Build Thread Want To Blow 5 Years And $50k On A Foxbody? Step By Step Instructions Inside!

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For This! Hahahaaaa

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And these!





~Noobz

I really enjoy reading everyone's build threads, so as a method of keeping me motivated and holding myself accountable, I've decided to start a build thread of my own.

The car is an 1988 GT. I've owned it since 2003, but it hasn't seen the road since 2009. Life got in the way and she sat on the back burner for a while. Earlier this year, I decided that I wanted to rebuild the car... the right way. It was always a solid "5 foot" car, but like many foxes, it had a lot of little quirks. Years of mismatched modifications and bolt-ons created a lack of reliability and performance issues. Not to mention the stock 100k mile bottom end had seen better days.

So, this is where I am now. Nothing but a shell and some jackstands. I'll spare all the boring disassembly pictures. After all, we all know how to take a car apart. It's the putting back together part that is interesting .



I smoothed the engine bay a few years ago, but for some reason, the paint didn't take to the primer in some spots. I decided it's best to take it down to the metal and let my painter redo it all correctly.


I rid the interior of the factory sound deadening. I'll be laying down my own at some point down the road. I'll explain the purpose of the racks in the rear seat area later on.




Decided to see how the Eastwood chassis paint laid down. It seems like it is going to be very easy to paint with. This will be the finish for the interior and underbody.


Going to be mocking up the IRS subframe this weekend hopefully.



Here's the new powerplant. Dart-based 331 w/ AFR 185 heads and an FTI turbo cam. 9.3:1 CR.


I'm still in somewhat of a teardown mode on the car. I need to clean up the interior a little more and then I need to strip the paint off the exterior. I have a couple of rust areas to cut and repair. Once all that is done, I'm building a rotisserie to flip the car on its side so the underside can get as much attention as the rest of the car.

Keeping it black. The exterior will look almost the same as it does now except the GT ground effects are being replaced with OEM cobra pieces. The new cowl hood won't have hood pins, and I sold my HID retrofit. I plan to keep the exterior as OEM as possible aside from the cowl hood. I need that to bring some fresh air into the engine compartment. The 01 Cobra wheels will probably stay too. I'm still going back and forth between keeping the polished wheels or getting a set of silver ones.

NikwoaC said:

I like the polished wheels.

What's the story with the racks?

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The bottom two racks will be used to mount my audio amplifiers. The large top rack is for all the ECU equipment. I was sick of stuffing everything in that tiny area behind the passenger kick panel. I wanted to neatly lay out the ECU, PMS, injector driver, and all the associated wiring. I also scored one of these on ebay a few months back:

MG-70 Ford 5.0 Mass Air Flow Telorvek Fuel Injection Wiring-Ron Francis Wiring

Paid less than half the listed price. It's what many of the kit car guys use when they put 5.0 engines in the cobras. This will let me completely rewire the entire engine and give me a nice point to troubleshoot voltages. No more old and broken connectors. I'll take a picture of the everything mounted on the rack when I get a chance.

1990Coupe said:

I've seen some threads in the past of putting an IRS in a fox - from what I remember it shouldn't be all that hard to do, that correct?!

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It isn't too bad at all. The lower subframe bolts right into the stock LCA mount. I need to drill the framerail for the upper subframe brackets and remove the axle snubber mounts. Just want to mock it all up before I get the IRS parts powdercoated.