I did it : starting a new build (@Donor teardown stage) - Saratoga Springs, NY.

[jakester888]

Well, here goes.

Last week I layed down $1000 and ordered an FFR MK4. I've been dreaming about this car since 1995. Delivery by 8/1. Tonight, I picked up a 5.0L LX donor (paid way too much for it - but it's super clean).

Now I'm beginning to think about donor tear-down.

Such a nice car - but about to become something even better.

Feeling a bit intimidated & getting the evil eye from the wife on this already. But still committed to see it through. If anybody in up-state New York wants to help up, send me an email : go_speed_racer_2000@yahoo.com.

Regards, John.

[65 Cobra Dude]

Welcome to the madness John. You should take a ride up to Lake George on July 8, 9 and 10 to see a bunch of Roadsters and get some ideas. If you come up just for Friday night or Sat morning, you'll see a bunch of us at the Fort.

Henry

[jakester888]

Thanks Harry - I'll look for you guys.

[Gumball]

Congratulations - let the fun begin.

[riptide motorsport]

Welcome ,,,,,enjoy!

[AC Bill]

Welcome to the club!:)
One thing about getting a decently clean donor is that you should be able to sell off many of the unneeded
parts, and recoup some of your investment in it.
Don't be surprised if you end up replacing some of the donor parts regardless. For example, you may not want
to install an old clutch assembly..
Stick around the build forums, and you have to really allow for a increased budget..;)

[bil1024]

Congrats and welcome to the family!

[LuckyWinner]

Congrats!!! If your married, let your wife know you have a new mistress.

[David Hodgkins]

John, welcome and congratulations.

Seeing as you are new and all, I'm going to overlook the serious breach in protocol and forum etiquette...

Pics man, Pics!!!

No pics, didn't happen!

Whew. I feel better now.

You know what to do...

:D

[jakester888]

The Admin, Mr. Hodgkins wants pics... OK.

93 LX with 93K original miles. New clutch (2010), new tranny (2010). Clean Carfax. Paid $6100. Drove it home 350 miles - no problems.

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Haven't figured how to upload pics to my profile - newbie.

Teardown starts this weekend. Some friends coming over for beer, pizza and destruction.

[riptide motorsport]

yea...sort of a shame to ruin that nice a car, I did the same to a 93 anniv.conv. stang....................Got over it though.,

[Joe]

Hodgkins wants pics... OK.

93 LX with 93K original miles. New clutch (2010), new tranny (2010). Clean Carfax. Paid $6100. Drove it home 350 miles - no problems.

268326842685

Haven't figured how to upload pics to my profile - newbie.

Teardown starts this weekend. Some friends coming over for beer, pizza and destruction.

OUCH!! Man, that is an expensive FOX donor. I seriously think you should think about this before you start tearing it down. You could buy what you need used and some new stuff for much less than that.

Maybe some others will chime in about this too, but I think you're about to be making a costly mistake right here.

Sorry, I know it's your build and I support you if that's what you want to do, but I would reconsider. Don't get me wrong, I'm one that normally supports donor builds (prior archived posts on other forum), but you have to do it smart in order for it to pay off. I'm just trying to save you some money and time. You have a 93,000 mile engine that probably should be rebuilt. The gas tank may or may not need to be replaced. The brake calipers probably need to be rebuilt and/or used for cores, might need a new alternator, water pump, radiator. You will probably want to convert to five lug and put in better rear diff. gears. Are you going to keep the EFI? If not, all the more reason to reconsider. On and on and on.. $1,000 - $2,000, okay go for it with the right car.. But $6100??

I made a similar mistake, but backed up and ended up getting a great $835.00 donor after looking around a bit.. Read the BLOG from the bottom of the page, if you want to read it in order.

http://factoryfive.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_archive.html

[Gumball]

I paid $5k for a very clean '94 SVT Cobra, took what few parts I really wanted - engine, trans, rear end, brake system, fuel tank, pedal box, parking brake, and some small parts, then sold the rest to a friend who is using it as the basis for a NASA American Iron racecar for $2500. It was a very clean car from CO with a good carfax and no rust or damage. I hated to pull it apart, but this way it will live on in two forms. If you tear into that nice Fox convertible, you may want to keep as much of the body and interior in good shape to sell to someone (along with a clean title, hopefully) so they can use it as the basis for a screaming street car / hotrod.

[DARKPT]

I had the exact same year, trim, body style and color as you for my donor. However, I got mine from a salvage yard with the donor parts on a pallet.

Good luck on the teardown! Remember to grab the brake line mount under the trunk where it goes from the hard line to the flex line that drops to the top of the axle. Those are getting hard to find.

In fact, if you have the space I'd hang onto the donor until you are absolutely certain you don't want anything else off of it. Parting out stuff you know you don't need will pay for the inevitable refurb/replace/upgrade on some of those donor parts.

[AC Bill]

I agree with Joe, on the fact that you may want to look at the calipers as potential cores. There may be a need for a few other replacements, but I don't agree that you will need an new alternator, water pump etc. at least at this point in time, (unless there are obvious issues with them). Those 5.0 engines can keep on running fine for many miles, so 93,000 is not so bad. Chance are you won't be putting on many miles during the driving season with the roadster anyway. You can always build a project engine while you are out cruising with the donor engine. Your tranny and clutch should give you several years of service still. The rear gearing is something you may want to look at down the road depending on the gears it came with. A set of 3.55's will make the roadster pretty perky, with a stock 5.0 engine. Often you can find gear sets available on the forum classifieds pretty cheap.
Unless the donor was winter driven in an area that uses lots of road salt chances are good the tank will be fine.

I do agree the price for the donor was a little on the high side. Chances are though that the parts you will be able to sell will be in good shape, and therefore you will get a better dollar for them. The roof alone should be worth good bucks if it's in decent shape, likewise with the interior.

[Joe]

I agree that there might not an immediate need to replace some stuff, but it is often easier to just do it now, rather than dealing with issues after the car is built. I installed my 89 alternator and ended up having to replace it before I was finished with go-cart stage.. I replaced the water pump because I cleaned up the front of my engine and needed a standard rotation one. Just last month the brake booster gave up the ghost and I had to replace that. FYI, replacing a brake booster on a completed car is a MAJOR pain in the arse. Sure, you can slap that 93,000 mile engine in the car and it might work for 3 months or 5 years. It's just very easy to tear down the engine while it's out of the car and put in an engine that should be good to go for many years. Keep in mind you may be wanting to drive the car like you stole it and if the engine is marginal now, it might not last very long. The gas tank could have rust issues or broken baffles in it and require replacement if you want to do it right. I had to replace the fuel pump before I was finished building my car.

Part of my justification to do a donor build was to save money. In exchange for saving money I spent lots of time selling left over parts. Spent lots of time refurbishing parts. Spent lots of time dealing with the wiring harness issues. Spent lots of time dealing with greasy, nasty parts and trying to get them clean. Spent lots of time trying to find someone to buy my shell, but ended up just giving it away in exchange for hauling it away and getting it out of my driveway. I still feel like I spend lots of time replacing parts on my finished car that would have been avoided if I had bought new parts to begin with.

I was able to sell a lot of my left over car parts, but most of them were pretty beat up. I didn't get very much money for them and I gave a lot of them away. A couple of months ago I threw away the donor upper and lower intakes, the orginal heads and a bunch of emissions related stuff. I just couldn't find anyone that wanted the stuff, even for free.

Good luck with the build. Just trying to help you learn from some of my experiences. :) For me it would have been hard to justify doing a donor build, if I wasn't going to save several thousand dollars, which in my case I did.

[jakester888]

Selling my 98 Mustang GT Convertible to make space in the garage and offset the high donor price. I agree it was a high price. But in my search to find decent Fox body donor here in the North East, I found prices around the $5K range (eBay, craigslist, local ads). The one I got was pretty clean and has new clutch & tranny. Hopeful I made the right choice.

[Joe]

Good luck Jakester..

Did you see this? It's sold already, but they can be found if you do some looking.

http://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?2349-1989-Mustang-GT

[Gumball]

Jake - In the course of my build, I went from a mostly donor to a partial donor with all heavily re-furb'd parts (such as the 100k mile SVT 302 that's now about to be assembled into a killer 347). Over that time, I learned to be happy with my decisions, even if I changed my mind a bit due to scope creep or what-have-you. Sounds like you got a really good donor and will have plenty of nice parts to use, as well as a very clean shell to sell to someone to recoup a good part of the cost instead of having to figure out how to cut apart and dispose of a rotting hulk. Congrats on the first steps of your build and best of luck on the journey - it's a blast!!!

[WHEELJ]

CONGRATS JOHN, I'M PART OF A GROUP OF COBRA OWNERS HERE IN THE CAPITAL DIST. WE'RE A GOOD SIZE GROUP. WE JUST HAD ANOTHER MEMBER FROM SARATOGA JOIN THE GROUP. IN FACT THERE'S A NUMBER OF US FROM SARATOGA AREA. MY E-MAIL IS wheelj@sage.edu. I CAN'T ALWAYS GET YAHOO TO RUN. SOME OF US WILL BE AT THE AUTO MUSEUM IN THE PARK THIS WEEKEND. STOP BY AND SAY HELLO ON SAT.
WELCOME TO THE COBRA FAMILY
JIM WHEELER

[jakester888]

Here's my son getting his hands dirty helping dad take out the radiator, A/C compressor and brake switch. Good job Luke.

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[Joe]

Looking good! Gotta love the father / son projects. He'll remember and talk about that for a long time.

[David Hodgkins]

Looks like the belt was ready to go! Good times for sure; take lots of pics!

[Art Caley]

Good luck Jakester..

Did you see this? It's sold already, but they can be found if you do some looking.

http://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?2349-1989-Mustang-GT

I was going to chime in on that but thought what the heck he did what's best for him. That GT may not have had all the stuff he wanted.

It sold in less than one week. I let it go for $2100 to make room for a '92 LX5.0 I'm getting. That GT was a good runner though. Just ask anyone at VIR.

2832

[Randy Jones]

Jakester,

Congrats!

Make sure and come up to Lake George this weekend! Friday evening or Saturday evening are the best. (we'll all be there and wont' be on the Saturday cruise)

The Fort William Henry, you can't miss us! Should be a pretty large group there for the weekend this year!

R :D

[jakester888]

Donor Teardown update.

I've had the donor for 2 months but not much time to work on it. Here are the parts harvested so far:

Radiator
A/C condensor (don't need)
Brake switch, bushing & pin
Power booster
Master cylinder
Distribution block
Steering rack (pain in the arse to get out)
Pedal assembly
Front wiring harness
Shifter
Drive shaft
Parking brake
Speedo cable
Clutch cable
Fuel inertia switch

Some photos of harvested parts:

39003901390439033902

Left to go to pull engine out : rear wiring harness, exhaust.

[jakester888]

Update on the build (i.e. teardown):

Still have not done anything on the actual roadster... I've spend the last 5 months on donor tear down. Status:

1) Engine out & rebuilt. See photo.
2) Tranny out and painted.
3) Front end out.
4) Wiring harness out.
5) Seats & console out.
6) Parts already sold on ebay.

What's left on the teardown: rear end & gas tank.

I can't believe it's taken this long to get this far. At this rate, the car will be ready for paint in 2014. :)

7045

[bil1024]

Nice, time always the enemy

[jakester888]

Here's an update.

1) Donor teardown completed in late 2011 early 2012. Harvested everything possible and the carcass of a once nice LX sits in my driveway.
2) Body buck built.
3) Engine blinged-up and painted
4) 4-lug spindles replaced with 5-lug
5) Rear end & front suspension in
6) Steering rack & shaft in
7) Brakes run & calipers bled
8) Fuel lines run and tank installed
9) 2/3 of the aluminum is in place
10) Pedal assembly in
11) Tires & Wheels mounted
12) Wiring started

Pics

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[jakester888]

Update:
1) Wiring is done.
2) Stereo & speakers are in.
3) Center console created.
4) Rear shelf/oval hole installed
5) Hidden battery from FF Metal installed.
6) Engine & tranny mated & installed.

1935519356193571935819359

[jakester888]

Update : well it's 2014 (3 years later) and I've only just completed first start.
1) Sold the carcass of a Mustang shell for $600.
2) Relocated the car & fam 3000 miles to the west coast & burned 9 months looking for a house while the car was in storage.
3) Ditched the donor harness altogether and bought the Chuck's Electric's EFI harness to connect to the Ron Francis main harness.
4) Connected gas lines to fuel rail with flexible hose & fittings from "Pure Choice".
5) Removed EGR & ran vacuum lines.
6) Radiator filler neck & hoses installed on the radiator.
7) New coil installed on passenger firewall (although I am thinking to relocate near the master cylinder).
8) Stereo & speakers all wired up (I know, you can't hear it when the engine is running).
9) Connected the power steering hoses (using the ugly & odd-fitting Mustang OEM hoses).
10) Added all fluids (oil, coolant, Type-F).
11) Connected starter to the solenoid (seems simple now but felt complex at first).
12) Added gas and then - First start SUCCESS! : 6/29/14 (that's 3 years and 2 days since I ordered the kit). This was real nerve racking but also satisfying when it actually fired up.

310733107431075310763107731078310793108031082

Here's a link to the first start video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JZ14nQumGM

Slow & steady. Next steps:
13) Replace MAF + sensor with 24# calibrated BBK (to go with 24# injectors).
14) Add a timing marker & dial-in the timing.
15) Clean up the engine bay wiring (figure out a good tie down solution beyond zip-ties).
16) Interior carpet.
17) Install drive shaft.
18) Figure out a cleaner looking radiator overflow solution.