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Hmm. Something went wrong here. I don't know if I didn't properly center the material or the upholstery was made a little off center. In hind sight, I should've looked where I was cutting the rectangular shaped holes to make sure they were centered on the striping of the upholstery. Rookie mistake.
It looks great and no one will notice that the seat belt holes are not centered.
Time to get back to some more mechanical stuff. My Dominator system is set up for a drive by wire (DBW) throttle. I needed to purchase this:
This is one of several different pedals that will work with the Holley.
Comparison of the OEM Ford cable pedal vs the DBW pedal.
I knew that pedal wasn't going to be easy to mount. There was a forum member that offered to sell me a pedal bracket that he made. At first I thought that I'd give it a try myself but I quickly came to my senses. I contacted him and sent him the money for the bracket. It was worth every penny that I paid for it!
I know that there are a lot of better shifter handles out there but I wanted to use the OEM handle from my '91 GT. The Tremec shifter uses larger diameter bolts than Ford did so I drilled out the holes going through the shifter.
There is a rubber isolator pad on the bottom side of the plate that I'm drilling through. It adds some "mushiness" to the shifting but it also helps to eliminate stick rattle. If I ever decide to race the car, I'll ditch this stick and go with a solidly mounted, short stick.
Here it is installed. Looks great even if the OEM **** has the wrong shift pattern on it.
I'm sticking with the transmission theme for now. Back on 2/17/2021 in post #182, I talked about my slave cylinder to clutch fingers clearance. It was excessive at .240" or .227" depending on how I measured. Andrew told me that was too much clearance and I knew I was going to have to do something about it. About a year later in 2022, I called the maker of the slave shims, Tick and asked them which of my two leftover shims I should add. They said that I should add the .113" shim (I measured .115" with my chinesium dial caliper) which would give me a tighter (~ .125") clearance. I pulled the transmission and added the shim.
Out came the transmission to install this Tick shim to get my slave cylinder to clutch finger specification within limits.
While the transmission was out, I took the opportunity to grind a little more clearance for my shifter. I used a die grinder to remove some additional metal from the shifter hump so that I wouldn't get any metal to metal contact.
Because of having to pull and install the transmission a second time, I finally purchased a transmission jack. Trying to use a floor jack was a total PITA. Once everything was back together, I felt confident that my clearance was right. Fast forward to today and the transmission has been shifting just fine with no issues.
For the exhaust system, I went mostly with Holley. My headers are Holley and I knew that the rest of the Holley exhaust components would mate up to the headers with minimal hassle. I prefer to do all of my own work so going to an exhaust shop is something that I'd like to avoid. I'll do it if need be so I won't say, "never!"
I really want tail pipes on this car because I'm not a young guy that enjoys a loud, reverberating, turn down exhaust system. However, at the moment, that's what I've got. I would've purchased the entire Holley exhaust system linked here: 3" 304SS Rear Exit Cat Back System but Toddoky who now goes by toddonc told me that the tailpipes on that rear exit system won't fit with my Maximum Motorsports' torque arm. See Post #367 of "New Hooker Fox Body Mustang LS Swap System Preview Thread."
As Todd had said there would be, there was interference with the X-pipe and the Maximum Motorsports torque arm: The x-pipe is contacting the torque arm crossmember.
It really wasn't that bad to clearance the exhaust pipe. I tried to clearance it as little as possible by sneaking up on it. A little bit of hammer work against a socket and then check the clearance. I did this again and again.
It's a start but not near enough clearance.
Some more hammer/socket work.
The clearance dent is getting larger. I probably hammered on the pipe, installed it back under the car and measured a dozen times before I had sufficient clearance.
I've got rags stuffed in the turndowns so critters don't try to climb into my exhaust pipes. I left the Holley foam packaging around the purty, polished bullet mufflers so that I wouldn't damage them while working under the car. This would come back to bite me in that I forgot to remove that foam when I first drove the car. Needless to say, the foam is now permanently affixed to the once shiny polished mufflers.
The clamps that came with the Holley kit were really nice. They are a heavy duty band clamp that doesn't pinch and deform the exhaust pipe. The pipes have welded on brackets that mated up to the Fox OEM exhaust hangers.
Good work getting them to play nice together. Brings back some memories for sure.
Thank you, Todd! Since I've been driving the car for a while, even with the loud exhaust, I'm now able to notice weird sounds like banging, rattles and vibrations. No banging so I know my exhaust clearance worked out well. I had rattles and vibrations but they were all cured when I installed the door panels. This coupe with welded in subframe connectors and sound deadening material is way more quiet (rattles/vibrations) than my stock '91 GT was. Now about the loudness of the turndown exhaust........
Yeah. It's loud. Real loud. I went with the turn down exhaust because the project was taking way too long and I didn't want any additional delays due to the exhaust system. My thought were this: install the turndown system and get the car on the road. Deal with installing tailpipes later.
Maximum Motorsports had told me that there were several brands of tailpipes that were known to fit their panhard bar and torque arm. These brands include Dynomax, Flowmaster, LMT and Pypes. I ended up purchasing Pypes polished, 304 stainless steel, 3" tailpipes. This picture shows the actual tailpipes but there are two more intermediate pipes that go over the rear axle.
I've put these tailpipes in place under my car just to see what I'm up against. The tailpipes and intermediate pipes do indeed clear the MM suspension parts but there isn't much room on the passenger side. Of course they don't mate up to the Holley turn down system. It's going to take some adapter pipes and some cutting and welding. I haven't done any of this work yet but I'm going to give it a try this winter. If I throw in the towel, I have a recommendation of a custom exhaust shop here in the north Houston area.
This turn down system is loud and I'm sure all the neighbors hate me. My wife says she can hear the car coming from down the street. I've got to get the tailpipes on it sooner rather than later. Heck, I'm not all that confident that the tailpipes are going to quiet it down enough. I might have to replace the Holley mufflers.
I wanted this build to be something that was a higher level than stock. I knew that the OEM Foxbody rear suspension left a lot to be desired so it was an easy decision to swap all of that out for aftermarket. I've always felt that Maximum Motorsports was the Foxbody suspension gurus. I did a lot of reading on their website (there is a ton of tech!) and I knew I wanted their parts under my car. Here is a link where they discuss their K-member: MM K-Member Tech
I knew that there were other aftermarket K member choices and some of them save a lot of weight. However, some of them look so lightweight that I'm not sure that they were for me. After reading MM's K-Member Tech, I was sold. Not only that but the Holley Foxbody LS swap components are designed to work with the MM K-member. I'm sure other brands of parts work well but for me, it was Maximum Motorsports.
I ended up buying my custom driveshaft from Inland Empire Driveline out in CA. I eventually settled on a 3 1/2" diameter aluminum driveshaft with beefy 1350 u-joints. Probably overkill for my car but that's what I went with. I was concerned that the 3 1/2" aluminum vs the 3" steel shaft would result in clearance problems under the car. Some Mustang guys on other websites complained about clearance problems. I was concerned enough to originally want a steel driveshaft. The Inland Empire guy that I spoke with really felt that the aluminum shaft was the way to go. I researched other people's experience with the aluminum driveshafts and eventually, I chose aluminum. I have no regrets.
In my case, I needed a driveshaft that was 46 7/16" from the transmission output shaft to the flat pinion flange. That Ford 8.8 flat pinion flange meant that I had to have a special pinion yoke that added to the cost of the driveshaft. This driveshaft set me back $857 one year ago in Jan of 2023. $59 of it was tax and they hit me up for a $60 shipping charge!
This added a good bit to the cost of the driveshaft. Gotta have it for a Ford 8.8 rear.
Here it is bolted to the rear end.
The large OD driveshaft clears all of the parking brake components. I've been under that car since getting it on the road back in November and I haven't seen any marks on the driveshaft so it has good clearance under the car.
I've never purchased a custom made driveshaft before. It certainly wasn't inexpensive but so far, I'm happy with it.
Really good write up Danny. I for sure will refer back to your thread for ideas/tips when it comes to my swap.
Tu
Great! Once you get to your swap, ask any questions and I'll be glad to help.
In fact, I've got a piece of advice right now! If your dashboard is out, change out your ancient heater core and AC evaporator core! I knew that I should've done this a year ago before my coupe's dash was reinstalled.
Yesterday, I noticed antifreeze on the garage floor under the Mustang. Sure enough, I could see it coming out of the air conditioning condensation drain hole in the firewall. I did notice an antifreeze smell the last couple of times that I used the heater so it wasn't a total surprise that my heater core is leaking. Now I get to pull the dash again .
Time to get back to some more mechanical stuff. My Dominator system is set up for a drive by wire (DBW) throttle. I needed to purchase this:
This is one of several different pedals that will work with the Holley.
Comparison of the OEM Ford cable pedal vs the DBW pedal.
I knew that pedal wasn't going to be easy to mount. There was a forum member that offered to sell me a pedal bracket that he made. At first I thought that I'd give it a try myself but I quickly came to my senses. I contacted him and sent him the money for the bracket. It was worth every penny that I paid for it!
dm, I just looked in my PMs and found his username. I purchased the bracket two years ago this month. His username is tcgrmt. It looks like he's only got 19 posts so hopefully you'll be able to get in touch with him. I'm sending you a PM.
I probably mentioned it already but I really wanted to try to bring this 1970s era designed car into the 21st century. Originally, I was going to reuse the Blaupunkt, single DIN CD player stereo that I'd installed in my '91 GT at least 15 yrs ago. The Blaupunkt had been sitting in my garage waiting to be installed in the coupe. However, when I went to install it, the LCD faceplate lit up with a "white screen of death." The stereo was unusable. I loved this old, 2000's era Blaupunkt CD player head unit. It had a bright, LCD display and the built in amp was powerful and clean. It didn't survive 5 yrs of sitting.
It was time for something much more modern. How about something with Apple Car Play? Maybe a double DIN? Back up camera? Purchased from Crutchfield about a year ago along with the faceplate trim plate kit to mount it in a Foxbody.
My older daughter talked me into buying a backup camera. At first I didn't want the extra work but then I thought about "21st century" so I paid the extra Benjamin to Crutchfield for this.
12-29-2023, 09:35 PM
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