Mad_Ratel wrote: So Met the owner, I'll start my own build thread here shortly, do you have any parts you're willing to sell off of your parts car? It appears the dumbass tried to take the instrument cluster out for something and shattered the trim around there. Also found a cobra hood for 200 bucks that's never been installed. (going to try talk them down to 100...) :D
Im excited to watch two t bird builds. Love these cars.
Mad_Ratel wrote: So Met the owner, I'll start my own build thread here shortly, do you have any parts you're willing to sell off of your parts car? It appears the dumbass tried to take the instrument cluster out for something and shattered the trim around there. Also found a cobra hood for 200 bucks that's never been installed. (going to try talk them down to 100...) :D
That trim is fragile, and the piece in my parts car is garbage. But I'm happy to help with whichever parts I can. Can you email me by visiting my profile?
Also noticed all my links are dead again. E36 M3.
Edit: I migrated all the pictures to Flickr. Hopefully that's the last time I have to do this.
Reasons I haven't gotten much done on this project lately:
-Vacation
-Weather
-4th of July sales on gun stuff
-Find a berkeleying snake in my garage
The sun was also in my eyes and the dog ate my homework. But no for real, that snake thing sucks. I did try to clan up the garage a bit today and sort the huge pile of parts from the parts car into "E36 M3 I need now," "E36 M3 I might need later," and "E36 M3 to sell" piles.
Oh, and this. People who know me and my cars know I'm kind of nutty about cutting weight from them. I pretty much apply an ST-class Miata mindset to bigger cars: Cutting an ounce in 16 places cuts a pound.
One reason I'm not doing a 5x4.5 hub swap on this car is that I have two NiB 5x4.25 front hubs. But they're for an ABS car, and my 95 doesn't have ABS. So I used a 2-jaw pulley puller to remove the ABS rings from the hubs and saved 14.2 ounces for the pair.
Nice, My abs light is on, never figured out why. lol
I have no excuse for how badly I've been slacking lately, other than it's been hot enough that I had a hard time finding motivation to work on the car. But I do have a minor update in the form of a junkyard score.
The factory spare won't clear the Cobra front brakes. So if I ever had a flat front tire, I would have needed to get one whole side of the car in the air, pull the front tire, swap the rear tire to the front, put the spare in back and hope that didn't eat the diff. While looking for some other parts today, I stumbled across an 02 Lincoln LS that still had its 17x5 aluminum spare. They normally go for $100-$150 on eBay, but I got it for $15.58.
This weekend was the Supercoupe Shootout, which means I was finally able to pick up the second most expensive item (after the engine itself) I'm planning for this car: Kooks stainless mid-length headers.
I bought them from Supercoupe Performance, and I asked the owner if he'd be willing to have the standard 3-bolt collector flanges removed and replaced with V-band flanges. He agreed, and the welds look great:
I read good reviews of Percy's Seal-4-Good gaskets, so that's what I used.
The headers look and fit great. It's a minor thing, but I like the fact that you don't have to remove the dipstick to install them. I'm hoping they add a bit of performance compared to the JBA shorty headers currently on my car. Even if they don't, moving from a shorty header/manifold to a mid-length header should make it a lot easier to work around the starter and passenger side catalytic converter.
No major progress to report on my project, though I did make another junkyard run and picked up a couple of useful parts.
Earlier in this thread I said I was slightly disappointed I couldn’t use the 70mm BBK throttle body from my 95 on the new engine. But I wasn’t disappointed enough to spend $150 on a new one that might not produce any more hp than the stock 65mm TB found on the Mustang, Explorer and 96/97 T-Bird.
After doing a lot of research, though, I learned that some 5.4-powered Ford trucks and vans came with a 70mm TB (probably the same piece as the old Ford SVO throttle body). CrownVic.net has an excellent post on which vehicles you should look for.
The local LKQ yard had a Black Friday sale, and their inventory showed four Excursions that might have the part I needed. Two turned out to be V10-powered and one was missing its engine entirely, but the last one had what I was after. It might not add any power, but for $26 I’m willing to risk it.
Externally, the 70mm and 65mm TBs look exactly the same, so you need to look for a label that says YC2U-BA or YC2U-BB. Without calipers, that’s really the only way to tell you’re getting the right part.
With calipers:
I also wanted to find a better MAF than the stock 96/97 sensor in the C&L 73mm housing I had in my 95. There’s no reason to go aftermarket here: Ford makes great electronics, and the best choice for my application (for reasons explained here is the one from the 02-04 Mustang GT. LKQ didn’t have any of those, but Ford ended up putting the same part on various trucks over the years—including, as it turned out, the same Excursion I grabbed the TB from.
Things to note: The 94/95 T-Bird MAF uses a different connector than later vehicles, so if you have one from those years, you’ll need to grab the female plug and a length of wiring from your donor vehicle. If you have a 96/97 T-Bird, you can use your factory wiring. Sort of.
All MN12 T-Birds have a four-wire MAF and a separate IAT sensor. The YC2F MAF has six wires because it incorporates the IAT and MAF sensors into one. You can just splice the wiring for your IAT into the new MAF sensor. It may be hard to tell, but the wires are even the same colors L-R, so making the splices couldn't be easier. Old MAF plug left; new plug right. The IAT wires are on the far left and far right of the new plug--you can see the old plug has room for them but doesn't actually use them..
And as minor a thing as this is, the new MAF is 12 oz. lighter than the old one. Not the reason for the swap, but I'll take it.
As the resident t bird guy: how common are limited slip 7.5 rear ends?
Dusterbd13 said:As the resident t bird guy: how common are limited slip 7.5 rear ends?
No idea--sorry. I've heard they exist, but I've never seen one. Never looked for one, though. My best guess is to look for a highly optioned NA V6 car.
Edit to add you'll find many, many more Trac-Lok 8.8s than 7.5s. Unless youre swapping the 7.5 in some lightweight car and are dead set against the extra few pounds of an 8.8, I don't see a reason to bother looking for one when TL 8.8s are so common (and cheap).
Its for a miata, actually. Ill keep my eyes open in the yards for either one.
Is there any way to check for a limited slip without crawling under every one? Option package, etc?
Look for the tag on the diff housing. Go here and scroll down a bit.
Better link (for door codes to help you find the right car)
Just sold my parts car. I probably could have gotten more by parting it out, but it's gone and I don't have to deal with it any more, so that's a win.
Awesome.
I"m waiting on the shop pressing in the used cobra hubs I bought from them... it's been a week already.
Then the rear can be buttoned up. Going to put off putting that 3.27 locking diff I bought from you for a bit. Looks like it needs new bearings from sitting open and I'd like to put a 3.73 or 4.1 into it at the same time.
It has GOT to be freezing up by you... So are you working on the car at all? lol.
Mad_Ratel said:It has GOT to be freezing up by you... So are you working on the car at all? lol.
No, unfortunately not. The old engine is more or less ready to come out. Just need to find the time and a few friends to help.
I did the exact same thing with my parts car, after selling a few things off of it. Definitely ended up being the right decision, even with the reduced profits. Parting out cars is way more work than it sounds.
Looks like an entertaining build. Always been kind of curious about these cars, though I've never really known much about Fords.
Time to make an update just so people don't think I've forgotten about this car. Unfortunately, it's been on the back burner a bit. Back in January I bought a truck to help me work on projects like this one, but it had a bad engine, and it's turned into a project itself.
But here's a tiny update for this car. I found a pretty good deal on a Trick Flow upper intake, so I decided to give it a chance. It outflows the stock piece by about 120 cfm. Not sure if that will make a difference, but at the price I got it for, I took a chance.
Potential issue one: It's 3/4" taller than stock, so hood clearance might be a problem. Ford actually changed the hood in 96 to make room for the taller intake, so cramming this under my 95 hood might require cutting the inner hood structure. We'll see.
Potential issue two: Because it's designed for a Mustang, the Trick Flow piece lacks the extra vacuum port found on the T-Bird and some other vehicles. It looks as if Trick Flow thought of that, though--they left a good flat spot in the right place to drill & tap a 1/4" NPT thread.
I actually had the right size hose barb handy, but it will interfere with the EGR port. You could easily delete the EGR if you wanted to, but I'll probably pick up a 90 degree fitting and keep the EGR.
Glad to see you post an update.
Mine's been parked since the dif noise started. Just no time to work on it, probably until fall at least.
Okay, so maybe drilling and tapping that extra vacuum port is a bad idea if you intend to keep the EGR. I had to trim the plenum and rotate the fitting 180 degrees from the correct orientation, and it's basically the thickness of a paper gasket from the EGR.
This could be a problem when it comes time to run the throttle cable. we'll see.
If I had it to do over again, I'd just use a tee fitting for the vacuum.
You might look around for EGRs that are the same but have the vaccum connector in a different place.
This car is still on the back burner until I get my truck running again, but I took advantage of eBay's 15% off coupon for Independence Day to buy a new radiator for this car. It was made in China, but it has two cores, aluminum end tanks, and only cost $170 after the coupon.
How bad could it be? Well, comparing it to the stock radiator, the inlet, outlet, overflow, petcock and trans cooler fittings are all more or less in the right place, so I've got that going for me, which is nice.
At this price point, of course I did a test fit to see if the thing actually fits in the car. It does, but not especially well. The passenger side mount for the fan shroud rests right against the AC accumulator. The whole thing should probably sit forward about 1/2" or maybe a bit more.
And speaking of the fan mounting, it's terrible. All four mounts line up vertically...
...but the depth is way off.
The problem is that on the stock radiator, the end tanks and mounting points sit farther rearward than the rear face of the core. On the new radiator, the thicker core sits flush with the end tanks, and they didn't compensate for that. I'll be able to make it work, but it's not something you'd put up with from a more expensive part.
The good: The stock radiator core is 1" thick; the new radiator core is 2.25".
And the welds don't look too bad.
Overall, I'd say that if it doesn't leak, it was worth the money.
Nice find.
Xr7 pointed out that I'd put the LCA poly bushings in backwards and when i did the toe comp delete I was supposed to put washers in to stop lateral movement. (Doh).
The cobra instructions have the large portions of the bushings facing outwards. not inwards. So I gotta pull it back apart to do this. I may attempt to do one side of a time while it's still on the car. Jsut worried that the spring launches the LCA at me.
I asked on TCCOA after finding the right side lca forward of where it was supposed to be. Guess that explains my "diff" noises from earlier this year. Really really bad alignment.
Can't see your pic, but my Supercoupe has been acting funny lately when the rear wheels hit a bump independently. I need to see what's going on with that.
The truck project that interrupted this one is now done, so that means it's time to get started on the T-Bird again. I spent a small amount of time today working on this car, and I hope this means I'll stick with it. Half of what I did today was just reminding myself where I left off. But I did make some minor progress by removing the torque converter nuts, unbolting the trans dipstick bracket from the back of the passenger side head, and looking for other things I'll have to do before the engine comes out. I'd kind of like to get the old engine out before it gets too cold to spend a lot of time outside working on the car.
It was encouraging how easily the old engine rotated by hand when I was doing the torque converter. If the short block is in decent shape, I might keep it and add some junkyard PI heads/cams. I have no idea what I'd put it in, though.
In other news, this project has paid me back a little bit recently. I sold the old A-pillar gauges for $25, the oil filter adapter for $40 and the original driver's side taillight for $12.
Here is to another MR2 owner that loves these
I remember my neighbor having a new red one with “SC” embossed in the rear bumper ... had some kind of oem body kit
I thought it was gorgeous ... I had a SC300 then
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