Steve
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Making progress in small, easy to handle chunks of awesome
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Ok then, after a couple of attempts to move this back on I have finally come to the conclusion that keeping it and actually doing something meaningful with it might be the best move   Right, bought/swapped this late last year as a gentle jump into american car ownership and to be honest on the drive home I thought I had been stung big time  both me and Si (B8D) had bought a pair of absolute sh!tters but it has slowly grown on me... Here we are on the way home and Si was doing some attempts to make the Herald run properly  The car is a 1991 Ford Thunderbird MN12 fitted with the 3.8 V6 engine but with an added sting in its tail......  Factory supercharged Y0 which makes for 210 rampaging horses when healthy and was available with the AOD 3+o/d automatic gearbox OR the M5R2 5-speed manual gearbox.....this particular one came with a slightly dead auto which meant only two forward gears and a max cruise of 50-55mph  so a slow & steady trip home resulted. Once home and I had got over the initial shock I got on with some essential maintenance. The car was suffering from some intermittent cutting out that was a pain as it happened whenever it felt like it without any warning(resulted in some interesting road side stops  ) after some research it appeared that the crank sensor was the likely culprit so ordered one from Rock Auto over in americaland which arrived in very good time and got on with it Engine in mid strip  The offending item next to its replacement  Whilst the bay was in pieces it appeared that the radiator wasn't looking too fresh so sent that off to be re-cored as these tend to run warm so didn't want to cook the motor with a sub-standard condition cooling system. After that it gets a bit boring as the car ran fine and even with a borked gearbox continued to work and was used occasionally for the work run and just general pottering about, MOT time came and with the exception to a couple of small plates of welding and headlamp adjustment it more or less flew through  Made the short trip down to the Beach Party where a few people were intrigued by it (one even mistaking it for being FWD ) and I even took it over Bristol for the queens square meet where it got to park next to some slightly more exotic fair  During this time of use I kinda bought another one......  Cost me near as damn it the same as the red one but this did have a large difference....  All the parts I need to convert the red one to 5-speed the blue one was complete and running but I hated the colour, the interior was a bit of a smelly mess and it basically didn't do it for me so I broke the sucker up! I mean....with quality mods like this...  and the bonnet vent you could tell it had been used hard by the wrong types of people SO I'm now just waiting on some bits to come before I pile into changing all the pedal box over to the manual parts then it should be going to a mates place of work where we can swap the gearboxes over along with rear diff and shafts to then make it a factory-look manual version ;D and I can actually use the car properly! Steve  |
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Last Edit: Aug 3, 2013 21:06:26 GMT by Steve
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Steve
Posted a lot
Making progress in small, easy to handle chunks of awesome
Posts: 2,034
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Glad to see you've commited to keeping it, awesome car. Can't wait to see it manualised!
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Sierra - here we go again! He has an illness, it's not his fault.
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Feb 19, 2013 10:17:07 GMT
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Ok then, after a couple of attempts to move this back on I have finally come to the conclusion that keeping it and actually doing something meaningfull with it might be the best move ^^THIS^^ Glad to see you've commited to keeping it, awesome car. Can't wait to see it manualised! ....and ^^THIS^^ All the way.  |
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Feb 19, 2013 12:45:15 GMT
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Wow - that's a generation of Thunderbird I've never even heard about And please make a video of that seat belt thing - I guess it's one of those automated things? |
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qwerty
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 2,416
Club RR Member Number: 52
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Feb 19, 2013 14:34:00 GMT
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Looking forward to seeing this progress. How tuneable are the V6s? What are your plans?
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Steve
Posted a lot
Making progress in small, easy to handle chunks of awesome
Posts: 2,034
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Feb 19, 2013 17:18:42 GMT
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Thanks for the kind words chaps, it just seemed to make more sense to actually push forward with my plans rather than let the car go for low money......I'm broke with no job but that isnt going to stop me The MN12 series is a bit of a rarity in this country as they never released a RHD version so never intended for this market and the few you will find over here are personal imports. DieselWiesel - I shall get a vid up just for you soon ;D Qwerty - The 3.8 will go upto around the 400 horse mark before any major internal mods are needed(some crazy nutters in the US have got almost 800bhp out of them  ) the heads are very restrictive as standard and there isnt anything aftermarket available to replace them which sucks and the major issue with mine is the supercharger as mine is the early M90 which are rubbish so I'm weighing up if I should ditch it and go single turbo instead or port the M90 and see how far it can go. I'd like to pull some big numbers out of it but in the end its gonna be down to money  Other than the motor I'm going to be replacing all the suspension for the slightly newer gear off the blue one along with loosing a little ride height and slightly wider rubber on the original wheels I did buy some 5x108 to 5x114.3 pcd adaptors to put some sexy J-spec rims on but have just sold them to pay some bills  but may revisit that idea another time. Gonna also try and clean up the exterior of all badges, hunt for an early "SC" stamped front bumper and if I can blag some space on a container from the US I wouldnt mind getting a cowl-type bonnet as well |
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Steve
Posted a lot
Making progress in small, easy to handle chunks of awesome
Posts: 2,034
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Feb 19, 2013 17:37:43 GMT
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Managed to snag a couple of hours outside earlier so decided to get started on changing the pedals Started by removing the drivers seat (four bolts and four elec plugs) which also netted me £2.11 ;D  This is the guts of the seat, several motors and a pump for the bolsters.....did I mention these seats are SUPER comfy ;D  After 30-45mins I eventually got the brake pedal out and was hoping for a straight swap with the manual brake pedal out of the blue one but alas that aint gonna happen without some major reshaping of the mounting bracket  Only two of the five bolt holes actually match the auto bracket, I did start modifiying but even though the four that bolt it to the master cylinder are not that difficult the one that mounts vertically is in a totally different place and it needs that one to stop the bulkhead flexing when the pedal is pressed SO I will be modifying the auto pedal to suit as and when I know how far over the clutch pedal will come. After all that I had a crack at seeing how much of a chore the clutch pedal was going to be and it looks pretty easy so far I have got a tonne of wiring to relocate as they thought it would be a good idea to ram a load of old alarm curse word just where the pedal wants to go guess they didnt think anyone would need to use the space! More soon Steve |
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Feb 19, 2013 21:14:20 GMT
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I'm glad to see something happening on this, you're spot on about the seat comfort.
Although I sold it, it was never my car (long story about how friends in germany shouldn't have UK ebay accounts) but I always felt kinda sorry for it, I went through that large stack of paper a couple of times and it seemed to be a truely cared for car that just fell on hard times for the last couple of years which is where the history just goes dead. I really wanted to take it on myself but the sad truth is I have too many cars and it would have languished about and never got fixed.
I'm glad you got the crank sensor sorted. I hadn't a clue where to start and when we did try to diagagnose it it point blank refused to cut out, in fact it only cut out twice in about 200 miles of driving for me. I'm also truely sorry about the auto box, I really thought it was missing 1, not 2 ratios!
But now it's going M/T then I guess it's all turning out right!
BTW your Sierra went to a friend, also MOT'd relatively easily and is still pretty close to me, in fact so close it's due back on the drive any time soon for a new drive line coupling and gear box mount, lol.
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'55 Austin A30
'71 MGB GT
'72 Datsun 240 shed
'72 Mercedes 240D
'79 Firebird
'86 Austin Maestro Van
'91 Mercedes 250D
'91 BMW e34 535i Sport
'92 Mazda MX-5
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Steve
Posted a lot
Making progress in small, easy to handle chunks of awesome
Posts: 2,034
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Ordered some go-faster bits last night only a 5% overdrive 'charger pulley, some upgrade tensioner springs and some poly rear shock mount rubbers so I can get all the better suspension on from the other car Hoping my bits from Rock turn up before the weekend as I was hoping to start getting the manual box ready to go in for poss next week...... |
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YEAH BOI! Moar boost and stick shift ahoy!
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Sierra - here we go again! He has an illness, it's not his fault.
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Steve
Posted a lot
Making progress in small, easy to handle chunks of awesome
Posts: 2,034
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Feb 20, 2013 10:13:28 GMT
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YEAH BOI! Moar boost and stick shift ahoy! Yeah you know it ;D Will only be a small increase in boost to start off with but I also have a K&N panel filterfrom the other car to go in as well once I've cleaned and oiled it along with deleting the "air silencer" from underneath the air filter box so more of that lovely supercharger noise can be released. Whilst the box is getting changed I'm hoping to loose the cats and will try and get a before & after dyno session just to see what we have to play with |
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Steve
Posted a lot
Making progress in small, easy to handle chunks of awesome
Posts: 2,034
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Well that was a nice wait even though I ordered the go-faster bits just under a week later than the stuff from RA I still ended up with both packages here the same day i.e today bit of a letdown as Rock Auto are usually pretty quick but hey ho.......progress has resumed! We start of course with the least important part.....  5% overdrive pulley for the supercharger ;D not pictured is two uprated tensioner pulleys and set of poly bushes for the rear shocks I decided that perhaps some engine bay work might get me back into the swing of things so swapped the new pulley in along with the springs and a new 'charger belt I have had here since fitting the crank sensor(kinda forgot to fit it)  Had to take the thermostat housing off to get a puller on the pulley so whilst that was off I dug into my big bag of spares and found a lower temp 'stat to chuck in....should have made a new gasket for it there and then but stupid me decided to chance it only for the swine to leak so repeated the process again but with better results put my K&N panel filter in then reconnected all the rubbish under the dash so I could fire it up With that out of the was I got back to dealing with the lack of pedals inside, first off I had a little battle with the brake pedal carrier but got that little sucker in then offered up the auto brake pedal to see just how much difference there was  Brake pedal overlaps the clutch pedal quite a bit but actually seeing it in there it seem possible to make the auto pedal go again with a trim to the foot for a manual pedal rubber which I have now done and we now have 10mm clearance between the two....I know....that ain't enough so since the pedals are made of mild steel will be heating and bending the clutch pedal away from the brake then due to the foot being at a slight angle will trim and reshape that so the rubber looks straight all sounds so easy! Oh and here's a pic of the 2inch hole that needed to be drilled for the clutch master cyl.....what an ar$e of a job that was!  The parts from Rock consisted of a new clutch concentric slave cyl, pilot bearing for end of crank and a new rear diff gasket for the manual-spec item(previous owner liked silicone sealant just a little too much) I was dreading doing the slave cyl as sometime in the past a previous muppet(there does seem to have been quite alot of them!) had removed the little sleeve off the outside of the pipe fitting into the slave that is required to allow removal....I ended up cutting an aerosol can cap up for a piece of flexible thin plastic, slotted it down past the fitting and after a jiggle it came free  Then out with the old and in with the new  Now we're cooking! Just need to finish the pedal mods, chuck the seat back in then its ready for boxes to be changed as and when that's gonna happen I really don't know Will keep ya posted Steve |
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omega
Posted a lot
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good work
looks like a probe on steroids
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Steve
Posted a lot
Making progress in small, easy to handle chunks of awesome
Posts: 2,034
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good work looks like a probe on steroids But no Probe ever went this well Minor update time! Aint had much time on this recently due to the biting cold weather and the car living outside which doesnt exactly entice me to be working on it Having now started working in another garage I buttered up the boss and he is gonna let me finish off the conversion there instead of at home simply cos I don't like the idea of trying to pull out a bleedin' heavy autobox on my back with just a jack for help  so we shall be moving forward with this in a week or two's time hopefully tieing in with the manual-ing of B8D's Barracuda the same week ;D me.....excited.....much!! With that in mind I pulled the manual LSD I had from the donor T'Bird and cracked the case open to see how it looked in there.....  Looks clean and tidy in there the oil was a bit nasty though and pretty sure it wasnt the correct type either which would explain why it didnt feel quite right when we picked the car up....I have now cleaned it all out and have the correct oil winging its way to me along with some slick 50 cogbox treatment to aid the probably worn syncro's in the manual box(apparently the original fibre syncro's are not that robust) which should be here by early next week, just need to finish cleaning the diff housing then a coat of paint and ready to go in when the gearbox does More soon Steve |
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Last Edit: Apr 10, 2013 17:46:55 GMT by Steve
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Steve
Posted a lot
Making progress in small, easy to handle chunks of awesome
Posts: 2,034
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Apr 10, 2013 17:53:41 GMT
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FINALLY!!    That is one heavy old gearbox!! Me and Si got on this tues night and left having removed the lump shown along with dropping the rear diff down to aid prop removal before the box came out pulled the flexplate off and got the flywheel on along with the new spigot bearing we will be getting some more done tomorrow night hopefully finishing the underside stuff off just leaving me to sort the clutch pedal assembly properly then bleed clutch then test drive......i'm rocking back and forth as we speak in anticipation ;D then its onto suspension to sort the well shot original stuff and a slight drop as well More soon Steve |
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Apr 10, 2013 19:40:39 GMT
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We be breaking a 302 V8 HO one of these soon in Essex if you need any more bits?
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Steve
Posted a lot
Making progress in small, easy to handle chunks of awesome
Posts: 2,034
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We be breaking a 302 V8 HO one of these soon in Essex if you need any more bits? What year car chap? Might be interested in a few things...... |
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Steve
Posted a lot
Making progress in small, easy to handle chunks of awesome
Posts: 2,034
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Right then.....  Its in and working! kinda failed to take any meaningful pictures along the way which I appologise for but once we were under it we kinda just kept going until we were finished. Here's Simon carefully heating & bending the clutch pedal until it was moved over approx 1.5inch towards the kick panel  The original brake pedal was used in the end just with the footpad trimmed down to "manual" spec so I could use the correct pedal rubber, the clutch pedal is now a reasonable distance away from the brake but due to the way it was formed in the first place now means after bending its longer than the brake so sits a little lower than standard but thats easy to get used to So then, on the thursday night we succeeded in finishing up the gearbox install, got the clutch pedal finished and bolted back in then bled the hydraulics and bazzinga it worked! Drove it out of the workshop and promptly did a little burnout ;D and parked it up until Saturday when the exhaust went back on(minus the rear silencers ) and it was then decided to see how many horses were left in the engine   Not bad for 100k and only a couple of little mods considering that factory tune would bring in about 210bhp the years must have been kind on this motor......there will be more coming Just waiting on enough dough to chuck some fuel in and get some proper use out of it, the first test drive suggests its proper high geared so might even be more sensible on fuel than I first though.....if driven carefully More soon Steve |
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Steve
Posted a lot
Making progress in small, easy to handle chunks of awesome
Posts: 2,034
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Apr 14, 2013 13:30:23 GMT
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Managed to find 20mins to get some primer on the replacement top section of centre console  The original was the wrong shape to suit the manual gearstick so have used the one out of the donor but it was grey and would have looked wrong compared to the original black item so will be getting a few coats of satin black should hopefully have the interior back together during the week then need to relocate the radio/cd player to the lower section of dash currently populated by the old factory-fit add-on CD player thats no longer in use so I can fit a din-size gauge plate and get a proper boost gauge in along with a working oil temp gauge and either a clock(silly but feel lost without one) or a EGT gauge ready for the upcoming mods Steve |
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both me and Si (B8D) had bought a pair of absolute sh!tters but it has slowly grown on me...
so a slow & steady trip home resulted. Once home and I had got over the initial shock I got on with some essential maintenance.
) after some research it appeared that the crank sensor was the likely culprit so ordered one from Rock Auto over in americaland which arrived in very good time and got on with it
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) the heads are very restrictive as standard and there isnt anything aftermarket available to replace them which sucks 
Other than the motor I'm going to be replacing all the suspension for the slightly newer gear off the blue one along with loosing a little ride height and slightly wider rubber on the original wheels 
but may revisit that idea another time. Gonna also try and clean up the exterior of all badges, hunt for an early "SC" stamped front bumper and if I can blag some space on a container from the US I wouldnt mind getting a cowl-type bonnet as well 
so we shall be moving forward with this in a week or two's time hopefully tieing in with the manual-ing of B8D's Barracuda the same week ;D me.....excited.....much!!
