79 Mustang, new daily driver?

hey guys!

heres a back story to get yer attention:

My grandfather owns a 79 Mustang with the 2.1L turbo and 4-speed. its in overall ok condition. clean body and decent interior.

its been sitting in his lot for a number of years, and he swears all it needs to run are a starter and a battery. it also needs tires REALLY bad.

I think, if I'm REALLY convincing, I might get him to sell it to me for real cheap if I shell out the money and labor to get it running again!

my only big road block at the moment is finding tires. this particular year/package came from the factory with metric sized wheels.

I cannot afford the tires for these wheels, does anybody have a set of cheap steel wheels sitting around? they are the four lug, but I've no clue what the dimensions are. I just need a set of cheap wheels so I can get some cheap tires and get it rolling.

heres hoping my grandpa actually sells it to me!

I'll get pics up soon too

79-93 have the same bolt pattern. that and if you find a mid 80's t bird, its the same deal. i would kill for a 79 turbo!!!!

Right on- we built a 4cyl turbo that ran 9 sec. 1/4 miles at Stanton...

Those 390mm TRX wheels with their French Michelin's were a Ford "DOH!" I had some on my Escort back in the day, and had to toss them when I couldn't get replacement tires. I really liked those rims, but the rubber was e-x-p-e-n-s-i-v-e!!!

I vote to go for it. Should be a fun daily driver.

One of my buddies had those metric wheel on a turbo T-bird. It was cheaper for him to buy some cheap steel wheels and tires instead of those metric Michelins.

I'm gonna go take some pics and stuff, should be cool!

if I kept my foot out of it (unlikely) could I get decent gas mileage? If I could get 25, that would be awesome! otherwise I'm not sure its worth putting any money into it.

when I was doing 12 credit hours of school and 39 hour work weeks, I went through over 300 a month to keep gas in the explorer.

If I can keep that cost down, I can go back to school!

congrads do u got pics of it yet

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/17-x...ies?hash=item33549d84ec&_trksid=p4506.c0.m245

a little cheaper...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Amer...ies?hash=item4a99fbc55c&_trksid=p4506.c0.m245

sweet finds dude! thanks

I hope I get it! I dont think I'll see him till sunday, so here's hoping

that's a turbo cobra!!!!!! if you don't want it, I'm steeling it!

if you get that car, take VERY good care of it. those are getting VERY rare!

I got dibs on seconds!!!!!!

Unless you wanna have a bidding war


No one has mentioned the Ford tractor parked next to it either!!










Jeff - :navajo:

Ford Torino in front

Some old Ch*vy pickup off the port bow :thumbdwn:

Those black american racing rims I posted up a link to would look HOT on that car! Nice find there, freshen er up a little bit and you got a nice ride there!

talked to my grandpa, and its a green light for gettin this thing rollin again!


catch 22 is, I told him I didn't mind shelling out the cash to get it running since he doesn't mind me driving it when it gets going.

He said: "Let me think about what I want to do with that..."

which means, I might be doing the legwork for fixing HIS car so that I MIGHT have a borrowed daily driver.

that guy is a pack-rat to say the least

well now I'm officially on the hunt for those all elusive cheap wheels and junk tires. I just need this car rolling so I can move it to work on it. i'm gonna go to Les Schwab after work tomorrow and see if they have/know of any cheap wheels to get this going.

I called Pick-a-part and got quite the idiot:

Me: "hey I've got a 79 Mustang that needs some wheels, would you happen to have any?"

Him: "uhh, is it the 5 lug or 4?"

Me: "the four"

Him: "Oh! we dont gots none of those."

...

Me: "well do you have ANYTHING that will fit a fox body mustang?"

Him: "wel yous gots to come down here and look, we's got lotsa wheels out back."

Me: "oh. ...thanks for the help?"

*click*


less than helpful. maybe I'll head down there on saturday. but I'll try to exhaust all other options first :

79-93 have the same bolt pattern.

How much are you looking to spend on rims/tires?

little as possible until I know for sure it I can buy it.

for now, I'd like to walk away with crap wheels and tires that hold air for $60 at most.

eventually, I'll get some nice rims with real rubber, but its gotta get running and the owner needs to get senile :


It amazes me that I can't find ANYTHING locally. but i'm definitely talking to guys at Les Schwab tomorrow. theres an OK Tires here that sells used, maybe I'll stop there, too.

fantastic news! I was sick of wasting my time looking for crap wheels, so I decided to fill the tires it has with air.

Lo and behold, they work.

they wont hold air forever, probably two days tops, but at least I know I can roll it around if I need to. I really hope he doesn't expect me to find wheels and tires before its ready to drive. He's so weird about these things. Hopefully my grandma will talk to him about it. I know she would rather see me workin on it and drivin it than let it rot where it sets. Theres a Gran Torino sitting in front of it and its in much worse condition. seems like such a waste. well enough of my yappin', back to the thread.

After that I spent about an hour getting rid of the wasps in the truck cab next to it. probably upwards of 20 wasps on one nest hidden underneath the dash. stupid things.

I then proceeded to pop the hood to assess the damage:

I need 1 battery, 1 starter solenoid, a new belt, and a WHOLE lotta cleaning!
I also found some Brown Recluse spiders. scary! Its gonna take a LOT of work, but I am way eager to work on it and get it done!

pics will be up later this evening

proof!



Its not that interesting, I haven't done much yet. but once I get it started, I'll start on the massive clean up






only so many ways to photograph a dirty engine bay



Lots of cleaning!





Fried the solenoid cuz I hooked up the battery wrong :scratch:
I didn't think about it, and matched up the colors, red to red, black to black.
hooked in the battery and smoke billowed forth from the solenoid. wasn't on there three seconds and I had that cable back off there. I knew I shouldn't have done that when the little warning flag went up when I saw that the "positive" cable was grounded to the chassis.

oh well, live and learn.

Ummm. Does anybody else see a problem here? Maybe I'm misssing something, but if that is a turbo car, 1.) Where is the turbo and plumbing? and 2.) Notice how the air cleaner is going to the inner fender, like a non-turbo car, instead of having a well-sealed airbox over the carb, connected to the turbo outlet?? Plus, the lid is only held on with 2 wing nuts. That doesn't seem like enough clamping force to seal against boost.

Admittedly, it does have an awful lot of vacum hoses; and the double v-belts seem like a bit of overkill for a n/a 4cyl.
...discuss......

I had that same (or almost) hood on an '80 Capri w/ a I6; got it out of the junkyard, after a bent up a fender. I got a good deal on the whole nose, and liked the hood.