Oct '03 - Donor teardown and parts prep

Donor teardown (Oct. '02)

My donor was an '89 5.0 LX I picked up in Provo for $850 in October '02. It ran, sorta, after sitting for a year or so. It was straight, but the paint job had apparently been the victim of a domestic dispute according to the previous owner, so it was just in primer. I had the necessary parts stripped off of it and had the carcass dragged onto a flatbed and disposed of. Who says I never recycle?

Mikey the Mutt is the supervisor and guardian of the entire process.

Here's the 5.0 engine getting yanked...it was going to get rebuilt and stuffed into the Cobra, but Performance Automotive Machine had a better idea and a better deal for me...a 351 Windsor stroked out to 395 cubic inches. Like the bitter crusty old fart Carroll Shelby says, too much is never enough.

And the wiring harness, which after being stripped of the dozens of unnecessary circuits, will be powering someone else's FFR, since I decided to go old-school carbereted instead.

And at last the gutted carcass gets hauled off to who knows where. I'll end up using the rear end housing, gas tank, driveshaft, brake/clutch pedal box, horn and not much else. After selling off the motor and other parts I didn't end up using, I got the entire $850 back out of it.

Donor parts prep - Oct. '03

The donor driveshaft got shortened to 10 1/2 inches flange-to-flange, with new U-joints put in.

The gas tank got cleaned up, painted, sealed, and stripped of the fuel-injection pump and pickup.

The pedal box already had an aluminum clutch quadrant - I kept that, painted it, had the brake pedal shortened and moved down to the manual brake location for better leverage, since I won't use a power booster.

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And here's the freshly built motor, that has Windsor Sr. iron heads, an Edelbrock RPM intake, MSD distributor, and Ford Racing valve covers. It will also be treated to a Romac balancer and Holley 750 CFM carburetor.