Dennis Lacy

Thanks, man!

Thanks so much, Steve! I’m really trying to make something special out of this project. Just wait until you see my painted interior parts update tomorrow night! ?

Thanks a bunch! Sounds like you’ve had some good ones. My current daily is this original paint ‘87 GT. Although, with the values of these cars skyrocketing I’m starting to rethink that.

Thanks! I try to be thorough on the chance what I’m doing might help someone else.

Haha, yeah I can’t take credit for the wires this time. AMT did a really nice job on this engine and it’s details. With some tedious detail painting it looks really authentic. That whole Phantom Vicky street rod kit is really well done. The assembled car is just kinda ugly. ?

I was set on Emerald for a bit, thought for sure that’s what it was going to be but then saw a picture that changed my mind.

No, but I strongly considered it.

LOL! With my last 3 projects being a ‘57 Chevy, ‘63 Nova Wagon and this ‘90 Mustang, believe me, I’m really itchin’ to get back to hot rods. But I can’t stop now or I’ll likely never come back! ?

UPDATE! I heard there was some kind of big sports game on today? ?‍♂️ At least my wife made a bunch of bomb party appetizers to take out to the bench with me! ? I spent the week getting most of the suspension and engine parts primed and sprayed on my lunch hours at work, sat down today and did all of the fine detail painting and then did some unplanned assembly. I was in The Zone! The rear axle was assembled with the girdle style rear cover, upper control arms, springs and anti roll bar. I painted the springs and anti roll bars Duplicolor Red to represent Eibach parts while the struts and shocks are Tamiya TS34 Camel Yellow to represent Koni “Sport” models. The rear axle cover is Tamiya TS30 Silver Leaf with their flat clear to look like cast aluminum while the trailing arms are Model Master Aluminum metalizer brushed on. The steering rack was also done in Silver Leaf with flat clear with flat black boots and Model Master Magnesium metalizer on the outer ends. Here’s a close up of all of the springs to show better how they are detailed flat black down between all of the coils. The 1996-1998 SVT Cobra engine is an aluminum block, cylinders heads and front cam chain drive covers. The bell housing and 5-speed transmission are also aluminum. As a unit they were sprayed with Silver Leaf, flat clear and then treated to a full wash of thinned Testors flat black. The cam covers and intake plenum are Tamiya TS76 Mica Silver with their gloss clear. Where the oil cap would be on the driver side cover I installed a K&N style breather cap as is popular to do. The breather is from the Revell 1948 Ford Convertibles optional hot rod parts for its Flathead V8. The coolant tubes are gloss black and I cut the molded in no-detail oil filter off and replaced it with one from Revell’s ‘32 Ford kits painted bright white. The belt drive was painted flat black then the pulleys and tensioners detailed in a combo of aluminum and magnesium metalizer. The engine comes with plug wires and coil packs. The wires are Duplicolor Red while the boots, coil packs and divider clips are flat black. They are not glued yet as now that they are detail painted I’m going to dull coat the wires because they shouldn’t be glossy. The plenum is also not attached because now that I’ve detailed the throttle body with bright silver and the EGR valve with Model Master Jet Exhaust I’m going to bury it in gloss clear like the cam covers. The headers are done in Silver Leaf but left as-is to look like silver ceramic coating. The oil pan is semi gloss black. Here’s a quick mock up with the rear axle and suspension in place along with the finished exhaust which, like the headers, is finished in Silver Leaf left as-is to look like silver ceramic coating. And I couldn’t resist setting the engine under the hood! In the coming week I hope to get the front K-member and subframe connectors painted (which I picked up the color for yesterday at my LHS) and also get the interior pieces painted except for the floor and roll bar as they aren’t quite ready yet. I also picked up the exterior color yesterday which isn’t an exact match but very similar to a very sought after color that was new to the Mustang palette in 1990. Any guesses?

Man, I can’t imagine having to go through all of that to work on one of my projects but I guess you do what you gotta do! The interior with the textured paint looks AWSOME!

Some seriously kick ass work going into this one. This will be your best A Coupe yet!

For your first chop looks like it turned out pretty nice! Car has a really tuff look to it. The second header looks much better. The sweep and larger diameter primaries make it looks really aggressive.

I’ve got two Coupes so far but have done nothing more than opened the boxes. People savvy to these kits know that the frame center cross members have different transmission mounting tabs depending which engine is used. I wonder if it’s possible that some kits included the wrong cross member? Feasible considering some of them are showing up with the wrong engine chrome tree. That would throw off engine placement and cause fit problems. PS: Both of my Coupes have the correct engine chrome trees and non warped frames.

UPDATE! I’m happy to report that there were no setbacks this time. In fact the day was productive at finishing the last of the major fab work needed and then moved on to chassis and engine parts clean up towards primer and paint. The first thing I did was scratch build a pair of subframe connectors out of .020 and .040 sheet. These are in the style of a popular bolt-on set from BBK in the 90’s. Next I had to make some tweaks to the engine coolant connections. On the upper U-shaped pipe that connects the heads the original hose connection was on top but that might interfere with the hood so I grafted in and blended a piece of .080” rod and to make a new connection pointing forward. The lower hose is a T-shaped piece that ties in with the oil cooler on the left side of the engine. I had to cut off the forward portion that would have connected to the radiator in the ‘32 Ford street rod kit the engine came from. I cut that off then added a relocated piece of .080” rod to give a better approach for the lower hose to the radiator. Lastly I addressed the brake master cylinder. When you swap one of these wide ‘96-‘04 4-cam SVT Cobra engines into the older cars there’s no room for the conventional vacuum brake booster. Instead you have to use the “hydroboost” unit from later cars. The hydroboost is tied into the power steering system and uses hydraulic pressure to boost pedal input. I cut out the molded-in booster area from the firewall and filled it with a piece of .040 sheet. I then created a loose interpretation of the hydroboost unit from a Ford starter and used the kits master cylinder. It’s still a tight fit but a sliver is as good as a mile! At this point I think I’ve done all I can do until the engine is installed and permanently located which means it and the chassis needs to be painted and assembled. Then I can make the radiator hoses and air intake and I may try to make a few other under hood details. ?

Maybe it wasn’t built to handle you! ?

Thanks for the nice post, KK. Always appreciate your thoughts and support!

Looking forward to following along. I procrastinated years ago when you could get these big kits used for $50-$75. Kicking myself now. I’d love to have a Big Deuce in my stash.

Those are neat wheels! Very similar to old Halibrand Sebring’s. I thought all he made was giant diameter stuff.

Some killer work taking place here, KK. Watching you slice & dice is always a pleasure! I can’t wait to see the next installment.

Quite the ambitious project you’ve taken on here, Phil, but I’m sure you’ll do it justice. Wheel and tire combo looks great as does the blown small block. No clue how you’re gonna tackle the flames and pinstripes, though. All that looks very intimidating!

The Vicky mock up looks killer sitting on those wheels and tires. Happy to donate them to a good cause. ?

Looks absolutely fantastic. Very much looking forward to seeing the finished picture set. I’ll save my gushing over it for then. ?

The justification is that the factory tach is inaccurate at upper revs, which is true. Doesn’t change the fact that the monster tachs are gaudy! ? I’ve never looked at it anyways. Always shifted by ear.

UPDATE! Today was a bit frustrating as I tried to get going back on the LX. As I last worked on it I felt like I had gotten the engine properly located fore & aft which allowed me to make a new driveshaft and exhaust system. As I started trying to work with the project today I decided that I would also like to add a locating pin to align the transmission with its cross member but I just couldn’t get the engine positioning to cooperate like before requiring the rework of the motor mounts that I had added to the pads on the tubular K-member so that they properly fit into the nooks in the sides of the engine block. Again, not prototypical but it works. The other thing is that it would be tremendously helpful if I could permanently attach the front K-member BUT if I do then the engine can’t be installed with the headers attached nor can the headers be snaked into place if the engine is installed without them. This makes it a challenge to get consistent mock ups and fit checks. Permanently attaching it would also make it a royal pain to paint as it needs to be a different color than the chassis. Anyhow, with the engine positioning finalized (for real this time) it’s now 3/32” forward of previous so that meant building a new, longer driveshaft and I added cone extensions to the headers so that the exhaust would hook up. No way I was making those pipes again! I still needed to make supports for the mufflers. The kit mufflers have pins on the top sides which fit into holes in the floor. I figured out where to drill and added pins to the new mufflers and slipped sleeves over them to set the muffler off the floor the proper amount. I then filled the holes in the floor and drilled them back smaller to match the size of the muffler pins. So that, unfortunately, was the big extent of today’s work. Admittedly a good portion of the time was spent in denial before ultimately sucking it up and reworking everything. On a couple of small notes, my pal @Rocking Rodney Rat sent me an Autometer monster tach which I fit to the dash with a pin. I would never put one in any car of mine but love ‘‘em or hate ‘em, thousands of people did in the 90’s. I also found that the electric fan from Revell’s 1948 Ford Convertible is a good fit for the radiator and looks like it would be robust enough to keep such a car cool. Here’s to hoping that there won’t be any more annoying set backs and next time will be more productive.

UPDATE! This week I managed to get the interior tub and seats painted on my lunch breaks at work. Much masking took place to make this happen. Typically an hour of masking to 5 minutes of painting! ? I absolutely couldn’t resist a quick mock up after dinner tonight and I could not be happier with how this all turned out. I can’t wait to fill it with details! Now, without further ado… (Oh, and I borrowed the tan/gray two-tone seat combo from the ‘29 Pickup my pal @Rocking Rodney Rat built last year for the Tim Boyd @tim boyd tribute thread in the truck section. That combo had never occurred to me before and I just dug it so much!)