Progress Thread Finally got my first Fox Body - 1988 GT

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Noted on the Corvette.

Anyone know what these brackets are called? I was able to replace the bigger ones that have three bolts on them but couldn’t find a replacement for these.
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That looks a lot better. Those things could be cleaned up with evapo-rust and a quick chase of the threads with a tap and die kit. Cheap at local stores. Paint them to add some longevity.
 
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That looks a lot better. Those things could be cleaned up with evapo-rust and a quick chase of the threads with a tap and die kit. Cheap at local stores. Paint them to add some longevity.
I called MRT to see if there’s any way to get the new brackets from this kit without ordering the whole kit. They are supposed to get back to me. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll likely be trying to fix my oem brackets as you suggested.

 
Just got done reading through this thread.
Nice job so far man! I've enjoyed your write ups and the pictures of your journey so far.


Drained the old diff fluid last night and started working on cleaning the old gasket material off.
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I may have missed this, does your car have an Eaton Diff?
 
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Just got done reading through this thread.
Nice job so far man! I've enjoyed your write ups and the pictures of your journey so far.




I may have missed this, does your car have an Eaton Diff?
If it does, it would have been done by a previous owner. Is there any way to tell visually? I didnt take a super close look when I flushed the diff fluid last year.
 
If it does, it would have been done by a previous owner. Is there any way to tell visually? I didnt take a super close look when I flushed the diff fluid last year.
I'm not sure, but it definitely doesn't look like a stock Trac-lok unit to me. Trac-loks have the big heavy duty "S" spring, whereas it looks like yours has the coil springs

This is a trac lok:

m-4204-f318c-20.jpg


This is an Eaton Posi:

etn-19559-010_xl.jpg


And if someone went through the trouble of installing an aftermarket diff, I can't imagine they'd keep the stock gears.
 
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I'm not sure, but it definitely doesn't look like a stock Trac-lok unit to me. Trac-loks have the big heavy duty "S" spring, whereas it looks like yours has the coil springs

This is a trac lok:

m-4204-f318c-20.jpg


This is an Eaton Posi:

etn-19559-010_xl.jpg


And if someone went through the trouble of installing an aftermarket diff, I can't imagine they'd keep the stock gears.
Wow. That’s helpful. I was trying to look up pictures of stock diffs but wasn’t finding anything that seemed clear and legit.

On the gears…with this particular car, it honestly wouldn’t surprise me if the person who did the diff just kept stock gears, given the way they did the brake upgrade and 3g alternator. I do think the gears are stock, given the RPMs it sits at on cruising speeds.

I wish I had a more substantial update but I haven’t made any progress recently, aside from picking up the painted bumper cover and trying to make sure I have the right hardware to put everything back together.


View: https://youtu.be/_Sjo1WGAIFM
 
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Got the smaller brackets cleaned up with some rust remover and paint. Not perfect but I think this will do.
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Got the bumper cover mocked up, somewhat securely. I’m pretty happy with how it lo
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The thing I’m kind of unsure on at the moment is how to get the passenger side ground effect piece installed.
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The instructions aren’t super clear and it doesn’t say anything about this metal bracket needing to be removed but it seems like the piece fits kind of awkwardly with it still there. Anyone have experience with the installing the replacement ground effect piece that uses double sided tape?
 
The metal bracket on the body stays and the lip of the ground effect slides behind it , iirc it was a pretty tight fit , careful not to mar the paint.
Those pieces on my 93GT had notches cut in them were they slid around the rivets on the body mounting bracket ,
yours look a little different are they aftermarket ?
 
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The metal bracket on the body stays and the lip of the ground effect slides behind it , iirc it was a pretty tight fit , careful not to mar the paint.
Those pieces on my 93GT had notches cut in them were they slid around the rivets on the body mounting bracket ,
yours look a little different are they aftermarket ?
Yeah the OEM piece has some notches but the aftermarket/replacement piece doesn’t have them. Kind of lame but hopefully I can still make the new piece work fine.
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To me it looks like the replacement is duraflex or a harder material. That top part the slides in the bracket is deleted. It would probably be OK with just the front screws and the bumper bracket holding it on. 2 sided tape would be weird to add on top of the bracket strip.
 
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The instructions said to use the double sided tape with adhesive promoter. I ended up doing that and got it installed but the fitment isn’t great. I don’t think it’s just because of the tape…it definitely seems to have something to do with the material being harder (as you mentioned) and the new piece not having the part that slides into the bracket. Also, I think there’s some sheet metal bent on the inside of the fender well and it’s worse than I originally thought.

Whatever though. Overall, it looks better than the banged up, cracked stock pieces from when I bought the car.

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You can see from above how it sticks out a bit.
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Here's how it looked before:
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I might revisit this at some point to try and make it look more flush but I want to get other stuff done that I’ve been putting off for a while.
 
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Over the weekend I took care of a much needed oil change, including replacing both oil pan drain plugs (magnetic plugs with new gaskets). I also tried to clean up a bit of the grime underneath but didn’t have the car as high up as I would have liked. I checked under the car a day later and it seems like the front drain plug at least did the trick. I couldn’t see the rear one that well but it seemed like there might still be a slow drip there.

I still haven’t had time to install the MM steering shaft assembly. I also picked up a Steeda clutch cable kit recently so I’m hoping to do both of those around the same time.
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The Fox is scheduled to have the high flow cats and factory horn bracket welded in towards the end of the month. Unfortunately the shop that is doing that work doesn’t do rear end gears. I’m trying to get quotes from a couple of other shops, as rear end gears is probably the thing I am least likely to try in the garage myself.

Edit: one of the shops got back to me and said that for the rear end gears, if I’m providing all the parts, the labor charge is $950. Does that sound right? It sounds more expensive than I remember paying on my TransAm back in the day but that was 18 years ago so….
 
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Over the weekend I took care of a much needed oil change, including replacing both oil pan drain plugs (magnetic plugs with new gaskets). I also tried to clean up a bit of the grime underneath but didn’t have the car as high up as I would have liked. I checked under the car a day later and it seems like the front drain plug at least did the trick. I couldn’t see the rear one that well but it seemed like there might still be a slow drip there.

I still haven’t had time to install the MM steering shaft assembly. I also picked up a Steeda clutch cable kit recently so I’m hoping to do both of those around the same time.
F10BA43F-84D8-46C3-BFC9-C75D45CB75F4.jpeg

The Fox is scheduled to have the high flow cats and factory horn bracket welded in towards the end of the month. Unfortunately the shop that is doing that work doesn’t do rear end gears. I’m trying to get quotes from a couple of other shops, as rear end gears is probably the thing I am least likely to try in the garage myself.

Edit: one of the shops got back to me and said that for the rear end gears, if I’m providing all the parts, the labor charge is $950. Does that sound right? It sounds more expensive than I remember paying on my TransAm back in the day but that was 18 years ago so….
$950 in labor?! That's crazy expensive.
 
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