Stupid things I do with and to my Supercoupe

I've owned my 94 Supercoupe since 2006. I've posted the occasional pic here and there, but even though I've been working on this car for nearly 15 years, I've never done a real build thread on it. It's too late to document the  vast majority of stuff I've done, but I guess it's never too late to start a thread about it. This will probably be a bit of a ramble and hopefully a long-term ownership log with occasional updates.

First things first: it's a five-speed, one of 722 built in 1994. It's a relatively low-optioned car--no sunroof, came with half cloth/half leather seats, non-folding rear sets, etc. I bought the car in 2006 from a guy in Florida. Ironically, he had bought it from the original owner--in Chattanooga, which is where I live. As purchased, it had 112,000 miles and had recently been given a very nice paint job. It had a few minor mods: clear corner lights, mild cam, and a few other things I've forgotten by now.

I started working on it almost immediately. The engine has been through a few iterations, but the engine that's been in it since 08 is a fully built 4.3 stroker. Ported heads, .580/.580 cam, 16psi boost, double intercooler (two stock ICs stuck together), all that good stuff. Dynoed at 377 hp/459 lb-ft of torque. Someday my plan is to add a better blower, since the engine can flow way more air than the M90 can supply.

After the engine, the suspension was the next big project. I swapped the 5x4.25 bolt pattern for 5x4.5 so I could use Mustang wheels and brakes. I added Focus RS calipers (same as 2000 Cobra R, just a different color) and Cobra rotors in front, relocated stock calipers with Cobra rotors in back, and 10th Anniversary Cobra wheels. I also lowered it and added 1.25 front/1.125 rear sway bars.

At this point, I loved the torque and the way the car looked, but the bigger wheels, brakes, sway bars, intercooler etc. meant that the car was about 100 pounds heavier than stock. These cars have a reputation for being overweight to begin with, and while the internet exaggerates it a bit, they're heavy--no getting around that. At this point, the car weighed 3,741 pounds with a full tank of gas. 

That wasn't going to do.

At the time, I was autocrossing the car in Street Mod. At one point, the car actually set FTD three times in four local events. But unfortunately, that's mostly because at the time the level of competition in our area wasn't as high as it is now. I took it to two or three national tours and got absolutely murdered.

This was around the time I had to put the car on a diet. And many people will ask "Why? Why wouldn't you just get a Miata, or a Mustang or [fill in the blank] if that's what you wanted to do with the car?" 

And the answer is because I don't want a Miata or a Mustang. I wanted a lighter Supercoupe.

The good news is that there are a lot of places to remove weight on these cars. For example, replacing the iron differential housing and lower rear control arms with aluminum pieces from a Lincoln Mark VIII. Below you can also see the aftermarket aluminum driveshaft that replaced the stock iron piece). Can't see the aluminum flywheel, but it's in there, too.

I added a 1996-style fiberglass hood.

Replaced the stock front seats with the factory Recaros from a 2000 Mustang Cobra R (don't have any good pics of those, for some reason) and replaced the stock battery with a tiny lithium ion one. I also built a set of custom Koni coilovers for the front.

Awesome build! I have always loved these cars. I like what you've done to it!

I like the progression, thanks for sharing it with us!

You can sort of see this in one of the earlier pics, but I replaced the cast aluminum intercooler tubes with some custom mandrel-bent aluminum tubing. Ditched the metal air intake tube for plastic ducting and replaced the copper/brass radiator with an ebay aluminum one.

After a while, finding huge chunks of weight got harder and I had to search for smaller gains. Earlier, I had removed the stereo (which never worked correctly) and the foglights (which looked kind of cool, but didn't produce any meaningful amount of light). That got me thinking about all the wiring the car still had for features it either never had (because Ford installed the wiring whether the car got the option or not) or because I had removed that system. So...I stripped the interior and removed the wiring for the stereo, power seats, foglight switch and. ride control switch. I also deleted the keyless entry system (this kind of sucked, and required rewiring the power locks) and went under the hood to delete the ride control harness and a few other little things. Even went into the headliner to remove the wiring for the visor lights and auto-dimming mirror. I replaced them with standard parts from a base-model Thunderbird.

While i was at it, I found some brackets and other things I could live without. Here's everything I ended up removing and/or replacing.

Around the same time, I replaced the Addco solid rear sway bar with a custom 1.25" tubular one I had built.

I tend to look at weight reduction from a dollar/pound perspective, and one thing I had put off was two-piece rotors. They're expensive, but two Black Fridays ago, I found a set of Baer two-piece rotors on sale, so I finally went for it.

And I replaced the Cobra wheels with 18" Enkeis--more for tire selection than weight savings, but it did save a modest amount of weight.

There are probably lots and lots of little things I've forgotten, but that's about where the car was up until a few weeks ago. As pictured above, it weighs about 3,370 pounds (though that's low on gas, not with a full tank. Add maybe 100 pounds for a full tank).

I've been driving the car for about a year and a  as pictured above without making any changes, but I recently got the urge to work on the car some more. Before going any further, I want to add a note about what this car is, what it isn't, and how that's affected my decisions about what I do to it. 

It isn't a race car. It is a street car that gets raced from time to time. That means I have a simple rule: don't do anything to reduce weight if it makes the car worse. That's why it still has air conditioning, sound deadening, cruise control, etc. I'm sure some people would say removing the stereo or keyless entry made it worse, but it's my car, and I'm the only one who gets to make that decision.

Unless the aftermarket comes out with a tubular front k-member/control arms or a fiberglass decklid, I'm at the point of looking for very small amounts of weight in a lot of places rather than bigger chunks of weight in a few places. 

Example: a few years back I replaced the steel tensioner/idler pulleys with plastic ones. I replaced the steel water pump pulley with an aluminum one. I just got a used aluminum alternator pulley to replace the steel stocker. 

I also got an aluminum power steering pump pulley, but after removing the stock pulley, I found out they're the same weight. That's disappointing.

I get that on a car this size, some parts are bound to be heavy. I tend to get annoyed when a part seems needlessly heavy. For example, the stock shift lever. So I bought a cheap aluminum T45 lever from ebay and modified it a bit to fit my car better. Ended up being less than half the weight of stock.

Even replaced the steel threaded insert. Found some aluminum M12x1.75 bolts on ebay and cut the head off one after threading it in.

Know how they say when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail? Well, when you have a covid quarantine, too much time, and some aluminum scrap, everything steel starts to look like something you can replace.

The front sway bar had a couple steel spacers for clearance under the mount/bushing. No reason those can't be made of aluminum.

Then there's this bracket that connects the center console to the bottom of the dash.

I love that "keyless entry" on those Fords - had it on my Town Car.  

Did you remove the key pad from the keyless entry?

This is fun! Love this kind of stuff. 

Datsun310Guy said:

I love that "keyless entry" on those Fords - had it on my Town Car.  

Did you remove the key pad from the keyless entry?

The key pad is still in the door just because otherwise there would be a hole there. But all the associated wiring is gone.

Someday I'd like to change over to the 96/97 style door handles, but that won't happen until the car needs to be painted again. If that ever happens, I'll pull the pad from the door and patch the hole.

Right now my SC's front bumper cover is in the kitchen, its steering wheel is in the back seat, and I'm tearing into the wiring harness again. Why is my car currently in pieces?

Broken odometer gears. Scope creep has entered the thread.

It's a common problem on Fords of this era; the plastic gears in the odometer break and stop turning. Replacing them is easy enough, but the plastic dash trim that surrounds the gauge cluster is incredibly fragile. I don't like to remove it more often than I have to. But I also have an FR500 steering wheel I've been waiting to install, and pulling the stock steering wheel off will make it easier to get the dash trim out. Good time to get a few things done at once.

Removed the stock steering wheel, dash trim and gauge cluster no problem. But after removing the cluster I found an electrical connector that wasn't plugged in to anything. No idea what it was, but clearly, my car didn't need it. 

Back when I did the interior de-wiring, I left the dash alone because it seemed like a lot of work. But I removed the glove box and started looking around for anything else I could see that I might be able to remove. Found a power antenna module (the brown box). My car never had a power antenna. I don't need that.

I also decided I could pull the electronics for the auto headlights and swap it with the non-auto headlight stuff in my other T-Bird, a 95 LX. That would save a tiny bit of weight from the SC, and I never really use the auto headlight feature anyway. With the tiny battery, I like to turn the headlights on manually after the car starts.

I found a few more unused electrical connectors, but after a while, I just didn't have the access I needed to get to them. I'm not looking forward to it, but it's time to pull the whole dash. Not quite there yet, but here's where we are now:

So how did this lead to removing the bumper cover? Well, on the first go-round with the wiring, I didn't remove the foglight wiring, and that's always annoyed me just a bit. But as with the dash, getting to the wiring was a challenge. Removing the cover would give me more room, and let me see if there was anything else under there I might be able to remove/replace. So far I've found the harness for the radiator pusher fan (removed the fan itself long ago, the puller fan has been sufficient) and a daytime running light harness (DRLs were only equipped on Canadian SCs, so it serves no purpose on my car).

I've been slowly pulling those wires from the harness, but there are few things I find less appealing than semi-sticky, oil-covered cloth wiring harness tape. It's slow going.

Do you see yourself stripping the entire interior/trunk lid/ door shells and going hole-saw bull goose looney? Love these and will quietly return to the breakfast nook /pooter room .......wink

In reply to 759NRNG (Forum Partidario) :

Definitely not. That's a rabbit hole I don't want to go down.

Probably spent more time today looking at the car and thinking about stuff than actually doing stuff, but I did find time to simplify the battery mounting and how the cables hook up. Was able to use an aluminum brace from my scrap pile and even use existing holes in the inner fender, so I didn't have to spend any money or drill any new holes.

Removed this stuff, saving 9 oz.

I also replaced the 175 amp fuse that I mangled while disconnecting the ground wire from the power distribution box.

Super coupes are so cool, I don't think I have ever seen one for sale. 

I'm not a Ford guy but I had one of these and it wasn't bad other then the windows wouldn't roll down, ac did not work and sometimes the engine would "buck" randomly. It was a 1990 anniversary edition with the five speed and lsd rear. Barely beat my buddies fc in a street drag.

I've always liked these. This is the best I've ever seen. I really like your approach to keeping it usable as a street car, while searching for weight to eliminate.

I love this. Do you have anymore info on the custom Koni's for the front? I need to ditch the strutmaster stock replacements that came on my Mark VIII for something a little more performance oriented.

In reply to LuxurySportCoupe :

Koni used to make front shock inserts for these cars. I just cut most of the spring seat off the donor housing and used what was left of the seat to support an ebay threaded spring perch. Unfortunately, the Konis are no longer available. I've heard about some people adapting 3000GT parts, but I don't know much about it. 

Only real off-the-shelf options now are daily driver-quality shocks (Monroe, etc.) or QA1 coilovers from Supercoupe Performance.

Made good progress today getting the dash ready to come out of the car, mostly because I accepted that step 1 was disassembling everything. Example: getting the dash out requires pushing one of the firewall bulkhead connectors back inside the car, but after tearing up my knuckles trying to work without enough space, I finally just removed the windshield wipers, cowl trim, etc. That finally gave me the room I needed. Right now the dash is just sitting loosely in place, but I might need a hand to actually get it out of the car.

Also, I was messing around with the center console and found another bracket that I tried to simplify. It provides mounting for the console armrest lid and adds some support to the passenger side of the console itself. The new one I made only does the former, so once I get it back in the car we'll have to see if the console is strong enough without that support. But it is 9.4 oz lighter.

Old, 10 oz:

New, 0.6 oz (replaces left part of above pic):

There are a couple other things I can do to remove a few ounces from the console and get a bit more than a pound out of it by the time I'm done.

In reply to Will :

Thanks for the info! Keep up the good work on the S/C, this thing is rad

Had to put this (and everything else) on hold over the winter to deal with a family medical situation. Things seem to be OK now, and it's warming up, so I can get back to tinkering.

Made some more aluminum brackets--the first is a throttle cable bracket made from 3x2 angle aluminum. Only saves four onces over stock, but it all adds up. (big hole at bottom left of the black piece is for the kickdown cable on auto cars, so I don't need to replicate that)

Next I made a coil pack bracket. Ford steel piece is 10 oz, my aluminum one is 1.8.

Years ago, I converted the headlights and corner lights to 96-97 parts, and I used an aftermarket header panel. By now it was broken, and it only broke more when I tried to reinstall it, so I went to a junkyard and got a real Ford part. I have to say the Ford plastic is much nicer than the aftermarket piece.

Also, when I did the headlight conversion, I never got the correct 96-97 hood release, so I picked one of those up. Old, incorrect part in front of the correct, installed part. Trying to make the wrong part fit is one reason the old header panel was cracked.

Took some finagling, but I got the bumper cover back on solo.

Getting the bumper out of the kitchen feels like progress. Next step is to get back into the mess that is the wiring.

More incredibly minor progress. One of the things I've known for a while now wasn't ideal was that the rear control arm sway bar mounts were single shear. This was my fault. Made them out of basic L-bracket steel back when I added the custom rear bar.

Today I finally made some new brackets to have the links in double shear. However, I couldn't find steel C-channel in the size I needed (and I don't have a welder nor the skill to use one), so I used 6063 aluminum. I'm not sure it's going to be strong enough, but I guess I'll find out. If one of them breaks it's not as if the car will explode.

Wish I had more meat to work with on the vertical legs.

Nice work! I am currently doing unspeakable things to the Mercury cousin of your car. Nothing as disgusting as an LS swap mind you? Will follow anything you post up, LOL.

In reply to egoman :

I've been watching your updates, and I wish I had your fabrication skills. If I did, I'd be making stuff like a tubular K-member and control arms instead of little brackets to save a couple ounces here and there. Looking forward to see your car progress.

Spent most of the day in the garage making more brackets. Used up all the 3003 sheet I had, so I guess I need to figure out what I can realistically replace next, and what kind of materials I need.

Threw the brackets I've made the last two weekends on the scale and compared them to the old ones. Combined it's a little more than two pounds saved. Modest, but it all adds up. And from a $/pound standpoint, it's cheaper than a lot of other ways to save weight.

Thanks for the compliments. We do what we can do LOL