The saga begins April 19, 2012
I found my 85.5 sitting in a field in Littleton, NC. I was enthralled, it looked perfect, no wreck damage, bi wing without sag, rims were ding free, then I opened the door and saw that the floor had been completely eaten away. I bought it anyway, the interior trim was complete and in very nice shape, the drive train was beautiful and original, even the seats had very little wear. I thought to myself that I could just replace the floor pans and bring this rare gem back to life and for $850 I couldnt pass it up, the guy selling it was quickly taking most of his "project cars" to the scrappers.
Then I towed it home and looked closer, the frame was more than gone, and if I had known how bad it was I would have used a flatbed to take it home instead of towing it with a car dolly 150 miles to Raleigh. The rails were disintegrated, the "A" pillar was literally being held together by paint, radiator support failing ect. ect. My dreams of restoring her to road worthiness were quickly gone. I was left contemplating what to do (I actually considered parting her out!) the next day is when I saw an ad on Craigslist for an 89 GT 'vert for $2000 (yes, I had Fox Body Fever) and thought I could take the money from parting out the SVO and invest it into restoring the vert.
I drove down to a small town called Liberty and looked at it only to discover that the sellers son had a really poor quality body kit on it, installed hood pins, slapped it with a bunch of distasteful Cobra badges and let small animals make their homes in the upholstery, the only thing this guy had done right on this car was keep it covered and for some reason had the really nice expensive cloth top with glass window installed (yes I was puzzled as well), it was mostly rust free with the exception of the drivers floor pan. I easily talked him down to $1200 and towed her home on a dolly in the rain at night in really bad traffic. This long and dangerous trip gave me lots of time to think about my recent purchases. I was not happy with having just another run of the mill 5.0, the SVO was bugging the crap out of me, I wanted it bad! Then the idea came to me! I have a perfectly good frame, and a perfectly good donor car and a hell of alot of time on my hands, I will build an 85.5 SVO Convertible!
Now for the research, I am a very meticulous minded person and when I do something that I invest a great portion of my life into, I do it right. So before I even touch either car I need to figure out how much I need to use from each. I knew I wanted it to be body and soul as much 85.5 SVO as possible. I sought to learn what makes it so different from the other Fox Stangs, and was quite surprised that they are in fact very different machines! I obtained all the factory manuals for the SVO, and scoured the web for others who hade done the same thing, I only found 3 people who had and they did not document the process (so here I am).
The parts I am using from the SVO:
Exterior: fenders,headlamps, tail lamps, cowl cover, hood, emblems, spats, door handles, front and rear bumpers, ground effects, side trim and wheels.
Interior: complete dash, PE ECU, front seats, seatbelts, steering wheel, steering column, inner door panels, new carpet (trimmed to fit), pedals, shifter, center console, parking brake handle, HVAC system, wire harnesses and even the little ford logo on the lower door sills.
Under the hood: everything!
Frame and suspension: K Member, brakes, control arms, sway bar, Koni's, tranny, brake lines, rear end, exhaust, fuel lines. Im even taking the old VIN plate and mounting it somewhere so people will know what car I had.
Parts I am using from the vert:
It had the aluminum driveshaft from the AWD AeroStar, Frame, top, top electronics and most of the rear wire harness, rear seats which I am recovering with SVO materiel, seatbelt guides, rear interior panels for the speakers, high torque mini starter.
My next task was to completely strip away everything that indicates it was a GT, so I start pulling off body panels and trim, dash, interior, so it is now completely gutted.
To do this right, I want it to be the same color as the SVO, Dark Grey Metallic. I will need to strip the red down to bare metal completely. I want this to look like it was always intended to be an 85.5, so everything must come out! Doors, gaskets, top, trunk, not a speck of red will be left on this frame! This is where I am now, I will post more as I do more weekly!
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Now I just need to figure out what to do about the reverse lamp switch, the harnesses I found at the junkyard are all newer and don't match the large 4 pin connector on the tranny, I guess I could re pin the old style connector with a newer one, that will be the cheapest option. Also while I was tracing my starting problem I found the fan control circuit unit under the dash was badly scorched so I grabbed one from a 4cyl lx and repinned it to the new connector. 
Originally Posted by Meotchh
