Progress Thread Therapy Car-- Freshening Up the Lower Intake

Olivethefet

I will own your nuts! LOL
5 Year Member
May 17, 2018
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Enterprise AL
So I bought a 90 GT back last May and I've been steady working on it as much as I can as time permits. So far a lot of people on the forum here have been a big help sorting out issues here and there. I'm no car expert by a long shot but I'm not afraid to jump in and try to figure things out. Good thing is this is a hobby car. My wife has dubbed it "Therapy Car" for good reasons. When I bought the car it was advertised as a 90 GT 5 speed, grey interior, 347, BBK SSI intake, long tube headers, MSD ignition, MSD distributor, and all the "goodies", whatever that meant. Oh, it wasn't running. It needed a fuel pump. To date I've had it running several times. I have yet to do anything with the fuel pump... I'm starting this thread to add my story to the mix and with a little luck something in here might help someone else out down the road.

The goal of the car is for fun. No drag racing or serious street racing. I had a 90 GT automatic as a teenager in high school back in the actual 90s. Loved the car but always wished it was a 5 speed. Bought this one because it is a 5 speed and if the extras under the hood turned out to be worth something, all the better. At the moment I'm trying to get the car to a point I feel good about driving it around and constantly worrying that it's going to leave me stranded. Long term goals are to really sort out the engine, fix some crappy body work, make a lot of ride updates, and to paint it.

I've found lots of interesting "work" done to the car, and I would not be shocked to find out the engine is stock except for bolt on parts. That's fine for now.

There are lots of things for me to add to this post to get it up to speed. Over the next few days or weeks I'll do that. For now I'll throw up some pics of when I got it home.

I wish I had taken more pictures along the way, but I'll just have to describe some of the adventure. 20180511_104808.jpg 20180514_191209.jpg 20180516_103730.jpg
 
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The first thing I wanted to do was get the car running. No reason to spend a lot of money on other stuff if it had a blown motor or something just as bad. I've never owned an Optima battery, but the car came with a red one. It is date marked 2013 so I figured it was trash, but put a charger on it anyway. After letting it charge over night I hit the key. Sure enough it turned over strong. Not to drag out the battery thing, I still have it on the car and it seems to be awesome. The car turned over and would hit about once every few revolutions. There is a pressure gauge on the inlet fuel line and I was getting 40# of pressure. At this point I came to the forum for help. You can read the details of that story here: https://www.stangnet.com/mustang-forums/threads/1990-lx-5-0-not-starting.903806/
After a lot of help and trouble shooting. I ended up changing the plugs along with a new MSD cap and rotor. The major culprit was the pickup in the MDS distributor. I know that thing cost someone a lot of money, but I haven't read a lot of good things about them. I pulled it out, knocked off the drive gear, pulled everything apart and installed the new Motorcraft pickup. In the picture of the engine above you can see and MSD 6 AL ignition. I thought it was hooked up. Turns out it had been disconnected at some point and was just mounted there. After I got the distributor back in the car it did fire up and run, old gas and all!
 
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Looks good man good luck with her and looking forward to your future post on the project.

Also I'm usually very skeptical of cars people sell without receipts for the thousands of dollars they paid for a built engine... I assume it's stock as can be and if it turns out to not be then time to celebrate. Call me a glass half empty kind of guy I guess. Anyways post a picture of one of the fuel injectors on the car and that would probably tell you if the car is stock or not roughly because no one is going to do a 347 and put stock injectors back on it. At least I would hope not
 
I don't have a good picture of the injectors, but they are blue 24# injectors. Just as a precautionary measure I pulled them all and sent them to a place in Houston called InjectorRX. They cleaned, refurbished them, and flow tested. I've attached the report. This is a good point to mention that the fuel hose on the supply and return going to the fuel rails both started leaking and had to be replaced. you can see the new hoses in the picture.

Fuel System.jpg
InjectorRX.jpg
 
I don't have a good picture of the injectors, but they are blue 24# injectors. Just as a precautionary measure I pulled them all and sent them to a place in Houston called InjectorRX. They cleaned, refurbished them, and flow tested. I've attached the report. This is a good point to mention that the fuel hose on the supply and return going to the fuel rails both started leaking and had to be replaced. you can see the new hoses in the picture.

Fuel System.jpg
InjectorRX.jpg
How much do they charge for this service?
 
$155. You can break it down by injector. This might not have been the most economical option for these injectors, but I believe the cost is relatively flat for most injectors. Nice people and easy to work with.
 
It's really frustrating buying someone else's basket case sometimes. I've been there and found out the car had a crown victoria 5.0 non HO. Was supposed to be a built 306. Had shiny valve covers and an explorer intake that was nicely painted. It had a ton of electrical issues ( that I was told about ). At only a thousand bucks I didnt complain. Ended up putting a good engine out of a Mark iiv in it from a local pull yard. Straightened out the electrical stuff and made a nice profit.

I miss the days of hundreds of 5.0 engines waiting to be plucked in the JY. Explorer engines are plentiful around here but fox mustangs never seem to make it to the yards anymore.

What are the next things you're planning on tackling ?
 
Well at this point I'm just trying to put together the narrative of what I have done so far. At the moment I'm redoing the front suspension and replacing the oil pan gasket and front main seal. The K member and everything is off the car at the moment.
 
That's awesome man. Now you can see if it really is a stroker engine. If the bottom of the cylinders have been notched then it's a stroker.
 
Once I got the car running the first time. I started working on the interior of the car. I went ahead and pulled everything out of the car except for the dash. The door locks didn't work, so I replaced the door actuators and the truck release actuator. This kinda got everything working. Someone at some point had the great idea to shave the door locks off and the truck lock off... A really crappy aftermarket alarm had been installed that worked as a key-less entry. All the relays had gone bad. After a lot of wire chasing I got it back to stock configuration and the doors and trunk lock as normal. Dont lock the doors and get out though. You cant get back in. I've got to reinstall a key-less entry at some point down the road.

The inside of the car was just gross. I ended up washing and de-greasing everything. It makes it easy when everything is out of the car and you dont have to worry about getting something wet. I ordered all new door gaskets and seal, truck seals, sunroof seals, carpet, armrest pads, center console pad, trunk carpet, rear seat carpet, door handle cups, window belting, and tons of other little things here and there. I also had a new headliner made.

All the plastic was washed, and degreased. I pulled everything out of the car. The black stuff was painted back SEM trim black. Everything else was painted SEM Ladera (kinda gray). The car was titanium, but it looked terrible and I just liked this color.

I washed the factory carpet pad multiple times as it was much thicker than the one on the back of the replacement carpet. When I installed the new carpet I put the old pad down first. Then slowly reinstalled all the plastic bits and the rest of the interior. I'll post some pics later.
 
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$155. You can break it down by injector. This might not have been the most economical option for these injectors, but I believe the cost is relatively flat for most injectors. Nice people and easy to work with.
Ok thank you. Yeah that’s over half the cost of buying a new set of 24lb ones. I’m sure it would be worth it if you buy a spendier used set though.
 
Just to let you know, when doing the sunroof, those plastic pieces that the stainless things slide into at the front, take them out and make sure they are not cracked and reseal them, I used silicon, on the little screws too, if they are cracked they leak, the gasket from the factory dries up and will leak too.
 
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