05/01/2004
I haven't updated in forever. I haven't changed too much on the car. I moved the amp so it's now mounted on the front face of the trunk. I backed the trunk panel with some 1/8" MDF so that the amp wouldn't pull through the trunk panel. It worked out pretty nice. Now with the amp, the StealthBox and the extra Y2K R wheel / tire back there for a spare it brought the rear down about where I want it. I could live with it being a bit lower but it looks good. It sure is nice having a stereo in the car again.
The site may be changing before too long. I think I'm going to switch to something a little more elaborate than this basic FrontPage web. PHPNuke is looking good.
02/01/2004
Happy New Year! It's been a long time since an update. Check out the cars pics to see how the drop job ended up.
I think it turned out pretty good. I want to drop the rear a little more to better level out the car. I'm going to wait until I get the stereo back in it to see how much more the rear needs to come down.
I had one of the convertible top lift cylinders break on me while putting the top up to wash it. The top shop quoted me $300 to fix it but I ended up being able to do it myself for $60 in parts and about an hour of my time.
I mentioned the stereo earlier... I had to pull the JL Audio Stealthbox and the amp when I installed the shocks in the rear. When taking this apart I noticed that the mount that I made for the amp wasn't doing such a great job of securing it. I had mounted the amp to the side of the Stealthbox. Now I'm going to fill the holes that I put in the Stealthbox and build an amp rack on the forward face of the trunk. I think I'll add a 1 farad cap while I'm at it. The trick to all of this is to not take up what is left of this car's tiny trunk.
11/24/2003
Well I had the car back together and drove it on 10/25. I was just slacking a bit on updating the site.
The car turned out pretty good. It's lowered about 1 1/2" all the way around now. I re-used the 300# coil over springs I had from the '92. Maximum Motorsports recommended a 375# spring but I had the 300# spring in hand and it cost me nothing to try 'em out. In the rear I retained the stock springs but saw some drop by way of the adjustable perches on the Griggs LCAs.
How does it drive? Better than I expected really. When I lean on it hard in turns it lays over on the front outside wheel which to me means I need more spring up front. It isn't real bad but it's noticable. The ride quality is awesome though. It rides better than the stock suspension I took off. This isn't saying a whole lot seeing at both front struts were wasted (one of them even compressed and didn't come back up!). Lowering the car some didn't cause any issues with the new tires and wheels which was nice.
10/24/2003
LOL - The replacement a-arm bushing came in today. It was cheap ($10) and Napa replaced my goofed up bushing for free.
I got back home and decided to clean up the a-arms since they looked like crap. They were covered in a white dirt coating. I scrubbed them up and while they were drying I decided to install the Maximum Motorsports caster camber plates. The install was easier than I was expecting considering I was going to be drilling holes and all but it went pretty quick. The CC plates are on now up to the point of mounting the strut. I need to mock up the coilovers before I can move forward with the install. More fun stuff to do!
10/23/2003
I haven't updated the site in a while so here goes:
First things first, I added a WiFi Stuff section. I'm messing around with WiFi antennas, wardriving, and checking out a bunch of equipment. I'm almost done with my first antenna and can't wait to try it out.
Now about the car. It is down again - lol. I didn't get hardly 1000 miles on the new wheels and tires and I've got the car up on all four in the garage again! I installed the Griggs LCAs (rear) I've had laying around the garage from the '92 as well as a set of Bullitt Shocks (Tokico). Up front I got really ambitious. The game plan is Energy Suspension Poly bushings in the front control arms, Maximum Motorsports Caster Camber plates, Bullitt Front Struts (Tokico), and Griggs coilovers.
I got the control arms off and was able to get the stock bushing out in short order with the help of a couple of my friends. We made an attempt at installing one of the new bushings in spite of not having access to a working press and managed to mess that bushing up. I had Napa try to salvage it and install the other bushings. $20 later the other 3 are perfect and the one we attempted is most of the way in but not all the way and that's as good as it's going to get. I special ordered a replacement and now I'm stuck waiting for it.
Once I get the bushing replaced I can start putting the front end back together. Until then - I'm stranded on stands in the garage. Thank God for the Contour!
Speaking of the Contour... it needs brakes! I ordered the parts and hopefully it can wait till I get the Mustang back on the road.
8/24/2003
The new wheels look good! I took some pics but almost all of them came out like crap. I posted a couple close up pics of the front and rear wheels in the 'Car Stuff' page. I was going to wash the car this morning but someone stole my hose a week or so ago so I can't. I'll have to get a hose or hit a carwash to wash up the car. All I was able to do this morning is scrub the top down a little bit and clean all of the hand prints / tire goo off of the wheels. They are super shiney now :). I've got to make time to get it washed inside and out and maybe even get some wax on it.
I still need to smog it too. Gas is getting better than $2.00/Gallon now for 87 octane so I'm taking my sweet ass time getting that done. The tags are due in October so I should be getting the renewal notice any time now. The car is good to go for smog though. I just hope the vapor return system passes.
8/17/2003
I got word on Friday that my tires have come in! I have an appointment on Tuesday to have the tires put on the Rims. As much as I wanted to do 315/30/18's out back, I couldn't find a tire under $300 that wasn't a BFG drag radial. I wrote Nitto an e-mail asking if they plan on making the 555 or 555R in 315/30/18 but I have yet to get a response.
I ended up ordering a set of Khumo Ecsta MX tires in 275/35/18's out front and 295/35/18's out back. I hope it doesn't piss off the ABS too bad :).
I trial-fit the wheels on the car and it looks pretty tight out back. It's going to look badass though. I took some pics with just the wheel on the back of the car and they are at the bottom of the 'Car Stuff' page.
In other news, I started the Atkins Diet today. I can't believe how much food I'm supposed to eat in a day! I definitely won't go hungry on this diet - that's for sure.
8/1/2003
I sold my wheels. I liked the Y2K R's a lot but I fell in love with the '03 Cobra Wheels I saw on this car. They are made by AFS and are 18x9 in front and 18x10.5 out back. He has some monstrous 335 tires on the back of his car but he tells me that it has rubbing problems. I think as big as I'd go is a 315/30/18 which is almost a perfect match diameter-wise to a 275/35/18 out front. The only problem is that about the only 'attainable' tire in that size is a Michelin Pilot Sport in a Porsche OE size that retails out at about $350/ea and has a 220 tread wear rating :(.
I think I'm going to end up going with a 275/35 in front and 285/35 in back with Nitto 555 tires. I got almost the exact same wheel as the car in the pic I linked above only mine are chrome :). Here are some pics of the wheels I ordered:
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7/12/2003
I'm finally smog legal! I had the turned down Borlas removed and the Dynomax Ultraflows installed with my Dynomax Tailpipes yesterday. I also had the shop add-on a pipe so that the smog tube can feed air to the cats on the VRS pipe. While the car was there I had a set of Maximum Motorsports full length sub frame connectors installed.
The exhaust sounds weird now. It is most definitely much louder now vs. the Borlas with dumps. These mufflers accentuate the X-Pipe as opposed to the Borlas which seemed to almost mask it. Right now at 2200 RPM I get a soft resonant tone that resembles the sound a Honduh with a fart-can muffler makes. A couple hundred RPM later the exhaust goes quiet again. At 4500 RPM The tone is back with a vengeance! It is at least 3 times louder and sounds wicked. Nothing Honduh about this noise! Again, the sound wanes off a couple hundred RPM later. It is my guestimate that the car would do it again around 6700 RPM assuming I could rev that high.
The sub frame connectors definitely stiffened up the ride but it is still lacking. I plan on upgrading the strut tower brace and possibly replacing the X-brace under the engine. My X-brace is tweaked from the previous owner having hit something so I may just remove it all together. I'm interested in a replacement only because I want all the chassis rigidity I can get!
5/27/2003
I haven't updated in like forever. The latest change to the car was removing the off-road Mac Pro-Chamber h-pipe and putting on the VRS Cat x-pipe. I was hoping to get my tailpipes put on connected up to my Borla mufflers but it just wouldn't work out. Rather than drive home without a cat-back I had the shop put the Borlas on with turndowns. The new game plan is to go with Dynomax Ultraflows that should match up quite nicely with my Dynomax tailpipes. It has to get done soon as I'm due for emissions in September.
I finally got the driver's side window fixed right. It used to roll up too far which made the window hit the a-pillar when the window was rolled all the way up and you tried to close the door. The window glass broke out and when I had it replaced the installer fixed the really bad alignment problem of the window and the tracks in the door. This is after having spent $500 to have the dealership fix the window. They offered to correct the window rolling up too far for an additional $500. I told 'em to EAD and have been living with it for the last year.
3/23/2003
I replaced the rear seatbelts today. The belts I got were used and were supposed to be off of a '95 Mustang GT Convertible but they were different from what was on my car. The retractors were different and the latches themselves were incompatible and a different shape than the belts that were on my car. I think the belts I got were from a '96 or newer car. It all bolted up, but rather than being able to replace the one bad belt I ended up having to replace both rear belts so that the latches would match. Now they don't match front to back but I'm probably the only person who would notice.
Now I just need to clean the interior. I vacuumed it out after having had the back seat out, but it needs more than that.
3/21/2003
The replacement wheels are here! As soon as Discount gets the special order tires in from Khumo, I'll have 'em on the car. I'm going to 275/35/18's all around this time.
Other stuff - I got a set of replacement seat belts for the car so that I can replace the one bad one. I paid $95 delivered for a complete used set. Ford wanted $150 for one new belt.
I'm also expecting my cat X-Pipe to get here one of these days from VRS. As soon as I get it I'm going to ditch the Mac cat-back and get to work getting my Borlas on the car. If they won't dummy up I'll hang some Magnaflows on there for the time being.
3/9/2003
This server went from a Dual Celeron 400Mhz on a BP6 to a 1 Ghz Athlon to a 400Mhz AMD K6-2 yesterday. I upgraded the RAID array and after the hardware was all buttoned up, the machine wouldn't power on at all. I decided to give the Athlon a shot but it overheated on short order (within an hour) and crashed. The old standby K6-2 that was doing duty as a Linux machine got the RAID array installed, a new system drive, and a bunch of memory added. It gets hot too but it keeps kicking. It seems fairly responsive as a web server so I think It may stay for a while - at least until I break down and get my 'real' server.
3/6/2003
Me and Nicole went to get her 3D/4D ultrasound done today and I took out a curb in the parking lot. This resulted in bending / tearing the rim lip on the LF wheel, slightly bending the RR rim, and taking a 1" round chunk of of each of the wheels' tires. $750ish mistake. That sucked.
2/14/2003
Yup, yet another MS IIS server hosted on the ex-@home network. I'll keep it patched - I promise.
I got the domain straightened out and if you're seeing this, that means that the DNS finally updated.
Now for the fun part... UPDATES! Since the site has been down, I haven't upated in like forever. This is a re-vamp of the site but I'll be importing some of the old site.
