Fox T-Bird/Cougar Forums  

i need to come to one of these events,,

by the way,, how did i miss this thread!!!

I don't care for show cars. I feel that they are a waste of time and money. I don't want to sit behind my car in a folding chair just to listen to people compliment my car.

I agree. I've pretty much given up on the car show thing. Just a bunch of old people sitting around in chairs. Boring. The drives to and from the show are much more fun than the show. So that's basically what I do with mine now. Go for long cruises or occasionally blast down the 1/4 mile. It's all clean and shiny but I do that for me, because I want it to be that way.

So moving forward what are the suspension/brake plans? Coil over/tubular K in front and SN95/Cobra brakes all around? If you're going to road course and are more worried about handling then I'd just make the 2.3T reliable vs. boosting the hell out of it. If it fits the budget use as many Maximum Motorsports pieces as you can. There stuff has made my car much more enjoyable to drive. It isn't cheap but you get what you pay for.

I'm not going with a tubular-K for a long time, if at all really. Maximum Motorsports' tubular does offer geometry benefits, but I'm not aiming to be competitive. I'm just aiming to fix the short-comings of the car.

As of right now, I have MM's tubular SN95 arms in need of bushings and balljoints. Also have their C/C plates. Also have 94-95 spindles and axles. For short term, I have some cheap shocks/struts/springs I'll use as my car has 225K miles on it and it just needs some love.

I'll be using 99-04 GT/V6 brakes until I follow through with removing the Teeves system. They're inexpensive and still pretty effective. After that, I'm unsure of where I'll go with brakes. The Cobra stuff is nice, but there are still a lot of other options to explore.

For certain, I'll be using MM's control arms, torque arm and panhard bar. My goal is to have the money stashed away by the time Black Friday sales start happening. They offer some *okay* sales. I'm hoping to have the TA/PHB for when I take it to the shop to have SFC's and jacking rails welded in and have them do it all in one swoop. After that, I'll determine what spring rates and shocks/struts I want to run.

It's going to take time since the car does need a lot of work. Every system on the car needs some sort of work. It's a 2.3T so every seal leaks. The 4 banger T5 is notorious for the input shaft being galled up, and mine needs attention. Still has a factory fuel pump. Needs headlight relays. So on and so on.

As far as power, the 2.3L can safely handle about 400rwhp. I'm not concerned with the strength of parts as much as I am with keeping it cool and the oiling system keeping up. I haven't done much homework to find what it takes to keep a 2.3 happy under sustained load and RPM.

The front plus the brakes sounds like a solid setup. I'm under the opinion that if you're doing mostly street driving that the stock K-member is probably better anyway. Better brakes are a definite plus, and realistically something I should do as well.  But ditch that Teeves system. It was such a royal PITA on my Mark VII. Parts were expensive and hard to find, and it's only going to get worse.

I'm interested in you experience with the MM panhard bar. I've been considering picking one up. The MM rear control arms made a huge difference but I think the panhard bar would make it even better. I haven't even considered the torque arm, as that's probably beyond what would make the car tossable on the street, but would be great on a road course.

I would think that an aluminum radiator with two rows of 1" tubes should handle the 2.3T fine. I've got got one of them (a several year old Northern unit) and the car rarely gets over 200°-205° even in traffic with the A/C on stun. But with that turbo dumping heat into the system you may need something even better.

The Teeves didn't treat me bad through the years. The only real failures I had were the relays. Kept a spare motorcraft in the glovebox. I just won't be able to keep a good pedal or good bias with anything other than stock brakes. Going with the PBR front's and SN95 rear will shift the bias forward, but I don't intend on it being permanent.

The torque arm really is another piece of the puzzle. The upper control arms really hurt handling in these cars. You can run the panhard bar, and remove one control arm to help free up the rear end movement. It gets called the PM3L, short for poor mans three link. It's still not as good as a torque arm setup, but it's still far better than keeping the quadrabind.

In a previous car, I used a big, universal radiator. It filled the entire opening in the radiator support. Was 31" wide I think. Was a dual row with 1" cores. It worked well, but it was a normal street car. Do a few highway pulls or stoplight blasts and it was fine. I never did 20 minutes of WOT to brakes. The 2.3T cars have a factory oil cooler, which uses coolant to heat and cool the oil, but I'm going to delete it, and use a large oil cooler with a thermostat. Hopefully that should be enough to keep it happy.

So the torque arm in conjunction with the PHB is awesome on the street...have them both on my Coupe (full MM car).

VAFs don't care about bends in front of the meter? MAFs get all screwy with bends.