The site, and what I will be doing!
(My 1998 Cobra) (My 1992 Mustang)
I am a mustang enthusiast, and have been working on cars for about 5 years now in my spare time. In this site I will be going over my previous projects, showing you what to do, along with updating you guys on my current projects.
Like many people, my love for fast cars (especially muscle cars) started when I was very young. As long as I could remember my dad was always taking me to cruise nights all over the state of
It did not take long for me to start liking the ford mustang over the Chevy, and
As the years progressed I became infatuated with performance cars, and racing. During the summer I attended as many car events as possible from car shows, to street racing events I was there. (I do not condone street racing, as this is a highly illegal and dangerous activity). There were also many races at the track I attended with friends and family that were legal sanctioned events.
My experience with cars started with barely knowing how to do any oil change, one of the simplest maintenance jobs on an automobile. To date I have worked on multiple car from my 1992 Mustang, 1998 Cobra, 1999 9-5 Saab, 2002 Z28 Camaro, 1998 Pontiac Trans-Am. Pulling engines, replacing transmissions, installing superchargers, turbochargers, nitrous kits, cam swaps, wiring gauges and other electronically equipment, suspension upgrades, performance ignition systems, painting and body work, clutch swaps, and much more.
The main car I have experience on, is my 1992 Mustang which I have owned for about 5 years now. This particular car has a lot of sentimental value to me as it was the first car I ever bought. When first purchased the car was used as my daily transportation to and from school, work, and friends houses. During the winter months things got really interesting, and I learned quickly the limitations of a rear wheel drive cars in winter conditions.
When I left for college I had saved up enough money for a daily driver to replace the duty of the mustang (in the form of a 9-5 Saab with 160,xxx miles on it). This freed up my mustang to become a dedicated project car in my free time. Now I was able to work on the car and not worry about getting rides while the car was down. This gave me the opportunity to jump into very complex projects (for beginner).
The project
Thanks to my dad, I was able to have one of the garage bays for my mustang projects, were the car has sat for two or more months at a time without moving. Over the years I have performed many upgrades to the car, from a manual transmission swap, rear end upgrades, cam swap, full exhaust, supercharger install, and much more. This last summer after getting the supercharger installed and tuned the engine started experiencing problems, and was not running at its full potential. After taking the car to the track and running a disappointing 14.2 at 100.2mph I new something was wrong. I took the engine apart, and located a lean condition on a couple of cylinders. What this means is that these particular cylinders were not receiving enough fuel, and the engine was burning up the cylinders, these pistons had a white coating to them. Another couple cylinders were experiencing a rich condition were they where receiving too much fuel. These pistons were black.The car is currently undergoing a full restoration, being done by myself and my dad. The mustang is currently just a shell, with every nut and bolt taken off. We are repairing the body, were there used to be rust, and will be filling in the unused wholes in the engine bay to give the car a very nice show quality look. After the car is painted, I am performing an engine swap were I will be using a Cobra engine from the new era Cobra mustangs to replace the old pushrod engine.
After determining that the engine was done in, I decided to embark on a complicated, but what will be a very rewarding transformation. Not only will this swap increase the power of the car, but it will also help with the value, (as long as I pay attention to the details of the swap). To perform such a swap, I will need to procure the engine, transmission, wiring harness, computer (or ECU), steering column, and cluster from a wrecked cobra. The advantages of going with a Cobra engine over the older pushrod engine, is that the cobra has a DOHC 4v engine. What this means is that there are Dual Over Head Cams, and four valves for each cylinder; compared to the single cam in the pushrod with only two valves per cylinder. Comparing stock engine to stock engine the 1998 cobra engine produces 305hp to the crank, while the 1992 mustang produces only 220hp to the crank. While with more horse power, the cobra engine comes in at only 281 cubic inches, while the Mustangs engine is 302 cubic inches. This shows that the modular, or DOHC engines are more efficient then the older pushrod engines. The modular engines produce more power per cubic inch then the pushrod engine. Along with this, the modular engines, due to their four valves per cylinder love boost. Boost is created from a supercharger or turbocharger system and greatly increase the horsepower, anywhere from 100-400+. As found in the magazine Muscle Mustangs & Fast Fords “a 93 Cobra is rated at 230 hp from the factory. It makes 370 hp at 10psi of boost. A 96 Two-Valve GT engine is rated at 215 hp from Ford. Adding the same 10 psi of boost brings output to 378 hp. The number seems insignificant, but consider that number is an increase across the board.”
This is comparing a single over head cam engine to a pushrod engine, when you go to the dual over head engine, the gains increase even more. Not only that but the new engine made 215 stock compared to the 230, and still ended up beating the pushrod engine when the same boost was applied. This is why I have decided to go with the newer technology offered by Ford’s engines. I get to keep the older look of the fox mustang and same insurance prices, while increasing performance and reliability with the newer edge engine.
