Project Resto - Supercharged 1992 GT 'Vert

Just making my introduction here. I've been browsing for better part of a month.

I am helping my father in law restore his 1992 LX. He is the original owner! And, it's only got about 21k miles. Unfortunately, it sat idle for about 10-15 years. It has a Vortech supercharger installed, and at the time that was done, a shop called Houston Turbo did all the work. Apparently it has over 400 hp to the rear wheels.

Amazingly enough it cranked and ran after sitting that long with the change of a new battery. Shortly after driving it around for a few days, the coolant system was overheating.

We got a new radiator, t stat, housing, hoses, and water pump installed. The worst part of it all was removing the rusted bolt on the T stat water neck. We had to drill it out, and re tap it. I am pretty sure it was fused with the block.

We got everything back together and now I'm bleeding the system. But the issue I'm running into now is burping the air out. I have a no spill funnel coming today. Our current observation was that it's not reaching operating temp. We were also only able to put in 1 gallon of our coolant, and maybe 75% of distilled water. Even after replacing everything we did , it's strange. We didn't get that much coolant out of the system either, but that I thought was okay because it may have come out when it over heated or who ever worked on it before hand didn't put enough in.

My worry is the fill point may not be the highest point in the system. So I'm gonna jack under the drive A arm. But I have my reservations on that since I have seen the issues with people's fenders getting out of whack with the test of the body. I need the no spill funnel so I can pour the coolant in, every time this thing heats up the coolant starts rising outside of the cap very quickly. And whenever I was testing a theory yesterday (holing the throttle at 2k rpm) the coolant was getting sucked down. So my theory is there is a massive air bubble in the system that will need some persuasion to come out.

Heater core seems to be getting hotter the more coolant i am able to put in. The inlet and outlet feels the same.

Anyway. I look forward to learning as much as I can here. This will probably be a spot where I purge alot of my thoughts and hope to get some feedback.

This car will definitely be a learning experience. I look forward to sharing my experience and thoughts with everyone here. I will try and get some pictures of the car whenever we get her dusted off.

Just another update.....

Got under the car to check out the air intake. This thing looked home brewed. We were look at this after I pulled the code 66. No signal from the MAF. Turns out, the MAF sensor was unplugged and we don't know how long it has been unplugged.

We plugged it in, and sure enough the CEL went away. BUT, and a huge BUTT, the car was not idling properly whenever the MAF was plugged back in.

The MAF sensor is from Pro Flow. Model is a PTF-77. Serial number is 930239. And the calibration is 24.

I was reading up on this company and their models couldn't find anything that matched our mustang setup to what it's showing in the companys pictures.

The intake is also in terrible shape. Turns out there was a loose fitting section of the intake. So much that it was pulling unmetered air through. We fixed that and it still idled poorly.

My biggest concern is to figure out why is put together like this. Because it's supercharged I know everything we change here is going to affect how the car runs which is going to require a retune. I would really like to figure out what intake and setup that ProM MAF is supposed to be using because there is a bastard sized filter on now and it's dirty.


We will consider buying the Anderson Vortech air intake setup and maybe buying a new pro m MAF with a new filter if all as fails and send it to a dyno. But we would like to avoid the dyno of possible.

stanglx2002 said:

I would look into cleaning the MAF as well. Once this is done and you have fixed all the air leaks take the negative battery terminal off for 10-15 to reset the computer. Then start the car and don't touch the throttle to see if it idles any better.

Click to expand...

10-4. That would be the easiest and simplest way to troubleshoot.

I got something else to add: Have you ever seen a cylindrical shaped air filter put on a fox body? Both ends of this filter are open to atmosphere and you canbut either end onto the MAF housing and the other is covered by this silver cap. Here is the kicker, its held on with 3 coiled springs. This filter does not taper down at all. There is this seperate silver cap that has three holes around it where these coiled springs will hook through. then you push the silver cap onto the end of the filter to seal one end. Then you take the other end of the coiled spring and pull it, and it hooks onto the MAF housing. There is not a part number on this filter but it does say K&N.

The wrong air intake wouldnt cause a poor idle would it?

Yes sir can do. I will be home in 30 minutes or so.

Hopefully these pictures work. See attached

We did pull the intake out from it was inside the fender since it was difficult to work on where it's at. This is only temporary till we figure out what's going on lol

Thanks for help so far. Really appreciate it.

Cleaned MAF reset computer. Fuel pressure is a 45ish psi. It's running extremely, extremely Rich.

It's surging. The throttle response is better. But it surges pretty hard. And it will idle just under 1k Rpms and then it will tank around 500 then up again. But it's not a constant back and forth.

Father in law wants to take it to a shop. I'm trying to convince we can keep moving forward. But it's got 24 lb injectors on it.

Well back to the drawing board. Car ran great now we gave time to idle and run.

But now we have an even bigger problem. Blown head gasket. Coolant in the oil, oil in coolant. Looks like it's gonna get pretty interesting here folks. Stay tuned.

Gotta figure out where it's leaking because there is nothing externally. Coolant came out of the breathing hole and smoke out the pipes

I lied. Coolant came out of the overflow tank. And purged out. So not sure where the leak internally is.

I assume blown head gasket. But yes compression test will show that. Whattt if it's a cracked block? Anything that can point to that?

I've never dived this deep into a motor before. Never had the opportunity to so I'm really stoked. Excuse to buy more specialty tools and learn new things.

Gunna read up as much as I can before we start ripping it apart. I want to have a plan laid out for him as we go so it's not too overwhelming.

10-4. Fair point. Just ordered a compression tester. We will go from there