Fired her up on Saturday after replace a bad Wally 255. She started immediately. The wife took the video, so excuse the rotation.

First start-up

I decided after this video to attach the brake booster line, so not the card settles to a 2k idle. Just need to let her run up t temp to bleed the cooling system. Then fill the drivetrain with fluids.

Got her to idle as she should link

I still need to look into the throttle-body, it is sticky and causing a 1500 idle at times. But, I juiced up the drivetrain and took her for a drive around the block. She is ready for a trip to the Ford stealership where two of my sons work to get her new tires mounted and get her aligned for the shootout. Then install the exhaust and enjoy it!! Here she is parked nose-in in the driveway for the first time, and parked under her own power for the first time since 2010ish.

Well, Gretchen made it to the Shootout this year!! In less than a year she went from an empty shell full of garbage to a running and driving car. Only had a few hiccups in the 560 mile round trip from Indianapolis:

1. Front left valve stem randomly split when we hit Upper Sandusky, so I installed thae spare and soldiered on.
2. The wheel shop across from the Pizza joint in Wakeman fixed the tire for $12.
3. Rear had a random clicking that I could not identify.
4. The random clicking identified itself on the drive home. Just as we hit Fort Wayne, I lost brakes midway while stopping. Pulled over and found the clicking was the brake line bouncing on the inside of the rim. So, we Vise-Gripped the rubber line shut, zip-tied the vise-grips closed and zip-tied them to the metal brake lines and drove the final 90 miles to home.
5. The alternator was trying to dies the entire trip, but it managed to make it all the way home, even through the torrential downpour we hit around Muncie.

I ordered some new stainless brake lines yesterday, installed the new alternator yesterday and tightened the exhaust to quiet a leak. She will be ready for MOD by the end of the week.

And some argue these cars are not dsm's /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif.

All joking aside, glad you were able to limp her home and take care of the problems. So glad you saved this car man, many out there in better shape than yours was when you got it wasting away. It amazes me how far the car has come in such a short time. Great job!

Thank you. I just could not let it die. Especially since it is Rust Free (ok, except for the surface rust on the rear AGX's, hence the broken bolt and dead brake line) I should have done my due diligence at the SO and pulled the rims to check the rear clicking. I could have saved myself from having to spend $115 for a complete set of stainless lines when I only needed rears. But, that is how I learn.

She will be a derelict for a while. I am not concerned too much with body work yet. It has hail damage on the hood, roof and trunk, plus a few decent dings in the crease areas. I will slowly bring the body back to straight and get her a 10-foot paint job. She will be driven a lot, so she will not be a trophy winner.

After removing the engine harness, replacing the C-61 connector and replacing the Sensor ground and ECTS wires, she finally fires up right away and settles down to a nice 900/RPM idle I set with link. The new EVO IX wheels roll real nice. Looking forward to buttoning up the little things and installing the AC so the mechanicals can all done before concentrating on paint.

Harness is still flaky. I have removed it twice more and tested all connections. Still causes the MPI relay to flicker over bumps, killing the car and resetting the DSMLink to back to firmware (I need to update the firmware to a better tune than stock). So, bought a new harness off Pot. Hoping for good results.

Also painted the bumper Belize Green using the paint I got from automotivetouchup.com. looks much better.

Swapped out the current harness for the harness I purchased from Pot. Did it in 45 minutes from start to finish, including the removal/replacement of all panels and glovebox. Impressed myself (although this also indicates I have R/R'd the harness too many times recently to get very efficient at it).

Everything works as it should now (although I get Intermittent TPS errors, I got these before, so I guess the TPS is bad) and I can reliably drive it and give her some WOT tuning now, as she is running stock rich when getting on it. The new harness is unmolested (except for some twisted and taped connections for the O2 sensor wiring that I corrected) so I will take the flaky harness and make it the new/future tucked harness, slowly replacing all the wiring I can with new wiring and shortening everything up to make it nice.

I have had it with what I thought was a stock turbo exhaust (with a 3 " downpipe). Did some measuring and found it was actually a stock NA exhaust. Ordered some 3" pipe, an o2 bung and a v-band set to get my spare Apexi downpipe connected. Time for some welding...

On the dining room table? Damn! haha

Got my new "stocker" flywheel and my Competition Clutch Stage 3 - Street/Strip Series 2600 Clutch Kit. in the mail on Friday. Looking forward to better than 15psi in the ol' girl.

Picked up a real nice set of EVO VIII Enkie's with BFG Road Race slicks for $300 at the shootout. So, last night I did a thing and swapped the tires on them (saving the tires for my son to run Max Effort with them next year in his VR4. The wife is hapier too as she hates black rims, so approval all round. The EVO IX Enkie's went to my son to put on 543/2000. Two of them have a slight lip bend, but are much nicer than his old Enkie RSF-2's that have the wrong off-set, one had a crack and were just plain ugly.

Completed a few more "to-do" items. I spent way too many hours (almost 4) stitching a new leather cover on the factory steering wheel. It was very difficult to find one that was not too large for the wheel itself, so I glued some strips of micro-fiber cloth around the steering wheel to make it thicker. It feels GREAT!!! Now I can buy the Hella horns so people will know when I am there. Also, I was finally able to get with the last known owner to have this car that cared for it. He had the dash plaque. He sold it to me and now it is home where ti belongs. It is no longer a mystery.

Hey Thom, good news. Maybe you did this already, but please send me the VIN of 1025 so I can correlate it in my list.

Thanks.

Got tired of a few things, so changes are in the air. Grew tired of the drone from the exhaust, so I ordered a Megan Racing resonator so I can rid the cabin of the drone form the homemade test pipe (steel straight pipe). Also, bought a known good throttle body and new seals. Will perform my first seal replacement and cleaning so I can start her up and have it idle as it should (like my Colt and Talon did before I sold them. Been a while since I have enjoyed and immediate fire up, 1100 rpm cold idle as factory. Will take pics of rebuild of TB and maybe an exhaust video

Installed my freshly cleaned and rebuilt throttle body. Also swapped out the 272"s for stockers. Purrs like a kitten. Forgot to take pics of the TB but she cleaned up nicely. Now to find the time to install the Megan Racing test pipe.

Replaced my 9.0:1 comp motor with a fresh 8.5:1 motor with 272's and a knife edged crank. Also upgraded the EVO IX 560's to PTE 680's and also upgraded my v2.5 DSMLink to V3 full with the MAF cable. While getting it up to temp I discovered there is a small coolant leak either at the thermostat housing or one of the heater core lines, so gotta fix that. Also, while the tranny was out, I finally got around to replacing my seized VC and installed a good unit. Was pretty nice to have the car not stop rolling on me while I was turning the car around. Should have did it long ago as it was much easier than expected.

Just need to get the idle up above 500rpm and set the timing and she can be tuned.

Old motor removed (Going into 543/2000 along with a PTE 6262)


New motor


A little 272 idle. Motor is still cold, when warmed up idle dropped to 500.
cold idle

When I was transferring the turbo/manifold form the old motor to the new motor, I discovered that the v-band clamp that holds the compressor housing to the turbo was loose. Now I know why the turbo was not giving me over 17psi and giving me the scream of death. Now I have to turn down the boost gauge as the turbo seems really happy with everything tight.

Picked up a BNIB TiAL Q 50mm and PTE 1200cc injectors for $300 total!!! Got them all installed, not to get a cruise tune on the new injectors.

Pulled the AEM UEGO in favor of my new Innovative LC-2. I went with ECMLink's recommendation of installing it in the factory O2 location and set up link to simulate the narrow band. Now I see where everyone has a square wave for their logs of the factory O2 and mine were all jagged at the top of the voltage rise.

I created a pod in order to mount the gauge in the lower left corner of the cluster surround. It only covers the 0-1200 RPM area of the tach, so I am happy with it. Will upload a pic later.