85 lx coupe "It's not good it's just cheap"

[Xemia22]

That's awesome! My dad taught me and my brother how to work starting with lawn mower engines and then a go kart. I wish my son were more interested in cars. He's more interested in games on his iphone. But when he's needed work on his Volvo I at least make him help me get tools.

You look like you've got a great project going there. I am looking forward to more of this story!

I think my dad nearly cried tears of joy when I asked him to help me go pick the car up. I had never really been interested in cars up until I got my car and it was a great excuse for him to be able to do car stuff again for the first time since having kids. A lot of quality time spent in the garage and the driveway together is one of best things that has come of this whole car hobby.

Nice to upgrade to a V8. I need to do that to mine. I've rebuilt that goofy Carter YFA on mine 3 times and having that lame C-3 auto makes it no fun to drive.

bangin gears with the 4 speed made the four cylinder bearable, I'd never driven anything but the family minivan and some trucks at that point so I didn't know any better than to think it was cool and "sporty". looking back it was a great car to learn how to drive in, very forgiving but forced you to think about what you were doing.

Coming along!. Is the motor in yet, or are you still in the process?

the v8s been in the car for 2 years, but you know how these things go it's always a work in progress.

[Xemia22]

After I got the oil pan and front cover on I installed the stock four barrel intake that originally came on my dads 83. Then we wheeled the engine out to the car and installed the flywheel, clutch, bellhousing, and the transmission on to it.



now it was time to drop the thing in!



before we dropped the engine in I had to set the exhaust roughly in place and drop the engine past the headers which was a pain but the hooker super comps I had were rusted/clamped to the H pipe and I didn't want to cut anything. It ended up biting me in the butt later but for now I was super stoked to have the engine in.

[Xemia22]

somewhere around this time I was laying underneath the car wrenching on something and I looked over and realized the bottom 2 inches of my front fenders had rusted away underneath the spats.



I went to one of the local junkyards and found a straight rust free set for $40





I ended up installing them along with my dads hood to clear the air cleaner I had.

[erratic50]

Bear in mind this is said in the most joking manner possible - I think the car is a neat project.

Do you know what would REALLY improve the looks of your Mustang?

Make it all one color.....

[Xemia22]

Bear in mind this is said in the most joking manner possible - I think the car is a neat project.

Do you know what would REALLY improve the looks of your Mustang?

Make it all one color.....

I've got good news It only stayed in mismatched colors for a couple months but I'll get to that.

So the original plan for the car was a 5.0 t5 swap because the car was originally a manual, but what ended up happening is that the clutch that I had ended up not lining up anywhere close to the throwout bearing. there was a 2 in gap between the bearing/fork and the fingers on the clutch I'm not entirely sure that it was the right clutch in the first place but it wasn't going to work. So I pulled the t5 out and installed a old c4 that was laying around. That sucked with the long tubes in place and it ended up being easier to pull the engine out and then drop it in from the engine bay.

this was back in 2016 so I don't remember all the fiddly things that I had to do to get everything hooked up, but the big things left were the fuel system and the ignition system.

For the fuel system I used 1/2" stainless hard line under the car and braided 1/2" stainless everywhere else with the carb being dual fed from the regulator on the shock tower. I had to put a carb spacer on so that i could get the fuel lines over the valve cover and back under the air cleaner.


For the ignition system I used a Dura-Spark III box and distributor with the connectors redone with weather pack connectors.


everything was ready to try and start it at this point


So cranked it over with the coil wire unhooked to gain some oil pressure, ran the electric fuel pump to get fuel to the carb and tried to start it up.
https://youtu.be/CI-6NKNVRhc
Fired right up but I couldn't get it to idle down without the engine dying, turns out I forgot to plug the main vacuum port on the carb. capped it off and it ran great.

[Xemia22]

With the car now running I took the first trip around the block and everything worked as it should. So started venturing farther from home with it and really enjoying the car, the only issue I had was the belt. I wasn't running a tensioner initially because it was pressing the belt down onto the water pump pulley. But at high RPM it threw the belt, luckily I was close to home and limped it back. I ended up putting an AC delete pulley on and reinstalling the tensioner.


Had everything sorted and drove the car around for about a month before I started losing oil pressure and getting lifter clatter when the car was warm.
Not wanting to ruin the engine I pulled it back out and pulled the pan, this is what I found in the oil pump.

oil starvation also trashed the main and rod bearings.

replaced the bearings and checked clearances, all were at the loose end of being in spec.
moral of the story if you are going to run a used engine replace the oil pump, its cheap insurance.

[Xemia22]

This is where things really started to get good, with the engine out I decided to take the opportunity to do some upgrades.
first up was heads, my dad decked, ported, and put big valves in his stock DO8E heads in the late 80s and ran them until piston contact bent the intake valves.




I sand blasted the heads and lapped new intake valves in.





you can see that quite a lot of port work was done especially on the exhaust side.
I also had old unmarked roller rockers to go with new(old) heads.

[Xemia22]

Other upgrades that were done while the engine was out were, a torker 2 single plane manifold that was port matched to the heads and a cam that my dad surprised me with for my birthday.






got the newly upgraded engine installed in the car and everything hooked back up and the car fired right up, but my dad didn't tell me he put a cam in it. he insisted on installing the cam while I was at work which was a bit fishy but he told me that he put the truck cam back in. When we fired the car back up and it was lopey I was sure there was some sort of problem until he handed me the cam card.

after the new engine was broken in and tuned I decided i need to do something about paint. the roof of the car was starting to get rusty and the paint was flaking up and leaving exposed metal. the rockers were so rock chipped that they were down to primer and even that was starting to have rust coming through. so I borrowed a friend's garage and set to preping the car. the first problem was that the air cleaner didn't fit under the hood I decided to make a scoop and wanted it to be forward facing, what resulted was some redneck engineering please dont judge me too harshly its been fixed since then. next I sanded the car down and taped off the windows and lights.




then without any bodywork or knowledge about painting I sprayed the car with rustoleum that my friend had in his garage that kinda matches the tangerine fenders i had.



Ta-da, its like a good 20 footer for sure but its unique and looks better than worn out mismatched paint.