Fox T-Bird/Cougar Forums

Here is a story of how I came into Foxbodies! I was delivering a common rail cummins to my buddy and my Dodge broke down....

I'm confused?!

Piled up the transfer case and exploded my transmission wide open at nearly 80MPH! So were stranded in Hope, B.C., Canada, missed the bus, no car rental place, no taxi. So I notice a small garage with some used cars while entering town in the tow truck. A Ford Taurus, a civic, a focus and a white 87 tbird. So I start running across town with suitcases to the place to see a guy closing the shop with no shirt on and a beer going. I start yelling from 2 blocks away I need to buy a car $1000 cash money right now! So the guy is late for his nieces wedding, I convince him to let us pick a car he offers the Taurus and I say F#$% the Taurus I want rear wheel drive! So we do the transfer papers, but no place to get insurance, so by this time the compound across town where my truck is has closed, so I climb the fence and take the plates of the dodge with the stupid guard dog chasing me around the truck a few times before I could get the plates off. Get the plates on the bird and we're off with all 80hp that the 3.8 was making. Get back to Port McNeill, B.C., 2 days later and get pulled over a block before my house and get a ticket for no insurance as truck plates are different than car plates in B.C.. It is not a few months later when I get my dodge back and I break it AGAIN at the drag races. So I start thinking, I could build a whole drag car for the price of 1 built diesel transmission!

lol, ok that made me chuckle, thanks! :P

I built a 347 stroker that sucked right from the start. I drove 100miles and checked the oil, nothing on the dip stick! The thing burned 2 quarts of oil every 100miles! Ran it for awhile kept taking back to the guy who built it and he kept saying keep drivin it, it has to get hot to seat the rings. Well I got a couple thousand miles on it, and started putting some gauges on. When I got to the oil pressure guage there was nothing at idle, 20psi at 3000rpm driving. Took it back again to the guy and got it back a week later, still no oil pressure and now overheating everywhere. Got pissed off drove it home and tore the engine out. The bearing looked like they came out of a million mile motor! The crank surfaces had wear thicker than a dime! Found weird markings in the cylinders like a piss poor hone job, then when I took the oil pump apart, I found pieces of wire wheel inside and broken pieces of metal.

So then I thought well if I am gonna do it again this time it will be all or nothing!!

Completely gutted the car, spent a few days with a propane torch removing all that rubbery asphalt stuff on the floor

Also bought powerglide with 6500rpm stall convertor and trans brake, Fabricated 9 inch rear end, and too much more to list....

Wow dude! Nice!!!!!!!

I love a story with a happy ending.  Got a laugh out of the dog chasing you.

I'd love to see the Bird when it's all done

what you've done with your bird is very similar to what i'm doing with my black bird.. love it! would love to hear some specs on your motor!

Well the heads are just cheap Patriot Heads off the 347 I had that blew up before it even broke in. I ditched the stud mount rockers and went with some prototype shaft ones with a one off cam from Comp Cams, my buddy (who owns an engine machine shop) was talkin back and forth with a comp cam technician before deciding on a grind. The cam lobes are nearly as tall as bearing journals:) Brad (my buddy) spent a week reworking the heads, consisting of porting, polishing, milling, regrinding where the valves sit, 5 or 7 angle valve job (not sure can't remember what he was explaining), the cam is 680 lift max. I think we are sitting at 11 to 1 compression for running nitrous (300hp shot is our end goal). No accessories up front, just a balancer and that's all, everything else is electric. Victor Jr intake manifold with 750cfm demon carb. The rotating assembly is good to 1200hp. All ARP fasteners, and the best stuff we could find, the only thing we did wrong was not going bigger! I wish I could tell you more, but that is all I know.

whoa.. victor jr? i would have went with a super victor on top, especially with that demon.. i strongly recommend having your friend spend some time porting the #1, 4, 5 and 8 runners on the intake, as they're known for being a little restrictive and sometimes cause lean problems in those cylinders. if you were still in the market for an intake, i'd have suggested a parker funnel web.. although i'm highly anti-NO2, the funnel web is great for nitrous and forced induction.. the runner volume murders the victor jr, hands down

We were going with the Parker funnel web, but seen a couple of em crack. Yeah the victor j is ported too:) We just went with what we had at the time. This combo is just to get us started. I really wanna try one of plastic composite intakes, have you heard anyone tryin em? We have a couple different combos to try. If the car ever gets finished, we will change out the motor and put a milder cam in it and make it a street engine, and go for more cubes and forced induction next time around. We built the car to take 1500 to 1800 hp.

just judging by the pictures of the toys you bought her, she looks plenty capable of handling 1500+hp.. in my experience, i've never seen a funnel web crack, except 1 guy who overtorqued the 2 rear bolts on the driver side.. and by over torqued, i mean way over torqued.. i have 4 of them, no issues.. only thing i don't like about them is the super sloppy casting slag left around the inside of the 'clover..' nothing that can't be fixed while porting..

as for composite intakes, can't say i have any experience with them or heard anything, for that matter.. i'm thinking about building a sheetmetal intake for the DART 408 i'm building for my black bird.. that's still a long way off, though.. i'm not even sure if i'm keeping it a 408 or going bigger.. i bought it complete minus carb for $850 because it kept blowing head gaskets at the top end of the track

Are you going forced induction? What will be running for rear end and trans?

PS: If you like the Tbird, you should see the camaro I am building! Same as the bird, but everything is hand made, no kits! Making all the brackets, cage, square tube chassis from scratch!

not sure yet.. my blue bird has a boosted 413w and my capri has a boosted 408w.. i'm not sure what route i want to take the black car.. i thought about building an alcohol motor, but it all depends on the cash flow at the time of the actual motor build.. chassis first, drivetrain 2nd lol

what i do know is, if i can afford it (oh i sure hope so!), i want to run a lenco CS1 3 speed.. i'm going to order a strange housing and fill it with all the goodies myself, including a spool.. since i have other street toys, this car is going to be an all out, sh*t-n-git race car.. i've also considered building the hell out of the 408 and turning it into an outlaw 10.5 car.. that's my dream, but will take a lot of work

and i'd love to see the camaro! i do a lot of chassis work, so hand-made parts are my thing.. it's always interesting to see what other people come up with

Yeah that Outlaw 10.5 class is just nuts, I love watching em race on TV. There's no way in heck you'd catch me trying run that much power on such a small tire, but then again the tracks are prepped real good down there, up here it takes a couple days of street cars laying rubber and a barrel of VHT before the race cars start to hook, but it makes for excitement when watching. I will try get some pics of the camaro after work.

sweet! can't wait to see it! the outlaw 10.5's are a lot of fun to watch from the burnout box.. hearing the turbo cars spool and take off (and actually hook on that small tire) is just exhilarating

I went and looked at the bird's motor today, I was mistaken it is a super victor:) I don't know why I keep thinking it is a victor j, anyways that cheered me up. Ok, I will start posting some of the camaro shots.

This is a 91 T-top camaro that frame was all made from scratch! There was nothing there originally. We plated the front subframe with 3/8" Steel.

We are keeping stock style suspension and stock body lines.

The engine is a 454 stroked and bored to 500ish, not sure what heads to use yet, probably Brodix aluminum. Full Billet Specialties serpentine setup with Dyers 8-71 black wrinkle finish with blower snout modified to work the serpentine setup.

Oh and here are the tires, Had the wheels made at US MAG the fronts didn't fit the tires so now I had to make 2 more front wheel in a narrower width.

So now the current dilemma is we have to narrow the rear 6-8", tilt the engine forward more to get the proper pinion angle as you can see in the last picture the diff needs to come up 4 to 5 inches. I want the tire to tuck up into the fender. Also in the engine pix, you can see the rad support has to be cut out, dropped and moved forward to clear the modified blower pulley setup

Holy hell.

That is some SERIOUS metal craftsmanship. WOW!!!! The foxes look awesome...that bird is something else. Those custom angular-bodied rear ends are the craziest looking automotive component. You said "this time it will be all or nothing". I can see you live by that statement...

WOW.. i wasn't expecting that! lol very nice work.. i really like your panhard bar mount.. the frame work looks very similar to what i have planned for my black bird.. if i can find my folder with all my chassis/susp designs, i'll upload a pic.. again, VERY nice!

and i had a slight sigh of relief when i read that it's a super victor lol

HOLY BLOWER! lol

WOW!

Travis

Another tip that would have helped a bit, if you are narrowing your rear end use an adjustable control arm for a panhard bar instead of cutting a stock length one down, we just couldn't seem to get it straight no matter how many times we tried. Also when doing a build like this get the wheels and tire you plan on running first!! Then build the car around them. That is easier than having to make changes twice. Also build a setup you can grow into; again, so you don't have to build it again! I made this mistake several times over before I learned. The camaro really snowballed out of control on me, I was only supposed to slap a running 454 in it and call it good, but I ran into problem after problem.

Very nice buildups man.  The fabrication work on the Camaro is top notch!

i know all about having the toys before i start building.. i, too, have backed myself into the corner too many times to go that route again lol.. i already have my wheels.. maybe.. if i make the money to build an outlaw 10.5, than i need to trade down in size.. if not, i'll go for 8.50 index and run my 15x15 with 5.5bs and 15x5 prostars.. no tires, as we all know what happens to tires if they sit around for a long period of time.. lol

but here's my frame design.. i transferred it to the computer on paint, but it's not final yet.. i have to actually take measurements and bring it to scale.. i'll do that when it gets closer to the time to actually start working on the car.. hopefully by summer (crossing my fingers)

(http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/423566_10151344599210335_585700334_23395070_1118497201_n.jpg)
(http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/s720x720/416931_10151344599365335_585700334_23395072_283402250_n.jpg)

Looks good! I kinda have a thing for square tube chassis cars:) What are planning on for steering and suspension up front?

so do i lol the only thing that won't be square tube is the bar in the front that'll tie into the cage, the crossmembers and the bars at the top of the rear 'notch'.. for the front, i'm using afco coilovers (already have them) and in-house built tubular control arms with 1 of my QA1 k-members (with a little re-enforcement, to make me feel better ;) ).. not sure on steering yet, but i'm sure it'll be some version of a manual rack.. maybe flaming river, but we'll see

Yeah, I am thinking of going with flaming river or unisteer on my tbird. Are you gonna use solid mounts, or an engine plate? Just got the 94-95 Mustang 5 bolt splindles in the mail Friday, now I gotta cut em up to mount the wilwood race brakes. I heard you get away with just looping the power steering hose and turn the power rack and pinion into manual, but my rack and pinion is wore out anyways. Also I am going with floor mount pedals and moving the driver's seat far back as possible. Not sure if I will try and move it closer to centre as well yet.

plate for sure.. on SBF tech, there's an article on how to make your own using a router with a steel bit.. going to try my hand at that and take it from there.. i'm not sure how i'm setting my pedals up yet, that's about a year's worth of work away, if i get started on time.. you can loop the line, but it's a real PITA to turn when sitting still.. if anything, pick up an OEM manual rack for a stang.. the gearing inside is different and makes a world of difference.. i did that with my cougar.. soooo much easier than trying to muscle a PS rack around lol

which WW calipers did you get? i'm using their 4 piston calipers on all 4 corners with 1 of their master cylinders and adjustable PV

I figured the ps rack would be a pain, that is why I am going for a manual rack, also going to add another knuckle to the steering shaft, so I have more freedom on routing and clearance. I am just going solid mounts and I have an idea for a brace that attaches to the backs of the heads (in the egr holes; at least I think that's what they are for) and also ties the k member to the bars that run through the firewall. Kinda like a half mid plate I guess, but not attached to the bell housing. I think the brakes are 4 piston calipers, I just told the guy what I was making these are the brakes Wilwood recommended. I didn't get their master cylinder, I was looking for floor mount brake pedal with the mc attached if I can find one.

aah, nice nice.. your idea (half midplate) should work out well with solid mounts.. i'm actually thinking about doing the full backplate with something similar to your idea on the front, since i won't be running any accessories, except a mini powermaster alt.. i was never too keen on the idea of having to charge the battery every time the car makes a pass.. between the high torque starter, ignition system and any other electrical gadget the car winds up with, i want the voltage to stay around 13v, so i have zero power loss because of a draining battery

So are you going to cut the firewall out? The guys didn't even wanna mess with the mid plate, otherwise I would have had one. Maybe when the real engine get built we will do it, but for now we will try keep things simple to get running and then add once all my other cars are done.  I am planning on running 2 batteries, 1 for starting and accessories and the other one just for running. Or maybe have it so I can switch when 1 gets low, still not sure yet. Was going with a mini alt, but scratched it.

not sure on the firewall, yet.. i may leave it, since it's basically flat already.. but i heard ya on finishing other projects.. i currently have 4 other personal projects and 3 owned by my buddy/shop partner.. i need to finish at least 2 of each before i start on my bird

Hey shadow do you have any advice on what should I focus on from here on out? I have little to nothing left as far as budget goes due to losing my riches in a poor decision on the Vancouver stock exchange in a gold mining company... but I think I have most of the hard parts here to get close to completion. I just got the 94-95 5 bolt spindles the other day so I can start hackin them up for the brakes. I am sure that I have just about everything to finish the tbird in hard parts just no cash left to pay someone to do it, I gotta take over myself from here on in if I wanna have any hope of completion this year. Any helpful or constructive advice from any member would be greatly appreciated as I have thousands upoon thousands in parts for 13 different projects at the moment without a hope of completion of anything due to the stupidest decision I have ever made that cost me everything.....

hmm.. where are you sitting with it as of now? if you were closer, i'd give you a hand on figuring where to go next and help you knock it out.. but you're in canadaland! lol