Wife's DFG Convertible GT

86svo9l

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I am sure some of you guys saw my sort of reintroduction post over in the Garage. I am going to track progress of the car here in this thread. Hopefully I can get it in good order and eventually get the mods going.

Long story short, my wife has been upset with me ever since I sold my Convertible a couple years ago. Since I am already balls deep in the RX7 build I figured that it would be a long time before getting back into Mustangs. But then I found a deal to good to pass up, problem being how to convince the warden to let me spend the cash on it. So I told her it would be her car and she gave the green light. Seems like a win/win for me. I enjoy building things more than enjoying them so she can benefit from this one.

Car in question is a 94 GT Convertible 5 speed.

Plans right now are simple and fairly budget minded. Probably going to cut the stock springs to bring the ride height down a bit. Swap on some 99+ PBR calipers I have hanging around. Go over everything mechanically with a fine tooth comb so its safe. Sounds like the smog pump is seizing up, so that's always a good excuse to install an offroad H pipe and get rid of the smog/egr stuff. Otherwise the engine and trans seem to be just fine.

Once the weather warms up a bit I want to pull it down to the short block to check over all condition, replace gaskets and wear items like the timing chain. Since it will be apart I am strategizing a GT40 top end and TFS cam setup, just figuring out the game plan to convince the wife she needs it. Probably just skirt all the parts in slowly over the next few months under the radar.

Anyway here are some pictures starting from when I got it to how it sits now.



Filthy beast with gross smoke smelling interior. Shout out to TanTop94 for the coffee bean trick. Has really helped the interior smell a lot!






Clever hole covering scheme going on here...




Gross looking engine.







After some TLC and lots of scrubbing and buffing trouble areas.


















Well that's it for now. I am tied up in my basement project for the next couple weeks. Once that is done I can start digging back into this thing.
 

ElrodKTPQ_89

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I like it man! The two-tone interior has always caught my eye. Good job cleaning that engine up too! You could change the looks under the hood a lot if you painted the radiator cover and picked up an MSD cap and rotor and coil kit, a little color would set it off I think. Plan on any different wheels?
 
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86svo9l

86svo9l

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I like it man! The two-tone interior has always caught my eye. Good job cleaning that engine up too! You could change the looks under the hood a lot if you painted the radiator cover and picked up an MSD cap and rotor and coil kit, a little color would set it off I think. Plan on any different wheels?


Probably going to pull the radiator cover and clean it up. Definitely going to scrub and paint all the little rust bits under the hood, every time I pop the hood it makes me want to rebuild the harness and start hiding wires. In some of my less sane moments I even considered swapping in a Megasquirt setup I have, but decided against it. For some reason the Tri Bars have always kind of caught my eye. No idea why. If we do a rim change on it I think it will probably be some 03 Cobra style rims but it won't be for a while.
 

ElrodKTPQ_89

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When I put the motor back in my car I took all the harnesses out and put new wire loom on a lot of it then used a couple rolls of 33 (electrical tape) and wrapped everything. It's one of the small things that no one but you is more than likely gonna notice but it made a huge difference. On the cover I cleaned it and sanded it and sprayed etching primer on it then just rattle-canned it black and put a few stickers on it. I personally don't like the tri bars but to each their own...we all gotta be different somehow.
 

TanTop94

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I did not like them at first, but they are kind of growing on me.

I hated them on every mustang I saw, until I went to buy bumper inserts and they just go very well with a tan top...but I couldnt find any.
 
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86svo9l

86svo9l

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When I put the motor back in my car I took all the harnesses out and put new wire loom on a lot of it then used a couple rolls of 33 (electrical tape) and wrapped everything. It's one of the small things that no one but you is more than likely gonna notice but it made a huge difference. On the cover I cleaned it and sanded it and sprayed etching primer on it then just rattle-canned it black and put a few stickers on it. I personally don't like the tri bars but to each their own...we all gotta be different somehow.

Yea it is definitely the little things that count. Even if no one notices, it still feels good to know that stuff is cleaned up. I will check out your thread and see how that radiator cover looks, for some reason in my head its tough for me to imagine one all cleaned up, lol. Almost all I have seen were the same base plastic color!
 

the5.ohh

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Car looks pretty good. Interested in how the PBR swap works out for ya, so definitely update us when you do that.. Oh and coffee beans are often used to hide the smell of marijuana haha
 
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86svo9l

86svo9l

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Car looks pretty good. Interested in how the PBR swap works out for ya, so definitely update us when you do that.. Oh and coffee beans are often used to hide the smell of marijuana haha

Will do!

I have spoke with a couple guys who have done the swap already and they all enjoyed the results.
 
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86svo9l

86svo9l

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Not yet. Been out of town quite a bit for work lately and I kind of shifted to finishing my basement project while the weather has been cold.

I did run a couple test areas to see how it worked on the scratches and had some promising results. There are a couple areas on the hood that have peeling clear coat. So that will need recleared unless there is a good way to touch up clear coat?
 
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86svo9l

86svo9l

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Will post some pictures later on. It was nice yesterday so the car came out of the garage for a bit. Finished getting the stickers off of the rear bumper. Discovered that the hole in the bumper had the missing section still attached(Barely), so for now I bent it back into position so it looks a little better.

Car runs ok up to about half throttle and then falls on its face. One of the tail pipes has a lot of smoke coming out of it and a rough idle. It does not smell like coolant, but may be a dead cylinder for whatever reason. I pulled off the cheap CAI and discovered the MAF is filthy so I pulled that apart and cleaned it up.

So next plan of action is to tear the top end apart. Clean and regasket everything. Give it a full tune up. Check timing(hopefully the balancer has not slipped...). Remove the smog crap. Remove the EGR crap, and fix the crap exhaust.

Should go fairly quick with the weather being what it is.
 

the5.ohh

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Sounds like you got your work cut out for you.. Lotta crap LOL. Check your injectors while your at it. My car had an issue awhile back, felt like it had no power and wouldn't move its ass.. Turned out to be a bad injector, so might be a simple fix for you too.
 
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86svo9l

86svo9l

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Well got out and got some work done finally.

Changed out what I now believe to quite possibly be the stock plugs, wires, cap and rotor. Everything else I found in the top end was much cleaner than expected. The corrosion on the cap and rotor was really bad, its no wonder it was misfiring. Some of the terminals were corroded completely.

As I was finishing up it was getting dark, unfortunately in my retarded hurry to finish before dark I slipped with a razor while cleaning some mating surfaces. Finished up reassembling the top end and went to show my wife the carnage, guess it was gross so she made me go to the doctor where they sewed the top of my knuckle back on. According to them it was down to the knuckle encasement or some crap and lucky for me it did not pierce the encasement. Anyway the doctor did a good job, but this splint is killing me. Have to wear it for a week which will be great motivation to be more careful down the road...

Fired the car up and all seems well. A little puff of smoke at startup tells me valve seals are next on the list.

 

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