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So.. a quick look at the FAST rule book says this....

M0 (Open Modified) Rules
The Open Modified class (M0) is for exotic cars, and cars that exceed any of the above limits, but are otherwise street legal and on street tires. Cars that bump up from M1 also go to M0. For safety, doors, hood and a complete firewall are required for ALL Modified cars.

Tube frame and kit cars are allowed in Open Modified provided they have a minimum of two seats, are fully street legal, and meet all safety requirements.

and...this...

R1 – Race Tire
This is our top class. Any streetable car on race tires can compete here regardless of modifications as long as it meets safety requirements.

  • See Safety Rules for requirements related to open-top cars with race tires.

So the current class killers are Lotus 7 clones with LS engines....the question is can a full body mustang be competitive?.....for about half the price.

The gauntlet has been thrown..project Foxbody.
 
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So..the plan (the plan...such as it is..) is to find the cheapest way to be competitive..shooting for say..$4500 about half the price of the Lotus clones..without the engine.
The bigger picture is to have some fun at their expense and to provide a little self deprecating humor for everyone to enjoy.
So to find a cheapo beater,... and actually a pretty cherry 99 mustang turned up locally..with a title no less hmmm. I want to go pushrod motor so I'll need a 95 or down GT for parts.


There's nothing like that new car smell..$250 bucks

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and there's nothing quite like stripping down a free parts car by the light of burning trash to get in touch with your redneck side, the car on blocks gives it that certain white trash savoir faire...


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The freebie car turned out to be an awesome find, got the spindles I needed, an 8.8 diff with a limited slip, misc electrical stuff, MM steerign shaft and some type of camber caster plates...
 

Grant 302

basic and well known psychic
The freebie car turned out to be an awesome find, got the spindles I needed, an 8.8 diff with a limited slip, misc electrical stuff, MM steerign shaft and some type of camber caster plates...

You could have just raided my garage. ;) Still too much SN95 **** laying around.
 
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So the freebie car was a big success having scored an limited slip and a set of ventilated rear discs plus a bunch of misc stuff that I'll need. Back in the day, I scored a Torsen and a 4.5 gear.. I've been sitting on it for awhile, now it will finally be put to use.
I tore down the diff and purchased new axles in 31 spline ( the old ones were shot anyway), they came with bearing s and studs for $200 , Located the rear end cover with the bearing support $75, misc bearing and seals $50 plus some suspension parts from Speedway for fabbing up a panhard bar..$125
So I have $450 in the diff so far..

Setting up the used 4.50 gears..it's been awhile so it took forever
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Installing bearings with the correct size piece of exhaust pipe and maximum force adjustment tool
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Aviation Permatex..what would life be with out this stuff? frezze plugs, seals, awesome...
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Pressed the studs into the 31 spline axles...
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Installed the axles and...cover..
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Slap on the discs and the bead blasted parts and..adjust the bearing cap pre load...done
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OK, so..the beater has a T5 in it which checks out OK, so until I can put power to it, I won't know for sure. I had intended to do a transmission post at this point, so I will bring back one from the past. This is a T45 I did a few years ago for an autocross website. The T45 and the T5 world class are very close, the big difference is the T45 loads from the front and has an integral bellhousing, the T5 does not, so it's a bit easier to deal with. I would not bother with any T5 that is not a later model "world class" (T5WC) unit.
Essentially the T45 and T5 premise is similar, which is, you get a brass drift and beat the crap out of any parts that won't move.
In this particular case the T45 wouldn't shift very well, going through the linkage and whatnot didn't gain anything and I surmised that somebody put the wrong trans fluid in it. These trannys have fiber type synchros similar to what you would find in an automatic, and once they become saturated with the wrong oil, they really can't come back. I did change out the oil and the trans shifted better...but not great, which led to my assumption.So..let the carnage begin..

Ok so now that the clutch linkage actually works I test drove it and the trans was better, but not great, so this means I get to dig into the trans....oh..yay..
So this is the info source that I used, a great resource.

http://www.pomoforacing.com/tech/Prelim ... ebuild.pdf

I extricated the trans, the t45 has an attached bellhousing that make removal kind of a pain, also, in the category of "wanting to kick an engineer in the nuts" section, there are 3 bolts on the starter, the bottom ones are 11mm, the top one, which you can't see, and that you have to reach by the longest extension known to mankind, through the motormount is a 13mm...why not all 3 the same? BTSOM.

So the trans is on the bench unbolted the tailhousing and let it drain..

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OK the PDF recommends using a puller to remove the bearing. however I've found a brass drift and a BFH to work just as well....I actually have a puller but it would not fit..so out comes the weaponry.

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I have to knock the pin out of the shift fork, remove some "c" clips and this is what 5th and reverse looks like. Notice the maximum force adjustment tool lurking in the background....

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I tie wrapped all the sub assemblies together to keep them in order and now we're down to the case..the real painful part is done.

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OK so back to the dismemberment of the t45, I unbolted the bell housing/front cover and opened up the front of the trans. everything empties out of the front of the trans, I divided it all into misc sub assemblies and tie wrapped them together

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a little brass drift action and most of it comes apart..you have to be careful since the T45 uses a front bearing on the mainshaft that slides into the input shaft, it is caged where the T5 is not, so you will need to count the bearings in the T5 as you remove them. You will see me using a brass drift A LOT, this is because some of the parts are pressed on, and I either don't have the right adapter, or I just can't feed the whole unit into the press. Just be careful and don't miss.

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At this point, all the gears forward of the center of the main shaft are off, keeping that bearing protected is a priority, removing the rest is also a press condition. Find a piece of lead, or aluminum, lay it on the floor and use that as the medium. This also has the advantage of not scattering the parts all over the floor around the press.
and if you put a 1/8 lead plate on the floor and drop the mainshaft onto it, the rest of the gears will "unpress" right before your very eyes..

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remove the next retaining clip and repeat..

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This is the sheetmetal clip that retains the reverse lock out...not too swift IMO but functional....the red dots, denotes the forward orientation in the trans...I replaced it with an "E" clip

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Here's the crux of the problem the synchros use a fiber, similar to what you might see in an automatic trans, personally , I think it sucks, but most modern units use this, so it is not only worn, but quite possibly may have had the wrong fluid in it, the fluid that came out of the trans was very thick for ATF, it should be GM ATF.

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further visual inspections showed things were pretty jam up
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Time for the JB Welder to come out....
I attempted to re assemble the trans by feeding the gears into the box while it was on the bench, in the past this has worked well but not this time, it was a PITA, so I had this epiphany and set the case on 2 wooden stools and basically dropped the guts into it..much better results....One thing I always do when I take apart a trans is to keep all of the snap rings in one spot, as I re assemble the trans I use them up, when I' done, there should be none left. This may sound stupid, but there are grooves all over the mainshaft and counter shafts, some take snap rings, other don't, it's just another way to keep track of the parts.

The front cover bearings needed some attention, both have shims behind them, and they had almost fallen out of the case. IMO this trans is not that great, the old school Muncies and ST10s that I'm used to have completely supported counter shafts, this is only supported on the ends. I also don't know how you would align bore the case is order to keep the bearing bores in line since they bolt together. In this case the bearings hadn't spun, but were not "tight" in their bores either, so I dinged up the bearing seats with a punch, added a little JB weld re-installed the bearing shells and it is at least better than it was.

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Visually inspecting all the guts, and cleaning, then pre lubing them..

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OK time for reassembly..I replaced all of the energizer springs and dogs, the bearings were in exceptional shape.

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every thing feeds into from the front..you may have to place the trans in a specific gear to get it to clear the cluster shaft, then place it back to neutral to install the shift rails..they also go in at this point.

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install the input shaft, and silicone up the front cover..

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if you choose to ditch the bellhousing/front cover assembly, this piece is made to do that.

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What it should look like..

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At this point, you can manipulate the shift rails and check operation of the 4 forward gears to see if you messed up..

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I then re-installed the tailhousing and temporarily put the shifter in place to check it...yep 5 forward and 1 reverse..that's not a guarantee the trans will work, but it's a good sign.

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A few notes:
The trans uses 3-1/4 quarts of Dexron ATF.
The T45 supports the cluster at both ends..not that great, I'm used to old school Muncies and Super T10s that fully support the cluster, it's much stronger.
Choosing between a T45 and a world class T5, I think I'd take the T5, first off the bellhousing stays with the car on the T5, secondly, the T5 has a top plate where you can actually look at the internals of the trans w/o taking it all apart, lastly, I'm not impressed with the stamped metal internal shifting mechanism.
You need to run an aftermarket shifter with the T45 (and T5), the stock one will allow "overshifting" of the trans and can cause damage, the aftermarket shifters have stop bolts on them, you can buy the ultra cheapo ones on e-bay for 70 bucks..no excuse not to run one.
If you at least a little detail oriented, you can pull this off, the hardest part was getting the trans out of and back in the car.
There is so much info on the internet that I would not hesitate to dig into a manual trans. The only thing that bothered me about this whole deal was that forward bearing that was loose in the bellhousing..but how do you fix it? replace the entire bellhousing?, then how do you align it? bore out the bearing and install a larger race? There really was no reasonable fix other than going all in. Back in the Muncie and ST10 days we'd bore out the case, heated it up and install a hardened aluminum ring, then line bored the case..that's not possible with this trans. As it turns out, the fix worked, the tranny has over 20k miles on it today.
 
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OK. so while waiting for parts, I started disassembly of the car, according to the dragster guys 100 pounds is worth .10 of a second, they of course are accelerating from a dead stop, but the point is well taken..weight is free..se let the chopping begin..

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While the sawz all cools down I pulled out a set of rear springs for a 98 mustang GT..there were 2 schools of thought when I was growing up, Dick Guldstrand, who always wanted all the parts to work together in total harmony..and Herb Adams, Adams was kind of..screw this, run the lightest springs possible to follow the track, then tune it with shocks and sway bars..I've always been a fan of the Adams approach..
In any case, a set of cut down springs, beveled for the perches.

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So here's the crux of the issue with foxbody mustangs..the lower control arms are relatively parallel, however, the uppers are used not only to locate the diff front and rear, but side to side as well. Whenever you ask something to do two things, it never bodes well, in this case, especially once the car is lowered from the factory ride height, you will have 2 competing arcs..fighting each other, trying to keep the diff centered, This is why fox body cars go into snap oversteer on corner exit. Those opposing arcs are desperately trying to find center. If you make the mistake of adding a panhard bar to this cluster, you now have a 3rd conflicting arc, working against the 2 conflicting arcs that already exists, At this point you might as well weld the diff up solid. It is the opposite of having a "free" suspension, it is bound up in almost any direction.
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We do however..have the answer to this..the redneck 3 link...
Locate a 1/2 x 1/2 Heim end, now this particular one is from a hardware store DO NOT use a Heim like this one, the real deal Aurora rod end is coming, I'm just using this to dummy up the install for now.

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Once you mock everything up, I cut a spare upper arm, found some metal stock, drilled a hole in it, using grade 8 bolts..welded it all up..on the end of the discarded upper (trailing arm) control arm..

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the somewhat finished product..

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