here's another kudos to Chuck W for opening up his design to us to use!
I needed a set of these for my own turbo coupe so I had quite a few of these made to help out anyone who needs a set! I currently only have 7 sets that are welded up and ready to be sold!
$65 shipped. Paypal friends & family or add a few bucks to cover fees! Comes with mounting bolts, washers and nuts.
- The seat studs are a little short to attach nuts to, to bolt these to the floor. I recommend removing them (Kind of a pain, but possible with a stud extractor, or welding a nut to them), then replacing them with bolts. They are M12-1.75 and M8-1.25 thread. 40mm bolts are long enough. You'll need about 6-8mm of spacers between the floor and the brace on the M8 bolt.
thanks for the info, Chuck.
I'm a bit jealous...I had subframe connectors put on my car before I had these seat braces cut and bent. my fabricator buddy used some 2X2 square tubing to basically mimic your design as best as possible for the seat braces.
first, kudos to Chuck W for open sourcing his design!
I had 20 sets of these made. They're made from 11 gauge steel - the guy who cut and bent them for me had an abundance of 11 gauge steel available. The small radius cut next to the notch in the one seat brace denotes that it's for the passenger side.
$70 shipped via USPS priority mail. Paypal friends & family or add a few bucks for fees!
the previous owner of my 87 TC who built up most of the car used 96-98 SN95 spindles with steeda x2 ball joints. according to MM, this is ok because it raises the pivot point enough in the FCA.
the 96-98 spindles seem to be a lot easier to find and cheaper...
my 87 TC has spindles from a 96-04 mustang and uses steeda x2 ball joints. I reached out to maximum motorsports and spoke to Jack Hidley as I was considering swapping them out for the 94-95 spindles as we always read that the 96-04 spindles create too much bumpsteer and throw the angles out of whack compared to the 94-95 spindles. He mentioned that the 96-04 spindles are just fine in our cars if we use a k-member with a raised forward control arm pivot point or extended ball joints (steeda x2).
I have a few problems with Jeff Korn's write up. The biggest one being running the alternator output directly to the starter relay (directly to the battery) with no circuit protector (fuse or fuse link). He is right about an ammeter complicating things. Do you still have the stock ammeter and does it still work? The stock alternator for your 87 Turbo is the Ford 2g. Jeff upgraded his 88 Turbo which came with a Mitsubishi alternator. So you may not have the same fitment problems he had.
I do not have the original amp gauge, no. my car has auto meter gauges installed in the gauge cluster.
I had to do some grinding on my bracket as well as the alternator case to get it to fit. I got my alternator off of a 96-00 v6 mustang for $45 ($10 core charge). from my understanding, the 90-95 ford taurus with the 3.0 motor has a 130A alternator with a small case that may fit better in our cars.
I'm not super crazy with how the 10 gauge wires for the alternator are laid out after being attached so I may revisit them when it warms up in Philly.
My car is heavily modified by a previous owner. Within that long list of modifications was the swap from the factory power steering to manual steering. Well, manual steering absolutely sucks when you live in a town with small streets and have to park the car inside a garage that's just barely big enough for the car itself and nothing else...
I'm not able to reinstall the factory power steering without removing and redoing the top half of my engine, which I'm not willing to do. What I am going to do is have a friend install an electric power steering unit and ECU from a 2004-2009 Toyota Prius - this is a very popular mod for older cars, especially the mustangs. With that in mind, I thought it was best to upgrade the alternator so it didn't burn up anything from the extra load of the power steering unit.
While it's a pretty good guide, it has almost no photos. I'm not a mechanic so I prefer to do as much research and see as many photos as possible before I start modifying anything. I took as many photos as possible during my process. Please note that since my engine and engine bay have been heavily modded, some of this stuff will not apply for most people and their 87-88 TC.
this is my set up prior to removing the old alternator:
old alternator removed:
here's my new regulator plug spliced into the factory wiring. I picked this up on ebay for I believe $13-14 shipped to my door. I liked this new plug because it already has the stator wire pinned to the connector so you only need to splice 2 wires rather than 3.
here's the yellow wire that runs along side the original power wire that goes into the large splice:
cut and spliced in with a new 10 gauge power wire:
here's the new 3G alternator installed with new wire loom:
turns out fuse #8 was blowing because the previous owner crushed a wire in the headliner when he reattached the passenger sun visor...my buddy Brian chased down that issue. after taping up the crushed wire and replacing the fuse, it basically fixed all of my electrical/lighting issues except for my side mirrors..they're still not working. I'm hoping the switch contacts are just dirty...
I'm running 235/40/18 up front and 275/40/18 in the rears..they seem to be ok. the previous owner had 235/50/18s up front and they definitely rubbed on my '87 TC.
The problem I see is that a lot of that nice feel is related to feeding a speed signal back to the BCM so it can determine the amount of assist it will provide. Ie the Fiesta, which I have a lot of wheel time in, the bcm actually shuts the epas off above ~45mph and it behaves as a manual rack.
Rack assisted EPS is far superior to a column assist in my opinion, the column assist has a garbage feel and only the lowest B segment and A segment cars are using them in my experience.
This would absolutely require a 3G alternator, and the starter might interfere with the E motor as there is over hang on the back opposite the input. Another factor is because of the rack weight a lot Of these electric power racks use 3 or 4 mounting locations over the “normal” two bolts.
this will definitely take some fitting, that's for sure. the biggest thing for me is that I live in a suburb with small streets and I have to keep the car in my garage as the borough doesn't allow us to park our cars on the street overnight being that our streets are so narrow. having to muscle the steering wheel to get around in my area is pretty annoying.
rather than cluttering up my engine bay with an original power steering set up, an EPS sounds like the better way to go, assuming I can find someone to install one for me (I'm not very gifted in the fab/mechanical side of things).
Kinda cool. Been thinking about something like this, but my current parts budget won't support it.
the cost seems like it would be tied up in the labor, if you can't do it yourself (I'm in this boat). you can get an EPS unit from a saturn vue for around $100, plus it'll need a controller that seems to run around $60-70. Another popular EPS is from a toyota prius - they don't seem to require an additional controller, but I'm not sure on the price of these...I don't imagine they're much more than the saturn vue EPS from a junkyard.
had a chance to check that #8 fuse today...it was indeed blown. every time I put a new fuse in there, it'd blow immediately. I'll need to chase down that issue.
