Working on "Goldie", my rusty-gold Git-Her!!
"Why", you ask?
I saw it for sale for $200 and was drawn to it because my Dad bought one almost exactly like it, brand new, when I was a kid. It was totaled by being t-boned going through a intersection, when we had a green light, while I was sitting in the back on our way to school one day. It's how they discovered I have scoliosis and probably impacted my spine at a young age advancing the Degenerative Disc Disease that I have. Because of DDD, I do projects at about 1/8th to 1/10th of the speed that I used to and I'm doing this build as probably my last car build because of how hard it is to bend and stoop and crawl around a car that I'm working on. Gas pumps are so much easier to work on than cars!!
Through writing this, I'm discovering that I'm kinda doing it as a proxy to strike back at my disease and to 'win' a battle against it while having a great "trophy" to drive and enjoy as the spoils!
It's a 84 Ford LTD II wagon and is apart of the "fox body" family of Ford vehicles so, parts from any 79-2004 Mustang basically just bolt in. It has 76,000+ original miles on a 3.8 v6 with AOD trans. It broke down and sat unfixed for MANY years.
I'm trying to do this build as in-expensively as I can while installing high quality parts, so, because there are soooo many Mustangs that have been built up and then wrecked or whatever, I'm finding the parts for it, used, on the internet when I can. I'm also selling off or trading the parts from it that I won't be using and using the money towards parts for the build.
A example is that I am taking out the entire dash to put a 97 Cobra Mustang dash into it, so, the Dash pad and instrument cluster was shipped to a person who shipped cash and a set of used Hotchkis rear control arms back to me in trade. Another example: I took the AOD auto trans out and sold it then used most of the $ to purchase a set of c-clip eliminators that were NOS, for the 8.8 rear that I have.
Many parts are coming from the donor car, a wrecked 97 Cobra Convertible with 119K on the odo. It was hit hard in the rear but it was a high hit from a 4X4 truck so the suspension and important parts were spared. My oldest son will be buying the engine and 5 speed from me, on the cheap for a family deal, and using it for his project car.
I want to be able to tow my flatbed car hauler with it so I'm installing in spring air bags on the rear.
I'm never going to be able to race the car that I built 10+ years ago, so I'll be using the 99 Cobra engine and some of the other parts from it since I bought most of them new, installed them and have never used the car because I ran out of funds to finish the car after starting "The Man-Cave Shoppe".
I'm planning on finding a low mile 6R80 6 speed auto trans from a 2013ish Ford v8 vehicle because they bold right up to Cobra/Modular v8s and can handle 400+hp/tq stock from the factory.
Hopefully I'll finish this car in less than 5-10 years,,, ha ha ha