The Low Down On Lowering

When I assembled the car, I had noticed that the front was a little too high. The distance from floor to the top of wheelwell in the rear was 25.5" and 26" in the front. So I set about removing the springs to cut them down a bit.

The springs are 620 one-inch drop springs from Mustangs Plus. They are about 12" tall and IIRC are rated at 560lbs, which is actually pretty high. I had a local shop cut them down with a cutting wheel. There was no way I could hacksaw or jigsaw through these things. I had only 1/3 of a coil removed.

While the coil was out, I replaced the old rubber spring perch bushings with a set of polyurethane bushings. I greased the pivot shaft and the perch rocks back and forth smoothly now. The roller bearing spring perches are popular, but since my perches were in nice shape and just needed new bushings I went this way. I can feel a big difference driving the car now, as the perch allows the upper control arm to move freely.

Here's the coil and perch installed. I had to use an internal coil spring compressor with approximately six inches of steel spacers on top of the threaded rod to fit these short springs. I borrowed the compressor from Advanced Auto, but ended up buying it since it worked well enough for me. The previous owner had installed a set of Edelbrock Performer IAS shocks (Edelbrock 33237 Classic IAS Front Shock Absorber) a couple years ago, so I left them in. This is a good shot of the Baer Racing 12" brakes too.

Amazingly the front now sits at a perfect 25.25" after driving a couple miles to get the springs settled.

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I Didn't Know Your Car Could Sing!

When I finished wiring the new stereo the other day, my four-year-old daughter heard the stereo playing in the car and she said "I didn't know your car could sing!" :-)

I just buttoned up the rest of the job today. I didn't want to spend the time or money on amps or subs or any of that. In fact I think I have no more than $350 in the whole job. Here's what I bought on Amazon, and what I did.

I bought a Pioneer DEHP5100UB SCD Receiver with USB Control and OEL for $166. This unit has more features than I'd probably ever use. The blue lights go great with my blue LEDs in the dash.


And it puts out plenty of power even though I only have 4 small speakers (Pioneer Car TSA878 60-Watt 3.5-inch Dash Mount 2-Way Car Speakers in the center dash for $40 where original speakers were -- and two Alpine 5x7s for about $60 under the rear parcel shelf). Some might want 6x9s here mounted on the shelf surface, but I was going stealth...

I mounted the stereo under the dash in a Metra 99-9000 Dash Kit Under Dash Full Shroud. Bought it for $18 at Amazon.

It was black plastic but I painted it blue with leftover dash paint.

I wired the stereo to make sure everything worked. Notice the $8 stereo antenna I bought on eBay (and the remote that came with the stereo). The antenna is the black cord draped over the passenger seat. I didn't want to drill a hole in my new fender to mount a traditional one. This new one is inserted into the antenna port on the radio and then runs along the back of the dash and works quite well in early testing so far. It's not even powered. Amazon has a similar one here -- Dual Electronics MAW40 Car/Marine Wire Antenna.

I then installed the under-dash kit. I used two screws that came with the kit to mount the front of the shroud to the dash bottom (had to drill two small holes.)






The rear of the kit is held up with a plumber's strap. I saw this strap idea on a blog I found the other day, after I had bought the stereo and the same or similar shroud kit. I was going to use a wire hanger, but this is probably better. The photo is of my install using the bolt on the back of the factory radio support strap. The factory strap is still attached to the factory radio and is visible in the photo.





Here's the finished product with one of the display options -- a dual sound meter that looks pretty retro. I just bought a HP 8 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive
from Amazon to hold hundreds of songs, so I won't have to use an iPod although the stereo could. I've downloaded a bunch of songs from iTunes and the drive sounds great -- and for only $18! The stereo has one USB port in front, and a second out back with a wire that is hanging out of the back of the shroud kit... I did have to elongate one of the two back shroud holes to let the wiring harness pass through during install. Depending on when and how you connect the wires (I soldered), this might not be needed.

I'm also using my iPhone 3Gs with this stereo using a USB cable from Amazon (Eforcity Black USB Hotsync And Charging [2-IN-1] Cable for iPhone3G, iPods).





The screen image flips from negative to positive for a little while every minute or so, I suppose to protect the screen from burn in. It's easily visible in real-life, but the photo is kinda far away. I think this install looks super clean and most people would think this is a factory install (until they realize there are 2 radios!)

The wiring was pretty easy in this old car (BUT I can't guarantee anything - use at your own risk!) My car is almost all stock as far as wiring is concerned, so in addition to running the speaker wires, I needed a 12v constant that I got from splicing into the cigar lighter lead; a 12v switched that I got from a wired ring attached to the rear of the ignition switch post; an illumination lead that I got from inserting a wired bullet connector into the illumination triple connector behind the gauges; and a ground that I got from the main cluster ground behind the gauges.

The stereo even has an auto dim feature when the parking/head lights turn on, which can be disabled if you prefer. I removed the gauge cluster and the ash tray for this install in addition to the interior panels on the passenger side for the speaker wires.





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