1985 GT Build

[85MUSTANGTGT]

Had a chance yesterday to get my car out for a short drive so took the opportunity to take a quick photo with the tailpipes.

[85MUSTANGTGT]

I did some car tinkering over the weekend. The aluminum rivets holding the magnetic pick-up in my distributor worked loose allowing it to pull into and rub on the reluctor arms. Drilled the rivets out and replaced with screws and lock nuts. Fortunately, it still seems to be working fine, but plan to order a replacement soon to keep on hand. While I had it all apart, figured I would try some more ignition tuning.

I mentioned previously that I purchased Dynosim software to play with, mostly for S&G's, into which I inputted my engine combo. It has a feature that estimates ignition timing for best torque. For my engine it was indicating 23deg at 1500 RPM advancing to 30 degrees by 5000 RPM. I worked on setting up my distributor closer to what the software called for, ended up bumping initial timing some and limiting total quite a bit. Planning to do a few more rounds of tweaking, but holy crap what a difference!! Found a lot of that power I thought I was missing. Engine is sounding much happier now, too.

For whatever reason, most timing references state to aim for about 36deg total timing on a SBF - which is what I had been believing to be true. Granted all engines will want something different, at least in my case, those references appear to be way off. Maybe the refs I found were for engines with factory iron heads or less compression, who knows. I also realize that the software is not 100% accurate either, but it seems to be pointing me in the right direction.

[qikgts]

Interesting findings Thomas. Ya don't know until you know. BTW, the car looks great in the previous post!

[85MUSTANGTGT]

Thanks! Yup, just takes experimenting. Just wish I had more time to spend doing so. Don't get much done with an hour or so here and there. Got a lot of time to scheme and daydream, though....and second-guess myself.

[85MUSTANGTGT]

Snagged a mildly rough-looking Cobra P/S cooler from eBay for pretty cheap. Didn't want to spend much as I had no idea if it would even fit. Initial measurements indicate it will, but I expect some slight notching of the fog light bar gusset will be needed. After a bit of tweaking and some time with a fin comb it looks a lot better. Hoping I'll have time to get it installed this weekend, will post more pics when I do.

[85MUSTANGTGT]

Guess I maybe spoke a bit too soon about ease of fitment. While there is plenty of room for the cooler inside the bumper cover, I didn't realize until I got it in there that the lower A/C condenser brackets were in the way. I screwed up and made the assumption that it would mount ahead of the condenser. I considered trying to modify the condenser brackets to move it up out of the way, but I couldn't get it high enough to clear. It needs about 1" to clear and I can only get about 1/2". For whatever reason I had been trying to avoid modifying the cooler itself, I guess trying to maintain that "factory look". I think that modifying the cooler is unavoidable at this point. Probably to be expected when fitting a part to a non-OE application. Part of me just hates cutting up perfectly good parts.

I think I can still get there though. As-is, the cooler mounts flat just ahead of the lower radiator support rail, basically at the lower edge of the opening in the bumper cover. I would envision little air would be flowing through this area, mostly flowing up through the condenser and into the radiator. I'm thinking now of modifying the cooler brackets to mount it in a vertical, on-edge orientation ahead of and even with the bottom edge of the condenser. In this higher position, I imagine the lines will need to run around the outside of the radiator support instead of through the oblong hole as the factory coolers do.

Of course, I came up with this new plan almost immediately after ordering an aftermarket cooler to install. Oh well, nice to have options I suppose.

To be continued...

[85GTGuy]

Why do you need a P/S cooler? Or is it just a want, for the cool factor?

Btw, your car looks good. Love all the mods you've done to it.

[85MUSTANGTGT]

Thank you, Sir.

Yes, just something I've wanted to do. Continuing with the theme of adding Cobra parts to my car. It has/had the factory un-finned loop steel tube cooler, which I always thought was probably not very effective and unimpressive.

[85GTGuy]

Thank you, Sir.

Yes, just something I've wanted to do. Continuing with the theme of adding Cobra parts to my car. It has/had the factory un-finned loop steel tube cooler, which I always thought was probably not very effective and unimpressive.

Gotcha. Cobra parts are cool additions.

An interesting factoid was that the 93 Cobra R, which was a manual transmission car only, came with the radiator from the automatic transmissioned Mustang. Ford plumbed the power steering fluid through the auto trans fluid cooler part of the radiator, in addition to the steel loop cooler, which in the Cobra R case had fins on it.