First Fox/First Project - 1988 GT "Zorro Blanco"

[DudeStang]

I documented this in the latest video, which I'm currently finishing uploading but I did a little comparison with each of my three available shifter handles.

OEM, Steeda Tri-Ax, and SVE


Side by side

 

[broncojunkie]

I'm about 3 videos behind, on your series, I think. I've just been busy getting the new garage finished. The last one I watched, I kept getting interrupted and didn't even get to the end. Things have slowed down some, so I'm getting caught up tonight. Anyway, it looks like you're making some good progress!

 

[DudeStang]

I'm about 3 videos behind, on your series, I think. I've just been busy getting the new garage finished. The last one I watched, I kept getting interrupted and didn't even get to the end. Things have slowed down some, so I'm getting caught up tonight. Anyway, it looks like you're making some good progress!

Thanks for following and watching the videos. I really appreciate that. I think my documentation of my regular confusion has helped solicit a lot of good input from people with more experience in the Fox world (and cars in general). If it wasn't for the forums and for comments from viewers on my channel, I'm sure there's a number of things I have worked on that would have taken a lot longer to finish.

My latest video is up as of last week, though I need to quit being lazy and put a semi-decent thumbnail on it, lol.

 

[DudeStang]

I’ve made zero progress recently...I blame the weather mostly. Snow the last three weekends and freezing temperatures over a couple of weeks before that. I really need to get some type of insulation for my garage.


My other excuse is that we spent a couple of weeks test driving multiple vehicles before finally buying one early last week. I made a video about it, naturally.

I didn’t put all the details in the video or it would be like three hours long but if anyone here is on the tall side (I'm 6'5") and in the market for a crossover, I can offer lots of insight. We tested 11 vehicles initially, narrowed it down to 3-4, then bought one.

I also realized recently that it had been about a year since I bought the Fox Mustang and since it’s still too cold out to do any work, I made a video talking about most of the things accomplished on the car over the past year.

 

[broncojunkie]

Already watched both videos lol! I'm snowed in too. Well, iced in. I've been on the boat running the OH River for 28 days. I'm supposed to go home tomorrow, but they're postponing our crew change due to weather. Anyway, I'll have to resort to following you and others working on their cars.

Do you have heat in your garage? I put those little electric ceiling heaters in both of my garages. They work well, provided you insulate well. Before that, I just had the one smaller garage and a kerosene heater with a non-insulated double garage door. We ended up insulating the door, but it's still not perfect. When I built the detached garage last year, I got insulated doors and insulated the structure very well. I got 2 of those electric ceiling heaters...a 7500w and 5000w. I haven't had a chance to install the 7500w unit yet, but the little 5000w unit is doing a great job. It's an 800 sq ft building with 14' ceiling. Good insulation makes a HUGE difference!

 

[DudeStang]

Already watched both videos lol! I'm snowed in too. Well, iced in. I've been on the boat running the OH River for 28 days. I'm supposed to go home tomorrow, but they're postponing our crew change due to weather. Anyway, I'll have to resort to following you and others working on their cars.

Do you have heat in your garage? I put those little electric ceiling heaters in both of my garages. They work well, provided you insulate well. Before that, I just had the one smaller garage and a kerosene heater with a non-insulated double garage door. We ended up insulating the door, but it's still not perfect. When I built the detached garage last year, I got insulated doors and insulated the structure very well. I got 2 of those electric ceiling heaters...a 7500w and 5000w. I haven't had a chance to install the 7500w unit yet, but the little 5000w unit is doing a great job. It's an 800 sq ft building with 14' ceiling. Good insulation makes a HUGE difference!

Thanks for watching! Being on a boat in this weather sounds insane....hopefully you're not freezing your butt off.

No heat in the garage unfortunately but I am interested in trying to do at least something to improve the insulation. The ceiling heaters sound like a good idea too. I hadn't thought of that. That detached garage sounds freaking awesome. Our property isn't big enough to do something like that but eventually we might see about having a new house built on a bigger plot and I'll definitely be trying for a bigger garage space with enough room for a lift.

It snowed again on Thursday. Blah

 

[DudeStang]

Nerd alert.....got a new phone case. Not an exact match clearly but I dig it.


So I got a few parts in the mail a week or so ago. I wanted to try and start working on getting the door aligned (I think I mentioned this in my latest video) so I went ahead and ordered the inner door renewal kit. After watching some videos, it seems this won’t be particularly easy but that’s fine.


So naturally I started with what I thought would be the easiest part - the door latch strikers. I had noticed recently the bushings were missing on mine anyways. So I got the new striker installed on the driver side with the spacer and it took a lot of fenagling and adjusting to get it to open and close the way it seems it should (still not completely certain to be honest but it seems to be working).

After closer examination of the center caps that came with my super cheap pony wheels, I decided to just go ahead and order new ones. Now I just need to figure out how soon I'm going to brave the rear main seal/clutch replacements and then have a better idea of what time I'll order some new tires. The center caps arrived over the weekend and seem like a pretty good match, though the wheels need to be cleaned.


I started another separate playlist for when I'm not actually doing work on either of the cars and just rambling. My plan is to try and keep this mostly Mustang related but we'll see how that goes...

I did a little bit of work on straightening out the pinch welds on the Fox on Saturday. I'll have a video up on that soon. Little thing that I had been meaning to do and also procrastinating on doing the cooling system stuff.

 

[DudeStang]

Got a new video up a week or so ago, a review of the SVE jack pads and the pinch weld flange straightening tool. There’s more detail in the video but I’m pretty happy with these SVE jack pads. It would be awesome if they made them in a few different sizes (like maybe slightly bigger to better fit the jack cup like the rubber one pictured below) but these seem like they will work pretty well for the Fox. I haven’t tried them on the 2014 yet but I do have the Steeda low profile jacking rails on that car so it's less of an issue.


It's pretty awesome that they have magnets.

 

[DudeStang]

I took advantage of the warm weather to finally get started on the cooling system stuff, which I’ve been procrastinating on. I drained the coolant, removed the hoses, and sprayed some PB blaster on the water pump bolts. Had to do some work on the back deck over the weekend as well so I didn’t get a ton of time on the Fox but I’m glad I finally started that process.


Also found a large drip pan at Auto Zone today. It was $10 so I grabbed it. Figure it’s better than constantly throwing cardboard boxes underneath to catch leaks.


Made a little bit more progress on Sunday - got all the hoses removed, got 4 of the water pump bolts out, and took the coolant overflow tank out. Taking the tank out made me glad I decided to order a new one.


I made a new video, which I uploaded last night. The earlier bits are me failing at something unrelated to the cooling system, rambling, taking a trip to Auto Zone, and then eventually getting around to working on the cooling system bits.

 

[DudeStang]

I've been crazy busy with work lately and my wife and I took a couple of weeks to get out of town so I haven't updated my threads much lately. The cooling system stuff (hoses, thermostat housing, & thermostat) took way longer than I expected. Sharing part 2 of that experience here:

Also, in case anyone's card nerdness extends beyond Mustangs, while we were on our road trip, we visited a friend in Louisiana who recently bought a 1996 Mitsubishi Lancer EVO rally car, which I got to drive multiple times in three days. It was pretty awesome, to put it mildly.

 

[DudeStang]

New video is up, taking forever to remove the damaged factory bumper cover and checking fitment on the new replacement bumper.

A few other things arrived yesterday

Passenger side rear ground effect replacement:




MM steering shaft:


I’m looking forward to having more precise steering on the Fox but I’m a little worried about the installation on this, lol.

I’ve got a few things I want to do on the Dudestang before I get to the steering shaft.

 

[DudeStang]

Dropped off my new rear bumper cover and passenger side ground effect piece for paint a few weeks ago and then took a road trip. Called the shop this week and the guy said the paint was done on the bumper cover but the ground effect piece was taking longer (I guess it wouldn’t take the paint on the first attempt).

In the meanwhile, I went ahead and picked this up since the original one is pretty badly rusted.


Hoping I can pick the bumper cover up soon and get it back on the car.

I still haven’t made time to put the new steering shaft in yet but am hoping to do that soon, along with an oil change and a few other things.

 

[Blueknights75]

Great progress thread!! That cooling replacement stuff caused me nightmares. Specifically that damn thermostat housing!! After three attempts I finally got it to not leak. I should have replaced the water pump (although nothing wrong with my current one) but after removing that damn 90 degree thermostat housing elbow (damn you Ford engineers) multiple times I said screw it….I have to say however I replaced my original radiator (I wish stuff was made to last like back then, try buying a radiator that lasts 34 years now) with the SVE 3 row and couldn’t be happier!!

 

[broncojunkie]

Just getting caught up on my Fox life after dealing with some family stuff. Glad to see you're making progress! Curious how the paint work turns out. I've been doing some painting, myself here lately.

Would you be willing to sell me your old oem steering shaft, by chance? I need one I can modify (rag joint section will get cut out). My Flaming River shaft failed after a couple hundred miles. Should have gone with MM!

 

[DudeStang]

Great progress thread!! That cooling replacement stuff caused me nightmares. Specifically that damn thermostat housing!! After three attempts I finally got it to not leak. I should have replaced the water pump (although nothing wrong with my current one) but after removing that damn 90 degree thermostat housing elbow (damn you Ford engineers) multiple times I said screw it….I have to say however I replaced my original radiator (I wish stuff was made to last like back then, try buying a radiator that lasts 34 years now) with the SVE 3 row and couldn’t be happier!!

Damn....that sucks but it's sort of good to know that I'm not the only person who had problems with this, haha.

 

[DudeStang]

Just getting caught up on my Fox life after dealing with some family stuff. Glad to see you're making progress! Curious how the paint work turns out. I've been doing some painting, myself here lately.

Would you be willing to sell me your old oem steering shaft, by chance? I need one I can modify (rag joint section will get cut out). My Flaming River shaft failed after a couple hundred miles. Should have gone with MM!

Hey man, I feel you. I didn't get much done on the Fox for a while. Actually just finished putting the new bumper cover back on yesterday finally. I need to finish the video but I'm pretty happy with the bumper cover (not so much the replacement ground effect piece though).

Here's how it looks now:


Here's how it was when I bought it:


Regarding the steering shaft - sure, I can send it to you (assuming it's still in good enough condition). I am not sure when I will have time to install the MM one but I'll let you know.

 

[DudeStang]

Documented some of the process for the bumper installation in my latest video:

 

[DudeStang]

I'm falling behind on keeping most of my threads up to date lately but I do have some updates on the Fox from recent weeks. I had a double din receiver with Apple Car Play installed:

I had high flow cats welded into the off-road X pipe (put on by a previous owner):

I also added some cupholders, which seemed like a natural next step after getting the stereo receiver upgraded:

I have some pics and other updates that I'll get to in the morning when I have more time.

 

[DudeStang]

A few pics:







I had the windows tinted on the Fox a few weeks ago:


I also recently update the lighting in my garage and did a little comparison of the two different light fixtures I found:

 

[DudeStang]

One thing I had been procrastinating on too long (also included a bit about this in the second lighting video) was getting the red body moulding stripe back on: