'98 Limited street X - Pic's and breakdown of mod's.

I got the truck for free from my parents because my Camaro (1996 ex highway patrol B4C) became not suitable as a daily driver anymore (It's a monster) and I have slowly been working on this instead. I have had it for about 3.5 years. I don't have to many pics but I have a few.


-1998 4.0 SOHC. 150k on the body and trans, about 30k on the engine rebuild. Crankshaft pully broke clean off.

-Custom air filter - Auto zone cone air filter. I ground down the MAF housing round. No adapter plate.
-Removed the orange reflector from the headlights. - Found the "how to" on the forum here.
-I re-painted the front bumper stripe. The tan had faded to an odd silver and black mix.
-Chrome door pillar stick on accents, stainless steel, 6 pieces. - Ebay.
-Removed the roof rack, partially.
-Lowered the front about 3 to 3.5 inches. Airbagit.com re-indexed keys with no adjuster bolts in.
-2 inch block in the back.
-Mid grade auto zone replacement shocks.
-7 inch in dash dvd touch screen. Valor 700W. Works great and looks great for cheap.
-Bazooka amp EL 2150 bridged at 2 ohms, 3 12's, mtx 6000's wired in series, 2 farad cap. DP audio super tweeters. Polk Audio 8 inch sub to replace the factory one. I blew it the 2nd day I had the truck.
-Radar detector mounted above the rear view mirror. Wired to the left map light switch to turn off and on.
-22 inch Velocity Racing U2-75 chrome wheels, 10.5 wide on Kumho 420s 265/35/22 tires.
-Clear/Euro tailights - Ebay.
-Painted ford logo's and third brake light white. Removed EXPLORER and Limited logo's.
-Painted all my bulbs with high temp silver engine paint in the clear housings. Light coat.

To do:

-Install new bulbs for the headlights and fog lights. Have not arrived yet.
-Paint radio dash bezel and map light trim white.
-Tint front 2 windows.
-Make my own mesh grill to fit in the limited grill.
-Maybe go to 3 inch blocks in the rear.
-Maybe paint the mirrors and running board black plastic white.
-Maybe add a white vinyl strip along the top of the windshield (6 - 8 inches thick) for that "chopped" look.
- etc.

 

[BADB4C]

Pretty much when I got it. The only change at this point are the rims.

Jump to 2 years later. A before and after. The front sits a little lower now.

Jump to 2.5 years later.

Photo Chop

Teasers of things to come.

 

[BADB4C]

Positive and negative comments are all welcome.

I would like suggestions on where to go from this. I would love to air bag it but I doubt I ever will unless a find a whole kit for cheap and buy a welder.

I will update all new changes and mods here.

Thanks

 

[Sams01XplrSprt]

nice x

 

[BADB4C]

I am thinking the clear tail lights need a really thin coat of white paint. I never liked how much they stand out. I don't think I can get a coat thin enough and even with a rattle can. I may have to send them out.

 

[BrianDye]

Wow man that looks great, how do your bulbs look with silver paint on them? Ive never heard of anyone doing that before lol...

 

[BADB4C]

Looking through the clear housings they blend in totally. Which is what I wanted. I hate how a clear housing with a red or an amber bulb looks.

As long as you put one semi thin coat on, you cannot tell the bulb is painted when it is illuminated at all. The tail light bulbs stood out the worst. It looked really half done to me.

You can compare picture 2 and 5 and see the difference in the headlights. It is the attention to detail imo that pulls off a custom vehicle. I may just be crazy though...

 

[XXTREMERIDES]

Very clean ride, cant wait to see the rest of the mods

 

[section525]

Looks good except the chrome! More white would be cool.

 

[BADB4C]

My initial plan was white wheels and no chrome. I have always wanted to paint the spokes white and leave the chrome lip. Chrome is definitely a hate it or love it addition.

 

[section525]

More so the door pillars. :

 

[BADB4C]

The pillars made the appearance because of the wheels. I admit it's not the look I was after, but I really like them. It may be more of a Texas thing. I will never put the chrome stick on vents on the front fenders though.

 

[BADB4C]

I got my new bulbs in today for the fog lights. I went to remove the assemblies so that I could clean them up and polish the lenses. Once I did that I saw that the drivers side had a triangular hole in the side about the size of two quarters.

So I went down and wandered around Home Depot. I found some stuff called Rectorseal EP-200 Epoxy Putty. They claimed "Sets Hard As Steel in 15 - 20 Minutes". Within 1 hour you could sand and drill it if needed. It was under 5 dollars.

I wet sanded all the plastic with 600 grit. Went over it with some paint thinner. Mixed up the putty and applied a blob. It is almost dry and flaky at first but as it hardens it is more pliable. Within 5 minutes it was to hard to continue to work with.

I covered about twice the area of the hole. I mushed as much in as I could and then with a screw driver inserted through the bulb hole I mushed it together while pressing on the outside as smooth as possible.

In the last pic the camera is looking through the bulb hole at the hole that the putty was applied. I think it appears it will work just fine. I will go over the cracks that run off the hole with some JB Weld in about an hour. You cannot see the putty through the lense either.

I will get some pics of it installed and the bulbs working tomorrow night.

 

[BrianDye]

I wonder if that will affect the reflection at all? I had some cheap aux. fog's on my 92, from AutoZone, and some of the chrome on the inside reflector peeled (left it black) and the light output was funky after that lol

 

[BADB4C]

Ford, Auto Zone, O'Reilys etc. want $90+ for 1 replacement, not even a set! I found that ridiculous so I figured for $5 bucks I would give this a try.

 

[BrianDye]

eBay has em in pairs for like 60$

 

[BADB4C]

The ones for the limited where $52 shipped a piece and they looked to be missing the "feet" which also broke on mine. The auto parts stores don't even carry or can order the housing for the Limited. I was surprised.

 

[BADB4C]

Here is a before and after. The foggy one is the one I just fixed and I will polish it once the JB Weld dries. It was completely washed and cleaned and still looks like that. A little 3M rubbing compound and a buffing wheel on my drill cleaned up the other one pretty well. It is by no means perfect, but it looks allot better after polishing.

 

[BADB4C]

Got my new headlights and fog lights in and installed. Just a camera phone pic. 2500k 880 100 watt bulbs for the fogs. The headlight bulbs are supposed to be 10k but they are more like 5k. The company said I could keep them and they would ship out the correct ones.

Just pulled my radio bezel out to re-paint. The rubber is really hard to get off. If you look at the bottom you can see it has taken about 30 minutes just to remove that much. Should have some new pics in a day or so of the bezel painted white.

 

[BADB4C]

It took over 3 straight hours sanding with 400 grit and melting it with some paint thinner. There are 2 coats of paint on the parts here in the pics.

I do not use the lighter, if you do I would suggest taping it off. I don't ever even hook it up so I sprayed it.

I will probably install these tomorrow night.