Progress Thread My 79 Coupe Is Alive.

[BMW Rider]

I probably could have started this thread a year ago when I really got back to work on this long neglected project. I did post a bit on it in the welcome forum.

The background on this car; I bought it in 89 as a project to recieve the 302 engine I had built while working as a mechanic in an engine shop. It had a blown 2.3 engine and auto trans and was a bit shabby in the appearance department. The good thing was, there was not too much rust in the structure, just superficial rust for the most part. I tore the car down and started working on it, but other priorities in life kept cropping up and the progress slowed then stopped all together. I didn't do any work on the car for nearly 20 years. I moved the shell around, stored the parts that I'd kept and it all gathered dust.

Last summer (2014) I finally decided I had no good excuses not to get working on it if I was seriously going to do so. So I started. I finished cleaning up the shell, welded in a 10 point cage and started ordering parts. I went with a full Maximum Motorsports suspension kit as my plan is to do some Autocross with the car, but I want it to be street legal too - just barely. By Christmas I had the car on wheels for the first time in years. Next was to start getting the drivetrain into it. The engine came out of the crate and the remaining parts to complete it were installed and into the car it went along with a freshly rebuilt T5. Slowly I worked at it over the remainder of the winter and at times during the warmer months. This past month I've been working pretty steady at it again and reached a significant stage yesterday. I started it up and have it running for the first time ever.

 

[90sickfox]

I like it. Man if I had rotisserie like that I'd get in all types of trouble.lol. keep us posted on the rest of the build.

 

[hoopty5.0]

Congratulations, and keep the updates coming.

 

[skyline247]

Awesome! Congrats and keep us updated.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

[A5literMan]

Subscribed! Keep posting please

 

[mikestang63]

Congrats and keep us posted. Definitely jealous of the rotisserie.

 

[89oem]

Awesome!!!!

 

[BMW Rider]

Here's a bit of detail on the engine which was the origin of this project. My original plan for this engine was to do up a V8 mini truck, a 73 Datsun to be exact. I abandoned that plan and went looking for a better recipient for the engine. I was actually looking for a Cougar or T-Bird when I came across this Mustang coupe.

The engine itself is a 68 302 4V engine from a Mustang, so it's fitting that it's returned to a Mustang again. The 4V engine was a one year only engine and was the 302 equivalent of the 289HP. The really significant difference is the size of the combustion chamber at 53.5 cc which is smaller than the standard 302. I ported out the heads, enlarging the exhaust ports to allow much better flow and went with larger mid 70s 351w valves on stellite seats with positive valve stem seals and screw in rocker studs and pushrod guide plates. The cam is a Crane 351w hydraulic with the 351w firing order not the less desirable 302 one. The rockers are 1.6:1 full rollers. The bottom end is largely stock, all journals are .010 under and the whole rotating assembly was balanced.The rods were deburred and shot-peened and have high strength bolts. Pistons are flat top forged at .040" over giving this engine 307 cid and 10.0:1 compression.

Fresh out of the crate.

Ready to drop in

 

[BMW Rider]

The last two weeks I've been getting some of the trunk and interior items fixed up. I pulled the fuel cell and battery out, cleaned up the entire trunk and then painted it. I chose to try the spatter trunk paint for the heck of it, seems to have worked out fine. The tank and battery are back in and the wires run to the back of the car which let me connect the fuel gauge now. I also needed to get the springs back on the trunk hinges while I had access to them and that meant I needed to find a way to keep the hinges down so the garage door won't hit them when the car is up on the lift. I figured the easiest way to do that was to put the trunk lid on too.

The next item was to fabricate the aluminum bulkhead to seal off the trunk. It took a couple days of templating and sheet metal work to get that done up. I sealed the edges and the roll cage tubes with fire stop caulk, the gaps behind the quarter panels I sealed off with fire proof expanding foam.

I also pulled the seats out to give me better access to the rear of the car which also allowed me to get the shoulder harness bar welded into the cage. Now the shoulder straps are properly supported behind the seats. I still needed to modify the passenger seat frame as well to move it inward to clear the roll cage brace.

Today I spent working on the air vents in the dash getting them connected and the cables secured. I also finished up the heater controls since I'd managed to get some better cables to work with. The original ones had the securing tabs broken and would not stay in place. I shortened the new cables to fit since the heater controls are closer to the heater than original.

 

[MustangIIMatt]

I probably could have started this thread a year ago when I really got back to work on this long neglected project. I did post a bit on it in the welcome forum.

The background on this car; I bought it in 89 as a project to recieve the 302 engine I had built while working as a mechanic in an engine shop. It had a blown 2.3 engine and auto trans and was a bit shabby in the appearance department. The good thing was, there was not too much rust in the structure, just superficial rust for the most part. I tore the car down and started working on it, but other priorities in life kept cropping up and the progress slowed then stopped all together. I didn't do any work on the car for nearly 20 years. I moved the shell around, stored the parts that I'd kept and it all gathered dust.

Last summer (2014) I finally decided I had no good excuses not to get working on it if I was seriously going to do so. So I started. I finished cleaning up the shell, welded in a 10 point cage and started ordering parts. I went with a full Maximum Motorsports suspension kit as my plan is to do some Autocross with the car, but I want it to be street legal too - just barely. By Christmas I had the car on wheels for the first time in years. Next was to start getting the drivetrain into it. The engine came out of the crate and the remaining parts to complete it were installed and into the car it went along with a freshly rebuilt T5. Slowly I worked at it over the remainder of the winter and at times during the warmer months. This past month I've been working pretty steady at it again and reached a significant stage yesterday. I started it up and have it running for the first time ever.

I see you went with the MSD Atomic EFI as well. Did you run it returnless or did you use a return line? (I've got mine set up as returnless right now with a Honda fuel pulse damper on the TB).

 

[BMW Rider]

I chose to go with a return on the EFI. Based on the check list for choosing between the two, I was marginal either way so I figured may as well just do it. It wasn't a lot of extra installation work to add the return line and the fuel cell was set up with a return inlet already as well.

How have you found the EFI to work for you? I'm also running timing control with it and so far it seems decent, but I haven't run it anywhere near enough for it to learn the operating parameters yet.

 

[MustangIIMatt]

I chose to go with a return on the EFI. Based on the check list for choosing between the two, I was marginal either way so I figured may as well just do it. It wasn't a lot of extra installation work to add the return line and the fuel cell was set up with a return inlet already as well.

How have you found the EFI to work for you? I'm also running timing control with it and so far it seems decent, but I haven't run it anywhere near enough for it to learn the operating parameters yet.

Other than a weird moment when it decided in the middle of a drive to idle at 2000rpm, its been great. I'm getting significantly better fuel economy than I did with my Edelbrock Thunder AVS 650 carb, it starts on the first try now that it's learned from about 10 miles of driving (don't drive the car a lot, which was one of my motivations for making the switch to EFI), and the throttle response is excellent with no dead spots. I haven't set it up to control the timing yet, but I will soon. I do have some pinging driving up the steep hill near my house that wasn't there with my carb that I need to tune out with timing or fuel mixture.

 

[BMW Rider]

Glad you are happy with the system. I was looking a the various brands out there and was almost ready to go with the Holley system, but then realized it would only do timing control with an HEI ignition. That and a recommendation from a local performance shop that in their experience the MSD was better at managing big cams than the Holley.

 

[MustangIIMatt]

Glad you are happy with the system. I was looking a the various brands out there and was almost ready to go with the Holley system, but then realized it would only do timing control with an HEI ignition. That and a recommendation from a local performance shop that in their experience the MSD was better at managing big cams than the Holley.

I had it narrowed down to the MSD and FAST EZ-EFI. A 30% off coupon from Advance Auto Parts that put the MSD Atomic a few hundred below the others elsewhere (they didn't carry any of the others) finished making up my mind. The MSD system is incredibly forgiving, it managed to start the engine even with the timing 10 degrees AFTER TDC. Having to set the idle, and how slow the IAC is at responding to changes at the screws is a bit annoying, but you only have to do it once (in theory). I will be going from the returnless system to a system with a return at a later date, but in my car's current configuration, it just wasn't easily feasible, and I needed it running sooner rather than later.

On another subject, did you fabricate that dash from scratch, or is that a kit? It looks clean as hell.

 

[BMW Rider]

I was going to buy a Scott Rod dash, but they were backordered 90+ days so I did just build it myself. It took a bit more time to do, but I am happy with the result. The wiring mess in that photo is all sorted now. I integrated the MSD and Auto meter gauge wiring into the factory harness and eliminated all the unnecessary wires from it. I also did the rear bulkhead from scratch. I used a full 4x8 sheet of aluminum so far on them. I will be doing the door skins and a few other items inside too so will need to pick up another sheet of that.

 

[BMW Rider]

Now that the mechanical and electrical is mainly sorted, I've started getting some of the body assembled. Last week I pulled the passenger door out of the attic storage and stripped it down. I was debating using HO Fibretrends doors on the car for some weight savings, they are 25 lbs lighter each than the stock steel doors. However a bit of researching the rule books and reading some review by others who have used them I decided It was not really going to save me any weight after all. To use lightened doors or fiberglass doors without side impact reinforcement in the doors, I would have to add more door bars to my cage and that would make access/egress more difficult plus it would have added back pretty much any weight savings gained from the doors. So, with that decided, I got to work on the door, cleaned up the rust on the bottom seam and did a little repair patch to the inner panel. The rest of the seam was pretty clean, a bit of rust converter and it was good. Some sanding and buffing followed by a shot of rust encapsulating primer and one door was read to go back on the car with new hing pins and bushings.

Yesterday I tackled another major item, stripping the horrible paint job off the Pace Car front bumper cover. I had bought this front fascia a while back after seeing it for sale locally. The downside was someone had applied a really heavy paint job on it with really poor prep work under it. The paint was brittle and any flexing of the urethane caused it to crack, so it had to come off. All of it. I looked into soda blasting, and chemical stripping, but decided to try good old fashioned elbow grease and sand it off to see how it would go. Not surprisingly, some of the paint would simply chip off in big flakes. I used my 6" air ROS and managed to get the vast majority of the paint off with 80 grit paper. I switched to my detail sander to get into as many of the nooks and crannies as I could, then resorted to hand sanding and even some scraping to finally remove all traces of the horrible paint as well as a good deal of the original paint too. That was five hours of work. It actually came out looking pretty good, though it still need a lot of final sanding and work. I still need to do the same treatment to the air dam.

The header panel that came with this cover was not in great condition, But fortunately my original is, so I will be reusing it.

 

[BMW Rider]

Today I got the passenger door hung on the car and lined up. I had temporarily installed the new fenders last week as well as the hood. The fender was removed again to get to the door bolts, so I figured no better time to address the next issue, tire clearance. Since I chose to use the forward offset control arms with the MM K member, the front wheels are 1 1/2" forward of stock. I bought 91-93 fenders to gain some room, but it was still going to need some modification to get enough clearance. I had researched methods for getting the required room for the tires and the common practice was to simply push the lower edge of the front of the wheel opening outward with a turnbuckle or brace to flare the fender outward and getting it clear of the tire. The downside to this method is that it makes the front fender look misaligned, plus the fender extensions for the PC front end would then not fit properly either. I had thoughts on how to modify the fenders to move the wheel opening forward, and then came across a post in another forumn wher someone had done just that. I took that idea and did it slightly differently. Basically what I ended up with is a wheel opening that is now 1 1/2" further forward and longer overall.

I laid out the area to cut out first, The angled top cut was calculated to allow a 1/4" overlap on the joint to make it easier to weld up. The edge got flanged to let the pieces meet up flush.

A bit of work with a disc grinder wheel in my air die grinder and the section was removed. I then cut 1 1/4" from the front edge of the cut out section, again allowing 1/4" of overlap.

Then all that was needed was to carefully realign the section to the fender in its new position, clamp it and weld it in. I had to then fabricate a filler strip to close the 1 1/2" gap at the middle of the fender and weld that in. A bit of grinding on the welds and the fender now clears the tire.

Of course the fender extensions and body side moldings will now be too long and need to be cut down to suit as well, but that's a later project.

And of course the other side.

 

[95BlueStallion]

I like what you are doing here, and will be following your progress.

 

[BMW Rider]

I pulled the drivers door down out of the attic yesterday to get it ready to go back on the car. Stripped it out and started cleaning it up, the rust along the bottom was worse than the other side. I was lucky with the passenger door as I only had to do a small repair, this one required most of the bottom edge replaced. The outside of the skin was not perforated, but the rolled edge was way too rusted to keep, so I had to cut away part of the skin to rebuild that.

This is the metal that I cut out.

I managed to get a couple pieces cut and bent yesterday before I had to head to work for the night. This afternoon I got back to it and finished fitting those pieces up and got them welded in as well as the rest of the repair.

I finished off welding all along the joints just as I ran out of welding gas, so I have to go pick up a fresh bottle Monday now. I still need to grind all the welds down and clean up the door. I need to decide if I'm going to save the data label on the door or not. I understand reproduction ones can be ordered through the Marti reports. It would be nice to clean everything up and start clean with the new paint colour as opposed to trying to save the old label.

 

[BMW Rider]

Finished off the door work this morning enough for it to be ready to hang on the car. Ground all the welds down and then spent some time cleaning the grime off the door jamb all around being careful to preserve the certification label for the time being at least. Sanded, buffed, wiped clean with thinner and a quick coat of rust encapsulating primer to protect it. Once that dries, I'll pop in the new hinge bushings and get it on the car.