Finally Joined

Wile E. Coyote Jr.

Registered User
Hello everyone. I have been apart of TCCoA for a while but now that my SC is in working order I joined this forum as well. I have a 1989 SC 5 speed, original performance white car with grey cloth interior, pretty standard.

But My SCs journey started in June when I bought it. The car had a broken HB, was completely rotted out, the suspension was shot, and had countless electrical issues. Instead of using it for my original purpose, just for parts, I decided to save it.

I started with the engine. I tore it down to replace the HB and other pieces that were damaged. And of course normal tune up pieces; plugs, wires, oil pump, water pump, injectors, vacuum lines, ect.

After that, I move to the body. The floor pans, rockers, fire wall, front shock towers, and rear shock towers were rusting away. I saved what I could but for everything else, some flat steel with a bit of massaging fixed the rest. A few pieces I was able to get from a friend, MadMikeyL on TCCoA. This included seat supports, windows, trim pieces, and a set of SC shocks.

After that it was pretty straight forward. Rebuilt the suspesnion with NOS sport shocks and 3/4 drop vogtlands because both sets of SC shocks I had were bad, did some bondo work, and painted it in my garage. Probably not the best job, but Im happy to have saved the car from the crusher.
Also, the black wheels were originally bought for my 96. But since the SC wheels had bad tires I swapped them so I could drive it. And the dealer in the pictures is the same one that sold it and 1989.
 

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Very nice! I have one with floors like that. I don't have the courage to do anything with it though. Any pictures of the repair?
 
Very nice! I have one with floors like that. I don't have the courage to do anything with it though. Any pictures of the repair?

I just took these. I know I should take pictures of the progress, but I always forget to once I get going lol. I never put carpet in the car, I saved it on a tight budget so I never got a new one. I do need to get some floor mats at least. And thats just dirt in the picture. I fixed this car to be my new daily because I have plans for my 96.
 

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Hi, what did you do with the black wheels that came with it?
They were sold to help offset the cost of the build. I was 19 and didnt have a lot of money for anything, so they had to go.


Car has also since been scrapped.

To condense a long story, the engine blew the head gaskets not long after it was built. Car was parted out to get some money in, and the car went into storage. I pulled the car back out to build into a track car in march of 2020, where I learned the lesson of needing to check the A pillars for rust as well. Car buckled while it was on the jack stands.
 
To not waste space by creating another thread I will post my most recent SC build on my Original join letter, which I pretty much abandoned after the engine let go on my 89.

I now have a 90 SC, originally an automatic car.
The car was actually given to me by a friend, who is a long time member both here at SCCoA and TCCoA, which is where I spend most of my time.
How the car came into my hands was the ABS system went bad, and with the car already having 240k on the clock and rust, it was originally going to be scrapped. But instead I got it in exchange from helping strip the car of its engine, trans, and seats. It also had a set of Tokicos that were to come off the car as I was building it.

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This was in summer of 2019, and like for my 89, I didnt have a lot of money to spend on the car.
So the goal was simple: get the car back on the road as quickly, and cheaply, as possible.

Using the manual trans parts out of my 89, and quick look around FB market place, I started work on swapping a 1996 Explorer 302 and M5R2 into the car.
Yes, I know. Another 302 swapped SC.
While getting the engine out of the truck, I was also given a pair of composite bucket seats, harnesses, shorty headers, the complete wiring harness for the engine PCM and the chassis fuel box, and a spare 302 short block. That was all $500.
The shorties were traded straight up for a set of Foxbody long tubes that I modified to fit around the steering shaft. The spare short block had a Fox oil pan on it so I swapped that onto the Expo engine. For motor mounts the explorer uppers were re drilled to fit onto the stock SC motor mounts. This ended up making for a hellatious driveline angle so I made shorter mounts later on.

It also created some clearance issues...
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Moving on, after getting everything fitted and using an F150 clutch kit to mate the engine to the trans, it was onto the wiring.

I rewired the harness with help from TheEFIguy on explorer forum, and turned the expo SLL4 into a standalone unit with its own relay and fuse box.

The exhaust was basically a straight pipe system, except for the fact that it still went through the stock SC mufflers.

When the Tokicos came off, I tossed on a set of Monroe blues just to have on the car for the time being.

Inplace of the broken ABS system I installed a 94 cougar booster and master cylinder.

Three weeks of work, and a total of 2 months agter taking ownership of the car, it went for its first drive.

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New Jersey law requires a hood on your car. Dictators, I know. And since I was rapidly approaching my budget and time limit I couldnt afford to make or get a cowl hood. So the cars calling card was born.


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The hood I had gotten on a trade from another member whos SCs hood was cut to fit a taller blower hat. So since it was already cut, I just cut it more.
Total price for the car, start to finish, was $960.

My millennial rat rod as I like to call it.
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Car was a daily for roughly a year and a half, before I started a new job that was further away.

Car is now under re construction, with a complete suspension rebuild, rust repair, chassis stiffening, proper fiberglass bucket seats, a refreshed engine, brake upgrade and more. I have that current build on TCCoA where Im a member under the same name.
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If you would like more updates on the vehicle Id be happy to post them.

And dont worry, I have an SC 3.8 and split port 4.2 waiting in the wings for a furture project with this car. But for now its keeping a 5.0, which now has ported heads, a lunati VS upgrade, and an E cam. And the cam also came from the spare 302 block I got when I originally built the car.
 
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Most recent project with the car was building a set of seat brackets.

I know Corbeau makes a set but I didnt want to spend near $300 for brackets I need to modify anyway.

For the passenger side I used photos of a Corbeau for reference, and noticed with everything installed its a bit too tall for me. With some modifications I got it so it was comfortable enough for me but also not super slammed for any passengers who decide to come along.

The driver side had to be a lot lower for me though, because thats my favored position and I wanted to have enough room for a helmet.
Since the seat risers for these cars are uneven in the first place, I had to get creative to keep it level and get it to my desired level.

These are more "prototypes" then anything but Ill be using them as I break in the cars new build to decide whatll need to be changed on them.
 
Yes a set of NRG Prisma seats are going in. Certainly on the cheaper side but the fit me well, are fiberglass, and have a pass through for an anti-sub belt.

The car Im building to use a learner car for drifting. So Ive been doing some "experimental" things with this car that I wouldnt have tried on another. Plus it was so far gone to begin with, I figured I had nothing to loose.

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Example: this was how bad the rust was when I started. Both front and rear torque boxes on both sides were shot. The rest of the rockers we pretty much gone. Most would write it off.
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But I cut out the rot, rebuilt the inner rocker and brought the torque boxes to were the outer rocker would be. Then I boxed what was left, and ran a 1 3/4in thick wall roll bar the length of the the car. I then finished building the torque boxes around the bar, and then gusseted to the body the in between.

Will it work? No idea. Seems to creak less if at all jacking the car up but that could be placebo. But I figured it was better trying something then just scrapping another SC.
 
Seats and harnesses are in.

An issue Im working on now is my cam sensor.

I am running an SBF 302 but I am using a 1996 Bird 4.6 computer to run it. I wanted OBD2 and coil packs instead of a distributor, and also easy tunability.

Whats funny is my tach and cam sensor worked with my original cam sensor, a 3 wire HE style, even though the EEC is supposed to use a VR. But it did throw a code, so I re wired the harness and swapped it for a 2 wire VR sensor.

Now the tach doesnt work.

Probably something stupid but looking into it now. 20220128_183852_HDR.jpg20220128_152730_HDR.jpg
And no the car isnt on. Just the lights to test if the pillars lit up and if I installed the LEDs properly.
 
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Spoiler is on and positioned in its lowest setting.

Its completely DIY so I have to shorten the sides still and finish some other rough edges but its basically how its gonna look.
 
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Interior has been swapped (mostly) to black. Need to work on a RSD.

Some of yall have probably seen the dash Im selling, and the reason for it not getting installed is the car isnt worth a dash like that. Plus this will all be coming out in about 2 years for a cage anyway.

Cars still waiting an a tune to run properly, should have my hardware to upload it by the end of the week. The first track event is on April 2nd and I atleast want to be able to drive this car over to watch.20220323_124036_HDR.jpg
 
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