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Messages - Tbird232ci

32
User Rides / Re: Starting fresh
Isn't it the best to be able to just jump in the car and go? I'm envious of that at the moment.
33
User Rides / Re: Back in a fox. 1988 Turbo Coupe. The life journal.
Progress was slow this weekend. I had higher hopes, but life does it's own things.

Now that I'm in my mid 30's, the things that excite me have changed. Here is a prime example of the things that excite me at my older age.



It's a Hollands 24.5 vise. My coworkers father sold his house, and told him to keep or junk whatever was left behind. My coworker already had a vise, so he gave me this one. It's pre-WW2, so it's legit American iron. I did wire wheel off the jaws and gave it a rub down with penetrating oil since the picture was taken.

The other hint of progress was that I finally found a reasonably priced 85-86 TC cluster. My ride control is disabled, so I didn't want the tach with the Firm Ride light.



I knew the 87-88 TC cluster was different than the rest, but I never realized how stupid it was. It has a little secondary harness for the Check Engine, Check ABS and Firm Ride light. I had to unpin the Ride Control light and had to unpin and cut the wires for the ABS light.

At least it looks good next to the 140mph speedo.



While I have it out, I'm also trying to refine the lighting. I've never liked how the white LEDs washed out the green on the gauges, but didn't like how the green LED's lit the needles and windows green. I'll have a few pics once I get my idea kinda dialed in.

Now for a little bit of a rant.

I have the full cam gear set from Race Engineering. Since I'm changing the belt and all of the gears, I wanted a nice billet tensioner. CheapHP.com made one and when I was ready to order, they went out of stock. I check at Speedway Motors and the tensioner was on backorder. I get around to Stinger-Performance, and they said to have 12+ in stock. I order it, and then get the e-mail that it's back ordered. I e-mailed CheapHP and ask about an ETA and have gotten no response. At this point, I said to hell with it, and emailed Esslinger to see if they had theirs in stock. Once again, no response.

I have NO idea how companies can't do something as simple as communicate with their customers. If the 2.3L wasn't such a small market, all of these vendors would lose 100% of my business. I know I will do as little business with them as possible now.
34
User Rides / Re: Back in a fox. 1988 Turbo Coupe. The life journal.
Quote from: Clayton – on
Looks good man. Its a whole different ballgame this time around than it was 10+ years ago not having to daily a project car. Now you don't have to rush to get it done in time to get you to work the next day.

I'm digging the TA wheels on it too.

The lack of urgency is part of my lack of motivation. I'm glad I don't have to rush, but I do wish it was easier for me to get off of my ass and hammer out work.

Part of the reason I was optimistic with stuffing he 18x9's on the car was that they actually fit on your car. I was under the impression that a 9" wheel was much harder to fit up front. I'll find out for certain whenever I get to that part of the project.

36
User Rides / Re: BlueBird
Quote from: Mikey97D – on
Nice seeing you get some recognition from MM.

I think 232ci is jealous now.  :giggle:

Maybe a year or two ago, Gumby and I were discussing builds and swaps that would be cool. I have access to a Mark VIII, so my "what if" build was to swap a DOHC 4.6L with a manual, and do the MM TA/PHB setup, 3 piece wheels and so on.

It just so happens that the stars align for Gumby to build almost exactly what I want.

I occasionally message him on FB to call him a dick.
37
User Rides / Re: Back in a fox. 1988 Turbo Coupe. The life journal.
Update 2.1. Apparently, there is a 5000 character limit in a post.

Today, I set out to mock up my exhaust. I could have easily purchased Stingers setup, but I felt that it was way over priced for what you get. My last exhausts from him were cheaper, and they both fit like . I took my last car to an exhaust shop, and they took about 5 hours making everything fit the way it should have from the turbo to the tip. This car isn't getting a tailpipe, so I ordered a kit with various bends and straights. I also picked up a pair of Amazon special lers.



I need to get a turndown, a hanger and some more welding wire. My welding skills are horrendous, especially with a flux core. I'm only tacking it together and then having my coworker do the finish welding for me.

I do have a lot more parts that I didn't take pictures of. I picked up a full cam gear setup, valve springs and retainers, 5.0 T5, Race Engineering water pump, blow off valve and a ton of misc stuff. I'll cover that stuff in more detail as I get to the installs.
38
User Rides / Re: Back in a fox. 1988 Turbo Coupe. The life journal.
Update part 2.

Months ago, I decided to tear the car apart. Typically I gather all of my parts and supplies long before I touch anything. I decided to take a different approach, start taking things apart and figuring the details out later. That method has saved me a little but of money here and there, but it made it much more difficult to stay motivated and on track.

I had to go back a post from February to see where I left off as far as posting goes. I'm going to try to go in order.

In the last update I posted, I had the intake manifold and all of that off. None of that has changed. I have actually removed more  since then. The stock radiator has been ripped out along with the stock fans. With that, I took to eBay and purchased a universal 31x19 Ford style radiator, fan shroud and 16" fan. I cruised eBay for an aluminum coolant reservoir but never really found one that I liked. I ended up finding a pretty nice piece off of Amazon. Part of my wanting to do the specific setup I'm doing is to have a place to mount a catch can. There was very few options for a catch can with a -16an fitting on it, so Moroso got the nod for that.

This is the quick mock-up of the setup.



I'll have a challenge or two with the lower hose, but I'll handle that when I get to that point.



The radiator is a pretty tight fit, which is exactly how I wanted it. I have since rerouted the headlight harness to under the front of the upper radiator support. I still need to lengthen the ground.

Another part of the project I started to tackle was the PCV delete. I went over to a company called Kevko and ordered their oil separator delete fitting. Yoshifab also has one, but I chose the Kevko as it is -12an rather than the -10an that Yoshifab offered. I have most of the other fittings I need do the PCV delete the way I want. I just need to swap valve covers, mark and drill for the fittings so I can have them welded in.

Here's the oil separator fitting sorta installed. It uses green Loctite to secure it, and I haven't taken that step yet.



I also ordered this guy, along with the correct fuel strainer for these cars. Not pictured is the Kirban AFPR that I also ordered.



I found that a few companies make a 12g fuel pump pigtail which was a relief considering that I was ready to find a way to unpin the connector, get new pins, solder 12g wire and drill out the connector. The plan is to run a heavy gauge power wire to the trunk, and use a heavy duty relay to power the fuel pump.

Around the time I got to that stopping point, I basically got bored. The list of things I had to do started to overwhelm me. I started playing with my RC hobby and rebuilt a few cars I had. I also collected a bunch of stuff to do a live planted aquarium. In typical Shawn fashion, all of those projects became disinteresting and are unfinished.

Gumby and I had a few conversations about wheel fitment which was sparked by someone selling wheels from their 4th gen F-body and dual lug patterns. That conversation bounced around in my head for at least a month until I said to hell with it and yanked a pair of wheels off of my Trans Am. I had to order some lug nuts and once those came in, the wheels got tossed on the car. I'm surprised how well they fit. The wheels are in horrible shape and need paint. Two of the tires are shot, but this at least gives me some ideas.



They only slightly poke out at the top. I wanted 1.5 degrees of camber, and the shop only set me up at .9 degrees. I figure that the extra .6 would get that tire under the fender.



Yesterday was the day I finally got motivated to do some more work. It took me nearly a half an hour to get the car jacked back up. I have the car back on 4 jack stands and they're all maxed out. I decided to tackle installing the PMGR starter.



If you haven't installed one of these starters, DO IT. It's significantly lighter and is much easier to get on and off of the car.

While I was under the car, I zipped off the stock downpipe and hunger the Stinger Performance downpipe. Honestly, I feel that the fit is mediocre, but it gets the job done.

39
User Rides / Re: Back in a fox. 1988 Turbo Coupe. The life journal.
For update part one today:

For those of you who have followed my progress, and lack thereof; this thread has been a testament of my ADD. I'm very easily distracted. For the past few months, I had gotten side tracked with other hobbies and endeavors.

The other issue that I have is that I do my best work under pressure. Carlisle was pushed back a few months, so there was no reason to hustle. Along with that, it was moved to a hotter month. That's not a fun drive in a car without air conditioning. In my youth, that wouldn't have been an issue. I've been spoiled these days.

Anyways, I have made some headway and taken some pictures and whatnot. I am going to do a bit more work today, upload the pictures and make an actual update.
40
User Rides / Re: Back in a fox. 1988 Turbo Coupe. The life journal.
Quote from: CaifanSC – on
Well, where da hell is the update?????
Yeah...I've certainly dropped the ball for the past few months...

Quote from: CaifanSC – on
I've enjoyed reading through your progress bro.  I always knew you'd end back in a TC. Lookin through your pics, I saw you installed that trip computer for the TC's. It reminded me of the hot ass days at Ray's messing around with cars and trying to source pieces for the birds. I still have my trip computer somewhere in the parts stash. If memory serves, it has a plug-n-play harness you made.
Luckily, the previous owner installed this one, and ran the wiring for the VSS and the fuel consumption.

I really miss the old days of going to Rays. It was hot, but never seemed too hot. The yards were always full of useful stuff and we never left with out pockets empty. I still laugh when I think about the handle breaking off of your tool box.

Quote from: CaifanSC – on
Your bird is looking great! I'm jelly...im in the fox body forums reading through stuff as I found one that caught my attention.

https://boston.craigslist.org/nos/cto/d/reading-1988-thunderbird-turbo-coupe/7157311282.html

If only it had the right transmission.

Hope you and yours are fairing well with this COVID crisis.

If you're actually looking, they aren't terribly hard to find. I bought the first car I found. A few weeks after I bought mine, a guy posted a lower mileage 88 TC over in Salisbury for 3K. His car was a little nicer, but this one had a lot of other stuff going for it.
42
Lounge / Re: SHhhhh....it happens.
This is a bit of a difficult post to respond to.

On one hand, a failing relationship is never an easy thing to deal with.

On the other, it opened the door to better things.

I think the best thing about all of this is that it's turning out to be far better for you and your kids. We are all human. We can't live the illusion of perfection and exact the illusion to come true. As humans, we can pursue our best idea of perfect and be happy with where we land.

I'm interested in seeing the house you and the family franchise are moving into. 5 kids in one household will make things crowded quickly.
43
Electrical Tech / Re: PMGR Starter Issue
Although the starter has a built in solenoid, it will still draw a significant amount of amperage to energize the solenoid. When the solenoid is initially latching, it will draw 25-50 amps and then taper off down to about 10 amps. Your ignition switch and circuit are probably struggling to provide the amperage the solenoid needs to latch.

I would recommend at least a 30 amp relay, with 10g wiring feeding it, and running to the starter solenoid. Either way, it'll save your ignition switch.
44
Engine Tech / Re: Aeromotive Fuel Pump
I haven't personally used the pump, but the one you have listed is the one we use.

The shame is that no one makes a specific install kit for our cars anymore. The Aeromotive will come with a kit that fits the Mustang. Our cars use a different strainer, which you can grab off of Rock Auto for cheap, and maybe a different O-ring. I grabbed an O-ring and locking ring for good measure. I just haven't ordered the pump yet.

Another thing to consider is going to a relay setup with a large gauge wire feeding it in the trunk. There is a significant voltage drop in the factory wiring. Feeding the fuel pump the proper voltage and providing a circuit that will handle the amperage will make the pump flow better, make it live longer, and keep the IRCM in the car alive longer.