95 Thunderbird v8 Coupe bound for Lemons glory. Or not.

So I've wanted to dip my toes in the crap can side of racing, but haven't really had enough friend folks interested enough to dig in. A month or so ago a local autocrosser decided to sell his 95 T Bird Coupe for $900. It's gutted. It's still an automatic. It's awesome. At the time I wasn't in the market, and honestly I don't want to trailer a car for just autocross. Now it can have a better purpose.

I've always loved this car. It looks so awesome being thrashed around cones, and just a blast to drive. I was surprised it was an automatic honestly. Anyway. 4 dudes, one car. We know there's a good list of safety items to address.

First will be cage. I'm thinking mail order bent cage. I'll tack it in place after getting it fit just right, and then have my brother in law buzz it in place properly. Round number of $700 is what I'm thinking. Any suggestions are welcome in that department.

It's got Kirkey seats. I don't see any Lemons rules on that not meeting requirements so that's good. If there's a strong opinion against them, we can sell those and buy the right one.

Harnesses need updated.

Fire suppression system.

Kill switch.

Headlights and tail lights.

It's supposed to have another set of wheels and old tires. I believe we are working with 17" wheels? It was mentioned there is a considerable amount of springs to go with the car as well. Still kinda gathering info, and on Sunday when we collect the car a full assessment can be done.

Here's a couple pics of it's autocross thrashing:

14290025_1421435624539303_8725989542853282546_o by hatchethairy, on Flickr

21586974_1841170762565785_7896417411030697681_o by hatchethairy, on Flickr

13690942_1376234285726104_4569004938889390274_o by hatchethairy, on Flickr

Hell, that looks way nicer than I expected. Maybe bring it to the challenge too.

Nice pick up!

I'm currently building a 318ti for Lemons/Champcar, and went the pre-bent cage route myself. I ordered from RollCageComponents.com, which already had a e36 kit that was close enough for my use. They have a measurement template for cars that they don't currently make kits for.

I'm very impressed with the kit, which took care of the hard parts - bending the tubes - but still requires a fair amount of notching tubes to fine tune the fit. I think the $700 estimate is low though, as my kit was just over $1k shipped. That's still considerably cheaper than buying a bender and the tube material, as well as the time to get everything bent up.

My former Lemons Taurus SHO ran a Kirkey seat, and it was ok. Not the most comfortable for long stints, but the price was right. I'm running a more typical fixed race seat in the 318ti.

For Lemons you won't need headlights, but will need brake lights. They don't have to be OEM though, and could be simple trailer lights bolted to the speaker deck or trunk lid... there are a lot of teams that do this.

I had a Supercoupe for a bunch of years. It was a fun car to throw around the cones. 

I also ran a 86 T-Bird in the first couple of Lemons races we did. The first year with a V6 and a auto. It was moderately horrible. It returned the next year with a 351 and a 3 speed. That car was a blast until it scattered the engine down the track.

We run Kirkey seats. They work very well. Make sure they are well fastened and have a good seat back brace.

Some pre bent mail order cages don't pass tech. Many of them have single door bars. Make sure you read the rules about cage design and follow them to a T. 

Have fun! 

check out rhodes racecars cages.  i ordered their kit for a c5 and everything looked good.  they do roadrace cages and drag race cages.  

I need to get this thing on scales. I have no clue what it weighs, but we should assume it's quite portly with an original curb weight of 3500 pounds. When figuring tubing size for the weight of the car, will that be pre-cage weight or should the total figure include the cage weight? If we are right under 3000 should we just bump directly to the 1.75 tube to be on the safe side?

In reply to captainawesome :

I put 1.75" tube in a Civic. I'm more interested in keeping the other 4000 pound cars out of the passenger compartment than I am being the lightest car on track. 

Heck yeah. I'm in for this.

So since the car isn't being purchased for $500 how does that work? Can I "sell" parts off the car to recoop like you would a GRM Challenge car?

Patrick said:

check out rhodes racecars cages.  i ordered their kit for a c5 and everything looked good.  they do roadrace cages and drag race cages.  

Looks like Rhodes has a LeMons/Chump/Champ legal cage available for this year and model car. Price after shipping is around $750 for 1.75 .120 DOM. I like it. I like it a lot.

Yes, you can recoup for budget, but really nobody is going to care about a t-bird unless you blatantly cheat it up.  
 

those specs on the roll cage are good.  Read this a few times, then print it and leave it on the car, then read it a few more times. https://24hoursoflemons.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/How-To-Not-Fail-Lemons-Tech_v3.5_040419.pdf

Some Kirkey seats will need additional work.  Use a road race spec seat that has shoulder bolsters and separate holes for each belt, not the drag race kind with the wide single hole as that headrest is super weak and needs to be reinforced.  If you can, get a seat with a halo for the extra protection.  A seat is an investment that you can move to other cars, and you are going to spend a lot of time in it and a good seat makes a big difference.  

In reply to Sonic :

That link is perfect. I'm going to read it a few times to make sure we get it right.

Staring at the general specs laid out by the cage guidelines and comparing to what Rhodes offers, it looks to be good. I'll make sure to call before hand to confirm they can meet the requirements.

rhodes cage by hatchethairy, on Flickr

Always nice to see another MN12 project. My first car was a 95 LX 4.6 (still have it), and I also have a 94 SC. Used to autocross both of them in Street Mod.

I have a set of scales and I used to weigh cars every year at the Supercoupe Shootout event. The lightest I've ever seen one was a totally stripped drag car at 2957 pounds. I doubt you'll get quite that low in a road race car (at least if you keep the automatic), but you should be able to get somewhere near there. I'd hesitate to guess about your car's current weight without knowing exactly what's still there and what isn't.

If you have any questions about the platform, I'm happy to share what I know. I have a spreadsheet with a lot of weights for individual parts (that I weighed myself, not internet rumor stuff), that sort of thing.

In reply to Will :

Honestly I don't think there is much left of the car when it comes to cutting weight other than rear quarter glass and rear windshield. Don't know if I should remove that or leave it at this point. The rules only dictate the door glass be removed or if it stays the door structure itself must remain and stay enclosed. Pretty sure he already removed the door glass.

One thing I remember from a pretty fast MN12 cougar that used to run Lemons is that they had issues with the differential overheating.  One of the most difficult things about keeping cars alive in Lemons is keeping them cool (been running Lemons for 10 years with a bunch of different cars).  Plan to get the biggest radiator you can fit, a good sized oil cooler, turn the A/C condenser into a transmission cooler, and you'll probably want a differential cooler and pump too.  Cool mechanical bits live much longer.  

In reply to Sonic :

I'll look into coolers once we get some test miles in. Me and the team have a private track day in June, so I think that's a good time to put some laps in and see where our deficiencies are. It also gets us a chance for each guy to turn laps in it and provide feedback on what we think it needs since it's currently set up for autocross only. I imagine that it will be decent enough though.

Aside from weight, one of the other problems with these cars is surprisingly tiny wheel wells. It's tough to get much more than a 275mm tire on a 9" wheel without it sticking out of the fender quite a bit, especially in front.

Shock selection is also terrible. Koni and Bilstein used to make options for these cars, but they've been discontinued for years. So I hope you already have something decent--though maybe it's not an issue for Lemons. I'm not familiar with their rulebook.

If you do decide you need more radiator, the 03-04 Cobra radiator can be made to fit pretty easily, and there's also an ebay seller with cheap-ish three-row all-aluminum radiators. I have one, and the radiator fan fitment is pretty bad, but they seem OK otherwise.

Just passed along my information to the PO for title work. I got the purchase price down to the LeMons $500 shelf. If I can bribe judges in the race setting whose to say I can't do it for the car?

Anyway, since my buddy is picking up the car and delivering to me Sunday, I haven't had a direct line to squeeze any of the salacious details on the car from the PO. I've been around it, but never really put effort into finding out what's been done to it.

So, it's got a chip, under drive pulleys, level 2 shift kit on the trans with a ratchet shifter to hold a gear. This makes me wanna look into a manual swap a lot less. Pretty stoked on that. Stock hubs and brakes, but he's got some wheels that are larger diameter. I believe them to be 17 so that gives us some tire selection.

In reply to Will :

Pretty sure he ran some 275s at some point in this cars life. I believe the spare wheels/tires were that width.

Don't know on shocks, but there's been a lot of mention of expensive springs so I assume he's upgraded dampers. I'll try to get more info on that.

Good to know on the radiator. I assume these are E-fans and not clutch type?

Yes, the 4.6 T-Bird has a really good 2-speed electric fan. It moves quite a bit of air. The only thing that's better is the Mark VIII fan, but the T-Bird's wiring really isn't good enough to support it. Also, the T-Bird fan and the Mark VIII fan are visually identical, so you'll see a lot of the former advertised as the latter. The part number is the only way to tell for sure.

You can upgrade to 99-04 Mustang GT brakes with nothing more than a caliper swap. They bolt to the spindles and the rotor dimensions are identical. If nothing else, the pad selection for the Mustang brakes is much better. And I'm not positive, but the T-Bird calipers may be iron, so you may even save some weight. Not sure.

If the car has rear drums, swapping to discs is easy. The 89-92 calipers are Fox body parts and have better pad selection than the 93-97 T-Bird calipers. 

If you do pursue a manual swap, the easiest way is the S197 transmission. It puts the shifter in the correct place, while the SN95 transmissions put it more or less under the radio. You'll want a Supercoupe clutch pedal, which aren't very common, but aren't impossible to find, either.

It's worth asking the previous owner if the shift kit is the J-Mod or something else like a Transgo.

In reply to Will :

Good to know on the fans. I've seen in other make/model cars where a larger radiator doesn't necessarily equate to lower temps and often times a better fan can make all the difference. I'm all for changing the rad if needed, but if a better fan does enough I'd go that direction.

Unless the stock calipers are in terrible shape we will probably just stick with those. Saves money and Carbotech has the RP2 pads available for the stock system. Those pads seem to be the hotness for endurance in larger cars from what I'm reading. If the brake lines aren't stainless we will probably switch those out when we flush fresh with Motul 600 or 660.

Manual swap would be a year or two out as long as this trans doesn't crap out on us before hand. I know it would be nice to have, but from what I'm gathering it's not going to put us on podium. Our focus will be on reliability, turning consistent laps, and most of all spend less time in the pits.

I'll check into what kit he installed.

Got even more great news on parts.

LSD rear.

3:73 gears installed and ready to rock.

He's also sending some 4:10 gears, but that's probably not a good ratio for the track.

Shorty headers.

Massive rear sway bar (his words).

Aftermarket torque converter.

Steering quickener 2:1 ratio. May need to remove, but probably worth trying out first.

So from a lot of reading I've done so far, and what was mentioned earlier by others will be keeping the diff cool. The only time I saw mention of them overheating was with an LSD. Open diffs no mention of boiling fluid. Maybe some ductwork to force air to it? The idea of running a pump and heat exchanger isn't something I want to do, so maybe we can figure out how to mitigate some of the temps with less moving parts.

In reply to captainawesome :

Massive rear bar might be the wrong way to go. Usually RWD cars do better with massive front bars and small to no rear bar. 

If he has the stock front bar, a big rear bar is a mistake. I can tell you from experience that Hoosiers, a stock front sway bar and a 1 3/8 Addco rear bar will make one of those cars lift the inside rear tire on cornering.

When I raced my SC, it had a 1 1/4 front bar and 1 1/8 rear, both from Addco. That felt pretty decent.

A good and relatively inexensive sway bar setup would be the factory bars from an 89-90 Supercoupe. They had the biggest factory sway bars for the MN12 platform.

The eagle has landed! My buddy that kinda brokered the deal for me was worried Missouri would shut it's borders for non essential travel. So he loaded the car up Friday night and headed out early Saturday morning. The newer battery with the car was toast. Must have a dead cell or whatever batteries no longer work from. I'm not a scientist. Anyway, I stole the one out of my Montero to get it unloaded. Posts are in the wrong spot, but we were able to get them somewhat connected so we could pull it off the trailer. After figuring out the car won't start in anything but neutral we were off and running.

I love this car.

It sounds good. It looks cool. It's kinda fast?

Anyway, I spent a good hour just kinda looking over the work that's been done to it and seeing what we may need to go fetch from a junkyard. I also went through the pile of parts to see what we kinda spares we have or what could be sold off. There's quite a bit of stuff to look at and go over so I won't paste the 90 pics I snapped. Just the stuff we will address and some overall shots.

The seat brackets on the driver side have to weigh a ton. Way overbuilt, and due to lack of adjustment will need to be address. After the team gets a good look at things we will go over whether a new seat is in the future or if we make this work with the proper safety measures in place. I'm pretty sure I still have a circle track head bracket from a Kirkey. My buddy has more too I think that could maybe bolted on as a halo of sorts.

No wiper motor assembly or arms. I imagine we are going to need that for any possible race days, so that's on the pick n pull list.

Air intake is a jumbled mess. We may leave it. If we find a stock one for cheap it will get swapped out. I was told by the PO that I should look into retaping the intake. He's funny.

Steering quickener is probably too fast for track work. Even so I think the only part of the collapsible column was where the quickener now resides. I need to do some research on that though.

The fuel gauge is pegged out. From a quick google search there's a chip on the back of the cluster that can fall out or be loose enough to cause the symptoms we are having. I'm hoping that's all it really is. Temp guage and all others appear to be working properly.

The e-fan is on when the ignition is turned on. Always. Not sure I like that at all, so we will probably get a relay set back up on a temp switch. The ignition switch itself is an interesting setup. Gotta figure out where and how we wanna setup the kill switch.

The front core support is mostly cut out and some bumper support brackets were fashioned up to kind hold things in place. It's functional but the lower part of the bumper needs support. Really the whole bumper needs a quick release setup because getting it on and off the trailer without scraping is tough even with long ramps. We will worry about that later though.

Looks all the wiring is still there for lights.

There's a set of spare wheels. They are hideous. The tires on both sets are basically round and good for moving the car around. That's it.

Main drive belt is cracked pretty bad. Gonna swap that out immediately.

I forgot about the back spoiler. It's been a while since I've seen the car, so I was planning to fab one up cheap. Looks like it's already done for me, and looks cooler than what I would have came up with.

In conclusion I think we got a great starter car. We mostly just need to focus on maintenance upkeep and getting safety equipment set up. The team should be all here today to go over everything and set our plan of attack.

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That steering setup looks dangerous for racing. Re-drilled wheels do too. But this looks really well bought. Should be fun.