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My Daily. An uber slow build with poor documentation

HiSPL

Fanking Champion 1993
Joined
Jan 8, 2015
Location
College Station, TX
So in January of 2021 I picked up this 1988 Blue Green Metallic 244 beauty of an old-man car. It's a DL, no sunroof, manual everything, cloth interior workhorse. And it is actually in fine shape. Couple of little dents, a scratch or two, but over all pretty mint.

First thing I did was paint the centers gold.
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I can't stand those plastic hubcaps so they got trashed. Found some dog-dishes and trim rings, painted the rims Rustoleum "Metallic Champagne Bronze" since it was the closest match to the pinstripe I could find. This is just a wire wheel and spray job. Nothing fancy. I also got some new Falken tires put on.
 
I bought the car from an estate auction right here in town. The guy had clearly taken pretty good care of the car. The old tires that were on it still had the little nubs on them, but they were 19 freaking years old according to the build date. The Oil looked as clean as a new bottle. it has a new oil filter and the battery is good. Everything about the car screams "old man's pride and joy".

After the new tires I started driving it to work. Took it to a few local hang outs:
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Just basically figuring out what it needs.

What it needed badly was a front end rebuild. So I did that. SuperPro Poly bushings, new tie rod inners and outers, boots, and ball joints. Not going to touch the springs/shocks yet. Waiting for coilovers. For now I'm rocking OE ride height. The shocks on the car are still good so I'm in no rush.
 
Then the rear muffler rusted out at the input side. I just removed the can and left the pipe under the car. Drove it this way for a while. Really wasn't too bad. After a couple months of that the joint at the output of the resonator failed and the pipe was dragging the ground. Stopped, ripped the pipe out and have been hating life for a few weeks now. It's way too obnoxious inside the car.

So now we break out the hot metal glue gun.

I've been collecting parts for a little bit and have started on a new 2.5" exhaust from the downpipe back. I cut the flange off the OE cat and hogged it out to match the ID of my exhaust pipe, which is a 2.5" 304 stainless builders kit.

There will be a Magnaflow high flow cat, into a flex joint, into a short 10 or 12" cherry bomb. This is the resonator. Then over the axle into a 24" cherry bomb where the original muffler was. Yep. 2 Cherry bombs. I don't think it will be too bad As long as I can route the piping like the factory. Plenty of bends, two mufflers and a cat, and the exit is past the bumper. Should be fine....

Boogers.
The short cherry bomb was welded on before, but never used. It's ugly, but idc. It's getting painted anyway. I hacked the original hanger off the OE resonator.
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Practically stackin dimes!
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My first crack at joining stainless to mild steel.
Blew a hole in her. I dropped the heat a little after this and all was good.
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Fixed
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A grinder and paint make me the welder I ain't....
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My second joint went much better. Getting the hang of it.
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I have a Lincoln 120V Mig. I'm using flux core on it because I hardly ever weld, so keeping a bottle here seems like a wasted expense. I pretty much followed this guys instruction to the T and I gotta say, it's working pretty well. My welds are not at all pretty, but they are going down smooth and getting good penetration. I don't think I have any leaks yet.

I'm using Blue Demon 309LFC-O wire and Solar Flux paste on the backside of the joint. I'm using a very high heat and very slow speed to get these results. The welding is easy. The guy holding the gun is just not that good.

Tonight after dark I removed my crash triangles to make room. I have to work tomorrow evening but I hope I can get out and do a little more tomorrow morning. We'll see.
 
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that's a good idea stealing the OE resonator hanger. I need to do that. I plan on doing a very similar exhaust but with 2 flowmaster HP2's in series with a 2.5" 240-like tailpipe squiggle but on the wrong side.
 
Started out my morning not motivated to crawl under the car to do exhaust things.

So I took care of a little project I'd been putting off for a while. Mounting door speakers. I picked up some sweet little Audax 4" coaxials. Found them NOS on ebay. Audax is a french company that made high-end pro speakers and got a little into hi-fi and car audio stuff. Audax isn't around anymore, bought up by one of the bigger companies but they had some great products back in the 90's and 00's.

Problem is they were slightly too large to fit in the metal bracket left over after you cut the magnet off the stock speaker.
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So I got out the die grinder with the angry end on it.
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Now the basket fits but the speaker still won't sit down flush because the surround is just a touch too wide to fit inside the little metal return. So I took a little off the plastic basket with my bench sander. Just a touch on two sides.
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Then it fit snug.
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Now I have a proper 2 way front stage. This will be super cool when I really dig into the stereo. For now I just wanted the door speakers in place to listen to podcasts.
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Congratulations. I miss my 1992 240 wagon. Hopefully, I can get one as a cheap project one day.
 
Was just talking about cutting out the small bushings by burning them and then cutting through the shell. These are for the rear trailing arms, but I did the fronts the same way. These are the 2nd biggest PITA on the whole car. 1st would be the heater core.

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The bottom one actually came out fairly easy. I have a big acme screw I liberated from a scissor jack that I use for pulling and pushing duties with various bits of pipe and sockets, etc. Out of the 4 "hard" bushings on the car this is the only one that came out with the screw puller method. The other three ended up like the top example.

You stick a propane torch on the middle steel bit to heat the rubber up. Grab the middle part and pull it out with some pliers. Then stick that torch back in there and catch the rubber on fire. I then hang it somewhere so that the middle can burn out of it. It takes some time, but just let it do it's thing and then you'll be left with the outer shell with some gross crusty rubber. Clean it up with a wire wheel or brush, then get out a sawzall, or a hacksaw. Cut a few slots in the outer shell almost all the way through. Then use a variety of punches and chisels to peel the shell out of the control arm. This is the top on in this pic. 3 out of 4 on my car looked like this when I was done. Eventually once you break the seal enough with the chisels you can usually drop a large impact socket in there and start wailing on it with a BFH and she'll come out.
 
Last night I finally installed my 7k rpm tach that I've had for a few months. That went well enough. Seems to work.

Today I'm starting on a mod that I hope will help a lot of people fix a real problem area on these cars. More to come, I'm just getting started on this....

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My tail lights bring all the boys to the yard.

 
You vs the guy she says not to worry about.....



I bought a 242 shell and it came with a 25mm rear IPD sway bar and no front bar. This car was previously V8 swapped. I guess they liked sliding around everywhere idk.

So I started looking for a matching front bar and finally found an old IPD Gold bar so I installed both bars tonight on my otherwise stock height, stock shock car.

If tomorrow doesn't rain I may try to do the BNE coilovers that I bought months ago and haven't had time to install yet.......
 
So I still haven't done any coilovers.

But my Chrysler Box 'O Misery and Intermittant Misses is not long for this world. I dropped some coin and started pulling wires. Started doing stuff last night and today I am spending my Memorial day wiring up my new Microsquirt and AEM Wideband.

 
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