My wife (Lea) bought this jalapeño red 1986 Mustang back in 1988 with roughly 40k miles on the clock. I owned a black 1987 Mustang GT at the time. We both loved street racing each other. The 87 always had a little better performance but she always had better reactions times and I was always playing catch up.
When it was time to give up one of the cars, I decided to get rid of the 87. I did this with the mind set that the 4 eyed stang will be worth more in the long run plus I always liked the look of it better. It was the first for sequential fuel injection but the last for the four eye look. As the miles kept clicking up and the paint started looking aged, I decided to tear it down and freshen it up. The car had 183k on it before I tore it down. The only thing ever done to the car was, the battery was replaced once and the brakes were re done a couple of times. When the motor was torn down, the hone marks were still in the cylinders. I used synthetic oils the whole time and will continue to do so now that I can see what it does for the engine.
Money was tight so I saved little by little until I could get enough parts together to put it back together. My original intent was to make a nice naturally aspirated sleeper. Nothing over the top, but I just wanted a nice driver that had some spunk. Well after the car was together and I drove it for about three months, I was bit by the horsepower bug. I kept wanting more and more. I stated with the typical mods such as intakes, TBs and other little things but it was never enough. I then added a Powerdyne 9 psi supper charger kit. I ran into all kinds of tuning issues. I then created a software package called Binary Editor and EEC analyzer to help me with the tuning. With a big learning curve, I was able to finally tune the centrifugal supercharger.
Well you guessed it, I wanted more instant torque. I did not like having to rev the engine to a point where it sounded like a rice rocket. Since the car is not a drag car, but one that I like to have fun with on the weekends, I decided to try the Kenne Bell setup. I must say the instant torque is fun to drive. Again the tuning experience was a long learning curve. I blew a head gasket from running to lean. Come to find out it was because I had the vacuum on the Fuel Pressure Regulator hooked up to the wrong source. It was an expensive lesson to learn but I have the car running very well now.
My father owns a 1965 coupe and a 1966 fastback that he takes on the route 66 runs and one of my brothers owns a 1999 anniversary and a 1966 fastback and the other brother owns a 1965 fastback. Its a family thing, the mustang will always be there.
