Hi everyone,
I'm rather new here, but I thought I'd start up a build thread. I've had my car since around '95 (it's my first car). It survived going away to college (I left it home), getting a job and first house, getting married, having a kid, and it's still with me. I've been doing on and off track events with it since '97 and it's progressed on the hardware side along the way.
I'm going to dig back into it for what's turing out to be another major step forward over the winter as it gets a new 331 stroker, some new rear quarter panel and some other rear repairs which is all leading up to finally getting one of the first production Street or Track 3-link rear suspensions installed before spring.
I wrote a bit of an introductory post so I used that as a baseline for an updated Blog post (www.kolkprepared.com). If you read the intro post here, there is some more detail in the blog post, so if you're interested check that out too.
Here's the blog post that I just put up today:
http://www.kolkprepared.com/2012/12/sum ... k-and.html
The car is currently on the lift and I'm starting in on the rear body work. As I was stripping out the rear suspension to be sold in preparation for the Street or Track 3-link I decided that I should take the opportunity to finally fix some body work that I had skipped over when I was a lot younger.
My car was used during the chassis tuning for the 'Race' configuration of the Street or Track front Bilstein coil-over system. As such it has (or as of Sunday...had) a mostly Maier Racing rear setup with 200 lb/in 'Race' rear leaf springs, the Maier racing panhard bar and then the rear Bilstein stock-style shocks from Street or Track. All of these parts are headed to another Detroit area Mustanger so they're going to a good home.
So my order of operations this winter is
1 - Rear body work (new 1/4's, repairing some trunk floor issues) Hopefully Christmas break and into January
2 - 3 Link install Timing is a little TBD and I don't want to step on Shaun's toes there.
3 - 331 build up and install I'm hearing approx mid February for the short block kit, so we'll see when things arrive.
The 331 is going to be coming from FordStrokers.com. I am really impressed by their approach to the block machining and the balancing. The specs are equal or better to what I was finding locally. The difference is that locally I would have to use multiple suppliers to get the same product as well as find my own roller block core so I decided to get it all from one place.
While talking to them recently there was quite a lead time difference between getting the short block kit and having them assemble it, so I decided to get it in kit form. They quoted me approx Feb for the kit form and April for an assembled short block. I decided to take a two-week hit and have them double check the bearing clearances prior to shipping. If not you can get one or two bearings you need and adjust as your measurements guide you.
Also, on my blog I hope to just back in time to when I got the car as I've been collecting as many old photos as I can find from my parents. That's the pre-digital age, so there's not as much as you'd expect now. I'm going to group things in years. I'll start out with the purchase, what we did to the car during High School. I did some minor touch up and paint repair during college on Christmas break once and then I'll dig in to what I did during my early years after joining the work force.
I had wanted to start my blog off with Day 1, 1995 and then get up to today followed with new updates, but that just hasn't happened since I started the blog last February. Having a small child just didn't allow that and now I'm starting on new projects so I'll just have to jump around. I'll try and be clear about dates so it's not too confusing.
Anyway, I hope a few people enjoy seeing the transformation of what happened over the last 17 years and where the project is heading.
In summary, in this thread you can follow along as this car:
Turns into this car (painted in that car-port in Seattle):
And hits the track in Kent, WA:
Goes in for surgery:
To go back to the track stronger:
Gets shipped to Michigan
To hit the track here and realize that there's a lot of room for improvement:
To then raise the performance bar:
And then, going forward to raise the bar again and add a couple hundred horsepower!
Hopefully this summer we'll be caught on to date and we'll be able to work through tuning the new engine and hit the track so see if we really did drop lap times significantly at our typical three Michigan tracks (Gingerman, Grattan, Waterford Hills).
I'm rather new here, but I thought I'd start up a build thread. I've had my car since around '95 (it's my first car). It survived going away to college (I left it home), getting a job and first house, getting married, having a kid, and it's still with me. I've been doing on and off track events with it since '97 and it's progressed on the hardware side along the way.
I'm going to dig back into it for what's turing out to be another major step forward over the winter as it gets a new 331 stroker, some new rear quarter panel and some other rear repairs which is all leading up to finally getting one of the first production Street or Track 3-link rear suspensions installed before spring.
I wrote a bit of an introductory post so I used that as a baseline for an updated Blog post (www.kolkprepared.com). If you read the intro post here, there is some more detail in the blog post, so if you're interested check that out too.
Here's the blog post that I just put up today:
http://www.kolkprepared.com/2012/12/sum ... k-and.html
The car is currently on the lift and I'm starting in on the rear body work. As I was stripping out the rear suspension to be sold in preparation for the Street or Track 3-link I decided that I should take the opportunity to finally fix some body work that I had skipped over when I was a lot younger.
My car was used during the chassis tuning for the 'Race' configuration of the Street or Track front Bilstein coil-over system. As such it has (or as of Sunday...had) a mostly Maier Racing rear setup with 200 lb/in 'Race' rear leaf springs, the Maier racing panhard bar and then the rear Bilstein stock-style shocks from Street or Track. All of these parts are headed to another Detroit area Mustanger so they're going to a good home.
So my order of operations this winter is
1 - Rear body work (new 1/4's, repairing some trunk floor issues) Hopefully Christmas break and into January
2 - 3 Link install Timing is a little TBD and I don't want to step on Shaun's toes there.
3 - 331 build up and install I'm hearing approx mid February for the short block kit, so we'll see when things arrive.
The 331 is going to be coming from FordStrokers.com. I am really impressed by their approach to the block machining and the balancing. The specs are equal or better to what I was finding locally. The difference is that locally I would have to use multiple suppliers to get the same product as well as find my own roller block core so I decided to get it all from one place.
While talking to them recently there was quite a lead time difference between getting the short block kit and having them assemble it, so I decided to get it in kit form. They quoted me approx Feb for the kit form and April for an assembled short block. I decided to take a two-week hit and have them double check the bearing clearances prior to shipping. If not you can get one or two bearings you need and adjust as your measurements guide you.
Also, on my blog I hope to just back in time to when I got the car as I've been collecting as many old photos as I can find from my parents. That's the pre-digital age, so there's not as much as you'd expect now. I'm going to group things in years. I'll start out with the purchase, what we did to the car during High School. I did some minor touch up and paint repair during college on Christmas break once and then I'll dig in to what I did during my early years after joining the work force.
I had wanted to start my blog off with Day 1, 1995 and then get up to today followed with new updates, but that just hasn't happened since I started the blog last February. Having a small child just didn't allow that and now I'm starting on new projects so I'll just have to jump around. I'll try and be clear about dates so it's not too confusing.
Anyway, I hope a few people enjoy seeing the transformation of what happened over the last 17 years and where the project is heading.
In summary, in this thread you can follow along as this car:
Turns into this car (painted in that car-port in Seattle):
And hits the track in Kent, WA:
Goes in for surgery:
To go back to the track stronger:
Gets shipped to Michigan
To hit the track here and realize that there's a lot of room for improvement:
To then raise the performance bar:
And then, going forward to raise the bar again and add a couple hundred horsepower!
Hopefully this summer we'll be caught on to date and we'll be able to work through tuning the new engine and hit the track so see if we really did drop lap times significantly at our typical three Michigan tracks (Gingerman, Grattan, Waterford Hills).
Last edited by a moderator:
