Progress Thread Therapy Car-- Freshening Up the Lower Intake

I did find some not so good stuff while working on the drivers side suspension. I've said it before. This car had a hard life before I got it. Not as bad as a lot of cars, but it was abused in the past. I knew the left side torque box was bent from what I'm guessing is rednecks with floor jacks, but it's worse than I thought.





There are some pretty significant cracks in the box, and its mangled pretty bad from people prying on it. I'm guessing this isn't something that you would just weld up. I plan on putting it all back together for now. Later I'll drill the welds out remove the box and put a new one in. Reinforcements were already on the "to do" list.

At this point I figured I'd put a clarification statement in here for anyone paying attention to this cluster. This is a progress thread. It's not a build thread. I watch a lot of people on here doing awesome things and producing amazing looking cars. One day I hope this car might be one of them. However, my main goal at this point is to make it solid and enjoy the hell out of it for a bit.

I could spend a lot of time trying to clean everything up and make it shiny. I do from time to time when it makes sense. This car is a mess. It needs LOTS of TLC from years of neglect. I've been driving around commuters ever since I got out of high school. I'm looking forward to just having fun with something different. I also just get an extreme amount of enjoyment out of just wrenching on the car. I've done a lot of things to date that were not necessary to just get the car back on the road. Again, just having fun and upgrading where I can and want to.

Sort term goal. Get it back on the road and drive it. Fix/upgrade as I can and need to.

I've got the 65 sitting there screaming at me to GET TO IT! That's my mid term goal. Focus on the 65 and get it put back together right. It's going to take a lot of time, energy, and money. It will be my primary focus point for a long period of time. It will be a lightly used car. I plan on getting it painted with all new interior. I don't plan on taking it back apart at a later date to do a major face lift. That being said as things go on it they will be shiny. They will be right. Once it's done and the funds have recharged it'll be back to the fox.

Long term goal. Strip the fox completely down. Clean it up and fix all the cosmetic issues. Pour some money into it and make it a car that you might want to take to a show and actually let people know that it was your car. So that day is coming. Just not now.

This isn't to say I wont be wasting money on the fox and upgrading things. I absolutely will! I just might allocate more of my "mad" money to the 65 for a bit.

Mustang5L5 said:

What happened to the rear of your car to cause both springs to look like that and require a truck to line up a control arm? I've never seen that before

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No idea! At first I thought the car might have been in a major accident, but I cant find any evidence of that. The car spent most of its life in south Louisiana. A lot of really terrible roads down there. I figure it got road hard and hit lots of hard bumps. The car doesn't track weird as far as I can tell.

The old control arm came out will little effort. I didn't look at the alignment when I took the bolts out, but I didn't have to pry them out either.

Maybe the new arm is slightly different then the old. Then again maybe the old one was just bent!

I am worried about the exhaust. The old arms were clearanced to keep from hitting the exhaust. The exhaust is on the list of upgrades though. If I have to I'll take the hammer to the exhaust before I start hacking up the control arms.

I forgot to mention I had help putting the tail housing on..... I lost track of him.



He found a sharpie Luckily he didn't do any permanent damage! Spider Man may never be the same though.