This is my 7.5L 1985 Mustang GT. After reading a Car Craft article about this swap in '93 I came across a $125 '71 Lincoln and a $400 '80 Mustang. I ordered up the swap kit and went to work. After 2 years of driving that beater and a best et of 12.20 @ 111 mph I thought it was time to have a nicer looking car. I found this car sitting in a local junk yard with a wrecked front end and bad trans but no rust anywhere. I figured it was the perfect car with no sunroof or t-tops, it had a nice interior and was loaded with all the options, which all still work. My brother Lorne and I have countless hours in this project which started by replacing all the inner structure ahead of the shock towers and sectioning the framerails. We completed this car in August of '96. I thought I had enough time to get all the bugs worked out before my wedding in October but that wasn't quite the case. The morning of the wedding I had a p/s hose rupture just moving it in the driveway so we could wash it. The hose off my '89 GT was pilfered so I could still drive it. My wife never knew that until after the ceremony or I wouldn't be alive to type this. I have also brought both my kids home from the hospital in it so I have to almost consider it part of the family.
This car was built to drive and so far I have logged over 34,000 miles on it. We have been on 7 Hot Rod Power Tours in all and were members of the Long Haul gang in 2002. Click here for some of the more memorable pics on page 11.
July 2005 Update: I decided to put 2" Hooker swap headers on to see if the 1-7/8" ones were too small. They definitely helped power wise but are terrible for ground clearance. It went from 11.84 @ 114 to 11.76 @ 116 but is almost undriveable on most PA roads. Something has to be done. I had to remake one tube due to my motor being lowered and in direct path of the steering shaft. We discussed sectioning all of them but ran out of time before Fun Ford Weekend. I know I made the situation worse by lowering it but I'm not sure how good it would be even if the motor was where they intended.
Oct 2005 Update: I bought an adjustable Super Power Shot nitrous system years ago but was always too chicken to try it. With the 75hp jets at Norwalk it went an 11.61 @ 117.6 mph. The next pass was going to be in the low 11.50's but I lifted during eliminations. Went under my dial anyway so I shoulda just stayed in it. Oct 15th I went to Quaker City to try the N2O again. Off the bottle the car was almost 2 tenths and 3 mph slower compared to Norwalk so I was floored when the car ran an 11.42 at 118 on my second pass. The only changes made were adding octane boost, leaning the carb a little and only taking 2 degrees of timing out.
Oct 2006 Update: I went to Quaker City for their last weekend of racing and ran a new best of 11.33 at 119 mph. That was with the 100 hp jets. I had a perfect .500 light on one pass that got me a bye run. I used a whole bottle of N2O but went 4 rounds and got some money back to help pay for the refill. I thought that stuff would last longer than that. I was able to go once more in '06. Thanksgiving weekend it was 60 degrees here. I ran a new best of 11.29 at 122.4 mph. It spun more than usual or I think it could have been in the 11-teens. I am a big fan of the Jacobs Nitrous Mastermind Controller. It makes N2O tuning very easy. I think I got a little greedy with the rpm I had the N2O come in at.
July 2007 update: We just came back Norwalk from Fun Ford Weekend and ran a new best of 11.12 @ 122.1 mph. This was with the 125 hp jets. The only complaint I can think of is the fact that my first 6 passes of the weekend were mostly wasted trying to figure out a problem that ended up being a broken solenoid wire. Thank goodness it was on the N2O side. I lost a tenth on my 60' time by spinning on my 11.12 pass and I had 3 other runs that started out quicker to the 330' mark until the wiring gremlins took over. I tried the 150 jets on Sunday and it went slower ???????? I'll have to work on that.
Oct 2007 update: I made it to Pitt Raceway Park the last weekend of October. I ran a 10.95 @ 124 mph using the 150 hp jets. I didn't make any changes to the car at all since July so I figure it must have been the 30 degree temperature change that made all of the et improvements. The car kept getting faster each pass. I ran an 11.15 and 11.10 prior to my 10-sec run. The 1/8 mile time showed the car went 0-100 mph in 7 seconds flat. Unfortunately, my brother bent a pushrod and valve in his Big Olds powered truck so we trailered his and I drove mine the 90 minutes home. I wasn't going to trailer it home if I ever got a 10-second timeslip anyway, but it didn't need to cost him money.

I always wanted a car capable of being driven daily or cross country and would run 11's on the motor and 10's on the bottle. After 11 years and 2 months of trying, I finally made it.

Here is what the engine compartment looks like after a lot more engineering than what the swap kits give you. I used the 1-7/8" Mike Hamm headers, the Canton 8-qt pan from the kit but the adapters used with the mounts do not make this a streetable swap in my opinion. The 1" thick alum spacer had to go. It makes the engine sit at a bad up hill angle to where the distributor can rub the underside of the hood, a 14" fan and no shroud are some of the negatives. After lowerering the rack, we were then able to lower the motor to the same water pump centerline as the 5.0L. I now have a 18" engine driven fan with a modified '87-'93 shroud with no cooling issues. My intention was to make it look as factory as possible.
This pic was taken when we got to Pontiac, Michigan on our first Power Tour in May of '97. I kept it this way for a couple of years until my brother found a great deal on a set of Convo Pros.
They are on loan until his Mustang is on the road. In other words, he gave them to me. Someday he may need them back so I'm not going to sell the 10-holers. The Convo-Pros definitely made it faster.......looking.

It was never show car quality but at one time it was in nice enough shape to be in a few magazines. It was never selected for a photo shoot or feature but instead got in from pictures I submitted in 1998. I'm aware that could be considered a form of cheating. I sent pics to Hot Rod first and they pictured it in the Power Tour news in the August issue. I sent Super Ford and Car Craft pictures taken at my local park on a near perfect day. Super Ford put them in September's issue. I really liked the 1/2 page layout they used. They pieced together an article from info I sent them but stated the car averaged 14 mpg on the Power Tour, not hardly. It did average 14, but only for one tankful worth going on Rt 70 in Ohio. The rest of the time it was barely 12 mpg. That was also after the rear gears were changed to 3.00's just for the trip. You have to love a 9" for that. Car Craft liked my Brush Creek Park background enough to use it for there "How to get in Car Craft" article in December.
Unfortunately after all this time since being finished, and the fact it has sat outside since 2005, it is needing redone badly. I hope sometime in 2008 to be driving one of my new projects. Speaking of projects, all of the garage stalls in the world can't prevent this from happening if you have too many of them.

These are the tracks I visit and my best times without N2O:
Quaker City Raceway in Salem,OH- 11.94 @ 112.73 mph in June '05
Pittsburgh Raceway Park in New Alexandria,PA- 11.84 @ 113.2 mph in Oct '00
Norwalk Raceway Park in Norwalk,OH- 11.76 @ 115.8 mph in Sept '05. The drive to Norwalk is about 3 hours each way in the Mustang. Since it's a lot cheaper and way faster, I've been trailering it the last couple of years. Way back in Oct. '00 when I still drove the car there I had an 11.85 @ 113.4 mph that I'm pretty proud of.

Engine Compartment/Undercarriage Pics-Page 2
Engine/Drivetrain Pics-Page 3
Exterior/Interior Pics-Page 4
Serpentine Belt Set ups-Page 5
Lorne's Truck-Page 6
'01 Big Block Mach 1 Clone/Other Projects-Page 7
Fun Pics & Links-Page 8
Friend's Rides-Page 9
My Side Work-Page 10
Power Tour Pics-Page 11