ill start off with a little back story…follow on down to the last few paragraphs and pictures if you could care less lol.
well most of you guys know i track the Roush and have been for the past few years. and its been a blast but there’s a part of me that keeps me from going balls out with the car with so much invested into it, so its time to put all that goodness into something else.
so i wanted to get another mustang to swap all (most) of the suspension goodies into and do something more than just HPDE’s. like time trial events and a few American Iron Extreme races perhaps.
but anyway, I was looking for a decent roller that wasn’t too far away here and there on Corral and Craigslist and whatnot, made a few calls on some and couldn’t haggle the guy down to what i wanted to spend or the car was an unfeasible distance away.
so finally found one in PA last november that the guy wanted $3500 for. i had no use for his awesome focus seats he had in there or the FR500 wheels since i have multiple sets laying around anyway, so we agreed on $2500 and i made arrangements with Andy Zeon to go pick the car up on Dec. 1st. took a set of Saleen wheels with me to load up the car and swap his wheels off when i got there.
got down there and started checking the car over. paint looked good from a far but had a ton of sanding scratches in it from shitty prep work. not that big of a deal since ill vinyl or plastidip the car anyway but i used it to my advantage.
and then i was looking at the rearend. which supposedly had 3.73’s. crawled under and spun the pinion…stock 3.27’s. so i wasn’t to happy about that either.
so i bolted the wheels on(18x10 Saleens in the back which are dead nuts flush with 1" spacers on my car) and drop the car off the jack. the wheels look worse than stock wheels do on a new edge mustang with their shitty offset. so i question him on that. he says its a rearend from a '96. which i know for a fact is narrower than a 99-04 but bigger than a foxbody. could remember by how much but i knew it wasnt the same. (94-98’s are 1.5" narrower than a 99-04 and 1.5" wider than a 87-93) him and his buddy argued with me saying they are all the same from 94-04 which isnt true. so he offers to measure the rearend in his other 98 mustang. well no shit its gonna be the same dumbass. so i got to the point where i offered him $2000 because of the shit i found when i got there or i was walking. he finally gave in and agreed.
so we trailered the car home and dropped it at the shop
pics when i first got it back
and as a bonus the car came with a list of things i didnt need that i could make some money back selling. which are listed below
$500 Cobra R Hood
$250 S281 Saleen Rear Wing
$450 03/04 Cobra Rear Bumper
$45 Front Seatbelts
$30 HVAC controls
$40 Radio Bezel/Vents
$125 Stock GT front Calipers/rotors/lines
$85 Steeda Caster Camber Plates
$275 UPR Coilovers
$200 Door Panels
= $2000 so i already broke even on the car lol with a ton more stuff to sell
so at this point the car has cost me virtually nothing except the tow money to go pick it up 
then i started looking for deals on parts and stock piling parts to put the car together(this is more or less a record for me to know what I have into the car without losing the file on my computer somewhere. But the overall goal is to keep it below 15k which so far is looking pretty feasible….for now.
$53 1.5" bolt on wheel spacers to make up for the narrower rear end
$100 MM Rear Spherical Upper Shock Mounts
$60 Hydroboost Setup- which i am not going to use anymore
$140 Maximum Motorsports Caster Camber Plates
$650 Shelby GT500 brakes- front and rears
$325 Roush Side skirts and Rear Valances
$35 95 Cobra Front Sway bar with mounts
$700 Griggs Koni SA front and rear coilovers with 98 spindles and bumpsteer kit
$50 2.73 Ring and Pinion
$50 3.08 Ring and Pinion
$190 2000 GT Trunk Lid and Legit from Ford 2000 Cobra R Spoiler
$400 Koni DA shocks and struts
$175 MM panhard bar
$700 Stoptech ST40 Calipers with brackets and lines- which came with Hawk HT-10 pads and some other unknown pads. WIN!
$65 Driver and Passenger door hinges
$1000 Nascar Craftsman truck Jericho Transmission
$108 MM sway bar relocation and Solid Motor Mounts
$60 8.8 Install kit
$600 18x10 RPF1’s +38 offset
$850 18x10.5 RPF1’s +15 offset
$250 Brand New Roush side skirts, exhaust tips and Rear valances- will end up selling one set
$115 MSD 6ALN ignition box and Coil
$60 Cobra Side Scoops
$4800 604 GM 350 Crate Motor with goodies
=$11,473 so plenty of money left to get a cage and other misc. shit along the way
So onto the pictures
Started to dismantle the car, Which pretty much includes taking everything except the body panels off of it.
Started out with this half gutted engine bay
Yanked out the whole interior. Scraped some sound deadening because appartently ford used the shittiest adhesive ever in 2000 that doesn’t come off with dry ice
Stripped the engine bay down.
So much wiring weight its insane.
Dropped the V6 shortblock and k member out
Picked up a MM tubular k member (which I put in the Roush for now)
Bought a whole set (front and rears with calipers, pads, lines, brackets etc) of GT500 brakes to modify to have as track brakes for a cheap setup. Rotors cost next to nothing compared to the Stoptechs
I have Sparco EVO 2’s in the roush but doing wheel to wheel racing I wanted something a little safer so I picked up one of these. A used Dave Blaney Butler Built seat. He is about an inch taller than me and same weight so I figured the seat would fit pretty good. Fits perfect except on my ribs, it’s a bit snug, but nothing a porta-power can’t fix.
And I’ve had the idea in my head for a while to use a carbureted motor setup for a track car rather than blowing 500-1000 on tuning and all the necessary crap that comes along with that. So with plenty of connections in the circle track world of racing, I made a deal with my friend Scott on his brother’s old Late Model motor that we lost the Championship with by 4 points in 2010. It’s a GM 604 crate motor with one season (14 races) on it.
Bought everything carb to pan with the following included
Quarter Master Aluminum Reverse Mount Starter Bellhousing
Quarter master Starter
Quarter master 5.5” clutch and flywheel and Hydraulic throw out bearing
Schoenfeld Crossover headers- with Y pipe and side exit exhaust not sure if I will use the cross over headers since it will require a decent amount of firewall modding- but it would be sweet to run that setup
Quartermaster aluminum driveshaft
fits in there good. So much room to work with
With this carb Holley 650 HP
http://www.holley.com/0-80541-1.asp
bumped into Joey from Gor-den last week at cruise night and talked about doing some motor work adding another 100+ HP or so :snky snky:
so at this point I started gutting the doors and want to get the car ready to get the cage done. Planning on an 8 point with nascar door bars on the drivers side and a standard x on the passenger. Maybe a single diagonal from the main hoop to the rear strut tower? Not sure if im going to extend it into the engine bay or not.
But will probably end up making some sort of tubular front end support for the bumper to attach the splitter to as well so it has enough strength.
Hoping to have the project done for events next spring if all goes to plan
im sure ill add a ton of other plans and whatnot to this to give you guys a better idea of what im after but ill add that in as i go.
List of plans or things i want to make/do with the car:
8 pt cage
install Roush side skirts and rear valances- modify side skirts for splitters
swap over Roush Track bumper that i currently use. make new splitter that extends 5" out from the bumper (max allowed)
Use solid 4.6 motor mounts with adapter plates to bolt up to the motor.
use a mid engine plate or make a tranny mount- havent decided what route im going yet.
make full aluminum dash to hold the gauges, MSD etc. like something you would see in a late model circle track car.
Lexan side and rear window
make brackets for wilwood pedals. and run brake lines
figure out a gas pedal setup
fully box in the whole front end and use fluidyne radiator from the Roush
run a full set of gauges- water temp,oil temp,fuel press, oil pressure, tach
buy a 18 pin wiring kit to wire everything- car will just have wipers and lights in addition to the engine stuff
make a steering shaft that attaches to the cage with a Howe bracket or something of the like since ford steering attaches to the dash
and if anyone has any SBC long tube headers laying around that they would let me borrow for mock up to see what im working with for clearances that would be great.
so far it looks like something like this might work http://www.speedwaymotors.com/Dynatech-1979-04-Mustang-K-Member-Headers-Small-Block-Chevy,48876.html
but i think a set of headers from a 68-72 chelleve or a 70’s camaro or a 64-72 Chevy II/Nova look like they will all clear the mounts no problem
thats all i have for now
Mike