Bringing a neglected 94 Vert back to life! (Pics Inside)

add5725

New Member
Joined
Apr 19, 2007
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Here are some pics of myself and my friends fixing, cleaning, and breaking a beat up 94 Vert that I purchased for $6,000 as my "Daily Driver." Some great before and after stuff, we got it ready in time for the big Fabulous Ford Forever show.

The purchase:
1994 Mustang GT Convertible, 58,000 miles. Red/Black/Black. Tons of suspension: BBK subframes, Steeda springs, Bilstein shocks, BBK strut brace, BBK C/C plates, Suspension Techniques panhard bar, a HUGE front sway bar (don’t know who's it is), a custom welded 6 point roll bar. The engine was rebuilt and had only 7,000 mile on it. With: custom ported Edlebrock Performer Heads, Edlebrock upper and lower intake, BBK TB, Steeda under drive pulleys, E303 cam, Crane Gold Race 1.6 roller rockers, hardened pushrods, Crane valve springs, Jacobs Electronics ignition, BBK long tubes, BBK off-road H, and some shitty ass cat-back (looked like a muffler shop hack job). There is a bunch more, but you get the idea. ;-) Car came with all its receipts and all of the documents, including the flow bench charts for the head work.
dscn3894.jpg

Picking it up. Don't know if you can tell, but the paint is F'ed up. This thing has been outside for probably its whole life . . . without ever being waxed.
dscn3897.jpg

Worlds ugliest rims for a stang.
dscn3901.jpg

This is the rear passenger side.
dscn3902.jpg

And this is the rear driver side, see anything wrong?
dscn3903.jpg

The roll bar was unpainted and had rusted over time.

On the way home the car made horrible noises. Turned out the Aluminum Drive Shaft was grinding on the e-brake bracket:
dscn3916.jpg

Not good.

First we thought the axle being shifted over might have been part of the drive shaft problem. So we fixed that by having Jamie at Fabtech cut/weld/and lengthen the incorrectly installed panhard bar. The drive shaft then made more noise now that the rear was fixed. So we took out the aluminum one before it had a chance to break and pole-vault the car into oblivion. We ground down the e-brake bracket and installed a smaller diameter stock steel drive shaft. Finally problem solved :pepper:.

Then we created problems for ourselves . . . with new exhaust:
dscn4447.jpg

The Bassani cat-back sounded great and replaced the leaking POS that was in there before. But, the driver side pipe could not be adjusted much because it was hitting the panhard bar. Not only that, it was slowly shaving tire rubber off the driver side rear really bad.

So we need spacer’s right!:
dscn4949.jpg

That was a fun adventure in itself. The car needs .75 inch spacers to fix the problem. That means it needed longer studs. Sal from Sal's Speed Shop helped us pull the axles so we could have Rocco from Ragged Edge Performance enlarging the axle holes and pressing in the studs (thanks to Sal and Rocco).
dscn4951.jpg

THEN, the crappy momo's, with there horrible small lug-holes that no tool made by man can get into to install the rims, wouldn't let us install the open ended lug nuts.
dscn5020.jpg

So my friend gave me his 95 Cobra R's to use because his car blew up and he wouldn't be using them for a while. But, with the .75 inch spacers the wheels stuck out way too far. So I bought ANOTHER spacer, this time a .375 inch spacer . . . problem fixed.

The Fab Fords thrash:
We started painting the rollbar, detailing the engine, treating the interior, clay/cut/polishing and waxing the paint. Steve (from True Forged Wheels) let us borrow his extra set of black FR500's 18's for the show. Because they looked better than the Chrome Cobra R's. I liked them so much that I just bought a set today so that will be the cars new look :coolman:
dscn5049.jpg

The Paint was in bad shape.
dscn5051.jpg

The back was worse.
dscn5048.jpg

We took out the back seat to get to the roll bar and paint it. The seat was so beat up that we just got a rear-seat delete and installed it after painting the bar (no pics of that yet).
dscn5058.jpg

We had to rattle-can the black hammer finish paint in sections.
dscn5063.jpg

The solid front door bars . . . "Daily Driver" :thumbsup:
dscn5101.jpg

After all the paint work.
dscn5102.jpg

Looking good :D
dscn4999.jpg

The engine before.
dscn5057.jpg

The engine after some work (bad pic I know).

At Fab Fords:
dscn5333.jpg

Sittn' Pretty!
dscn3550.jpg

Getting ready to leave after the show.

Some Pics of my friend's cars from the show:
dscn3555.jpg

Hector's Mach1 on True Forged 19's.
dscn3552.jpg

Rocket Couch's Blown Vic.
dscn5197_web.jpg

My 02 Lightning on True Forged 22's and other True Forged wheels in the back.
dscn3562.jpg

Stopping for food.

Check out this thing (vid):
http://www.supermotors.net/getfile/508412/fullsize/dscn5151.mov
Agent 47 AIX SN95 :eek:


Let me know what you guys think, it was lot
 

Downshift

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 21, 2006
Messages
1,957
Reaction score
1
Man you really made that thing look 100x better. When I first read that you got it for 6k....with your title in mind I was like WTF were you thinking haha. Sounds like you got a pretty nice car. Goes to show what some hard work will do on the exterior and under the hood. Nice.
 
OP
OP
A

add5725

New Member
Joined
Apr 19, 2007
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Thanks . It still has a little ways to go. I still have to get a rear window for the top, that was missing when i bought it. Then i have to work on the sound system. What is in there now is really old and cuts out once in a while. But we will leave that for another weekend.
 

unclebens

New Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2007
Messages
21
Reaction score
0
That car took away 3 days of my life . . . it was worth it though.
 

TripleBlack

New Member
Joined
Jan 22, 2007
Messages
72
Reaction score
0
i also have a 94 vert that has the same problem with the rearend sitting off center, i was wondering if you could go into what you did to correct it a little more(what parts and process) and price to get it done....really bothers me to drive it that way...
 

Nacho

Active Member
Joined
Dec 23, 2006
Messages
629
Reaction score
0
Looks awesome man. I was never too crazy about the roll bar on vert's but painted black, it doesn't look bad at all. :thumb:
 

95-stang

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 6, 2007
Messages
2,446
Reaction score
0
Sorry, i meant add5725.

I'm sure your equally talented. :)
 

unclebens

New Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2007
Messages
21
Reaction score
0
He's my room mate, so I was there when we fixed the rear . . . Jamie at Fabtech down here in Cali gave us a friend discount and got the car up on a lift. Turns out the panhard bar was installed incorrectly and the mount to the frame was weded off-center, pushing the thing over. He cut the mount and re-welded it farther to the drivers side and then he took some chorme-moly tubing and tig welded an extention into the bar itself. After all that and a little adjustments to the on the bar itself and she was fixed. But, as you read all that created its own problems. You'll have to ask add5725 the price details . . . it wasn't to bad though.
 

ryclef331

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 20, 2006
Messages
2,913
Reaction score
11
Looks great guys. Fantastic work. Any more pics of the lightning on 22's? I love it...
 

cobra4978

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 16, 2007
Messages
1,154
Reaction score
0
Dang that turned out great guys did a good job i wanna go buy a abused stang and fix it up! just for the fun of it
 

97blackgt

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 8, 2006
Messages
1,064
Reaction score
2
wow that thing did a 180 degree turn from what it looked like at first

good work O0
 

95Boss

Active Member
Joined
Mar 20, 2007
Messages
623
Reaction score
0
Nice work. Shows what a little blood, sweat, and good old American enginuity can do. If it was me, I woulda' pulled the roll bar. Not a big fan, especially in converts. But, the car looks great.
 

unclebens

New Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2007
Messages
21
Reaction score
0
Trickflow.GT said:
i dont like the roll bar at all...it needs to be taken out

95Boss said:
Nice work. Shows what a little blood, sweat, and good old American enginuity can do. If it was me, I woulda' pulled the roll bar. Not a big fan, especially in converts. But, the car looks great.

Well to each their own . . . I happen to think the roll bar is sweet :dunno:. I know add5725 loves it; it was one of the car's selling points. Yeah it was rusted, but the bar was tig welded and attached to the frame. It’s a true 6-point and with the rear-seat delete it looks killer >:D. Don't forget, combine the roll bar with the sub-frame connectors, the huge sway bars this thing has, the panhard bar, and the spring and shock set up; this car has little if NO chassis flex. It handles better than allot of coupes I've been in. Also, the original owner ran it at the open track often, and I believe add5725 plans to do the same some day; they won't let him run with all of his mods with out it (that goes for drag racing too)
 

S.O.B.

New Member
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
65
Reaction score
0
Car is looking GREAT! The Lightning is BAD AZZ too. Love the wheels and I'm not much on 22's
 

ryclef331

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 20, 2006
Messages
2,913
Reaction score
11
unclebens said:
ryclef331 said:
Looks great guys. Fantastic work. Any more pics of the lightning on 22's? I love it...

Here are some . . . They are True Forged Wheels' 22 inch anthracite Ravel's
Here is the web Site: http://www.trueforgedwheels.com/
IMG_2539Medium.jpg

IMG_2537Medium.jpg

IMG_2542Medium.jpg

Sickest wheels I've eve seen on a Lightning. I had an 02 on 20" forged centerline rapids but those looks AWESOME.
 

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
77,554
Messages
1,504,835
Members
15,019
Latest member
Srchop16

Members online

Top