My ‘86 GT came without rear window defrost. During restoration, I went through several replacement hatches, and I think they all had the rear defrost. Mine has it now!
Bill
Mustang5L5’s progress thread -
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Bill
On another note. Explorer ST got rear ended by someone on the phone earlier this summer. Finally home long enough to drop it off at the body shop.
Apparently the others guys insurance company considered a base Escape Active with the 3-cylinder engine to be an equivalent rental.
It’s fine. Been driving my wife’s car or taking my 2000 GT to work. This thing has been mostly sitting
Apparently the others guys insurance company considered a base Escape Active with the 3-cylinder engine to be an equivalent rental.
It’s fine. Been driving my wife’s car or taking my 2000 GT to work. This thing has been mostly sitting
gkomo
now i can hopefully expect to receive the shaft
F'n insurance. My wife was hit over the weekend in her Lexus, insurance was like, "would she be good with a Corolla?". Not a bad car by any means... but definitely not the same.
- Jul 12, 2017
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I’m in the collision repair industry and you could return that back to the rental company and ask the insurance company to cash you out on whatever they are covering a day. Cash in your pocket if you don’t need it.On another note. Explorer ST got rear ended by someone on the phone earlier this summer. Finally home long enough to drop it off at the body shop.
Apparently the others guys insurance company considered a base Escape Active with the 3-cylinder engine to be an equivalent rental.
It’s fine. Been driving my wife’s car or taking my 2000 GT to work. This thing has been mostly sitting
That's what i had for almost 2 weeks in CA. Base Corolla. Couldn't complain much since it was for work.
Not a bad suggestion, but I think i'll prob have intermittent use of it for the next week or so. My wife needs her car and if it's a rainy day I'm not taking the convertible to work.
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I used to travel a lot (a lot!) and I usually wound up renting something from Hertz that I liked, primarily because I was there often enough that I knew the counter personnel. At the time I liked to rent '90s T-birds, and then wound up getting counseled by my manager that I was supposed to rent something cheaper. Then I started negotiating with the counter personnel. One time I got a bright metallic red Lincoln Towncar with a white vinyl top and white leather interior for the price of a Tempo.On another note. Explorer ST got rear ended by someone on the phone earlier this summer. Finally home long enough to drop it off at the body shop.
Apparently the others guys insurance company considered a base Escape Active with the 3-cylinder engine to be an equivalent rental.
It’s fine. Been driving my wife’s car or taking my 2000 GT to work. This thing has been mostly sitting
Bill
Back at it with the car. Fall weather is upon us, which for some reasons seems to be when I drive the Fox the most.
Got it out again Sat and did some more tuning with AutoTune on. Making less changes now in the normal driving band. I have good response and torque. Have not had the chance to tune WOT as much as I want to but maybe we will get to that in the next few weeks.
Cold start crank, warm start crank all seem to be pretty good now. Still working on accel enrich.
This is about the time last year I noticed my (false) fuel pressure issue. This year, with the right injector settings, I’m cruising through the tuning a lot faster now. Of course some of that might be experience now. Still a newbie, but I have a strategy now.
In terms of fall projects, I’ll likely add the 2nd wide band. I also noticed that the rear window trim I pulled from my donor hatch is in better shape than what’s on the car so I’ll likely work to paint that up and swap it out.
I also need new tires. The ones on the car are 9 years old. I’ve been procrastinating due to not being sure what wheels I want to run on this car…and the fact I hate the idea of dropping $$ for tires on a car I drive 50 miles a year it seems.
Also debating ditching the Borla and swapping mufflers for flowmasters. I miss that tone.
Hate to say it but I like driving my SN more. Turn key reliability with a stock setup, won’t shed a tear if I get rear ended. Slow as balls but sounds nice.
Got it out again Sat and did some more tuning with AutoTune on. Making less changes now in the normal driving band. I have good response and torque. Have not had the chance to tune WOT as much as I want to but maybe we will get to that in the next few weeks.
Cold start crank, warm start crank all seem to be pretty good now. Still working on accel enrich.
This is about the time last year I noticed my (false) fuel pressure issue. This year, with the right injector settings, I’m cruising through the tuning a lot faster now. Of course some of that might be experience now. Still a newbie, but I have a strategy now.
In terms of fall projects, I’ll likely add the 2nd wide band. I also noticed that the rear window trim I pulled from my donor hatch is in better shape than what’s on the car so I’ll likely work to paint that up and swap it out.
I also need new tires. The ones on the car are 9 years old. I’ve been procrastinating due to not being sure what wheels I want to run on this car…and the fact I hate the idea of dropping $$ for tires on a car I drive 50 miles a year it seems.
Also debating ditching the Borla and swapping mufflers for flowmasters. I miss that tone.
Hate to say it but I like driving my SN more. Turn key reliability with a stock setup, won’t shed a tear if I get rear ended. Slow as balls but sounds nice.
Yeah…I’m never happy. I dropped a hint to LMR to make some 17x9 or 17x10.5” versions of my polished 01 cobra wheels. If they do that…my decision is made
My ‘86 hasn’t had as much done as your car, but it’s had a lot done to it, and I feel pretty much the same way. It’s a bit more of an effort to drive it than when it was stock.
Bill
Think of it this way, they have personality, yeah sappy sht I know but you build on that personality, some are pretty happy and they let you know it, dependable, predictable and fun to play with, others want more and are happiest driven at the limit, and when something breaks it's telling you it want more..
Like the ranchero I have, it just wants to die peacefully in my back yard...
Like the ranchero I have, it just wants to die peacefully in my back yard...
WhiteCobra95
10 Year Member
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About 12 years ago Flowmaster had several of their best-seller cat backs available in 409 stainless. They used the same part numbers as the regular kits but added an 8 to the beginning. I don't know if they still offer them, I thought some of them were discontinued after only two or three years, but if you're headed in that direction it might be worth looking into. At the time, they were about twice as expensive as the aluminized cat-backs w/stainless tips.
If I switch the muffles I would look to just buy the mufflers and swap them out. I have the Panhard bar so fit is tight and I know what I have works
First question really is to look up dimensions of the flows I want and see if they match the Borlas. I used the clamp stay that allows for easy disassembly of the exhaust so if the dims are good this should be easy.
Yeah I’ll prob lose a few HP…but let’s be honest. What am I really doing with the car? Local driving with a few spirited pulls and then it goes back to the garage
First question really is to look up dimensions of the flows I want and see if they match the Borlas. I used the clamp stay that allows for easy disassembly of the exhaust so if the dims are good this should be easy.
Yeah I’ll prob lose a few HP…but let’s be honest. What am I really doing with the car? Local driving with a few spirited pulls and then it goes back to the garage
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Welp, not much to report. Did some more driving and tuning. Car is definitely driving nice now, and reliable. Believe it or not, not a single stall since going to MS3. Idle has always been reliable. But car is to the point where I can hop in it without hooking the laptop up and just go take it down the street and back.
Have learned a few more things. Learned how to optimize my idle advance. Had too much advance which had it running well, but softened some of the cam chop. Found a nice midpoint that was still reliable but got a bit more chop. Happy with VE table for now, working on some Accel enrich. Not a whole lot of opportunity to work on that now, as it's just getting too cold. Tires don't grab well so hesitant to jump on it to refine WOT and AE. Might have to call it a year.
Not much left to do on this car. The only suspension part left hanging is the torque arm. Hesitant to drop $800 on something I likely won't really do much spirited driving with.
I'll be 100% honest here. I think I went too far with the car. It was nice to go crazy and do all the mods i wanted to do when I was 18, but at the end of the day I don't think it's was worth it. What i should have done was the 5-lug conversion, stuck with vac brakes, found a good spring/shock combo and did a simple GT40/N61/Cobra intake combo that will run well on an untuned A9L and called it a day. DOn't get me wrong, i like my car, but I do think I overdid it.
On a nice day, my bone stock SN95 convertible was the car I pulled out of the garage first. Stock, smooth, reliable, simple mods. Sounds good, and I can sit in 2 hours of traffic with it (I have). I think i'm getting into the "driver" phase of my life since turning mid-40's. Which means I want a nice clean stock car to cruise around with. I put over 1K miles on the SN95 this summer. I put maybe 50 on the Fox.
I might close out this project thread. Not much else to do to the car really.
Have learned a few more things. Learned how to optimize my idle advance. Had too much advance which had it running well, but softened some of the cam chop. Found a nice midpoint that was still reliable but got a bit more chop. Happy with VE table for now, working on some Accel enrich. Not a whole lot of opportunity to work on that now, as it's just getting too cold. Tires don't grab well so hesitant to jump on it to refine WOT and AE. Might have to call it a year.
Not much left to do on this car. The only suspension part left hanging is the torque arm. Hesitant to drop $800 on something I likely won't really do much spirited driving with.
I'll be 100% honest here. I think I went too far with the car. It was nice to go crazy and do all the mods i wanted to do when I was 18, but at the end of the day I don't think it's was worth it. What i should have done was the 5-lug conversion, stuck with vac brakes, found a good spring/shock combo and did a simple GT40/N61/Cobra intake combo that will run well on an untuned A9L and called it a day. DOn't get me wrong, i like my car, but I do think I overdid it.
On a nice day, my bone stock SN95 convertible was the car I pulled out of the garage first. Stock, smooth, reliable, simple mods. Sounds good, and I can sit in 2 hours of traffic with it (I have). I think i'm getting into the "driver" phase of my life since turning mid-40's. Which means I want a nice clean stock car to cruise around with. I put over 1K miles on the SN95 this summer. I put maybe 50 on the Fox.
I might close out this project thread. Not much else to do to the car really.
I have somewhat similar feelings on my ‘86. It runs good, sounds great, goes great, but more difficult to drive.
Bill
Have always loved your car man and your two progress threads have been great to follow. With that I think a lot of us have gone over board on a project or two and completely understand where you are coming from.
For me I can absolutely say that if I did it again the only thing I would change is not doing the coil overs and I should have moved to a stroker after the first 302 build and not the third. Everything else is great. I really want to completely tear the drive train and suspension out of the car and clean it up (years of driving crud) and if I do that I may very well swap back to coil springs and sell the coil overs.
And I still need to swap in the MS3 but I’m going to have someone else tune it as that is not something I even remotely like to do. I just know that the A9L and SCT chip are not as good as the MS3 with a good tune.
For me I can absolutely say that if I did it again the only thing I would change is not doing the coil overs and I should have moved to a stroker after the first 302 build and not the third. Everything else is great. I really want to completely tear the drive train and suspension out of the car and clean it up (years of driving crud) and if I do that I may very well swap back to coil springs and sell the coil overs.
And I still need to swap in the MS3 but I’m going to have someone else tune it as that is not something I even remotely like to do. I just know that the A9L and SCT chip are not as good as the MS3 with a good tune.
Appreciate your honesty about your car. I have seriously been considering putting a vortec on my HCI combo...but that will end up snow balling into abandoning my A9L quarter horse setup. I'd end up going with a terminator x which is a whole other tuning software I'd have to learn. I've tuned my current combo by learning binary editor, so it's hard to just walk away from it. I also don't want it to turn into a race car that's barely street-able. Having a B21 cam is annoying enough in traffic.
Maybe keep your thread open for any little things you do. It may be helpful knowledge for the rest of us.
Exactly... with 375k on mine driven almost daily for 44yrs!
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