Shelbatop!

I drove in to Greensboro for a family lunch this Sunday. I got to see a lot of people I don't often see, including Trevor & Alisa and their lil' chitlin Morgan. Robert & Nancy were in from Colorado. All the usual fam was their too- mom, dad, grandma, justin, jamie, mac & sherry.

We were playing some yard games out in the front when I got a visit from my old childhood buddy Joey Cheek and his mom. It's always nice to see somebody that you only see occasionally so this weekend was very good for me in that regard. I've seen Joey several times since he 'went famous', but I haven't seen his brother Michael in forever - I wonder what he's up to.

We put the top back on Shelbatoast for the drive home. This was the first long, high speed drive with the top on, and it help up great. No problems at all. I do need to find a way to put the top on without scratching the crap out of the car though!

but in the end...

But what I really need to upgrade first is the transmission. Not so much upgrade, as repair. A master rebuild kit runs about $250 for the T-45 transmission and should be fairly basic to work on - especially for someone who knows the transmission. I'll probably see if I can get fastlane to rebuild it. While they have it there, I'll most likely have them dyno-tune it as well.

After the transmission and tune, next up would be the suspension upgrades and then the engine upgrades.

or an engine upgrade?

So I've ditched the idea of putting a blower on this thing. I am skeptical about how the old engine would handle it and I don't really want to rebuild it. Instead, the plan is to go with the old N/A regulars - cams intake & tune. I figure I could easily see an extra 35 horse with that, which would put me at or above 300 at the wheels. Could always delete the cats too and pick up a few more.

Still holding off on the idea of switching to 3.73s in the differential. I like the highway cruise at 2K rpm too much.

coil over rear suspension

I have been considering adjustments to the rear suspension set up. Here is the plan as it is now: going to stay with the 4 link setup, but switch to coil-overs for the shock/spring and switch to tubular links. This would allow me to get rid of the crappy ghetto mustang spring setup and the loose control arms.

Ultimately what this would do is improve handling particularly through corners. What I don't like about it is that it'll be stiffer and wont grip quite as hard on acceleration. Overall it's a much nicer setup that is way less ghetto and old. Total cost is $750 plus tax & shipping.

Soft top pt. 2

So part 2 started on Saturday morning. I was installing the lift-the-dot snaps when Brandon and Allison came out to pick up some stuff they left over Friday night. The snaps are a pain to install: you have to punch a hole through the fabric for the stud, then you have to cut 4 little slots around the hole. Then you feed the grommet spikes through the 4 slots and slide them into the grommet backing on the other side of the fabric. Then you bend the spikes over to grip the fabric. They work really well once installed, but my fingertips are worn off from the process. Brandon and I broke one of the studs installing it in the body, so I'm going with 11 snaps instead of 13. No big deal. All the snaps are in place - thank goodness.

During soft top part 1 we noticed that the rear brace was too short. It's final position should be just behind the roll-bars, but we couldn't get it to fit there properly without it smashing up against the roll-bars. So Brandon and I came up with the idea to build what we entitled an 'extend-o-bracket'. We worked together to come up with a design that would keep it from lowering the brace further than we wanted. I'll take some pics of the 'extend-o-bracket' later and post 'em up.

Later on Saturday, Diana helped me to glue the windshield brackets to the fabric top. It wasn't pretty - or easy. We stretched the top tight and put a piece of tape on the corner where it laid over the windshield. Then we rolled it back and put some glue on one side of the bracket. We tried to position it as best as we could, using guestimation way more than I was comfortable with. We did a test fit and made some adjustments, then we glued that sucker together with contact cement. That stuff is really messy and I'm not too good at it so the glue is pretty much everywhere. Once it all dries completely, I'll spray paint all the over-glue black and it should be pretty unnoticeable...relatively unnoticeable...passable.

Anyhow we got everything glued in place and it's clamped down right now. It takes 7 days to fully cure. Luckily for me - rain in the forecast for the next 7 days so ugh.

Oh I almost forgot, the door windows mount in by 2 posts that slot into 2 holes in the door. I measured very carefully and did a visual verification that the door posts line up. Unfortunately, it's such a tight fit that the slightest variation causes it not to fall in place. I used the grinder on the posts and got the passenger side to fall in. It's still not very pretty though, there is a gap between the window and the canvas on the backside, and it's too close to the window. I might have to summon on Joshes welding skills once again to place the posts in a slightly different position on the window. The door posts aren't really movable.

Once the glue is dry I'm supposed to drive a few hundred miles before I place the braces back in.

Soft Top

After watching Shelbatoast get poured on in the parking lot for about an hour during work yesterday, I realized the time to install the soft-top is definitely past due. Luring a few willing friends with steaks and beer, Josh and Tom came out to help with the process. This was a good thing since I was pretty nervous about drilling into the finished fiberglass.

We had to make an emergency run to Ace hardware to get a special tool. Even in the Cobra we only got there with 5 minutes to spare. But we found what we needed and came back to get started. After setting the windshield at a 53 degree angle and cranking it down, we got started drilling some of the holes and installing the ferrules. After that we pulled out the hardware and assembled it on the body. We draped the soft top over just to get a feel for how much clearance there will be. Honestly, there is a lot more room inside than I expected. And although this little paragraph doesn't make it sound like there was a lot - quite a bit of work was involved in all this. Plus, the engine was hot from driving to Ace hardware :-)

Left to do is install a couple of snaps on the body, drill 2 post holes per door, install the snap grommets on the soft top, stretch & fit the top, contact cement it to the boughs and install the bough snaps. I'll probably have folks come over and help with this too because if the contact cement portion goes anything like the dashboard cement, I'll need all the help I can get!