1980 Ford Fairmont Wagon. Family Cruiser.

ClemSparks said:

If anyone has experience with fox bodies and gears, I would listen to your experience.  I want to be able to drive this car on the interstate comfortably.  I know from experience a 3.27 gear will do that...and would actually be geared a little hight (numerically low) for that.  I have a stock T5 from a mustang.  Would 3.73s have it wound too tight?  Or would it be just right?  If I had a good, complete, used rearend with 3.27:1 gears, I'd put it in without hesitation and run it.  

Tire height will have an effect, and you should have enough room to make choices, so pick your tire size first, then the gear.

On my '89 LX 5.0 the stock tire height was 26", IIRC.   I was running 4.10 gears with a 28" tire for better dragstrip traction (more sidewall deflection with a taller tire), which was the equivalent of running 3.73 with a stock tire.  It was a light car, but that gearing with a T5 returned high 20's MPG (26-28) on the highway.  IMHO it was the perfect gearing for my setup, which was basically equivalent to GT40 heads and a B303 cam.  Ran 12.40s at 108mph in the 1/4 on the motor.

I would consider 3.27 a "freeway flyer" gear with a 302 and T5.  For a stock Mustang 5.0 engine, I would consider 3.55 the minimum I would want in a street gear, and 3.73s for any motor that will rev better than stock.

Thanks for that feedback.  I'm going to be running something like  225/60/15 or 235/60/15 on the ten hole wheels.

3.27 rear gear, 25.6"diameter tire (based on the smaller tire you mentioned), 0.68:1 5th gear ratio (an assumption on which T5 you have) and a hypothetical 2200 RPM cruise speed which I pulled from an orifice, gets us here;

Seems doable to me.

I just dug through photos and confirmed my T5 model number and that it DOES have the 0.68 ratio for 5th gear.

And yeah, those calculations make 3.27 seem pretty fitting.  My old Z28 with the T5 would lug along at like 1850 rpm on the interstate and that seemed to be on the low side of the sweet spot.  (I don't remember what rear gears it had but almost certainly numerically lower than 3:27)

I'm just hoping someone can keep me from overthinking it too much and say "Yeah...with your intended use and that car XXX gear will make you happy based on my experience."  

Realistically...at this point I'm going to move back to putting the engine together and leave the gear selection for down the road (or until a stupid deal falls in my lap).

I just hit the order button for the proper rear brake hose bracket.  Thoughts of a rearend or gear swap are getting pushed down the list.  I need to get this thing to make sweet noise and roll.

5th might be a tad tall but not by much if at all.  Motor torque numbers & curve would be the determining factor.  This is about how I remember my 95 Mustang GT conv. running on the highway and it was fine.  3.55's might be perfect but this isn't that far off it at all in my estimation.  Stock 5.0's are truck motors anyway.

I've been looking into it a bit today and (like you mention) I need to kind of figure out where my engine is happy (where it makes torque and vacuum while cruising) to make the best decision.  So that's more toward the strategy of "kick this problem down the road until after it's running."

A station wagon with a truck motor.  That has to be on a short list of the good ideas the car makers had.

What are the build specs again?  

This is a 1985 GT HO roller-cam engine with E7 heads on it.  

I think those are pretty low-speed torque motors with the E7 heads.  Seems fine to me.

This week the radiator went in and the fan touched the bottom of the shroud.  So I've raised the engine up the width of two washers.

The sway bar went in (with sway bar mounts that purportedly came out of a turbo coupe) but the brackets put it pretty low and now the sway bar links are too long.  I should be able to solve that with either different sway bar mounts or different sway bar links.

I tightened down the lower control arm bolts.  (I used rubber control arm bushings so the car needed to be bearing its own weight while I tightened these).

The front brakes have now been bled and should be done.

I've started looking at how all the wiring is going to work out.  I believe all the electrical controls for a 200 straight six and a carbureted 5.0 are pretty much the same.  The locations of the components and sensors (Coil, gauge/light senders/switches, etc) are just different.  So that all should go fairly smoothly.  

I was given a 3G alternator.  That'll take a bit of wiring, but it looks fairly straight forward.  Since the modern alternator is internally regulated, you simply take the regulator out of the system and connect a couple wires, best I can tell.

This project had been lost to details for a bit.  I hadn't organized myself enough to chip away at 30 minute or 1 hour jobs so it didn't get touched.  I'm trying to get things organized a bit better so I can make progress on it again.  The weather hasn't helped either (hot/humid...typical summer weather).

The dust layer is getting pretty thick by now:

If you need some help in wiring up that alternator, the various early Mustang groups on Facebook have all of the info that you need along with step-by-step instructions. Just did that  "conversion" on my '65 Mustang. Easy and could be and a much better alternative to stock I think . . . 

In reply to MuSTANK :

Thanks.  It seems pretty straight forward but the fox body forums don't have any comprehensive "how to" threads that I've found.  (I'm sure they are there.)  I hadn't thought about the classic guys as a resource...I appreciate the tip.

It really does seem easy.  There are a couple wires for the old external regulator that are the same color as the wires used on the 3G alternator.  There is a bit of confusion about Ammeter wiring (I don't have an ammeter) and whether or not a big-ass fuse is warranted.  

I'm going to dig through my EVTMs and get to the bottom of it (confirm what I've read on the fox forums).  

I wouldn't go to the trouble of converting, really...except I don't think I have the correct original-style alternator for this setup and a friend GAVE me a 3G alternator when he was cleaning up shop a bit.  So...why not?

I'm getting a little closer to firing this thing up for the first time.  Mind you, it won't be ready to drive for a while still...but V8 noises from this wagon will certainly be a big step in the right direction!

Yesterday I finally got to fitting the spark plug wires.  

I realized that the 6 cylinder throttle/accelerator cable isn't going to work so I've ordered what I hope to be the correct one.

I started hooking up some vacuum hoses and such.

I put oil in the crankcase.

Now I need to start connecting wires to other wires until there are no wires left unconnected.

ClemSparks said:

A station wagon with a truck motor.  That has to be on a short list of the good ideas the car makers had.

A personal goal post, that alas, I have not achieved yet!

And BTW, the engine bay pictures with a nice looking V8 between the fenders, is giving me unpure thoughts!

I wasn't really a fan of Fairmont wagons, then you started talking about v8s and manuals. Ugh something else to add to my Craigslist and marketplace searches.

Good looking car

13 months ago ClemSparks said:

 

I'm lovin' the roof rack.  It's like they meant for me to store the hood up here for the next 6-12 months!

 

 

Today the hood went back on.  I mis-forecasted this by so little it doesn't even matter ;)

I could've put the hood back on in time, I just hadn't thought about it until I had a reason to have the hood on the car:

I figured I might as well fire it up on known-fresh gas fed by gravity (this is the same way the wagon drove INTO the barn, by the way).  The hood is a natural place to hang this handy fuel IV.

The engine DID fire up this past weekend and what a glorious noise it is to hear 8 cylinders firing through an off-road h-pipe.

I ran it just a little while to set timing, Idle, get fluids flowing, etc.

I had not plumbed the fuel line yet or wired up the new 3G alternator.  The choke was tied open (not electrically wired yet)

We got the boat out this weekend (fun!) and that meant the spot in the barn next to the Wagon was empty.  An opportune time to shuffle the bench seat back into the car.  The kids helped with that.  (This thing was supposed to be a "family cruiser" but my kids are adults and off to college now!)

This evening I spent some time wiring up the new alternator.  I plumbed the fuel line from the tank to the pump and then attached a length of hose to the output of the pump into an empty gas can so I could pump the old fuel out.  There's probably nothing wrong with it (I'll run it in the daily driver) but it's just so easy to pump out when I'm running it off the IV tank.  I also wired up the electric choke to the original choke circuit in the car.

I fired it back up and checked the alternator output.  14.3 volts.  Perfect!  (Also I believe the Alternator warning light on the dash is working properly)

The fuel hose commenced to squirtin' and pumped the remaining 2 1/2 gallons of fuel out of the tank.  

It had that nice top fuel idle of a carburetor with the choke closed and (while I didn't visually inspect) the choke seemed to open up after a couple minutes (it smoothed out and settled into a nice low idle)

Next I'll plumb the rest of the fuel line and put some gas in the tank.  

I'm feeling good about it!  There's a list of stuff to do before it is ready to do some driving...but it runs!

Oh...I also ordered some tires for it this past weekend.

Nice too see yours coming along! I still love driving mine 

There should be a video of auditory bliss coming soon. 

meh...you all might just have to imagine it.  I've become too cantankerous to figure out how to post a video on here that you all can see but the rest of the world won't have to be exposed to.

But it moved out of the barn under its own power tonight for the first time with the 5.0.  It's actually a tiny little bit of progress...but a tiny little bit that has been a long time coming.

Project cars moving under self power is always a WIN!  Congrats!

I've been buttoning up details here and there.  A noteworthy one is that I replumbed the rear brakes to make room for dual exhaust pipes.  That took a few headscratching sessions but came together well.

Today I pulled it out of the barn on all 4 matching wheels (though the rear tires are just junk rollers for now).

I took this one specifically...with the Futura photobomber:

As it sits currently it has lowering springs on the front but still has stock springs in the rear.  The front is (almost certainly) too low and the rear is too high.  Hopefully the rear lowering springs will do the trick on the rear.  But I'm not yet sure what I need to do on the front.  And I know plenty of you will tell me the front ride height is perfect.  But it's (again...almost certainly) not.  Not for this car on the driveway that I will operate it on every time it gets used.   (I do agree that it would LOOK fantastic if I lowered the rear to complement the front.)

In reply to ClemSparks :

It may not be functional the way you want it, but it does LOOK great that low up front

Indy "Nub" Guy said:

In reply to ClemSparks :

It may not be functional the way you want it, but it does LOOK great that low up front

 

Indeed it does ;)

If, by some miracle, the front tires don't rub the fenders, it's possible it can be a workable front ride height (there's a reason I qualified "almost certainly" in my post above ;)).