Looking to you guys for answers

Tom95gt

Member
Oct 10, 2007
186
1
19
South Jersey
I'm not sure on my next move here. This is my situation. I decided to turbo my car over a year ago. After that $5000 move i blew head gaskets, twice! Barely put 10 miles on the car. So I decided to give up. Now I'm not sure what to do. I've totally lost interest in it. I think about all the little stuff that needs to be done, window needs new track, other window needs motor,driver's seat is about down to the metal springs, etc etc could go on all day. That's on top of a new motor it will need and the paint job that it could use. On top of that, who knows how long the trans will last with that much power. A lot of my friends say I should fix it then I watch videos of turbo stangs on youtube and it gets me pumped back up. The car would be bada$$. I'm stuck, lately i've been thinking of a 96-98 cobra. Just to start over, but no one is going to want my car in the condition it is. I'm lookin to you guys for some insight. I'm almost considering selling all the vehicles i have and putting a down payment on some type of schooling. Thanks for reading!
 
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Why do you keep blowing head gaskets? Is it not tuned? Maybe you need to upgrade to some better gaskets.

If I were you i would fix the head gasket issue for good and then fix the little things with the car. If it was running the way it should be and all the little things were taken care of you would love the car all over again. Your to far into it now to scrap the project and stat something else. Turbo cars are very sweet. your there now just fix a few minor issues.
 
It's going to be real hard to sell that car in the condition it is in. If you need to get the maximum cash out of it, you are probably better off parting it out. Honestly I think you are better off fixing the car. Whatever is causing the head gaskets to blow is probably a small issue. O-ringing the heads is an affordable option to giving you the head gasket protection you need.

Kurt
 
Well i'm probably gonna have to rebuild the motor anyway cause i forgot to mention it has 154,000 miles on it lol I do have some edelbrock rpm heads that i bought but they need to be rebuilt. They should handle the boost fine. I was thinking about rebuilding the motor with those heads and porting the cobra intake and with lower boost i should be in the clear.
 
Well i'm probably gonna have to rebuild the motor anyway cause i forgot to mention it has 154,000 miles on it lol I do have some edelbrock rpm heads that i bought but they need to be rebuilt. They should handle the boost fine. I was thinking about rebuilding the motor with those heads and porting the cobra intake and with lower boost i should be in the clear.

See, that didn't take much. You're on the round track.

Kurt
 
"That's on top of a new motor it will need"

is your motor ruined?

i was in a similar position a few years ago. i had a KB that i couldn't get tuned and i ended up blowing a ring or something and killed my engine. turns out the KB had a leaky seal that was letting in unmetered air and that was why it kept detonating on me. i was at a crossroads ... i had 3 options:

1. dump the whole performance car thing and get a beater import
2. get a new mustang gt convertible
3. fix my 1995 and go back to naturally aspirated

i couldn't stomach #1, #2 was too expensive, so i ended up with #3. then i went overboard on that option and spent way too much money on it, but i am still about 10 grand less than option #2 would have run me.

now there is at least one big difference between us though: you say that maybe you should go back to school, so i am guessing you are fairly young. i am almost 50 now and have already gone through school and had kids. my oldest is in college and my youngest will be in 2 years. do you mind if i ask how old you are?

my advice?

sell the turbo and all but 1 car, use the money to get the one car you keep (hopefully the stang) in a daily drivable condition that you can live with. live below your means, pay off any credit cards and save a thousand dollars as an emergency fund. enroll yourself part time in a school you can afford.

after you get out of school and are in your new job (that will make you more money), then re-evaluate your car situation. sometimes the right thing to do is to put off what you want to to in favor of doing what is best for you. that can often be very hard to do, but it is the sign of a true adult.

sorry if i sound like your father or something ... but you have to admit, you asked for advice. i'm just being honest about what i think would be best.
 
I am 21 years old, well I'll be 22 on the 22nd lol

Motor's not ruined but with that kind of mileage it's a tickin time bomb. There's so much blow-by that I blew the dipstick and pvc valve right off the motor. I would say the rings have seen better days. I would like to keep the turbo even with very low boost cause it sounds amazing haha. I gotta figure in reality how much a budget rebuild would cost. Hopefully the heads aren't too messed up. Maybe I'll do the head gaskets one last time. Come to think of it, would too much thread sealer mess up torque readings? Maybe I used too much and didn't torque the heads down enough. There's no reason they should have popped the second time. I never even went into boost.

Oh yea, I appreciate all your responses so far ;)
 
"That's on top of a new motor it will need"

is your motor ruined?

i was in a similar position a few years ago. i had a KB that i couldn't get tuned and i ended up blowing a ring or something and killed my engine. turns out the KB had a leaky seal that was letting in unmetered air and that was why it kept detonating on me. i was at a crossroads ... i had 3 options:

1. dump the whole performance car thing and get a beater import
2. get a new mustang gt convertible
3. fix my 1995 and go back to naturally aspirated

i couldn't stomach #1, #2 was too expensive, so i ended up with #3. then i went overboard on that option and spent way too much money on it, but i am still about 10 grand less than option #2 would have run me.

now there is at least one big difference between us though: you say that maybe you should go back to school, so i am guessing you are fairly young. i am almost 50 now and have already gone through school and had kids. my oldest is in college and my youngest will be in 2 years. do you mind if i ask how old you are?

my advice?

sell the turbo and all but 1 car, use the money to get the one car you keep (hopefully the stang) in a daily drivable condition that you can live with. live below your means, pay off any credit cards and save a thousand dollars as an emergency fund. enroll yourself part time in a school you can afford.

after you get out of school and are in your new job (that will make you more money), then re-evaluate your car situation. sometimes the right thing to do is to put off what you want to to in favor of doing what is best for you. that can often be very hard to do, but it is the sign of a true adult.

sorry if i sound like your father or something ... but you have to admit, you asked for advice. i'm just being honest about what i think would be best.

+1 with taking a step back and evaluating everything and see what is cost effective to better your life for now!

I've gone for several years with nothing but a good dd and eventually bought a mustang but it too was stock for about 2 years now its finally moving forward...only because im caught up in debt and bills and have enough money in the bank that im comfortable doing small things here and there.

Do what will improve your life in the long run,not short term.

Going to school may improve your cash flow later on and in turn will better fund your muscle car urge!

Start going to the race track or car shows to get your muscle car buzz and fulfillment but i would def improve everything around me before jumping into a money sucker hobby
 
now there is at least one big difference between us though: you say that maybe you should go back to school, so i am guessing you are fairly young. i am almost 50 now and have already gone through school and had kids. my oldest is in college and my youngest will be in 2 years. do you mind if i ask how old you are?

my advice?

sell the turbo and all but 1 car, use the money to get the one car you keep (hopefully the stang) in a daily drivable condition that you can live with. live below your means, pay off any credit cards and save a thousand dollars as an emergency fund. enroll yourself part time in a school you can afford.

after you get out of school and are in your new job (that will make you more money), then re-evaluate your car situation. sometimes the right thing to do is to put off what you want to to in favor of doing what is best for you. that can often be very hard to do, but it is the sign of a true adult.

sorry if i sound like your father or something ... but you have to admit, you asked for advice. i'm just being honest about what i think would be best.

Damn I hate those age markers :eek: but I have to agree, that is good advice, (from one who's even older) :)
 
[sell the turbo and all but 1 car, use the money to get the one car you keep (hopefully the stang) in a daily drivable condition that you can live with. live below your means, pay off any credit cards and save a thousand dollars as an emergency fund. enroll yourself part time in a school you can afford.]

[after you get out of school and are in your new job (that will make you more money), then re-evaluate your car situation. sometimes the right thing to do is to put off what you want to to in favor of doing what is best for you. that can often be very hard to do, but it is the sign of a true adult.]



I have a question for you sir (Black Vert) ...... did you read Dave Ramsey's book??? OR did Dave talk to you before he wrote his book? I'm confused!:rolleyes::lol:
Great & very TRUE advice by the way!!!:nice:
 
lol, i do sound like dave ramsey, don't i?

i've been listening to him and following his advice for long enough that i know that it works. the emergency fund saved my a$$ the last 6 months when my wife needed a root canal, her transmission died, and our basement filled with water. that was the fastest drain of 10 grand in my history. if i didn't have an emergency fund, i'd have been screwed.
 
I've got some emergency fund, but it's hard to build up. My fiance was out of work for 6 months. She has a job teaching right now, but it's over in the summer. The damn face herpes is going to cost me too, cuz I'm out of sick time at work.

Kurt
 
If you want to keep the car and need something cost effective... Im pretty sure i have said this before to you... Put in a stock engine from a junk yard... solve the little problems then build a engine that will handle the boost correctly.
 
I feel your pain right now on the shortblock end of things.

Blackvert gave the best advise really in paying off everything and so forth...what to spend on the car end of it though should be up to you. If you really want out get out. It does get really hard daydreaming on the 'could be like when its fixed' end of things...but I've even found that light at the end of the tunnel just isnt there after the money is already spent and gone.

I'm sorta stuck the same place as I've been trying to gear myself back into really liking my car. I start hating it during the winter as I dont drive it and esp this one as it too is suffering from a blown HG...(although not tune related).

I've finally set enough $ aside to buy a shortblock to replace the 186k blowby machine. Whats got me irked now is after all my physcing back up, I've come full circle after talking to Jim at Fordstrokers for awhile about picking up a forged liberator 331 shortblock. It's just going to die with the boost unless I spend insane $ on a real block. The news just put me right back into my hole of just walking away from the car. You can't come close to making the potential power for under $4500 it seems. A 331 on boost will easily eclipse 450rwhp which he made out to be a timebomb situation even as I spoke of keeping it around that level and under 6200rpm for saftey.

So, I've been kicking around one of those LRS economy shortblocks with the SpeedPro forged pistons. After all the new gaskets, hardware and such; I'll have appx. $1688.09 into getting the car running again. Crappy thing is it's still factory everything else which in theory seems to go fairly far for people...but I just feel like its half assing it. Then I would try to keep the HP lower to get it to live and I just can't seem to want to pull the trigger. I tried researching them and there's limited info other than they are .030 or .060 over and outsourced.
The rest of the car is pretty much done sans trans; but the whole cost thing is making me sick at this point. You either build an n/a stroker and max your block out, or build a similarly expensive h/c/i car then toss a blower on it, then watch everything around it die....and have to tame it all down in the end to get it to live. $3k h/c/i + 3k+ blower + 2k+ shortblock to make @ 450rwhp = shoot me now.

At least that's how I'm feeling.

Since you don't seem all too deep in, either part the turbo kit and get a used/junkyard shortblock to toss in to sell the car separate or junkyard shortblock it and tune it on low boost, don't really drive it much and sell the thing while it's still running. Get your 4v car with nice paint and all that and just forget the headache and ultimate $-pit aspect.
 
I do have the spare cobra motor i could just throw right into the car but then i have to trust that the guy i bought it from said it was in good shape. Throwing in a new motor isn't really an easy job especially when i have to remove all the turbo stuff. So i mean should i chance it? There's no way to check compression with a pulled motor is there? I sure have the time to do it all but i'd rather not waste my time. I guess I could pull the oil pan off to check the cylinders and do the head gaskets on the cobra motor. I could also slap on the rpm heads on it too.

On a side note, if i can get a good price for my trans-am and get my tax return i should have $4-5k to play around with. There's a built dart block but then i gotta consider the trans toast among other things. Hmm too many choices. I'm sure 450 rwhp would suit me for a while. I should put 1-2 right into my savings. Who knows, it still needs paint and wheels but getting it running should be top priority.

I guess once i open up the cobra motor and take plenty of pics, you guys can examine :) Even though my dad is hardcore into motors and what he says is right. (He thinks i should do a forged crank even though the cast one will handle more than the block) I guess I should mention that more, he'll help me rebuild a motor. I don't want to open it up until i can put it in the garage unless i coat everything in oil and wrap it up. :shrug:

It seems i'm all over the place on this post lol i'm just trying to gather it all up.
 
lol, i do sound like dave ramsey, don't i?

i've been listening to him and following his advice for long enough that i know that it works. the emergency fund saved my a$$ the last 6 months when my wife needed a root canal, her transmission died, and our basement filled with water. that was the fastest drain of 10 grand in my history. if i didn't have an emergency fund, i'd have been screwed.

Yep! That's a good thing....... I finished reading Total Money Makeover several weeks ago. If I could have read/learned from Dave 10 years ago I would be in great shape finacially. I have wasted lot's of hard earned cash over the years from just being plain stupid & not managing it properly. I am on the right track now thanks to Dave Ramsey!