My Kids Named Her "Dirty Bird"

CDsDontBurn

CDsDontBurn

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97 Thunderbird Sport
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She got the name "Dirty Bird" because she was parked in my driveway for so long. I would go outside and wash her once, maybe twice, a year in her time of sitting on my driveway - roughly 5 years. In between these washing intervals, she would get dirty and my kids would say to me, "Look dad, it's Dirty Bird!". She wasn't named "Pearl" anymore after that.

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Why was she parked you ask? For two reasons: A massive transmission leak at the front pump seal and failing suspension. So over the years I've been gathering all the parts needed to make this build happen. I have a detailed PARTS LIST showing what I've purchased and what still needs to be purchased.

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Now that the parts have been collected, she is back in the garage, where she has always belonged. I cleaned her up real good, inflated the 15yr old tires to 32psi, added 4qts of ATF, dropped in the battery from my DD, added some fresh fuel, and she fired right up! After a few minutes of letting her warm up I drove her around the block with the family before driving her into the garage.

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The day I drove her into the garage, about 10 minutes later after driving her and lifting her front end up, I had this little puddle of ATF. I cleaned it up and placed a cardboard under the transmission. Even with the nose up, she's still leaking ATF as seen in the second picture below.

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So after bringing her in I began to disassemble the front end suspension components.

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Wanting a good suspension setup, I opted for the Bilstein insert mod as some of us here have already done thanks to @MadMartigan and @gunn for exploring this.

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I am excited to finally be able to get this started and get her back on the road. When she's done, she'll be manual swapped and I'll be rowing my own gears with a huge grin on my face :D.
 
What transmission are you going to go with? If I were to do it over again, I would go with a 6 speed. The t45 is geared well, but it would be nice to have 6th to get the RPM a bit lower on the highway.

Are the emblems painted gold or aftermarket replacement. Honda and Toyota were big on gold badges in the 90's, it was usually a dealer add on, and they installed replacement ones.
 
Kenz said:
What transmission are you going to go with? If I were to do it over again, I would go with a 6 speed. The t45 is geared well, but it would be nice to have 6th to get the RPM a bit lower on the highway.

Are the emblems painted gold or aftermarket replacement. Honda and Toyota were big on gold badges in the 90's, it was usually a dealer add on, and they installed replacement ones.
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03-04 TR3650s have a .62 overdrive
 
IIRC I originally went with the earlier model T45 for ease of install. The speed sensor plugged right in and is accurate, and a Panther drive shaft was easy to find.
But considering the better overdrive on newer transmissions it would be worth the extra trouble to go with one.

With the swap already done it would probably be easier for me to change out the rear gears to drop the RPM. First and second gear seem low enough the car would be fine with 3.08 or maybe even 2.73s. I wonder if anyone has ever ran that setup?
 
I ran 3.08s in my first T45 swap, and it was perfectly fine. That car was an otherwise stock 94 Cougar 4.6, so it wasn’t going to be fast no matter what gears were in it, but it was definitely more fun with the T45 than the 4r70, and the gear ratio was never an issue. I probably wouldn’t go 2.73s unless the goal was purely highway cruiser/gas mileage.
 
Kenz said:
IIRC I originally went with the earlier model T45 for ease of install. The speed sensor plugged right in and is accurate, and a Panther drive shaft was easy to find.
But considering the better overdrive on newer transmissions it would be worth the extra trouble to go with one.

With the swap already done it would probably be easier for me to change out the rear gears to drop the RPM. First and second gear seem low enough the car would be fine with 3.08 or maybe even 2.73s. I wonder if anyone has ever ran that setup?
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Mine’s still a SN95 spec TR3650 so with the lone exception of the electronic speed sensor it’s the same swap as a T45, I have a Police interceptor driveshaft on mine as well. Oddly the S197 TR3650 went back to a .68 overdrive.
 
Kenz said:
What transmission are you going to go with?
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I'm going with the s197 TR-3650.

Mainly for ease of install and everything being plug and play.

I'm aware of the speedo issues, but I have the stuff to make it not an issue.
 
For purposes of my AT not leaking like a sieve from the front pump seal (presumably) anymore, this is all I should need, right?

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Nice write up! Best of luck in getting all that work done. I know you will appreciate the difference. What I want to know is, your neighbors Cougar, what is the story behind that?

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White Lincoln said:
Nice right up! Best of luck in getting all that work done. I know you will appreciate the difference. What I want to know is, your neighbors Cougar, what is the story behind that?

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I spotted it a few years ago, I called first dibs, back off! 😆
 
White Lincoln said:
Nice right up! Best of luck in getting all that work done. I know you will appreciate the difference.
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It's been so long I've driven her regularly that I don't think I really have a point of reference anymore. All I know is that she'll ride very nice when she's back on the road.

White Lincoln said:
What I want to know is, your neighbors Cougar, what is the story behind that?
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This picture is slightly older, probably a year or so. My neighbor has since died and all that needed to happen happened. The sister of the man took over and she didn't tell anyone about what she was doing, including the car. Before I knew it, the car was gone and about 4 months later, I had new neighbors.

Turns out a company purchased the house and is now being rented out.

Even I asked about the car, lol.
 
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CDsDontBurn said:
It's been so long wive driven her regularly that I don't think I really have a point of reference anymore. All I know is that she'll ride very nice when she's back on the road.



This picture is slightly older, probably a year or so. My neighbor has since died and all that needed to happen happened. The sister of the man took over and she didn't tell anyone about what she was doing, including the car. Before I knew it, the car was gone and about 4 months later, I had new neighbors.

Turns out a company purchased the house and is now being rented out.

Even I asked about the car, lol.
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God I hope it didn’t get junked, that happens so often with family who just don’t want to “deal with the hassle”
 
CDsDontBurn said:
Turns out a company purchased the house and is now being rented out.

Even I asked about the car, lol.
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I am sorry to hear you have renters. I hope they are not assholes like so many can be.

That would have been a really great project car. The fact that it was white is what drew me in.
 
White Lincoln said:
I am sorry to hear you have renters. I hope they are not assholes like so many can be.

That would have been a really great project car. The fact that it was white is what drew me in.
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They're good people. They have a little girl that my boy became friends with.

It definitely would have been a great project car.
 
CDsDontBurn said:
They're good people. They have a little girl that my boy became friends with.

It definitely would have been a great project car.
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That is really good to hear that your neighbors are decent people and have a daughter that your boy be-friended. Makes life a lot easier.
 
House right next to me just went up for sale a couple days ago. 3 families in 12-13 years. They've all been great so far, afraid my luck may run out.
 
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I got my shocks back today. Shop didn't charge me squat for these because of all the issues they had getting them to me.

The yellow is ever so slightly different than that Bilstein yellow, but it's close enough to where I'm happy with the final product 😀.

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