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LOWER SEAT HEIGHT + FLOOR REPAIRS
Not only did this car's seat brackets lack some design aspects we like, the stock floors were pretty wobbly. The stock "boxed" sheet metal step here makes a proper racing seat install impossible without a change to the floorpan. These early Mustangs have a "riser" under the seats made of boxed sheet metal. It is flimsy, too tall, and the insides were not primed, coated or painted from Ford.
Adam knew about this issue and we agreed that we should remove these "boxed" upper shelves, inspect then clean up the metal, and build a more substantial seat base structure (like our
production seat base brackets we make for a number of cars). Adam liked the idea and we got to work.
After Brad cut away the upper sections the scale and rust inside was obvious. Water can come into these seat riser cavities from the 4 access holes on the bottom, and it did. Next up Brad donned some proper PPR and got to cleaning the metal, to see if we needed to patch them or if they could be saved.
Someone in this car's past has replaced parts of these floors, and they did decent work. After Brad cleaned one side we noted that the rust was merely superficial and on the top side only. Most of the dust and scale was from the underside of the upper box piece that was tossed.
Brad logged 3.6 hours removing these parts and cleaning the metal. Now it was time to treat the bare metal and convert any remaining rust to an insert substance.
In another 1.2 hours Brad had gone through the various prep stages and added this POR15 "stop rust kit". The floors are now protected from future rust, and yes, we will be welding some structure back to this area after we design the seat bracket for this car. That will happen AFTER the cage is complete and we do a test sitting
TEST FITTING WHEELS, TIRES & FLARES
One of the main reasons we took this job was because Adam was open to doing the same things we try to add to ALL of our track builds: A lot of tire, reliable LS power, modern brakes / ABS, and modern suspension. It took a little testing, lots of pictures, but we got him there. We have been doing pictures and mockups of wheels and tires from the day it rolled in here last November through May of 2020.
Conventional wisdom on 1st gen Mustangs is to add giant flares whenever you want more than about a 245mm tire. This car rolled in here with 17x8" fronts and 17x9" rears on 245 Michelins (that were square due to the imbalanced brakes). So I picked up a set of Maier Racing composite flares for the rear, and Adam already had their carbon front fenders - which already have a tiny bit of extra flare built into them. Mostly these are done for weight, which I showed last time.
We mocked up the rear flare it is is BIG. It adds nearly 2 inches to the factory lip, and with a little more wheel room utilized inboard we could easily fit 18x12" wheels and 335s. And if you have been following our builds for the past 20 years you KNOW that I am all about the "
Big Tires Matter" movement.
I love it when "the tires starts with a 3" - half my best car memes are about tires! There has been no limit to
our "no tire is too wide" rule, not on stock 2.0L powered FR-S, not on Miatas, not on BMWs, and for sure not on Mustangs. If you cannot get the tire up to temp, DRIVE HARDER.
For this build a 315/30/18 was targeted as the most likely tire that could fit under the front fenders - but only after we ditched the stock front suspension. This setup "has not aged well", even with aftermarket bits and pieces to correct some of the geometry flaws. The packaging just plain SUCKS.
This is as far as we got with this MOMO heritage 6 wheel in 18x11" with a 315/30/18 Hoosier mounted. The stock upper spring pocket and bump stop were in the way and it pushes the wheel outside the fenders by inches. But I knew just by looking inside that fender, way back at the beginning of this project, we could make this wheel fit. Once I had the customer convinced, we cut all of that junk out of the way...
Lo and behold - the 18x11" wheel fit EASILY inside this fender when we had it mocked up with an S197 strut, temp camber plate, and temp control arm (one of two iterations we designed and built). If we wanted to push the limits we could have fit an 18x12" up front under the stock fenders, but the 18x11" wheel and 315mm tire was a noble goal - and one that could possibly be matched out back
without the add-on flares. That was an early goal...
After Myles drew up the control arm for the S197 spindle we did geometry tests and wheel tests. Steering lock, ride heights, geometry changes with suspension travel, and ground clearances were all checked. The second version of the mock-up arm dialed it all in, and we will show the complete suspension installed in another update.
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