t-bird irs...

it wouldnt be worth the trouble. im not sure if the mounting points would work out since the unibodys are different. plus the tbird 89-97 has a funky bolt pattern for the wheels. its almost impossible to find a nice wheel without swapping to a 5lug from a sn95 stang. then you have to get the cobra irs rear wheel hubs to finish the swap lol. imo id pass.

too bad i wasnt on this site bout 4 1/2 months ago, had a whole 8.8 assembly with 3.73's and a new trac-lock that i was giving away but decided to junk the whole car. even had Southside lift bars welded to it lol.

Do the 87-88 T-Bird Turbo Coupe rear end swap!

Auto trans 87-88 Tbird Turbo Coupes come with 3.73 gears and manual Turbo Coupes come with 3.55 gears. Cost is $125-$300 for the rear axle. Add another $100-$200 or so to complete the brake upgrade.

I choose 3.55 since I do more highway driving. Both ratios have 10” disk brakes with vented rotors as standard equipment.

It takes 2 guys the first day to get the old rear end out and the new one bolted in place. It takes 1 guy another whole day to do the brakes.

You will need a several sets of fittings, I recommend that you get them from Matt90GT's website, http://www.svo73mm.cjb.net/. Read Matt's instructions thoroughly, everything you need to know about the brakes is all there. You need to be patient and follow all the internal links, and there are many of them. You will need 2 fittings in the rear to adapt your old brake tubing to the TC disk brakes. The fittings go between the steel tube and the caliper brake hose. You will need another set of fittings to make a 2 port to 3 port adapter. To make life simpler, just buy the kits from Matt. You could piece them together, but it's not worth the time unless you work at an auto parts store with all the fittings ever made.

You will need to drill the quad shock mounting holes 2” below the holes drilled for the Turbo Coupe mounting points. The bolts are metric, so don’t loose them or the nuts. A 15/32” drill should be about the right size unless you have access to metric sized drill bits. Going without quad shocks is not an option unless you have aftermarket parts to soak up the wheel hop.

You will need a proportioning valve, Summit has one for $40 + shipping.
You will need a kit (FMS makes the part) to gut the stock proportioning valve, Summit also has that, about $10.


You will need a new master cylinder, see Matt's site and make you choice. I used a 94-95 Mustang master cylinder. Note that rebuilt 94-95 Mustang master cylinders do not come with a reservoir. That means a trip to the junkyard and some more money spent.

Your brake pedal may be very hard and almost impossible to lock up the brakes. I had to replace the front calipers with 73 mm calipers from a 91 Lincoln Mark 7 to get the braking performance up to par.

Bleeding the brakes will require 2 people and some coordinated effort. I don’t recommend using you wife or girlfriend to pump the pedal – they get offended when you yell at them. I used a homemade power brake bleeder constructed from a garden sprayer and some fittings from Home Depot. It cost about $25 and was worth every penny. Do a search on garden and you'll find it complete with pictures.

See http://www.mustangcentral.net/tech/brake.html for help with the emergency brake. The red words link to some very useful photos on how to modify the handle. The stock setup tends to lock up and not release properly.
All in all I have been very pleased with the results.

billison said:

I saw online that around 93ish t-birds have a 8.8 with disk brakes, 5 lug and irs, could this be used for a fox?


PLEASE DON'T TRASH ME FOR ASKING, I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS TO MY CAR I JUST WANT TO KNOW IS IT CAN BE DONE?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1993...tegoryZ33731QQihZ012QQitemZ220067721465QQrdZ1

Click to expand...

Not realisitically. That subframe bolts to the unibody with vertical bolts and bushings kinda like truck bodies are bolted to frames. Our unibody simply doesn't have the right spots to bolt this thing in. The IRS you would need would be from the 99+ cobra that uses the horizontal bolt locations of the LCA's and quad shocks.

I like the IRS personally, it needs a little tweaking from it's factory condition to be right, but what on our Mustangs don't?

the t-birds from those years really dont share much with our cars. Not really something i would waste my time with

Plus they aren't real strong, it would need Cobra Upgrades to really work and it's an open diff too... Would be better to upgrade the stock suspension with panhard bar, etc...