August 2004
8/23/2004 -- I haven't done any work lately. For those of you not from souteast Texas, it is way too hot and humid to work outside. It may be late September before I get back to work on the car. I tried to work on it last week when we had a "cold front" which cooled it down to 88 degrees. Still, I sweat through my shirt in less than five minutes, with two fans blowing on me. Then I gave up and just took a drive around the neighborhood with my dog.
I have been looking at front suspension rebuilds out of Car Craft Magazine. For around $1000 I can rebuild my front-end with an aftermarket Mustang suspension from Global West http://globalwest.net I really need to do this to tighten up the front end and get the allignment safe for high-speed driving.
8/26/04 -- Decided to put out the second fan, again. Began to take the rearend off the car, need to clean the entire rear half of the undercarriage and get all the dirt-daubers off. I will likely put a locker system in the rearend. Am currently looking at the Richmond Powertrax limited slip rearend. I haven't decided which gear ratio to go with, since I want highway cruising economy as well as fast takeoffs. Currently I have 2.79:1 differential. I originally wanted a 4.11 but hear that if I am currently doing 3000RPM at 70mph, that with a 4.11 I would be doing 4500RPM. Not too cool for cruising.
Regardless, the rear half of the car needs to be cleaned, primed, and painted. I need to paint the springs, shocks, and differential. I also have a leak at the front of the differential, which is flinging oil all over underneath. After taking off the drive shaft, I noticed that my u-joint is dried and sticky. Will need to replace both of them while I am under there. Looks like a decent project ahead of me...