SUB

No not the sub your thinking of. Although the stock speakers do need help pretty bad. I finally got the subframe connectors welded in and finished up last night. I welded in torque box reinforcement plates and a set of subframe connectors. What an unbelievable difference in the attitude of the car. Even needing the worn out struts and shocks replaced the handling of the car is on par with the current model gt. I recently took an 08 California Special GT 5 speed down a local twisty road (rogue river drive) and then took my car down the same run last night. I was able to keep the same if not better speeds through the turns. The worn struts played a significant role in the extra little hop the got the front end loose in one corner, but everything else was pretty impressive. I really couldn't be happier with the results, the feels better, the steering is tighter and more precise, and the car even feels like it is putting power down better (placebo effect, maybe; do I care, no!). So far this has been the single best improvement done to the car. I very well spent $80 bucks. The best part is that I didn't even blow the car up. Kelsey was pretty concerned I was gonna blow it all up, when she found me with a wet wash cloth wrapped around the fuel lines, laying down a big fat bead of molten steel about a half inch from them!! :) By the way, the undercoating on this car really has no problem igniting and burning, I can't tell you how many fires I smothered with my welding gloves! All is well that ends well, and this chapter ended pretty damn well. Now we just need to replace the stuts and shocks, lower the car, replace the h pipe and headers and......... boy this is addicting!!!!

Is This Your Car Ma'am?

Kelsey just called and relayed a funny story. She has the Mustang today and went over to Wal-Mart in Eagle Point. She parked out away from most of the other cars and when she came out of the store there was an Eagle Point police car parked behind the mustang and the officer was out of his car looking at the mustang. Kelsey quickly ran through her head the possibilities of having cut off someone, or blasting through eagle point. As she approached the officer said "is this your car ma'am?" She said yes and he said "wow it is really nice!!!" Kinda funny, she thought she was in trouble and he just wanted to check out the car. I'll take it as a compliment, makes me wonder what she's doing in my car though.......................

Breath Dog! Breath!

This could have been titled "Waiting to Exhale" but then you would all have to shoot me....

The Flowmasters are IN!

Peter stepped up and helped me install the Flowmaster American Thunder Cat Back last night.
Two and a half hours including a dinner break. The install went really smoothly no major problems. Having this done, just makes me want to new H pipe and headers even sooner!!!




Here is a couple tach trips on the stock mufflers.




I like this sound. No mufflers, just open CATS!!!!




Moment of truth. Here is the cold start on the new Flowmasters




Backing out of the shop at 11:00 at night.






This is a really cool video, Kelsey thinks it looks like a scene from a horror flick. I think it's autoporn :).

Rob-

This is for you, missed you in the shop brother....



Till next time
the Thunder Rolls.

Glamour Shots

Leg Room!!!

Being just shy of 6' 5" tall. The fox body mustang is a little tight for me. So I had to "adjust" things a little bit. When I had my 90 lx I found out that if you unbolt the front seat there is another set of bolt holes in the bottom of the seat that will let you relocate the seat back about an inch and a half. The non power seat cars used an all steel bracket, but not too sturdy. I must have broke a dozen of them before I sold that car. What happens is that by moving the seat back it puts a lot of pressure on the front of the bracket because there is less support in the back. When I went to make the same alteration in the GT, I found that the power seat bracket has aluminum runners along the top, nowhere near sturdy enough to handle the pressure. So here is what I did....

First: unbolt the seat and remove it from the car.

seperate the seat bracket from the seat.

you will notice that on the bottom of the seat frame there are two front bolt holes, the two rear bolt holes (that you just unbolted) and two more holes about an inch and a half forward of the rear holes.

fit the seat bracket back up to the seat frame aligning the rear holes in the bracket to the forward set of holes.

you are going to need to drill new front holes in the bracket, so mark the location of the forward bolt holes on the bracket, then take it back apart and drill your holes out.

especially on the power seat bracket, you are going to have to re-inforce the bracket, or it will break.

i took a couple pieces of steel strap that I had laying around to make reinforcement plates.

the straps were about an inch wide and probably 1/4" thick.

I couldn't tell you how to make them fit on the steel bracket (too many years gone by) but on the aluminum bracket there is a channel that these straps will fit it.

I simply shaped them up a bit with the angle grinder until they fit into the channel, drilled out the bolt holes and then fit them in.

Turned out that my bolts were not quite long enough, so I recessed the bolt holes just enough to get some turns on the bolts and snug everything up good.

bolt it all back together and re-install it in the car.

Unlike the seat track extenders that you can buy. This mod is pretty much free, if you can find a couple steel straps. More importantly it doesn't raise the seat level. The extenders lift the seat nearly an inch.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that if your wanting more leg room, you don't want to sacrifice head room....

This mod is super easy and only took a couple hours total. My seat is stronger now and I have more than enough room, the Mustang is actually the only car I have that I don't have to have the seat back all the way.

Now I just gotta get the driver's seat reupholstered and call it good!!!!

Here is another article on how to do this mod.

CHEESE GRATERS GONE!!!!!!!!

Thank god for ebay and poor spellers. So here is the scoop. The LX taillights are the more desireable light. They were used on the saleens and are all around a better looking light. Generally you can find reproduction sets on ebay for about $120 and factory sets in good shape I have seen bring as much as $150.00. I happened across a set of factory lx lights on ebay that had a poorly written title and taillights misspelled. I was able to snag them, shipped, for only $80.00 :) I put the cheese grater gt lights up on ebay and got $115.00 for them. Yah for me! Got better looking lights and made a little change. Can't beat that!

Bringing you up to date

So the first thing we had to do was a new steering rack.
The original was complete shot, it was a miracle to be able to keep the car on the road.

Next came a new set of plugs, a cap and rotor.
I'm am pretty sure I pulled the original plugs out of the motor.
These plugs should gap at .0054, the plugs that came out were so worn the gapped at over .0075. It is a miracle that it even ran like that. What a difference a minor tune up made, it was like breathing new life into that engine. It seems like there's a demon living under the hood after all! The really good news is that the old plugs could not look better, no oil, no over heating or detonating. The old plugs made me very happy to see them in good shape.


Amazing what a difference a fuel filter with 16 years worth of fuel run through it can make. The car really seemed to hesitate and struggle at wide open throttle. Changing the fuel filter cured that instantly. If the previous owner drove this car after these few small tune up items, they would think I rebuilt the engine, what a difference! It runs like a mustang now! Just need to get rid of these horid 2.73 rear gears. :)

The Beginning

This is my 1992 Mustang GT 5.0 AOD with a factory moon roof. This car was being traded in at the dealership by a 75 year old couple who had special ordered the car from the factory. Right at the end of the deal the decided they couldn't trade it, because they couldn't stand the thought of their Mustang going to a wholesaler. So I just had to buy it :) Hey, I had to make the deal, right?

Everything is absolutely dead stock with only 72000 miles on. The owners books and business card from the salesman were still in the glove box. There were towels over the backseats and a fresh set of tires on it!