Articles

Keeper Convert

New Fox Mustang has Shipped!

New Fox Mustang has shipped and should arrive on your doorsteps any day now!

Dragon Chaser

Nelson Cardadeiro

 

Riding a wingspan roughly as wide as a 10-story building is high, the U-2 pilot, insulated in a full pressurized flight suit and astronaut-like helmet, grips the stick and makes a final check on his alignment with the runway. The Lockheed spyplane is in the final seconds of a long, high-altitude recon mission overflying volatile hotspots to see what the bad guys have been up to lately.

Automatic to Manual Pedal Conversion

Jim Smart

 

To convert from an AOD to a five-speed, you’ll need infrastructure in the form of a brake/clutch pedal assembly for it all to work together. You can approach this change a couple of ways. You can swap in just the clutch pedal and safety switch, or you can change out the entire pedal assembly with one from a donor car. Both involve some work, but both can be done in your garage without special tools.

10-Hole Transformation

Huw Evans

 

As with vintage muscle cars, for many 5.0-powered Fox Mustangs the factory wheels were often the first things to go. Why run a set of 15x7-inch 10-holes or turbines when you could spring for a set of 16-inch ponies, Weld Draglites, or 17-inch Cobra Rs? And as for five-lug conversions — well, you can say goodbye to your four-bolt factory rims forever.

As a result, for many years, turbines and 10-holes were sold, junked, or dumped in the back of the garage with the pile of other unwanted parts.

Factory original as it left the factory

Terry McCoy

 

I’ve been an enthusiast of ’79-’93 Mustangs long before they were called Fox-bodies. Back in the early days (the ’80s) they were referred to as third-generation Mustangs.

My first Mustang was an ’82 GT 5.0 four-speed. That car gave me such a thrill. It was lightweight and fun to drive. I had never felt that kind of power. I could be in First gear and nail it, and the car would start burning until I hit Second gear. Then it would chirp going into Third.

Blue-Flame Hot!

Jim Smart

 

The Marti Report

Kevin Marti

 

Funny thing about the 70’s — they weren’t very funny, exceptSaturday Night Live (yeah, that show used to be funny!). So much was in disarray, and the auto industry was no exception. The oil crisis of 1973 had messed up the comfort zone of the Big Four (the carnage was going to reduce that to the Big Three and eventually make even that term irrelevant).

Seat Re-Seat

Brad Bowling

Nothing makes an interior look nastier than stained, saggy, sticky, split, smelly seats. Yucksville. 

Power Window Fix

Tom Shaw

Crank windows are so last millennium. Electric windows, once considered an extravagance, are now routine even in cheapie econo-boxes. Who can be bothered to hand-crank a window down when we’re so busy with chow, java, chat, text, GPS, and iPod? Oh, yeah, and driving.

The Marti Report

Kevin Marti

As you see by the cover of this magazine, exciting things are in store for the reader. The feature car, a beautiful ’92 Bright Red GT Mustang convertible, sets the pace both for the era of the Fox-bodied Mustangs and the direction of FOX Mustang Magazine. Along with this great news comes our excitement of being able to offer Marti Reports for the ’79-’93 Mustang crowd. And this is no small crowd—there were more than two and a half million Mustangs built during this period. To put things in perspective, rival Camaro barely pulled two million units.

Pick of the Pack

Tom Shaw

If you were stranded on a desert island with only one Mustang, which would it be? The question is always good to start the opinions flowing. But for Steve Freedland, the Fox-body is the one.

“I’ve owned many Mustangs over the years,” Steve says. “I’ve had SN-95s; I had the new Edge; I even had an ’03 Cobra. But for some reason I always go back to the Fox-body style.”

Factory Find

Tom Shaw

Sometimes you search for years to find the right car, and sometimes the right car finds you. That’s how it worked for Joe and Linda Beutler. In May 1999, while visiting the K.A.R. Mustang showroom in Columbus, Ohio, they saw this spotless ’89 GT convertible.

Repaint or Revive?

Tom Shaw

Sooner or later, just about every Mustang owner has to make a decision — keep the original paint job, or let it go and repaint. But how do you know when the original paint can be saved, and when it’s beyond hope?

Editorial

Tom Shaw

WELCOME TO THE FUTURE.

You’ll notice the future has its own magazine dedicated to Fox Mustangs. And not some goofy, broken-down newsletter, but rather a very nice, deluxe magazine like you’d take home to Momma. I’m talking about an oversized, full-color magazine slammed full of high-powered feature cars, tech, restoration, and fix-up articles you can actually use, and realistic performance stories that don’t center around some 6-second, triple-turbo, 1,500hp, machined-from-billet monster motor.

I’ll never build, drive, or probably even see a 6-second, triple-turbo, 1,500hp, machined-from-billet monster motor, and I’ll bet you won’t either. So how about if we let other mags get geeked up over that stuff ? Fox Mustang Magazine will focus on more realistic stories that help make the Fox Mustangs in our driveways better cars right here in the real world.