Summit Fast-Five Wheels

I have both front and back wheels now. They are the Summit Stars, or what Summit calls Fast-Five wheels. The fronts are 15x4 and the rears are 15x8. Now I have to get tires. I'm going to be putting on the M/T ET Street Radial P 275 /50R15 on the back. I'm having problems finding front tires. Since the wheel is only 4 inches wide the tire size is 165/80TR15, which were used on the old VW Bug. I have found two different tires that will work, one is made by Nexen and the other is made by Kuhmo. I'll have to check next week at Dekalb Tire to see if I can get them ordered.

I'm working on cleaning out the garage to put the car in there so I can work on it this winter. Plus it gets it out of the weather. I'm back on track on what I want to do with the car. I flirted with making it a road racer, but after I saw how much it cost to race I have decided to keep it on the road. The cost of just one 45 min. road race is what it will cost to keep the car insured and on the road for a year. Plus after looking at the spec. the tire they have to run cost $836 for a set. I think I'm just going to stick with something I can cruise around with and take to the drag strip once and awhile.

Since I'm going to be working on it more this winter I promise I'll keep the blog updated more often. First up will be cleaning out the garage and I have made a huge dent in that area. I hope to have the Mustang in there by next weekend. I'll keep you posted....

Street Machine

Well, my project car will be going into my garage this winter. I'm going to build a car that I will show at parking lot shows, you know the ones, where you sit by your car in a lawn chair and lie about it. I'm also going to drag race it mainly at test and tunes. I wanted to go hardcore and just build a full on race car, but I really just want to enjoy it by cruising hanging out at shows with fellow gear heads and taking it to the strip every now and then to see what my mods have gotten me. So right now I'll be doing the cheap stuff first, making the car lighter by taking out the rear seat, radio and speakers, things like that. My seats will be going into my wife's 1998 white V6 convertible Mustang. Her interior has seen better days and mine is in great shape. So since I'm taking off as much weight as I can I'll be reusing what I can in her car.

She will need some tires soon, so I'll give her my 17" wheels with the nearly new tires and buy the Summit wheels that I talked about in the post below. I'll start out with the Mickey Thompson ET radials on the back while and some skinny tires up front. So I'll be working on the suspension first. I'll be using the springs that I talked about in the post below along with the Lakwood 90/10 struts for the front and the Lakwood 50/50 for the rear.

As far as the engine I'm using my SVO intake, adding a Steeda timing adjuster, PI cams and a X-Pipe. After all that I'll have to get it dyno tuned with my Diablo tuner.

So that is it for now, just a quick update on what I'm going to do with the Mustang. Until then here is a nice photo of an SVO intake.

Econo Drag Springs

It has been awhile since I last updated my Project Blog. I have been laid off from work and have been looking for another job. So the funds are tight and I have not done anything to the Mustang in months. So this update I'm adding something cheap. Used Mustang springs. I went over to Prestige Mustang and got a set of springs. The fronts are from a Fox body 4 cylinder car and the rears are from a Fox body 8 cylinder car. This is an old Mustang drag racing trick. The front springs will lift on acceleration transferring weight to the rears. I know that this will hurt handling as the front end gets mushy from the softer springs, but this is a non-daily driver project strip / street car. I'm going for a muscle car look and ride something along the lines of this:

I also plan on going with wheels like the ones in the photo. Those are the Weld Prostars, I think I'm going to go with the Summit Stars from Summit Racing. The first step toward all of this is the springs, which I have now. The next step will be getting SN95 Strange adjustable struts and shocks along with some kind of upper and lower control arms and lastly the wheels and tires.

I'll be doing this as funds allow, so it might take longer than I'd like. The project is coming together well enough. Once all the above mods are done I'll have the supenstion done then I can work on the last two parts before I hit the track. The last two parts will be adding a 4:30 rear gear along with beefing up the rear end. Then the last phase will be the engine and for right now I'm thinking I'm going to go with just a PI head swap and some shorty headers. While I'm stashing away my funds for all this modding I'll be doing the cheap stuff like making the car lighter. I'll post more on that as I go. I'm excited that I have a direction to head toward.