mustangs, however for some reason the torque convertor would not slide back far enough into the bellhousing to allow it to spin freely when we pulled the old engine, and this turned out to be a major pain when we dropped the new engine. because of course the bolts on the convertor did not line up with the flex plate and we had to get the transmission jack out and lift the transmission and finagle the torque convertor into the proper alignment and of course the studs were wedged against the flexplate. anyway we finally got everything lined up and bolted up the bellhousing and motor mounts.



I powdercoated the powersteering bracket and painted the belt tensioner and alternator bracket assembly with alumablast paint.



then I hooked up all the wiring harness and put the battery in temporarily and cycled the fuel pump a couple of times to make sure I had no fuel leaks.



then the new intake manifold and the chrome powersteering cover. and the wiring harness.



I still have to put the alternator on, and i have a new fan I need to swap because the old one was broken in several places. I have to figure out what I am going to do with that shroud too. I think I will try to paint it, it is so faded it looks brown and it is terribly ugly. and I still need to put the h pipe back on and hook up the o2 sensors. but I am getting closer.

---------- Post added at 10:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:27 PM ----------

I forgot to mention that these valve covers had to be modified to fit with my roller rockers. the little splash baffle in there hit on 2 of the rocker studs. a little judicious use of the die grinder and some manual molding of the baffle and everything clears. there is still plenty of room for ventilation and the oil should still flow in with no problems.


and before anyone asks yes I am going to remove all the labels I just need to sneak a pair of sharp scissors out of the house without my wife catching me lol.

 

[mustanggarage]

ok last installment of pics to bring this thread up to the present.

alternator is in, new fan, powdercoated the pulley, new shorter belt, cap, rotor plug wires and wire looms.
I also got the cold air intake back on.



then I tackled that old ugly radiator and fan shroud. the radiator had been leaking at the drain plug so I took a wire brush and some carb cleaner and compressed air and cleaned it real thoroughly then painted with eastwood radiator paint. (man I sound like an eastwood advertisement lol. but I do get a lot of stuff from them).

then I spent some time scrubbing the fan shroud and the overflow bottle. the overflow cleaned up surprisingly well with some soap and water and a bit of carb cleaner. then I painted the shroud with some crylon fusion paint, I chose a semi gloss black so it would look more like stock, and I carefully masked off the sticker for the ten pin plug retrofit. I do not know how well it will hold up but it looks a lot better to my eye.






I still have to get back under the car and put the x pipe in and swap the fuel filter and fuel pump. unfortunately that is going to have to wait until after christmas I am afraid. I have the filter but not the new fuel pump and that is 200 bucks I need for other things right now. I do have money set aside for the dyno session once I get everything together but I am saving that. I will probably try to start it before christmas but it won't be on the road until I swap fuel pumps and get it dyno'd

 

[mustanggarage]

I forgot to mention that I ported the lower intake manifold using tom moss's instructions before the stroker kit arrived. http://www.veryuseful.com/mustang/tech/engine/IntakePorting.pdf

 

[John2002]

That was my idea, just a summer driver....its been going on 5 years now...lol... I got ours at a Lincoln.Mercury dealer a week into December 2008, and the receipts kept commin....and commin...and commin....before the snow even hit the ground I wanted to take it out of the garage for a spin...I'm getting ready to start on the interior this winter. Pulling out the seats and carpet this time and rolling on some heat and sound deadener. And as long as its near X-mas I ordered a new distributor yesterday...LOL..."we just paid the Discover card off" my wife informed me....so I told her , "its ok we just have a few gasoline purchases on it now"....I want to keep mine as close to stock as I can...other then the new rear trunk lid and spoiler that went on early 2009 and the strut tower brace I put on last winter, most everything I replaced was as close to stock as possible. A few touches of eye candy under the hood ( PA 95 amp alt, BBK Ceramic headers and CAI ) sub frame connectors was about the whole of my projects that were done before I put it away in 2013. I want to get more time in the garage this winter as to get a few more touch ups taken care of. I put a very nasty dent in the hood about a month ago and really want that done right after I get the car back on the ground...so the soner the better for that....I'm sure I'll have a few pictures up in a few weeks, I'm usually a start to finish guy when it comes to doing something with a project on the car, I forget to take a before and after snap shot when I get in the zone. By the time I remember I didn't I'm already in for the day and nursing my cuts and scars....

 

[mustanggarage]

sounds like a nice project. I look forward to watching your progress.

 

[mustanggarage]

here is another episode of "dang it I know better than that" lol.

I got all the hoses on the engine and put the antifreeze in, and let it set for a while and... crap antifreeze running down the front of my engine. it was coming from the thermostat housing. I pulled the t-stat housing off again. this was a new housing I bought from summit if I remember correctly. anyway I had intended to check the mating surface before I put it on, but we got in a hurry. Dad put it on while I was working on pulling the sensors and stuff off the old engine. long story short there was a high spot on the new housing. I put it on a mirror and you could see right where it was leaking. so I put a sheet of 400 grit sandpaper on the mirror and rubbed the thermostat housing on the sandpaper until all the mating surfaces were shiny. then put a new gasket on with sealer on both sides of the gasket. again using my rubberband trick. then carefully reinstalled the housing. let it set for an hour, snug up the bolts some more, let it set over night and put the water in, pressurize it with Dads pressure tester and it seems to be working. what a pain. anyway no big deal just more fun in the garage lol.

 

[mustanggarage]

one thing I try to do on my threads is to post my failures as well as my successes. I like to think someone may look at what I have done and use it to prevent them from making the same mistake. I feel if I just put up what I got right it is kind of dishonest in a way.

so having said that I had another setback today. I got the thermostat housing to stop leaking and thought everything was good, then I saw coolant under the car, turns out I have two more problems first I had coolant leaking out of the evaporator hose on the firewall never saw that before, but I guess when I pressurized the system I exposed the problem. that will have to wait until I get the engine sorted out however.

the next problem is probably a lack of experience problem. I decided since I was spending so much money on this build that I would use ARP head studs instead of head bolts like I have always used before. well I found out a few things first of all it would be good to understand the instructions a bit better. I watched some videos on the studs and I thought I understood what they were saying and that I needed to use this arp ultra torque lubricant on the studs. so I bought that stuff and used it. I have always used head bolts before and never had a problem but apparently the threads on the studs are rolled and the holes in the block are cut so the bottom head studs had coolant seeping up them. I have never had that problem before.

now I have not even tried to start this engine yet so the only pressure on it was from the radiator tester and I kept it under 16 psi. so I know the head gaskets are still ok. so I did some research and it seems people have had good luck removing one stud at a time and sealing them with permatex ultra black.

so that is what I did. pulled the headers back off. I still haven't hooked up the h pipe so that was relatively easy, and since I used header studs it made that part much easier.

then having previously drained the radiator again, I pulled the back head stud. of course a bunch of coolant started coming out of the block but I had planned for that at least I had my shop vac that I put a piece of 3/8 tubing on the end and taped it with electrical tape to hold it in, it fit right down the hole perfectly and I was able to suck the coolant out with minimal mess.

then I used a bore cleaning brush and brake clean to scrub the threads thoroughly and vacuumed them again. then stuck a rag down the hole with an allen wrench to dry the threads. I did not use compressed air because that caused coolant to splash the first time I tried. then I coated the stud with ultra black, ran it down the hole, removed it recoated it with ultra black and put it back in. then torqued the nut down.

rinse and repeat on all the studs. left it set for 24 hours and refilled with water this time.

pressurized it for 3 hours at 16 psi no leaks from the studs just from the stupid heater core


I did accomplish a couple of things this week though. first I have spent a lot of money on this project so I was trying to cheap out and not do a couple things I knew I needed to, but a couple guys on modded mustangs set me straight. one guy sent me a calibrated maf senser that I installed. I was having some trouble getting my stupid cold air intake to fit, it has always fit kind of funky so I decided to do something about it. I had to cut the tubing a bit as it was too long so I put a hose clamp around it, cut it with a hack saw.


you can see how I bent the stupid thing trying to get it to go together. anyway after cutting a bit of the tubing off it fits much better.

then I swapped to a 255 lph fuel pump. I decided to paint the tank insulator and straps while I had it out

I took several pictures of pulling the tank but there are some good videos on utube that describe it pretty well.




tomorrow Dad is coming over and we will put the exhaust on, put some fuel in the tank and maybe try and start the beast. then have to see all the other little things I have to fix

 

[Blown347]

Great write up and an awesome build! Sorry to hear about the setbacks, I look forward to see her fired up and breaking some chevy hearts


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