Finally a Fox Body Owner - 1988 GT acquired!

DudeStang

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

Juice

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The two words ,"fox body" and "snow" (ok, 3 words) dont belong together, ever. lol Got mine from a buddy, all stock and automatic and all season tires. He said: dont attempt driving in snow, he was correct. We got a few inches, enought to need to shovel/clear snow. I pulled the fox out of the driveway to clear snow. Got stuck on the flat street in front of the house. lol
 

OX1

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The two words ,"fox body" and "snow" (ok, 3 words) dont belong together, ever. lol Got mine from a buddy, all stock and automatic and all season tires. He said: dont attempt driving in snow, he was correct. We got a few inches, enought to need to shovel/clear snow. I pulled the fox out of the driveway to clear snow. Got stuck on the flat street in front of the house. lol

Not really that horrible with dedicated snow tires on the back. Bought my Capri 5.0 new in early 87. Had "gatorbacks' on it the first snow. Only succeeded is getting rear tires jammed against the curb, and car 90 degrees to the street. Bought Goodyear "eagle mud and snows", and really had no issue after that. Bought BII in 88 for snow duty, so really only 2 years I had to persevere.
 

86GT351

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The two words ,"fox body" and "snow" (ok, 3 words) dont belong together, ever. lol Got mine from a buddy, all stock and automatic and all season tires. He said: dont attempt driving in snow, he was correct. We got a few inches, enought to need to shovel/clear snow. I pulled the fox out of the driveway to clear snow. Got stuck on the flat street in front of the house. lol
I honestly don't agree with that. When I had my 88 GT it was a Heads, Cam and Intake Car, It went 11.70s off the nitrous and I drove it 365 days a year when I lived in New Jersey. It's a challenge in the snow but can be done. You just have to respect the car and drive.
 

tjm73

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I had a '98 GT that was useless on the 17's and an unstoppable animal on 15" studded snows. Proper tires and respect for what your driving in the weather you're driving in goes a loooooooooonnnnggggggg ways.

The car had 3.73's, was 99.9% stock and I put over 100,000 on it in Western NY over 5+ years of 365 driving.

Back to he regularly scheduled program..... I kinda dig the phone cover. LOL
 

DudeStang

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I haven't really driven the Fox in the snow at all....but I've driven the 2014 (and my 1998 TransAm back in the day). I got stuck in the TransAm two or three times but was usually fine, and that was when I lived in Colorado. Never really had any issues with the 2014 GT in the snow but also haven't really been forced to drive it in really bad conditions many times.

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.
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DudeStang

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

 

tjm73

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Did you put the flow restrictiors in the hoses from the heater manifold off the engine to the firewall? They could keep the heater core from bursting. Also, do you know if your heater core is leaking or not? It's a job. Dash has to come out to do it.
 

DudeStang

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Did you put the flow restrictiors in the hoses from the heater manifold off the engine to the firewall? They could keep the heater core from bursting. Also, do you know if your heater core is leaking or not? It's a job. Dash has to come out to do it.
No indication of heater core leaking (fingers crossed). I've heard horror stories.
 

DudeStang

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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.
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DudeStang

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Like a for real raced WRC rally car?
I believe it was raced but likely in Japan because it's essentially a RHD version of the car that Makanin drove in the Swedish Rally. There's more information towards the end of the second EVO video I made here (around the 15 min mark it starts I think):

 

DudeStang

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Back to the Fox - 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:
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MM steering shaft:
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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.
 

golkhl

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Back to the Fox - 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:
View attachment 78097

MM steering shaft:
View attachment 78096

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.

That steering shaft install is going to be more time consuming, than difficult. I have had the steering rack out of my 94 multiple times, hopefully you can just remove the steering rack bolts and move the rack forward a bit. It might also help to remove the drivers side header. If you are working under the dash, remove the drivers seat first. Other than that, please let us know your thoughts on steering feel and response with the new shaft. This mod is at the top of my wish list for the 94, but only if I end up keeping the car.
 

DudeStang

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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 part is pretty rusted.
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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.
 

OX1

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This is how far I had the steering rack, on my dads fox LTD, away from the X-member (doing rack bushings, which you might as well do if you are in there and they haven't been changed already). The only reason it wasn't even lower, was the high pressure line was holding it up on drivers side. I also did not touch tie-rods or need any alignment (heck, I didn't even jack up tires all the way, go figure).

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I would have no issue changing that shaft out with shorty headers.
(originally, I put that shaft in at the same time as a used GT rack)

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DudeStang

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I went to a car audio shop last weekend with the intent of getting a quote on a new stereo setup for the Fox. As much as I tried to convince myself I was OK with the soulless gap in the center console and no music, I needed something. The shop wasn't super busy and the guy ended up installing a new double din receiver in a little over an hour. I now have Apple Car Play in my Fox:


The passenger door speaker is missing but the rest of the speakers work OK. Next I just need to get a replacement door speaker, an amp, and a subwoofer or two.
 

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