1998 - The beginning
The Ford LTD I am using for my
"Sleeper" project is a midsize 1984. I found this car
for sale by a mechanic for "about $500" but it was after hours
and nobody was at the shop, so I sent my wife to look at it. About
an hour later I got a phone call from her saying she bought the car for
$200! She brought $160 hoping to get him to go as low as that, but
to no avail. When she got it home I took a good look at it and was
surprised to see it was in decent condition for the money.
The car was a base model with roll up windows,
but it did have power locks, cruise control and air conditioning and
over 175,000 miles on its 3.8 V6 drive train. It ran great.
The transmission slipped a bit on the highway but for $200 who could
complain. We drove this car everywhere for almost a year and a
half with no problems at all. The only money we spent on it was
for gas, oil changes and windshield wiper blades. We were really
lucky to find a car this good for such a low price.
After driving the car for a year, a good friend
of mine gave me a great deal. Vinnie's plans for converting a 1988
four cylinder Mustang over to a 5.0 H.O. motor fell through at the last
minute. Little did he know at the time that his Mustang would
become a magazine project car and be converted anyway! He knew I
wanted to do a V8 swap so he sold me an entire 1988 Mustang LX 5.0.
automatic for $400. What was supposed to be his donor car, was
soon in my driveway. This Mustang was twisted like a pretzel after
a high speed collision but all of the mechanical parts were good.
In order to remove the driveline I had to spend a day cutting the nose
off of the crumpled Mustang. After I removed everything of value
for the motor swap project, including the 8.8 rear end, wiring
harnesses, and all of the little bits and pieces that would make my life
difficult had I not grabbed them, a local junkyard took the remnants
away the next week.
So after all the work to get the parts out of
the Mustang, I let it sit for six months waiting for the ambition to
start such a big project. Then one day my LTD just shut off after
going over a speed bump in a parking lot. Although it was probably
just the ignition module I said "why bother fixing it when I have a 5.0
sitting in the garage". That was the last my wife saw of me for two
months! (See the Tech Page for more info on the actual conversion.)
After I was finished I took it to
Englishtown, NJ to try it on the drag strip, only to run a disappointing
15.4 seconds at 92 miles per hour. My friends thought 15.4
was a good number for a heavy "family" car with an automatic.
When I got over being mad, I adjusted every sensor that had an
adjustment and even a few that "can't be adjusted".
Then I tuned everything that could be tuned, and at my next outing I ran
14.7 seconds at 95 miles per hour. Now I was in the right time
zone.
Since then I have added Auto Specialties Under
drive Pulleys, a Moroso Cold Air Kit for a Mustang (I had to cut a
little of the inner fender), and skinny front tires. I still have
the original 7.5 inch rear with 3.27 geared open differential (no
traction loc). Getting traction is a problem, but if I launch just
right I can run 14.62 seconds at 97.89 miles per hour with a 60 foot
time of 2.223 seconds. I average 14.50s at 97 mph with a 60 foot
time of 2.335 with street tires in back. My best run to date
(March 29, 1999) is a very repeatable 14.337 at 96.888 miles per hour
with a 60 foot time of 2.164 seconds. This was with Hoosier Quick
Time's Mounted out back. I lost one mile per hour due to increased
rolling resistance of the sticky tires at the end of the track but it
was worth it to gain a repeatable time.