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Project Ugly Horse: Part VIII

Zach Bowman — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:57:00 EST

Filed under: Aftermarket, Classics, Budget, Performance, Hatchback, Ford, Specialty

Now With More EcoBoost

There's an EcoBoost 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder in there somewhere, and it's headed straight for Ugly Horse.

For the second time in my life, I'm staring at an engine in the back of a truck with no concept of how to get it safely into the garage by my lonesome. The first time this happened, I dragged home a $300 International 345 V8 in the back of my Scout Terra only to discover that the bounds of my manliness terminated well before my ability to muscle that 800-pound cast iron block out of the pickup bed.

Now you know the story of how and why I bought my first engine puller.

Some six years later I'm playing out the same dance, though a Ford F-250 has stolen the Scout's starring role, and there's a towering pallet of thick cardboard boxes in place of the old International mill. It's not that the boxes are particularly heavy. They're just stacked too high to get in the garage. Each one is emblazoned with a massive Ford Racing Performance Parts logo and wrapped in enough plastic to keep both prying fingers and the persistent rain at bay. Good thing, too. There's an EcoBoost 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine in there somewhere, and it's headed straight for Ugly Horse.

Project Ugly Horse is an ongoing series. Need to catch up? You can find the previous articles here.

Continue reading Project Ugly Horse: Part VIII

Project Ugly Horse: Part VIII originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 17 May 2013 11:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Project Ugly Horse: Part VII

Zach Bowman — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 11:57:00 EST

Filed under: Aftermarket, Budget, Performance, Hatchback, Ford, Humor

Devils, Details and Weight Reduction

There are many things I could call this exercise. A party is not one of them.

I've spent three days crammed in the axle well of this 1989 Mustang with nothing to keep me company beyond a trouble light, a DeWalt drill on the very last of its legs and billion razor sharp, red hot slivers of metal with an affinity for my most sensitive of regions. My joints are raw from crawling around on the concrete. I'm half deaf from the shriek of the spot weld cutter and the boom of the cold chisel and hammer.

There are many things I could call this exercise. A party is not one of them. You see, after test-fitting the independent rear suspension from a 2004 Mustang Cobra into the old Fox Body I was left with the really challenging portion of the install: the details.

Technically, I could have simply plumbed some brake lines, said, "screw the emergency brake," dropped in a driveshaft and rolled, but I want this car to function in all the ways a road machine should, while still being able turn a decent lap on a road course. Combine that desire with a compulsion to scrape every ounce of unnecessary weight from the Mustang, and the result is me doing my best impression of a hammer-wielding Quasimodo, contorted into the void where the rear suspension should be.

Need to catch up on Project Ugly Horse? Take a look at the earlier posts here!

Continue reading Project Ugly Horse: Part VII

Project Ugly Horse: Part VII originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 11:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Project Ugly Horse: Part VI

Zach Bowman — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:58:00 EST

Filed under: Aftermarket, Budget, Performance, Hatchback, Ford, Humor, Specialty

Solid Axle? What Solid Axle?

I was fully prepared to embark on a seven-day journey down a rabbit hole of broken bolts, internet hearsay and consternation.

This should not have gone this easily. Having a long and checkered history of simple projects punctuated by much wailing and gnashing of knuckles, I was fully prepared to embark on a seven-day journey down a rabbit hole of broken bolts, internet hearsay and consternation when I finally decided to lay hands on the '89 Mustang with the goal of relieving the car of its stock rear axle. Instead, it took less than a full morning's worth of work to carve the old 7.5-inch solid axle from its moorings and mock up something, well, different.

You see, after my ~~enablers~~ friends at a local Ford Mustang salvage shop made mention of how easy it would be to plunk an independent rear suspension from a 2004 Mustang Cobra in the ass-end of my decrepit hatch, I became consumed with the notion. Sure, anyone with half a lick of sense and the synapses necessary to fire off a Google search will tell you the stock hardware can be made to handle quite well with a few modest modifications, but the IRS held a number of unique appeals. Chiefly, the conversion actually made financial sense.

Listen, you can't give me any look I haven't seen from my wife on a weekly basis for the past four years, and sheltered as I am from the glare of your skeptical eyes, I'll expound on the dollars and cents argument for gracing my $400 car with more than $900 worth of engineering.

Need to catch up on Project Ugly Horse? Catch up on all the earlier posts here!

Continue reading Project Ugly Horse: Part VI

Project Ugly Horse: Part VI originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Project Ugly Horse: Part V

Zach Bowman — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 14:59:00 EST

Filed under: Aftermarket, Classics, Budget, Performance, Hatchback, Ford, Humor, Specialty

The Slippery Slope

I've had a healthy appreciation for cars that stop since one truly unfortunate incident with a runaway 1971 Lincoln Continental.

It's funny how quickly a party can turn from, "We're all having blast" to "What happened to the front of the house, and how many stitches do you think this is going to take?" Standing in a Mustang salvage shop in Kodak, Tennessee, I couldn't help but feel I had strayed into the latter territory with Ugly Horse. There was a supercharged 5.4-liter V8 plucked from a rear-ended Cobra sitting off to my left. The shelves were lined with second-hand Roush and SVT components galore, but I couldn't stop staring at a set of rotors with the approximate diameter of my chest.

Plucked from a 2003 Mach I, the package deal included a set of five-lug hubs, 13-inch rotors and dual-piston PBR calipers for the princely sum of $300. If you're paying attention, that figure is nearly 3/4 of what I paid for my whole Mustang. Still, I've had a healthy appreciation for cars that stop since one truly unfortunate incident with a runaway 1971 Lincoln Continental 12 years ago, and the hardware that was staring me in the face should be enough to pull the freckles from my skin should I get serious with the brake pedal in the Fox. I fished three slumbering 100 dollar bills from my wallet, laid them on the counter with a wince and walked out with a set of parts that set this project down an entirely different path.

Need to catch up on Project Ugly Horse? You can check out earlier posts here!

Continue reading Project Ugly Horse: Part V

Project Ugly Horse: Part V originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 11 Feb 2013 14:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Project Ugly Horse: Part IV

Zach Bowman — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 11:58:00 EST

Filed under: Aftermarket, Motorsports, Budget, Performance, Etc., Hatchback, Ford, Humor

Bits and Pieces

The asphyxiation-blue plastic of my dash looked like it would snap under a crass tone.

The line between cleverness and idiocy is a blurry one. After reading a number of write-ups on the best way to swap pedal boxes in a Fox Body Ford Mustang, I decided to eschew common wisdom and blaze a new trail of my own. Traditionally, putting three pedals where once there were two involves pulling the entirety of the ancient plastic dash from the vehicle in order to gain access to a few carefully hidden nuts and bolts. Undo some linkages, pull said hardware, reverse the process and voilà! You suddenly have a portion of the controls necessary to row your own gears.

It was pulling the dash on Project Ugly Horse that had me sweating. The asphyxiation-blue plastic of my dash looked like it would snap under a crass tone, so rather than go all hog wild with the ratchet, I took a closer look at the construction of both pedal boxes. From what I could spy with my little eyes, the swap could be accomplished with a little ingenuity, some sweat and a few well-placed curses. I busted out the grinder, set the welder to warm and got busy.

Continue reading Project Ugly Horse: Part IV

Project Ugly Horse: Part IV originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 18 Jan 2013 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Project Ugly Horse: Part III

Zach Bowman — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:01:00 EST

Filed under: Aftermarket, Motorsports, Classics, Budget, Performance, Hatchback, Ford, Humor

Now With More Manual Transmission

Trust me when I say there is no more detestable a sensation than being slowly overrun by cold tranny fluid.

This isn't my first rodeo. I have, in the past, pulled any number of transmissions, both automatic and manual, and no matter how many times I do the deed, I'm always astounded at the staggering preponderance of fluid a slusher can stash away in its unknown voids. I started the madness of converting this 1989 Ford Mustang from a four-speed automatic to a five-speed manual by dropping the pan on the old gearbox and letting the super-fried automatic transmission fluid bleed out into a drain pan.

Pulling the old box out of the car was as simple as keeping everything supported while I removed the driveshaft, unbolted the bellhousing from the engine block and sent the one crossmember that supported the transmission packing. But wrestling the contraption from under the car unleashed a small lake of brackish ATF that threatened to flash flood the basement. Trust me when I say there is no more detestable a sensation than being slowly overrun by cold tranny fluid. Please hold your "that's what she said" jokes until the conclusion of our program.

Project Ugly Horse: Part I
Project Ugly Horse: Part II

Continue reading Project Ugly Horse: Part III

Project Ugly Horse: Part III originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Project Ugly Horse: Part II

Zach Bowman — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 14:58:00 EST

Filed under: Classics, Budget, Hatchback, Ford

Life To The Car, Death To The Slusher

Miss Part I of Project Ugly Horse? Read it here.

Daniel was not happy. The melting frost had turned the dirt/mold mixture on the Mustang's rear quarter panel into a sort of frog-sweat slime, and his right hand was now covered in the goo. He stopped pushing, looked at the contagion and glared.

I'd decided my new life goal was to pass a 911 on the track with this car looking exactly as it does right now.

"You need to wash this thing, Bowman."

Asking a friend to ride four hours north in a standard-cab Ford F-250 to pick up a crappy car was one thing. Asking him to risk his life against a thin coat of psychomagnotheric goo was something else entirely.

I had already made it clear I planned to preserve the, um, patina on the Mustang, mold and all. After all, you can't recreate the kind of personality this car has going on. With its surface rust, grime and general air of dereliction, the machine looks like it would be happier rotting in a field somewhere than tearing up a road course. Which is why I love it. By the time I talked Daniel into rolling the car onto the U-Haul trailer, I'd already decided my new life goal is to pass a 911 on the track with this car looking exactly as it does right now.

The term, kids, is fugly.

Continue reading Project Ugly Horse: Part II

Project Ugly Horse: Part II originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 07 Nov 2012 14:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Project Ugly Horse: Part 1

Zach Bowman — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 15:01:00 EST

Filed under: Aftermarket, Motorsports, Budget, Performance, Hatchback, Ford

Meet the Horse

I have always hated this car.

Not the Ford Mustang, mind you, nor the ubiquitous Fox body, but this specific car. It's not because it came from the factory cursed with a heavy and under-powered 2.3-liter four-cylinder engine or an entirely worthless four-speed automatic gearbox. No, I hated this car because once, while I was off pretending to pay attention at college, my father traded two whole International Scout II trucks, their titles and a scad load of new old stock parts for this: a secretary special hatchback Mustang. It made me ill.

Sorry, son. I've sold you to a brace of machete-wielding Somali pirates.

As a vested devotee of all things International Harvester, this was a sin of inconceivable magnitude. I would have been less crushed if he had sat me down, looked me square in the eye and told me in his most earnest and paternal tones that he spent his working days feeding laundry baskets of kittens to a wood chipper instead of wielding Autocad in a cubical as a structural engineer. Or that, "Sorry, son. I've sold you to a brace of machete-wielding Somali pirates to pay off a blood oath."

Confusion. Anger. The betrayal was made all the more painful by the news that the new owner of the two IH bruisers had simply thrown the stack of brand-new 345 heads into the back and hauled the Scouts straight to the crusher for scrap. The locals say you can still hear my teenage screams rolling around the darkened hills of Virginia on a still night.

Continue reading Project Ugly Horse: Part 1

Project Ugly Horse: Part 1 originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 10 Oct 2012 15:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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