82GT Lysholm 3.3 e-85 powerd terminator swap

Attachment 1561Attachment 1562I’m going to do an online build diary of my Fox body to not only for myself and to document my work, but help keep me motivated with enthusiasts keeping me motivated.
(This part is more for me). A little history on the car and why I chose an 82GT to begin with. When I was a young child my dad owned a silver with red interior 82GT with TTops, from then on I was hooked on mustangs. I was in the 6^th grade I had a subscription to 5.0 Mustang magazine. When I was 19 I was attending and paying my way through college and a 82GT came up for sale locally. I went and looked at the car and knew I had to have it. It was a rust free, clean and straight car. It had a (what I thought was a NASTY 306) a mildly bult 306 with worked stock heads and a lumpy comp cams. It still had the SROD 4 Speed and 7.5 gear rear end.
As time went on I had 2 cams go flat on me and (missed a shift one night) and cracked the block. I ended up taking my dads motor that was actually in his 82GT and had it freshened up, added some world products Windsor Jr’s and a custom grind roller cam. That’s the motor that is currently in the car. (more on the motor and trans later).
Back in 2008 I set out to do something different with the car, I ended up putting an IRS out of an 2003 Cobra. At the time a good friend of mine did something similar in his 86GT and I thought it would be a fun project. So I did the front and rear suspension, converted it to 5 lug
2003 Cobra IRS
Full tilt boogie cradle bushings and solid mount for the diff
Energy suspensions poly bushings in the control arms
03/04 Cobra Bilsteins
Steeda 2x balljoints
03/04 Cobra Brakes
Stainless brake lines
Steeda caster camber plates
99/01 Cobra wheels and tires

When I got the car all finished it was fun and handled like no other car Id ever driven it had decent power and would take a corner harder than any car I’d driven before. The only down fall was the brakes, they never worked right I tried swapping the booster, master and adjusting the portioning valve 100 times.
In 2010 I thought that the cars issue wasn’t it wasn’t pulling enough vacuum due to the cam and I ended up swapping a 03/04 Hydroboost in. The car immediately had brakes like a Ferrari, come to later find out the larger bore of the mark 7 master cylinder I swapped in 7 years prior was too large and going to the smaller bore was what the braking system needed.
Attachment 1564In May of 2011 I was finally able to buy a 2004 Cobra, I ended up with a Redfire car that only had 36k miles on it and had a Whipple on it, so it had a lot of supporting mods for it. At that point when I got it home and a month went by I had the idea to basically take my 82GT to the next level and do a full terminator swap on it, but do it in such a way that both cars would essentially match, the only thing that would separated them would be the different era of bodies.
Attachment 1565At the end of 2011 I ended up getting a built teskid shortblock (with a torched head surface) on trade from a buddy, and at the time had ZERO money in it due to horse trading that I was able to do. In the spring of 2012 I was able to buy a 2003 Torch red cobra for $10,000 with some damage history, but still somehow had a clean title, and the deal included an extra rear bumper and an eaton. I was unable to get a title for the car and was pretty much forced to part it out to part it out to get my money back out which turned out to be a blessing in disguise, I ended up keeping
A complete Eaton swap
T56 trans and clutch/flywheel
Driveshaft
MINT Parchment Seats
ALL the wiring from car, cluster, computer etc
Fuel tank
HVAC and ALL A/C stuff
Fan and Radiator
A lot of little brackets, nuts and bolts etc.


So my plans for the 82GT is to completely remove the interior and convert it over to black, I have 100sq feet of dynamatt that I need to install. New carpet, headliner, door panels, make the A/C and heat 100% functional and make the cruise control work from the terminator.

My current motor plans are (and I have all of these parts just need to assemble everything)
Teskid shortblock, diamond pistons, manley rods, billet oil pump, aprox 9.2:1 comp.
ARP mains, side jack bolts, head studs
FR500 heads with oversize valves with a stage 1.5 port job, the shop says there equivalent to a stage 2 03/04 head with all new lash adjusters and rocker arms
Crower stage 3 Cams
New timing chains, guides, and tensioners
Lysholm 3.3
105 Injectors (being in Iowa its going to be on e-85)
RPM Performance T56 Trans

That is going to be a great car. The 82 GT's are easily the best looking of the 4 eyes.

cant wait to see it come togather! it is going to be sick for sure!

Sounds like a hell of a sweet project, looking forward to the updates as they come!

Awesome to get the bsck story, Ben!

It will be a beast, can't wait to see it come together.

Yeah sorry for the long winded post, but I'm keeping a diary on my hard drive and typed it out figured I'd throw it out to share, hopefully after today the interior will be 100% removed and before the week is out the engine and trans will be out

Been super busy recently, between my regular 40 hour a week job I run an auto repair business on the side to help pay for all the toys, and that's been steady the past couple of weeks, but unfortunately that hasn't allowed time for the toys. And to throw another thing in the mix a very good friend of mine is doing something similar to his 97 cobra (3.3 Lysholm, 6 speed, aluminator, IRS and is at the bodyshop getting painted) but luckily his car is more adaptable to this stuff than mine so it’ll be easier.

I have however finished pulling the interior out, and with any luck I can get the engine trans and fuel tank out in the next couple of weeks. I've also been busy ordering and getting parts. My current plan with the car is tear ALL of the wiring out except for the hand full of connectors that’ll will be re-used for lights and hvac stuff. Im going to lay the entire wiring harness from the ’03 cobra in the car and start trimming out what I don’t need (ABS, air bags etc) and then graft the stock switches and lights into the harness.

I disassembled my Mark 8 motor and my built teskid motor and sent everything over to D & R in Marion for: Bore/hone and deck the head surface. Hopefully they’ll have it back in a few weeks.

I found a great deal on a set of KOOKS longtube headers that I also bought, it will work great with the full 3” exhaust that I was able to get this past summer.

I also during this time picked up some fuel line and 2 Aeromotive fuel filters. The line that I got is a -10 feed and -8 return, it’s the cloth braided stuff with the coating inside to allow for e-85 coating inside to allow for use with e-85

I also got my door panels back, the parts car that I bought was a super clean T-Top car that had great black interior but the idiot that owned it before left the car out in his back yard with leaking tops and it ruined the boards on the back of the panels, so I took them into the interior shop and had them replace the boards, new vinyl, new carpet and then add a little custom touch with the dark charcoal at the top to help tie in the seats and the dark charcoal items that Im going to incorporate from the 03/04 interior.

I can't wait to see the end result Ben! It's going to be nasty for sure

you going to bump up the compression from 9.2 to something higher now that your running e85?

No... still around 9.2 just turn up the boost, and I want to be able to go back to pump gas if im out on a cruise in pinch plus this shortblock may end up in my 04 before its all set and done

Luckily I haven't had a ton of customer work (kinda purposely didn't schedule much this week) but I was able to make some good head way and get the engine and trans pulled today. I have tomorrow (Friday) off so my goal is to get the fuel tank pulled and start pulling out the rest of the wiring. I hope to start laying in the 03/04 harness before too long.

I also in the past few days was able to drop off some more items to the upholstery shop. Im having a bunch of accent pieces done in dark charcoal to help tie the interior together, Im going to try and use the 03/04 Lighted sunvisors and dome light so Im having the headliner done in a fabric that’s similar to the whats in the 99-04 Mustangs, and I also dropped off the console so they can make an E-brake boot that mimics the 03/04 as well as a shifterboot.

Your shop makes me jealous. Good work Holmes.