Project Black Panther: 1988 3.8L Cougar LS

Topic: Project Black Panther: 1988 3.8L Cougar LS (Read 142132 times) previous topic - next topic

Project Black Panther: 1988 3.8L Cougar LS

Reply #405 – January 07, 2012, 04:03:58 PM

Quote from: sarjxxx;377157

Well I took the car out for a little fun today, and I think I burned off what was left of my tires... It might be time for a new set....

ah, the tire is fine.. just break out the needle and thread kit.. lol

but i definitely agree with scott.. the most important part is, you're having fun with the car.. hope you finally get her legal with your income tax money

Project Black Panther: 1988 3.8L Cougar LS

Reply #406 – January 29, 2012, 02:19:58 AM

Well, I've gotten a little done lately.

First, I spent a night installing my final set of LED's in to the car, at least for a while, under the armrests. They are totally hidden and look really freakin cool. That process also coincided with the installation of the signal wires to my taillights that are required in order to get them to only sequence with the turn signals instead of also pulsing with the brake lights. The brake light thing was kinda cool except that my brake light switch doesn't really work all that great, so they tend to burst very rapidly which is confusing to whoever would be behind me, so now the brake lights function normally and only the turn signals sequence. Just like one of those shiny new mustangs:hick:

I also finally got around to installing a proper thermostat relay for my electric fan, instead of the always-hot-on-run relay setup that I had had on it before. While I was in there I traced out a vacuum line with a gigantic freakin hole in it and replaced that sucker. Now my idle is MUCH smoother:D And I gave it a nice good washing and waxing for the first time in about a year the other day. I got a nice chrome downtip for my exhaust too.

But perhaps the thing I am most excited about is that I just scored a pair of brand spankin new NOS inner marker lights for the front end.

No more heat cracked pitted lenses for us! Was it a stupid purchase that I really can't afford this week? Yes. Did I get a really sweet deal on a pair of lights I probably won't see come up again for another year? Yes. Paid about $30 with shipping for one side, and about $38 for the other side. Suhweet:D

Project Black Panther: 1988 3.8L Cougar LS

Reply #407 – January 29, 2012, 08:12:21 AM

Good to see you're getting some things done for the Cougar. As I always say, one piece at a time. Where did you get the lights from? Oh, and surely you could put more LEDs on the car. How about on the steering wheel, and on the outside mirrors, and the windshield wipers, and the core support, and the throttle body..........? LOL.LOL. Just kidding. I made myself laugh though. LOL.

Project Black Panther: 1988 3.8L Cougar LS

Reply #408 – January 29, 2012, 11:08:05 AM

hah hah hah hahhhhhh......... not.:beatdown:

Honestly you can't knock em till you've seen em in person. All the lights on the car are totally hidden except for the ones on the hood and trunk for well, obvious reasons. Believe me, I spend hours and hours going over ways to make the car unique without making it rice. They look pretty slick you'd be surprised.

As for the lights well they were ebay specials...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=400271470381&ssPageName=ADME:L:OC:US:1123

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130634398166&ssPageName=ADME:L:OC:US:1123

Project Black Panther: 1988 3.8L Cougar LS

Reply #409 – January 29, 2012, 11:44:43 AM

Oh yeah, I saw those. Good score. I gotta give you a hard time about the LED's. LOL. I'm just glad you're getting the car pieced together. What's left that you need to do?

Project Black Panther: 1988 3.8L Cougar LS

Reply #410 – January 29, 2012, 11:52:04 AM

way too much. Whats up on the top of the list right now is new tires and also rear brakes but I'm trying to skip working on the brakes and just go straight to TC rear. I also badly need an alignment and front struts. Then there's some misc interior stuff to be done but nothing to keep it from being fun to drive. I also need to get in there and get my thermostat housing off b/c I broke a bolt off trying to replace my t-stat and now the housing is leaking so that's something I need to get fixed before I start going on any long trips. Thinking I might actually get to that today or sometime this week.

Project Black Panther: 1988 3.8L Cougar LS

Reply #411 – January 29, 2012, 12:00:38 PM

Get out there and get to work. I'm swapping my O2 harness and sensors as soon as the temp comes up some more. Still a bit too cold for me out there today.

Project Black Panther: 1988 3.8L Cougar LS

Reply #412 – January 29, 2012, 12:54:16 PM

Yeah I would but the only reason I might not get to it is cause we just got back from breakfast and now were about to go out to Silver Springs. (one of our local nature parks). Its sort of an every other month sunday tradition. We prolly wont get back till about a hour before sundown... then I got sunday cs to do blah blah blah.... but who knows I might fit it in there;)

Project Black Panther: 1988 3.8L Cougar LS

Reply #413 – February 01, 2012, 02:44:24 PM

Its official....

I might have to let my truck get repo'd to do it lol, but the cougar will be legal and on the road again before the end of next week.

As for that stuck tstat bolt well its being a real bitch. So far there is no hope to get it out. I even welded a nut on the end of the bolt to have something to attach a wrench to... well it broke the end of the bolt off before I was able to turn it at all. That MFer aint coming out without a drill. I think I'm just gonna go down to my local JY and pick up another intake. It would be far easier at this point.

Project Black Panther: 1988 3.8L Cougar LS

Reply #414 – February 01, 2012, 02:50:02 PM

Quote from: sarjxxx;379181

Yeah I would but the only reason I might not get to it is cause we just got back from breakfast and now were about to go out to Silver Springs. (one of our local nature parks). Its sort of an every other month sunday tradition. We prolly wont get back till about a hour before sundown... then I got sunday cs to do blah blah blah.... but who knows I might fit it in there;)

Did you goto the silver springs Ford show

Project Black Panther: 1988 3.8L Cougar LS

Reply #415 – February 01, 2012, 06:05:29 PM

That would be no on account of the fact that i am an idiot and forgot all about it for the second year in a row. it would help if they would actually advertise it at yhe park as we go almost every month but over there they act like the event doesnt even exist...

Project Black Panther: 1988 3.8L Cougar LS

Reply #416 – February 02, 2012, 11:47:39 PM

Well its been an interesting two days...

It all started yesterday, when after welding a nut to the bolt to try to turn it wasn't even enough to get it to budge, and it then broke the weld, I decided it was time to take the intake off and do something about this problem. After getting the intake(s) off, I discovered another whole problem. It turns out, that all the water I was getting from my tail pipe and all the sputtering on startup, was in fact not condensation, as I had hoped.

I had originally thought I had a head gasket promlem, but I had no water in my oil, and on oil in my water. So I just let it go for a bit, since I'm not driving it on a reguar basis it was not a big deal. So anyway, while removing the intake-head bolts they were all coming out all mucky and wet and gross. After I got the intake off, I found out the real problem. Turns out the intake gaskets had failed and the reason I was not seeing any water in my oil / vice versa, was that it was leaking from the water jacket in the intake straight into the intake ports, and into the heads... well you get the idea.

So that began a long journey to cleaning off all the old gaskets (which annoyingly enough were only 2 years old), cleaning up the heads and intake and block, and cleaning out the intake runners. What did this have to do with water leaks, well nothing really, but it was nasty in there so I wanted to clean off all that gunk and let my air flow more freely. Any way, after fighting for ever with the bolt that holds the FPR to the back of the block I got the fuel lines out of the way and was ready to reinstall pending new gaskets and stuck-bolt-free intake. This began the other part of my journey.

tstat bolt just would not give up. So I attempted to cut the stem off so I could drill it out. Only problem being that my hacksaw blade was so dull that I literally could not cut even my own skin with it. So I just whacked it off with a hammer. Luckily I got a nice flat break right at the face of the intake so it wasn't hard to get a drill started. After going through it multiple times with bigger bits I realized this bolt was not coming out. So I went down to AZ and picked up a reverse thread drill bit set and a tap set. Reverse drilled it as close as I could get and then tapped it out at the same thread and size as before, and it actually worked out favorably. I then took my new tap and chased every hole in my block, which made reinstallation a whole lot easier. btw, if anyone's curious, it seems that almost every bolt size in this engine is M8 - 1.25.

So anyway, long story long, after fighting with the gd fuel lines and injectors for a freaking hour because they just didn't want to keep the fuel in the lines, I got everything reinstalled, with new gaskets, and while I was at it replaced the ACT sensor, which was OEM and toast, and also the coolant temp sending unit, also OEM. I did the ECT sensor about a year ago so I left it alone. After everything was back together I turned the key and she fired right up, no sputtering or bogging down on accel like before. Runs like a champ. So I think its safe to say the problem has been solved.

Oh and what was cool is that I got to put my hood lights to their first real test. I've fiddled around under the hood with them on before but a solid two nights working in the dark for hours really showed me how good of an investment they were. I never once had to pull out a secondary light source. And they're so bright that if I keep my tools near to the car I can see everything I need.

So far the only strange problem I'm having is that my temp sending unit is way out of range, throwing my guage all the way to its stop. I don't know if I got a faulty unit or what. Anyone ever had that happen?

Ooh and one of my lights came today and yes sir it is beautiful. Now if I can just get outer parking lights and headlights to match:cool: Feeling pretty good about these. They're my first ever NOS purchase so its kindof a big deal to me lol.

Oh sorry for the book about pretty much nothing I just feel like this is the first thing I've accomplished lately so I wanted to talk about it:p

Project Black Panther: 1988 3.8L Cougar LS

Reply #417 – February 03, 2012, 12:44:55 AM

Sweet Steve! You're really making some progress!

Project Black Panther: 1988 3.8L Cougar LS

Reply #418 – February 05, 2012, 11:08:42 AM

When I first saw the length of this post, I was fearing the worst. But after reading it, I'm glad it's all buttoned up and smooth running.

Project Black Panther: 1988 3.8L Cougar LS

Reply #419 – February 05, 2012, 01:17:32 PM

Quote from: sarjxxx;379606

Ooh and one of my lights came today and yes sir it is beautiful. Now if I can just get outer parking lights and headlights to match:cool: Feeling pretty good about these. They're my first ever NOS purchase so its kindof a big deal to me lol.

Quote from: sarjxxx;379173

As for the lights well they were ebay specials...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=400271470381&ssPageName=ADME:L:OC:US:1123

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130634398166&ssPageName=ADME:L:OC:US:1123

Definitely a nice score on those inner lights. I gotta start watching Ebay better, I'd a jumped on those too if I had seen them. I see there is still one side available but I hate to buy it unless I know I can get a full set.

As far as headlights, you probably saw this already but there is one side available here. He had several OEM sets of both so you might contact him if you are interested to see if he has any more of the other side. I ordered a set from him and they showed up in two days and look great.