Hello Stangnet,
I wanted to introduce my self as well as my fox, Foxy Molly. She's a 1989 LX 5-speed with 235K on the original motor and tranny. I'm the second owner and picked up the car two years ago. Due to life, I've not had many opportunities to work on her. That has started to change in the last 4 months.
Here is how she looked when I picked her up in December of 2014.
Since I brought her home to Texas I've replaced the water pump, installed a set of used BBK long-tubes H-pipe with flow masters and repaired the non-functional reverse lights. The reverse lights ended up being a dime that had become lodged in the cigarette lighter and blew the fuse!
Since I brought Molly home I've moved into a new home which allows me much more room to work on her. Currently the interior is gutted and I'm cleaning, repairing and reinstalling the interior pieces. The previous owners smoked in the car so a thorough cleaning was in order. I also discovered that the drivers seat is broken and that the front mounting post has pulled through the sheet metal.
The exterior of the car is rough but not entirely bad. There are a couple small rust areas bubbling that I'll address later. The car has had a couple small fender benders and has been driven hard. The a-pillars show the usual cracks due to body twist and I've noticed that the fenders don't actually line up 100%. I'm okay with this as the car will not be a show car. I had to restore my taillight housings / lenses, restore the quarter glass and the side mirrors all because I'm too cheap to pay for news ones and I figured it would be a great learning experience.
The mechanicals are okay. With 235 thousand miles, you would expect the car to be tired. The engine is still strong, no horrible leaks, although it does have leaks, and it drives for the most part okay. The suspension is shot, the brakes are horrible, the clutch needs adjusting and the idle is not 100%. I do know I need to replace the IAC and a couple of sensors. I'll get to all these issues at some point soon
So as you can see Molly is going to keep me busy for the foreseeable future. I'll be creating a build/progress thread here at www.stangnet.com to help me document the car and to get input/help from the huge user base here.
This brings me to my self. My name is Brian, I'm 39 and I have pretty much no idea what I'm doing. My 12 year-old son helps me and we do the best that we can. I'm not a mechanic, a body person, welder or anything. I'm a software developer by trade. But, I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night, so I think I can do most of what needs to be done! All jokes aside, I plan on teaching my self as I go. I've lurked on this site for years, literally years and there is a huge amount of information here. I like to learn and make mistakes, so I imagine there will be plenty of mistakes to be made of which will be documented in the build thread! What I've done so far has already taught me so much. I'm sure I've made mistakes thus far, but nothing has been a show stopper up to this point.
I'm also trying to learn photography and videography, that means allot of what has been done already is being documented as videos and photos. The videos are pretty bad, you can clearly tell I'm learning, but I keep making them in the hopes that perhaps, just perhaps I may be able to help some one or at least show some one that you can do allot of things on your own if you're willing to make mistakes and at least try.
Thank you all for reading this huge first post and I look forward to being a part of the community!
Brian - Foxy Molly Build
B&T Garage
I wanted to introduce my self as well as my fox, Foxy Molly. She's a 1989 LX 5-speed with 235K on the original motor and tranny. I'm the second owner and picked up the car two years ago. Due to life, I've not had many opportunities to work on her. That has started to change in the last 4 months.
Here is how she looked when I picked her up in December of 2014.
Since I brought her home to Texas I've replaced the water pump, installed a set of used BBK long-tubes H-pipe with flow masters and repaired the non-functional reverse lights. The reverse lights ended up being a dime that had become lodged in the cigarette lighter and blew the fuse!
Since I brought Molly home I've moved into a new home which allows me much more room to work on her. Currently the interior is gutted and I'm cleaning, repairing and reinstalling the interior pieces. The previous owners smoked in the car so a thorough cleaning was in order. I also discovered that the drivers seat is broken and that the front mounting post has pulled through the sheet metal.
The exterior of the car is rough but not entirely bad. There are a couple small rust areas bubbling that I'll address later. The car has had a couple small fender benders and has been driven hard. The a-pillars show the usual cracks due to body twist and I've noticed that the fenders don't actually line up 100%. I'm okay with this as the car will not be a show car. I had to restore my taillight housings / lenses, restore the quarter glass and the side mirrors all because I'm too cheap to pay for news ones and I figured it would be a great learning experience.
The mechanicals are okay. With 235 thousand miles, you would expect the car to be tired. The engine is still strong, no horrible leaks, although it does have leaks, and it drives for the most part okay. The suspension is shot, the brakes are horrible, the clutch needs adjusting and the idle is not 100%. I do know I need to replace the IAC and a couple of sensors. I'll get to all these issues at some point soon
So as you can see Molly is going to keep me busy for the foreseeable future. I'll be creating a build/progress thread here at www.stangnet.com to help me document the car and to get input/help from the huge user base here.
This brings me to my self. My name is Brian, I'm 39 and I have pretty much no idea what I'm doing. My 12 year-old son helps me and we do the best that we can. I'm not a mechanic, a body person, welder or anything. I'm a software developer by trade. But, I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night, so I think I can do most of what needs to be done! All jokes aside, I plan on teaching my self as I go. I've lurked on this site for years, literally years and there is a huge amount of information here. I like to learn and make mistakes, so I imagine there will be plenty of mistakes to be made of which will be documented in the build thread! What I've done so far has already taught me so much. I'm sure I've made mistakes thus far, but nothing has been a show stopper up to this point.
I'm also trying to learn photography and videography, that means allot of what has been done already is being documented as videos and photos. The videos are pretty bad, you can clearly tell I'm learning, but I keep making them in the hopes that perhaps, just perhaps I may be able to help some one or at least show some one that you can do allot of things on your own if you're willing to make mistakes and at least try.
Thank you all for reading this huge first post and I look forward to being a part of the community!
Brian - Foxy Molly Build
B&T Garage