FF58's Mod Swap - Step by Step 5.0 to Modular Engine Mustang Conversion

Navigation

Dec. 14/06

Been a long time since my last update again, sorry. It's that retarded busy time of year. There is a lot to go over here. I just want to add that once this project is finished, I will be redoing the site so that it is less of a blog and more of a resource, which was my original intention.

First, let's talk about doing a rear seat conversion. To my knowledge, this has not been done before. I'm sure it has somewhere, but I have ot found anything about it on the web. The goal here is to install the rear cobra seat into the fox car. This project is pretty easy, but really time consuming.

The first thing that needs to happen is to remove the rear seat brace from the cobra. This is a large brace and it is spot welded in place. You of course need to drill all of those spot welds to get it out. An air chisel was also used to remove it. Here is a picture of the cobra after the seat brace was removed. Thankfully the donor car is scrap, so we don't have to be too careful when doing things like this.

The brace may need some coaxing to come out once all of the spot welds are removed. What we did was slice the brace in the center over top of the transmission tunnel to facilitate easier removal. That way it could come out in 2 pieces.

Once the brace is out, you need to move it over to the fox car. The brace is too long to just fit in the fox car by 2 inches. Measure one inch at both ends of the brace and cut it. DO NOT CUT THE 2 INCHES FROM THE CENTER OF THE BRACE. If you do, the seats will not fit. After the ends are cut by 1 inch, the brace will weld into place in perfect position. You also have to remove the old fox rear seat mounting brackets. Simply slice off the parts that stick up and then grind them flush. The seats will go into the car at the proper location now. Here is a picture of it in the fox car.

After you get it in, you will notice that the part that goes over the tranny tunnel floats up about an inch because of slight chassis variance in the cobra's trans tunnel. This is ok. In fact, now that this is in, you will be able to use the Cobra carpet if you want.

Fuel and brake lines.

I am using the fuel and brake lines from the Cobra, front to back. You may not be and will have to figure out how to modify your particular application to work. The fuel and brake lines basically come off in giant sections. With some chassis modification, they will fit in exactly the same place on the fox car as they did on the Cobra. You need to look at how they are connected under the Cobra and duplicate those connections under the fox car. The fuel filter bolts into stock location, but some of the clips will need to have holes drilled for them. Where the lines run in the tranny tunnel, you will need to modify one of the brackets to sit higher. You can bring the one from the cobra and weld it in place or you can move the one on the fox car up 3 inches. The line bracket at the back of the tranny tunnel is perfect right where it is. When you put the lines up in the car, make sure to use the proper hangers and clips that came off of the Cobra. You can't have lines rubbing anywhere or they will eventually wear through.

You may run into problems with your frame connector being in the way. Because I did a frame through body connector, all I had to do was slot the connector and weld a piece in to make a valley for the lines. This will not be so easy with a floating connector. On the Cobra, the lines were actually up above the connector and I had to cut it off to get them out. Obviously if you did that, you would have to cut your connector off if you ever had to do the lines. Here is a pic of the lines sitting in the "valley".

I am going to weld a plate across the opening and recognize I will have to cut that plate off if I ever need to repair or change lines.

Pedals (so far).

First, when you are removing the pedal assembly, make sure you be careful when you disconnect the brake pedal. There is a sensor there that consists of a few different pieces that can easily fall apart. I left the sensor assembled and put a bolt through to keep it together.

I have the pedal assembly mocked into place in the fox. It is not tightened down yet because the brake booster needs to come over. The pedals basically fit into the stock location, but there may be a little modification needed as far as elongating a bolt hole where the booster stud comes into the car.

The gas pedal mounts the exact same way in both cars. Take note, if you switch gas pedals, there is a metal bracket underneath the Cobra pedal that needs to be brought over to the fox car. I can;t remember if it is in the fox car already or not. This bracket need to go in place or you will not have full pedal travel. Here is a pic.

I am thinking about changing the firewall mounting plates on the cars. On the Cobra one, there is a roller bearing in the plate for the steering shaft. I will most likely move that over so I can use that bearing.

Some wiring stuff.

I kow this is where a lot of people get hung up because they are not sure what to splice into their fox car. Unfortunately, I will not be able to help you because I am using the complete Cobra harness, which I recommend. The Cobra harness is in several pieces. There is the engine bay section, under dash section, mid car section, rear section, door sections, and speaker and roof lighting sections. When disconnecting these remember to label everything.

The dash section comes out with the dash.

The engine bay section disconnects from distribution blocks and a couple of single connectors located in the bay.

The mid section disconnects at the drivers side rear wheel well.

The harness in the cobra is neatly bundled together and should go into the fox car as nicely as it comes out. the harness is form fitted to the chassis and fits just as well in the fox car as it did in the cobra.

At the rear of the car, there are 2 important modules that need to be moved over. First is the first inertia switch. In the event of an accident, this switch turns off the fuel pump. the swith from the cobra will bolt into the stock fox location. here is a pic.

The next important module is the fuel pump relay computer. I don't need to explain what this does. IT should bolt into the fox car in roughly the same position as on the cobra. You will have to drill a hole for the ground. Here is a pic.

I'm going to end it there for now. I will try to get one more update in before Christmas.

112 hours previous + 31 hours over the last couple weeks = 143 hours total.

Dec. 28/06

Well, so much for getting an update done before Christmas. It was just too busy to get anything significant done on the car. I did do some work this evening though.

First things first, I once again mocked the hood into place to make sure I wasn't smoking crack when the 1" lift cleared the blower pully. Before when I was messing around on it, I had the car sitting on the Cobra K-Frame. I wasn't sure at that time if the Cobra K-frame maybe sat a bit higher than the AJE fox one. I got the AJE k-member bolted up because I am doing the mock up install for the transmission mounts and here is what I found.

So there you can see that with a stock pully and this hood, there is about 3/4 of an inch clearance. Go to a 3.8 pully and you will have over an inch of clearance. Pretty crazy.

I got the Cervini wing and decklid mock mounted. Whenever I say something is mocked into place, it means it is fitted for the time being but will be removed at a later date for one reason or another. Anyway, the decklid and wing are mocked into place. One thing is that even though the Cervini stuff is of exceptional quality, the bolt holes for the decklid were drilled in the wrong spot. I had to elongate the holes on each side in order to get it to mount properly. I was a bit dissapointed by this since the decklid alone cost more than a lot of places charge for hoods. Here is a pic.

I am using the Cobra style wing and I think it looks pretty good. I was worried about it being too big since I kind of like things to be low key when it comes to my cars, but it sits pretty nicely. One last note on the deck, even though the bolts holes were drilled wrong, I still recommend this piece to anyone. The finish of the product is fantastic above and underneath.

Now that I have the IRS buttoned up, I threw on the rims and tires to see how they fit. As I expected, they stick out an inch on either side. My goal through some machine work and different tires is to get them at least flush with the lip. This means I may have to roll the lip on the quarters to get them to fit properly. Right now the car has 255/40/17, I will probably drop to a 245/35/17. Hopefully that will give me a bit more leeway. If anyone has any suggestions for this, give me a shout at mustang1234562003@yahoo.ca

I mocked in the engine and transmission tonight as I mentioned earlier. My goal here is to get the Cobra transmission mounts lined up and tacked onto the car. For anyone who wants to do this, the trans mounts line up with the contours of the fox car perfectly so it is an easy swap. You will have to completely remove your old transmission mount brackets for these ones to go in right. Here is a pic of it up in the car with the transmission in place.

You can see where the old mount was. I still have to grind some of it off. You will have to mock everything up just like this in order to get the mounts welded into the proper place. If you just eyeball it, chances are it could be off a bit.

The last thing I will touch on is my bumper install. In my quest to have the most complete swap car on the planet, I decided to use the cobra bumper on the fox car. This serves another purpose as well. The mounting points for the intercooler brackets are on the bumper. I'm not sure how other people have mounted their intercoolers, but I will be able to mount mine in the stock location. If you are going to use the Cobra bumper, there are a couple of things you have to do. You will need to slice 2 inches off of both ends of the bumper so that ot fits under the bumper cover and you will have to drill mounting holes in the bumper mounting plates. Holding the bumper up to the bumper shock will allow you to see exactly where the holes need to be drilled. Pic.

That is it for tonight. There is a lot of work planned for Saturday.

143 hours previous + 6 hours tonight for 149 total hours so far.

Jan. 4/07

Just a quick update today with no pictures.

What's happening now is a complete mock up of all the brake lines, rad, intercooler and anything else that has to go in the engine bay.

Some tidbits:

I got the transmission mounts welded in to place. They went in pretty easily. I remind you to tack the mounts in place when the transmission is in the car. You should also put your driceshaft in to make sure everything is sitting squarely. If you use the lines from the Cobra and have them installed in the right spot, the driveshaft will clear just fine.

The Driveshaft from the Cobra fits perfectly into my car using the IRS. I suspect it would work fine with the 8.8 rear, but you will have to change the flange on the rearend.

The hydroboost brake setup takes a little modification. You will need to elongate the bottom right bolt hole (when looking at it from inside the car) and you will also have to modify the hole where the pedal hook up comes into the car. The plunger on the booster sits up higher and the hole needs to be made to accomodate that.

The hard brake lines in the engine bay all go into place where they should as if they were in the Cobra.

That is it for now. I will have a larger update with pics on Saturday.

Jan. 12/07

All work and no updates make Jack a dull boy.

Hoping to make a good update on Saturday. Been working on getting the cowl back onto the car.

Jan. 14/07

I wish I had more of an update for you, but this will be a short one. That being said, it will answer a lot of questions about dash swaps that people have. So it is short, but important.

First I will start with the progress on the cowl. The cowl has taken up most of the time in the last few work days. Fortunately, I didn't butcher it too badly. I don't profess to be a body man, so taking this project on was a bit nerve wracking. Fortunately things worked out (kind of).

My goal with the cowl is to fill the holes but retain the wipers. I went to a wrecking yard and cut out a drivers side wiper bezel so I could weld it over the wiper that sits underneath the plastic on the cowl.

As you can see, there is some funky patchwork going on there. It was originally all one patch, but the metal expanded too much and we cut the center out of it. We re welded a patch back in and it levelled off a lot more. It looks ugly, and it is. But this also presents an opportunity. I am not one to condone the use of a lot of body filler so I am going to learn how to use lead to fill panels. My leading kit is on the way from Eastwood. One it is leaded, I will file it as flat as possible, and then it is the body shop's problem. Really I'm just relieved that it is back on and lines up right where it should.

Also, on a side note: The Eastwood rust converter goo I bought seems to be creating rust underneath of the black paint I sprayed for some reason. I can't leave it like that so unfortunately I am going to have to strip the engine bay to the metal and then acid wash the metal. That will encompass an entire Saturday.

Dash Madness Part 1:

The dash swap seems to trouble a lot of people and I know why. It isn't so much the how to do it, but it is scary when you are cutting something that you potentially only have one of and you absolutely must not screw it up. It is a bit daunting.

I recommend pulling out the windshield for this.

The first thing I did was mock the old dash back into the car since the cowl had been off. I put on the piller plastics and the speaker covers just to make sure the window line was correct. You won't have to worry about your window line.

Take your old dash and trace the back edge with a marker onto a large piece of cardboard. Be careful when you do this as it will serve as your template.

The dash mocked in.

The template I made.

I took some measurements from the A-pillar to the points on the cardboard just for reference.

Like most who attempt this, I had a lot of trepidation around my first cut. I made it way shallow and not even close to where I needed to.

When I cut, I traced a line on the dash with black marker, and then carefully cut with a razor blade along it. I then removed the foam and the vinyl from the are that was being removed. This is so when you cut the hard ABS plastic underneath, it didn't shoot up all over the place. I then used a cut-off wheel to cut the plastic underneath.

You may opt to make the cut all at once, just be careful.

The first cut:

Removing the vinyl:

After I mocked up the dash in the car after the first cut, I saw how rediculous the amount of material that still needed to come of was. I went on the net and checked some pictures of cut dashes and decided the next cut would be made close to where it should be. You will need to remove some of the heater components: namely the part I like to call the antlers. Also, there were 2 metal brackets in the way of cutting the dash. I wasn't sure if I would use them again, so I just bent them down and out of the way. If they don't get used, I will just leave them bent down where they are. It also looks as though I will have to remove the passenger side airbag. Not sure on that yet. Here is the dash cut to roughly where it needs to be to get in the car right. All that will be needed from this point is fine trimming. Also note how well a 4.6 works as a pizza holder.

That is all I have about the dash for now, I will finish this on Monday.

Now on to a mystery. Maybe someone out there can help me figure this out.

Under the dash, I found a garage door opener hardwired into the car. When I had first saw it there, I though it was strung up and the previous owner forgot it. But when I actually looked closely at it, it is wired to the car.

It still runs on a 9v battery, which is strange, and then it wires to a relay and then finally it connects into a white wire with an orange stripe that is connected then into the column. Here are some pictures.

It is a mystery. If anyone has an idea what it may be, shoot me an email at mustang1234562003@yahoo.ca. Thanks.

Hours: 25 in the last couple weeks plus 149 for a total of 174. Wow.

On to Page 5.