The Fox Body Mustang gets Restoration parts
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00:00 This time on Car Craft Video, we're back with part 3 of our Fox Body vs 3rd Gen Camaro build.
00:08 After installing the new engine, transmission, and suspension and brakes, our Mustang is
00:12 in the final stages of the build before we send it off to the paint shop.
00:16 Now we need to start focusing on our 3rd Gen Camaro project.
00:20 We have a lot to do and not a lot of time to get it done.
00:35 So as you can see, we're back, but this is not the Mustang.
00:38 The Mustang has moved 18 feet in that direction.
00:41 We have accidentally test fired it when we were testing the starter.
00:45 It runs.
00:46 It made us very aware of that fact.
00:48 Since then, we've been working on adding fluids to it, doing the final touches, doing the
00:54 dash, wiring everything that needed to be wired internally, AC, and stuff like that.
00:59 So yesterday, we brought the Camaro in.
01:03 It got back from paint.
01:04 It's been sitting on the trailer in my field outback for a little while.
01:07 So excuse it for being a little dusty, but it's been in here for about 12 hours.
01:13 In that time, these gentlemen over here have taken out the engine, transmission, front
01:17 K-member, rear end, all the suspension, the seats from the interior.
01:20 I think all we have left to do is remove the carpet from when we weld in the crossmember
01:25 for the rear torque arm.
01:27 We're getting started on all of our speed tech stuff.
01:29 That took a little bit to get ready to really start measuring and cutting so we can weld
01:35 everything in.
01:36 It's a pretty intense kit.
01:37 It is turning this Camaro into an absolute race car.
01:41 Now if you read the directions, they tell you to put it on jack stands and get everything
01:45 level.
01:46 That's okay, but in our current situation, sometimes we need to pull cars in at night
01:50 and we're in a little bit of a rainy season right now.
01:53 So we've set it on our bottom lock.
01:56 We've done all of our measurements from the six datum points that they've provided for
01:59 us to measure to and the differences in those across the car.
02:04 We've leveled the car at the bottom lock, which means no matter what we do, when we
02:08 come back down to bottom lock, we can check our datum points, make sure we're still square,
02:12 and move on with our project the next day.
02:15 So we're going to get started on this.
02:17 I think everybody's excited, especially Noah, to cut the front end of this thing out.
02:38 Very nice.
02:39 Very, very similar.
02:40 Like, laser cut.
02:41 Come on, dude.
02:42 All right, so what we have here is we're running the Speedtech performance suspension and they
02:53 make a nine inch housing that you can get with their kit, but we like our quick performance
02:59 stuff.
03:00 They've always been good to us.
03:01 Great guys over there.
03:03 So we talked to Cameron over at Speedtech and he has sent us the brackets that they
03:08 use.
03:09 We don't have a jig, but we have some measurements that they sent me.
03:12 There are a few more brackets we have to put on here for our torque arm.
03:15 These are the ones they sent us.
03:17 The beauty of a torque arm system, kind of like they're doing here, is you have two lower
03:22 control arms and then you have one rod that goes all the way forward and grabs a cross
03:26 member.
03:27 And what that does is it gives it a center pivot point to where you have the minimal
03:32 amount of bind that you can have in a suspension.
03:34 And our coilovers and our springs are what are damping and holding up the car.
03:39 We've got a triangulated four link, which has a lot of bind.
03:42 As you start to move the four link around, it starts to bind up.
03:45 When you're building something for going racing, the less bind you have, the more predictable
03:50 all of your shock and spring adjustments truly are.
03:54 So this is a beautiful kit.
03:56 And as you've seen with what's going on with the car and the parts that we have in a pile
04:00 over here, this is going to be a true race car suspension right here.
04:04 [Music]
04:21 So it's starting to pour outside and we live on clay.
04:25 So we're about to go get in the four bys and get out in that mud for a minute because it
04:29 doesn't happen that often around here.
04:31 So when we come back, we'll probably be full of mud right around here.
04:35 If we don't wreck the wife's car or the other Jeep we rolled last time or the Scout, we'll
04:41 see what happens.
04:42 [Laughter]
04:44 [Music]
05:13 [Music]
05:19 All right, we're back here on the Fox body.
05:22 We've done a few things since you all have seen it last.
05:25 We've got our subframe connectors in, front sway bar.
05:28 Realize we can't use the rear sway bar that we have.
05:30 We'll put our minds together, figure that out a little bit.
05:33 We've got our wheels and tires here.
05:34 We're going to try to mount those today.
05:36 We've got our Dakota Digital Dash.
05:37 We're going to try to put that in and wire it in today.
05:39 At least get it in the hole, get our wires drawn out, start making a harness for it.
05:43 We're going to get back in here.
05:45 Gabe's got a lot to do.
05:47 He's going to be working on the rear windows.
05:49 He's swapping them out for the earlier 86 style, which I do like the looks of.
05:54 Gabe loves the looks of.
05:55 I love it.
05:56 I'm into it.
05:57 Anything we can do to get this thing running and driving so we can get into tuning it.
06:00 All right, we finally got our BBS wheels in the mail.
06:16 And also we got these Nexen Enfera SU1 tires.
06:19 These are like a summer tire.
06:21 They have three main grooves.
06:23 They do pretty well in wet conditions.
06:25 That's about as much as we experience here in California where Gabe is from.
06:30 It's very much an ultra high performance street tire, which will work well for us on the track
06:34 for what we're doing.
06:35 But it'll also work really well when we're going on road trips or for Gabe as he's driving
06:40 to work in inclement weather, which here is just a little bit of a sprinkle.
06:43 But this should be a very, very good high performance tire.
06:46 These are a 275/30 ZR17.
06:50 It's got a 300 tire wear on it.
06:52 We got them wrapped on these gold BBS wheels right here.
06:56 They made these in about 11 days and sent them to us.
06:58 But they have something that's really kind of neat.
07:00 We're running square tire all the way around the car.
07:03 So we're running 275s all four corners.
07:06 But we didn't want to buy two different offset wheels because we want to be able to swap
07:11 them front to back.
07:12 Well, the car doesn't always let you depict that you run the exact offset unless you're
07:17 going to change your axle width.
07:19 So what BBS has done is they've come out and they made this kind of a spacer.
07:24 What it takes is these lug bolts right here.
07:27 It's got a little spacer conical for the wheel.
07:30 And this bolts on.
07:31 It's got different insertable hub-centric spacers that can go in there.
07:36 So we have a little bit of a different one from our rear axle to our front hub up here.
07:41 But this allows it to be hub-centric to the car so we know it's spinning straight.
07:45 And then you bolt down your lug nuts to here.
07:48 The studs are always a little bit long.
07:50 But if you look at the backside of this wheel, it's recessed right here so that the studs
07:55 can go into it.
07:57 And this is another hub-centric spacer for the wheel to this actual spacer that we're
08:02 going to put on, which is really kind of cool.
08:05 We lucked out and we can run the same backspace front and rear.
08:08 Same with wheel.
08:09 We can run everything, which was really cool to be able to take these tires, especially
08:13 for Gabe, you know, say you start wearing out the rears because, you know, you're showing
08:16 off leaving work, laying those 11s down on the ground.
08:19 You can take them.
08:20 You can swap them with the front back and forth.
08:22 We're not worried about buying two tires or just flipping them side to side.
08:25 So this is going to work out really good.
08:27 Can't wait to see how these tires perform.
08:29 They feel sticky to the hand.
08:48 So here's the original center console plate.
08:51 Mine actually works.
08:53 Are you selling this for $500 on eBay?
08:55 A thousand is my asking price.
08:57 So usually these break and you have to use a little repair kit to get them working again.
09:01 But now we have these sweet new replacement center console plates.
09:07 We've got to take some parts off that come with cup holders so you don't have to pin.
09:12 The old move was to pin your coffee right here between the seat and the e-brake when
09:19 you're on your drive.
09:21 No cup holders.
09:22 Times have changed since the 80s.
09:24 Now you can slap one of these in.
09:25 I like this actually.
09:26 Two drink holders.
09:27 These are available with or without the leather boot.
09:29 You can swap over your door mirror controls.
09:32 And we have ones with USB charging and a cigarette lighter port.
09:37 So they come like that?
09:38 Yep.
09:39 You don't even have to do that?
09:40 Nope.
09:41 So you go from that to that.
09:42 You'd be low riding in no time.
09:44 We need to get you one of them 11 inch steering wheels.
09:47 One of these ones on the chains?
09:48 We carry them.
09:49 We got those.
09:50 You do?
09:51 Yes we do.
09:52 I like them.
09:53 Oh you got the low rider crowd.
09:54 Yep.
09:55 Yes we do.
09:56 So what we got going on here is we're trying to just get it to where we can tack it, bring
10:06 it down, make our measurements, make sure the nose didn't fall.
10:10 Kind of doing this not the right way.
10:11 We don't have a frame table here.
10:13 But this kit's kind of designed to be done on jack stands in your driveway.
10:18 But it is a little bit of an undertaking but we're getting there.
10:21 We had to slice out the body all the way back.
10:24 It's kind of making a frame rail out of this back to the rear seat mount.
10:28 We cut out the channel of the rear seat mount and then we put a cross member there.
10:32 That cross member holds our torque arm that runs to the back and holds the rear end in
10:37 place which is our pivot for the whole rear suspension.
10:40 The pivot is sitting right here.
10:44 And then we have our torque arm running back.
10:46 And the brace that comes across inside the body in that rear seat mount is what these
10:51 tubes or jigged up frame rails we'll call them, run all the way forward off of.
10:59 And then that comes up here, locates the back of this K-member that we're going to weld
11:03 in.
11:04 We got to make sure that we're 1.6 degrees nose down on this actual K-member.
11:09 We got to make sure we're centered left to right, that we're sitting level.
11:13 We got to make sure we're square inside the car.
11:15 So we've dropped plumb lobs a few times.
11:17 We're going to probably drop them a few more times.
11:19 We're going to lay them on the ground.
11:21 We're going to snap chalk lines.
11:22 We're going to make some measurements.
11:23 We're going to measure in and out and make sure that this thing is centered left and
11:27 right inside the car.
11:29 And then we'll tack it in.
11:30 But it's getting there.
11:33 All right, it's officially been de-badged as a 5.0.
11:42 And while we don't have 7.3 badges yet, what we do have are these beautiful Ford Performance
11:50 badges that will take its place after it comes back from paint.
11:56 So that should look pretty sharp.
11:57 Kind of actually fills up that space nicely.
12:00 Now the funny thing is, '79 to '93, you can get a 2.3 or a 5.0.
12:06 There are some V6 options in there, but the 2.3 and the 5.0 were the most common engines
12:10 available.
12:11 And if you combine those two displacements, you get 7.3, and that's now what's resting
12:16 in the car.
12:17 I think it looks great.
12:18 I think it's going to look really sharp, have a nice flat cargo area.
12:31 All right, so now I have the window frame secured in with these clips.
12:37 Securing it from the backside.
12:40 Now all I have to do is lay up the glass.
12:42 Now I'm not putting sealer on it at the moment.
12:45 This is also just kind of like a final mock-up.
12:47 We might actually send it to paint like this, just so that it's closed off.
12:52 And that's one less thing they have to mask.
12:55 If somebody wanted to convert to this style of window, most of the holes are already there.
13:01 All that was really required was a little trimming around this opening.
13:04 There were some mounting ears that had to be removed.
13:06 And that's it.
13:07 We had to drill a couple of holes for the sail panels.
13:10 Five out of seven holes were already drilled, so only two had to be drilled.
13:14 And that kind of gives you a visual of what that's going to look like when it's all said
13:18 and done.
13:19 I can even close the door, give an even more completed look to it.
13:35 Stay tuned for our final episode on our Fox Body and 3rd Gen Camaro series.
13:39 We'll be finishing up the Camaro and putting a fresh coat of paint on our Fox Body Mustang.
13:44 I think it's going to look good when it's all done because it's not going to be everything
13:47 jet black.
13:48 We're going to have like charcoal, some gray, we got some contrast stitching and some stripes
13:52 in the seats.
13:53 It's going to look really sharp.
13:54 I do like the black as much as I was against it in the beginning.
13:57 I like a lot of contrast and I think against the one way on the outside.
13:59 I just really like that stock Fox Body plaid.
14:02 You give me a red on a red car with plaid?
14:05 No.
14:06 Nobody would like that red on a red car.
14:08 Maybe I'm the one that's color, what did you call it?
14:10 Deficient.
14:11 Color deficient.
14:12 Not color blind.
14:13 That looks good.
14:13 That looks good.
14:17 Thanks.
14:18 Thanks.
14:18 Thanks.