Black Jack: Road trip! Home from the eclipse in Ohio. 24mpg!!
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Are you talking about the missing rubber plugs back there? I have some in a box in the attic I'll fill them with. I'd guess that explains the rust. Do you have another idea?
As
As high as the rust looks on the back panel, how’s the hatch weatherstrip, and are the tail light housings still sealing to the body? And if all that is good, is the hatch panel (or trunk lid) all solid with no spoiler or rack holes leaking? At the base of the glass can be rusted and hidden under the trim and mastic, allowing water in the hatch and draining along the latch ot other low spots.
Did you find the goldfish a new home?
Since you asked seriously, I will answer seriously first.
As high as the rust looks on the back panel, how’s the hatch weatherstrip, and are the tail light housings still sealing to the body? And if all that is good, is the hatch panel (or trunk lid) all solid with no spoiler or rack holes leaking? At the base of the glass can be rusted and hidden under the trim and mastic, allowing water in the hatch and draining along the latch ot other low spots.
Did you find the goldfish a new home?
Now, the lights and blinkers are working without throwing the voltage meter and temp gauges through the roof. The line lock works again, too. Engine bay's a bit cleaner.
Last post was the 'before'. Here's the after:
Last post was the 'before'. Here's the after:
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Here's another 'after'. This is with the front B-springs installed. I'm a little surprised it doesn't end up with a forward rake, but now it doesn't have a reverse rake anymore, at least. Handles night & day different, too. Steering is much improved, and I just don't get why others had problems with the ride on B-springs.
With the front a lot lower, I doubt I'll see 1.83 60's or better at the track, again, but I had my fun there, and now I want a cool looking, comfy, low-key street cruiser that I don't have to be as paranoid about as I am with the others.
With the front a lot lower, I doubt I'll see 1.83 60's or better at the track, again, but I had my fun there, and now I want a cool looking, comfy, low-key street cruiser that I don't have to be as paranoid about as I am with the others.
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Where have you been all of my foxbody life? Tried these in Black Jack. Love them! Now, I'm buying pairs for the other foxes, my daily Saturn, & my F250.
www.lasfit.com
Taking pics of lights never works out all that well, but believe me, this is something I've always wanted out of stock housings. These are factory bulb replacements for $70/pair.
Carrying on, New fuel filler neck stopped the overwhelming gas smell in the car after filling up on fuel:
That last pic shows the filler neck seal, but it also shows the worst rust on the car, which is on the lower right quarter. I will have this addressed by a body-man. Fortunately, the adjacent panels are perfectly clean. Honestly, looking at this picture made it finally click... I think we've found the culprit. The rear tire was kicking water up into the cabin here at the filler neck for who knows how many years. It drained into the lower quarter panel, add to that cocktail a couple decades, and boom! A rusty lower panel.
@7991LXnSHO I did as you said, and looked around a bit. The weather stripping is new-ish and seals fine. The new driver's light is nice and sealed. I plugged up the holes in the spare tire well. I do see a little rust around the hatch latch, but that'll have to wait for a new spoiler. I hate the whale tail, so when that goes, I'll take a look to see if there's any way water's coming in through the hatch. So in the next two pics, you can see the plugs, followed by a peak through the passenger tail light assembly's lack of seal:
Finally, I made 1 good cluster out of 2 bad ones. I mean, one panel was bad, one speedo gauge was bad - it was way off & over about 50-60 mph, it read about 80 and then jumped from 80 suddenly to ~120 mph. Now, I've adjusted it so that even though the 23-tooth driven gear is off by about 12%, I've offset the speedo needle down significantly so that it's accurate at 70mph. This has the effect of reading low by 5-6 mph at the bottom of the gauge, but only being off by 1-2 mph at Hwy speeds.
The other's RPM gauge was bad. It would stick at 3k RPM, and then would go up from there. The new RPM gauge is still probably pretty badly off., but at least it's giving me a consistent sense of where they car's at as I drive around. The Volt-meter & temp gauges both read way out of the norm that I typically see foxes in, but my spare cluster's is right on the money, further convincing me that the cooling issues is solved. The only thing that was good in both was the right two gauges (fuel & oil pressure). So, here's the disassembled 'parts cluster' and then the car with the new mats & reassembled cluster. Future sale note: here's the moment the car jumped from ~1,397 on the odometer to ~43,598. I'm not out to screw anyone, and frankly I'm not sure I've done anything but make it look like it has extra miles on it, lol. I just need a speedometer that works decently, and I already had this one stored. With the new one, the needle has started 'vibrating' within a 5mph range around the speed it thinks I'm going. I hope the speedo cable I've ordered clears this up, but honestly not sure if it will. The last speedo was terrible, but it seems smoother until it got high enough to freak out.
New cluster, door panels back in, for the moment. Running pony floor mats. Kick panel out, waiting for either replacement or repaint.
That's the end for today. Nice progress on this car in 1.5 weeks! It's coming right along, and I'm loving it more every day!
LA Plus Series 9004 HB1 LED Bulbs 60W 6000LM 6000K | 2 Bulbs
Chips placement is perfectly aligned with the halogen bulbâs filament, luminous pattern 99% close to the factory halogen bulb, no blinding oncoming traffic.
www.lasfit.com
Taking pics of lights never works out all that well, but believe me, this is something I've always wanted out of stock housings. These are factory bulb replacements for $70/pair.
Carrying on, New fuel filler neck stopped the overwhelming gas smell in the car after filling up on fuel:
That last pic shows the filler neck seal, but it also shows the worst rust on the car, which is on the lower right quarter. I will have this addressed by a body-man. Fortunately, the adjacent panels are perfectly clean. Honestly, looking at this picture made it finally click... I think we've found the culprit. The rear tire was kicking water up into the cabin here at the filler neck for who knows how many years. It drained into the lower quarter panel, add to that cocktail a couple decades, and boom! A rusty lower panel.
@7991LXnSHO I did as you said, and looked around a bit. The weather stripping is new-ish and seals fine. The new driver's light is nice and sealed. I plugged up the holes in the spare tire well. I do see a little rust around the hatch latch, but that'll have to wait for a new spoiler. I hate the whale tail, so when that goes, I'll take a look to see if there's any way water's coming in through the hatch. So in the next two pics, you can see the plugs, followed by a peak through the passenger tail light assembly's lack of seal:
Finally, I made 1 good cluster out of 2 bad ones. I mean, one panel was bad, one speedo gauge was bad - it was way off & over about 50-60 mph, it read about 80 and then jumped from 80 suddenly to ~120 mph. Now, I've adjusted it so that even though the 23-tooth driven gear is off by about 12%, I've offset the speedo needle down significantly so that it's accurate at 70mph. This has the effect of reading low by 5-6 mph at the bottom of the gauge, but only being off by 1-2 mph at Hwy speeds.
The other's RPM gauge was bad. It would stick at 3k RPM, and then would go up from there. The new RPM gauge is still probably pretty badly off., but at least it's giving me a consistent sense of where they car's at as I drive around. The Volt-meter & temp gauges both read way out of the norm that I typically see foxes in, but my spare cluster's is right on the money, further convincing me that the cooling issues is solved. The only thing that was good in both was the right two gauges (fuel & oil pressure). So, here's the disassembled 'parts cluster' and then the car with the new mats & reassembled cluster. Future sale note: here's the moment the car jumped from ~1,397 on the odometer to ~43,598. I'm not out to screw anyone, and frankly I'm not sure I've done anything but make it look like it has extra miles on it, lol. I just need a speedometer that works decently, and I already had this one stored. With the new one, the needle has started 'vibrating' within a 5mph range around the speed it thinks I'm going. I hope the speedo cable I've ordered clears this up, but honestly not sure if it will. The last speedo was terrible, but it seems smoother until it got high enough to freak out.
New cluster, door panels back in, for the moment. Running pony floor mats. Kick panel out, waiting for either replacement or repaint.
That's the end for today. Nice progress on this car in 1.5 weeks! It's coming right along, and I'm loving it more every day!
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Just little stuff, tonight, like killmat + a door lock actuator on the passenger side:
A new striker, well-adjusted + some paint for the hatch:
A cleaned up & lithium greased latch + some CLD tiles on the upper portion of the hatch. The latch seems to be working better:
A new striker, well-adjusted + some paint for the hatch:
A cleaned up & lithium greased latch + some CLD tiles on the upper portion of the hatch. The latch seems to be working better:
I did my entire interior in kilmat and am seriously impressed at the difference in sound in the interior. It’s really muffled the exhaust tone (until I open the windows)
Both doors are done, now, on both the inner and outer panels. The door lock actuator is in on the Driver's side. Strange how it still has trouble locking and unlocking, despite about a 5 gal. bucket worth of WD40 on the lock.
Doors shut with a satisfying thud that makes it seem like a much higher class car, lol. I'll spare the pics, for now. When I get the other door panel from TMI in on the passenger side, I'll snap a couple more. The alignment of the holes left a little to be desired, but the door panel and arm rest are higher quality and better feel than the factory original stuff.
Doors shut with a satisfying thud that makes it seem like a much higher class car, lol. I'll spare the pics, for now. When I get the other door panel from TMI in on the passenger side, I'll snap a couple more. The alignment of the holes left a little to be desired, but the door panel and arm rest are higher quality and better feel than the factory original stuff.
I'll post some updates with the project from over the last couple of days, but at the moment, I'm at a standstill on an issue and could use a hand. The bottom line is that I have the smell of gasoline while I'm driving, and I think it may be coming from what looks like a fuel line that may have originally run to/from the charcoal canister. Check this link out if you think you might be able to help me figure out what to do with it: https://www.stangnet.com/mustang-forums/threads/fuel-line-questions-gas-smell-in-engine-bay.924242/
Then there are a couple of things down there I don't recognize. I guess I've never been in the passenger fender before:
What's this spherical plastic thing with broken mounting tabs and what looks like a vacuum line that's hanging out in the little nook behind the front passenger quarter panel?:
How about this canister above the front passenger shock that has what looks like a vacuum line that I had pulled off for a moment right before I snapped this pic?:
Now the vacuum line that runs to the canister in the previous pic splits off and runs up into the engine bay. Right before the engine bay, it splits off and there's this plugged vacuum line.
Then there are a couple of things down there I don't recognize. I guess I've never been in the passenger fender before:
What's this spherical plastic thing with broken mounting tabs and what looks like a vacuum line that's hanging out in the little nook behind the front passenger quarter panel?:
How about this canister above the front passenger shock that has what looks like a vacuum line that I had pulled off for a moment right before I snapped this pic?:
Now the vacuum line that runs to the canister in the previous pic splits off and runs up into the engine bay. Right before the engine bay, it splits off and there's this plugged vacuum line.
The ball looking thing is the vacuum tank, for the havc, the can looking thing is for emission stuff iirc.
Alright, it's on order. Purge solenoid & Charcoal canister from Rock Auto. Vacuum hoses, adapters, and the harness-to-solenoid connector from LMR. Hopefully that clears up the gas smell issue.
Let's catch up on some other progress:
New U-joints did not clear up my vibration issue, which Black Jack had, even when I owned it before. I'm wondering if it'll need a D/S balance, in the end. I'm gonna go balance the tires myself, tomorrow at a friend's shop, most likely.
Replaced the MAC fenderwell filter with a $40 filter from AutoZone. The filter I put in it matched the filter from Edelbrock. Looks like same folks are manufacturing both. Didn't snap a pic.
Check out this beauty:
Fortunately, the panels around it are all fine. It was a plugged hole that was starting to rust rot away. I'm going to keep my eye out for a donor car or another floor pan and try to have a friend weld in a replacement there, eventually. For now, I found the culprit:
For now, you can see the POR-15 rust stuff that will hopefully stave off any worsening until I can get a more permanent fix going. The drain tube from the moon roof was channeling water directly to the driver's rear floorboard, and has been restored to its proper place in the water channel behind the quarter panel trim:
Kilmat is now everywhere else, while the "meat curtains" are gone:
Kilmat replaced all of the eyesore stuff, including in the hatch/spare tire well area, the passenger side rear, and I can confirm @Mustang5L5 that the drone from the flowmaster 40s is a lot quieter. I don't have pics of the Kilmat installed, but the seats are back in and cleaned up & so is the rear hatch carpet:
... & so is the rear hatch carpet:
And let's not forget to get a snap of the new TMI door panel I mentioned a couple days back, which feels even better than it looks:
Let's catch up on some other progress:
New U-joints did not clear up my vibration issue, which Black Jack had, even when I owned it before. I'm wondering if it'll need a D/S balance, in the end. I'm gonna go balance the tires myself, tomorrow at a friend's shop, most likely.
Replaced the MAC fenderwell filter with a $40 filter from AutoZone. The filter I put in it matched the filter from Edelbrock. Looks like same folks are manufacturing both. Didn't snap a pic.
Check out this beauty:
Fortunately, the panels around it are all fine. It was a plugged hole that was starting to rust rot away. I'm going to keep my eye out for a donor car or another floor pan and try to have a friend weld in a replacement there, eventually. For now, I found the culprit:
For now, you can see the POR-15 rust stuff that will hopefully stave off any worsening until I can get a more permanent fix going. The drain tube from the moon roof was channeling water directly to the driver's rear floorboard, and has been restored to its proper place in the water channel behind the quarter panel trim:
Kilmat is now everywhere else, while the "meat curtains" are gone:
Kilmat replaced all of the eyesore stuff, including in the hatch/spare tire well area, the passenger side rear, and I can confirm @Mustang5L5 that the drone from the flowmaster 40s is a lot quieter. I don't have pics of the Kilmat installed, but the seats are back in and cleaned up & so is the rear hatch carpet:
... & so is the rear hatch carpet:
And let's not forget to get a snap of the new TMI door panel I mentioned a couple days back, which feels even better than it looks:
More wire clean-up:
Before:
After:
Finally, Black Jack has a working stereo, though obviously I need to work out the face plate trim, and I think I'm ready for a small sub in a fox. How do you guy's like the reversal of the HVAC & head unit? I think it makes a lot more sense for the touch screen to be up a bit higher:
Before:
After:
Finally, Black Jack has a working stereo, though obviously I need to work out the face plate trim, and I think I'm ready for a small sub in a fox. How do you guy's like the reversal of the HVAC & head unit? I think it makes a lot more sense for the touch screen to be up a bit higher:
New Speedo Cable has stabilized the needle above 30. Still twitchy/bouncy below that, though. Fixed the right blinker light in the cluster while I was in there.
Installed a radiator wind deflector/ scuff plate. Replaced clutch fan. The last one seemed to lock up too tightly and it sounded like I was overspinning the fan when I revved. Turned out to be correct. New fan-clutch doesn't cause the same sound but keeps the engine temps where they should be.
The car did great in 90* bumper to bumper traffic, today.
Installed a radiator wind deflector/ scuff plate. Replaced clutch fan. The last one seemed to lock up too tightly and it sounded like I was overspinning the fan when I revved. Turned out to be correct. New fan-clutch doesn't cause the same sound but keeps the engine temps where they should be.
The car did great in 90* bumper to bumper traffic, today.
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I'm still anxiously waiting on the evap system stuff. I'd like to show it off to my car-guy colleagues at work, but I don't want their first impression to be the raw smell of gasoline.
That said.... new pics for this update:
Scraped/brushed/elbow greased down to clean metal, then primer + paint:
Finishing up with Kilmat:
That said.... new pics for this update:
Scraped/brushed/elbow greased down to clean metal, then primer + paint:
Finishing up with Kilmat:
Sound system progress. Not absolutely in love with the face plate, but it's not too bad.
Still working out the deets on the sub.
The P51s up front are nice, as are the pioneers in the back. The alpine head unit doesn't play nicely with my phone, but probably will after I upgrade it in a few months.
Overall, a very nicely balanced system & budget friendly.
Still working out the deets on the sub.
The P51s up front are nice, as are the pioneers in the back. The alpine head unit doesn't play nicely with my phone, but probably will after I upgrade it in a few months.
Overall, a very nicely balanced system & budget friendly.
Still trying to work through the vibration. I thought the U-joints were likely the culprit, so I swapped them, but U-joints didn't fix it. Today, I did axle bearings. My hopes are not high that high, but they were only $10 + the cost of seals.
I knew they were real, because of the receipts from when I bought the car the first time, but it was also cool to validate the FMS 4.10s & 31-spline axles with my own eyes.
Does the wear pattern look good to you more experienced folks?
I'm doing a little cleanup & rust prevention on the diff cover, while I've got it off.... I've got pretty good company, who you can tell is not very impressed with the state of my diff cover:
Used some 3M Roloc wheels on the dremel to knock the rust off and took it down to some pitted bare metal and mostly powdercoating or whatever was already on it:
The POR-15 is drying overnight, and I should get a snap of it on the car tomorrow. I don't expect stellar looks... this is purely about rust prevention and not wasting funds or time waiting on a new cover.
Now, tech question, guys...
I'm what-if-ing myself on the vibration. Here's the list of things that I have come up with that might be causes and contributors to the 75+ vibration:
- Tires (balanced fronts the other day & finished balancing rears today - they had locking keys and I had to use rounded-nut removal tools to get them off)
- U-joints - replaced last weekend
- axle bearings (replaced today)
- loose pinion nut (question about this below)
- driveshaft out of balance (have found a machine shop nearby that can balance this)
- pinion angle: I can measure this, but probably can't do much, here. I don't think my UCAs/LCAs are adjustable.
That's what I've come up with. Regarding the pinion nut, looks like some guys just tighten it down to 60-70 ft-lbs when they change the pinion seal. They say that it takes well more than 100 to crush the crush sleeve, anyways. Would it be a bad idea to check the pinion nut to see if it's looser than this 60, and if so, tighten it down a bit?
Any other thoughts?
I knew they were real, because of the receipts from when I bought the car the first time, but it was also cool to validate the FMS 4.10s & 31-spline axles with my own eyes.
Does the wear pattern look good to you more experienced folks?
I'm doing a little cleanup & rust prevention on the diff cover, while I've got it off.... I've got pretty good company, who you can tell is not very impressed with the state of my diff cover:
Used some 3M Roloc wheels on the dremel to knock the rust off and took it down to some pitted bare metal and mostly powdercoating or whatever was already on it:
The POR-15 is drying overnight, and I should get a snap of it on the car tomorrow. I don't expect stellar looks... this is purely about rust prevention and not wasting funds or time waiting on a new cover.
Now, tech question, guys...
I'm what-if-ing myself on the vibration. Here's the list of things that I have come up with that might be causes and contributors to the 75+ vibration:
- Tires (balanced fronts the other day & finished balancing rears today - they had locking keys and I had to use rounded-nut removal tools to get them off)
- U-joints - replaced last weekend
- axle bearings (replaced today)
- loose pinion nut (question about this below)
- driveshaft out of balance (have found a machine shop nearby that can balance this)
- pinion angle: I can measure this, but probably can't do much, here. I don't think my UCAs/LCAs are adjustable.
That's what I've come up with. Regarding the pinion nut, looks like some guys just tighten it down to 60-70 ft-lbs when they change the pinion seal. They say that it takes well more than 100 to crush the crush sleeve, anyways. Would it be a bad idea to check the pinion nut to see if it's looser than this 60, and if so, tighten it down a bit?
Any other thoughts?
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