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Thread: '89 csx-vnt #104

  1. #1
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    '89 csx #104

    Hello everyone!

    I've been seeing so many threads about projects as a lurker that I decided to share my little Shelby!

    How I got a hold of this rare beast? I was riding my Ruckus past the lemon lot on base and it just caught my eye. The rear spoiler and ground effects had me. I had to get closer, I turned around and checked it out. Only 96k on the clock and the owner had a bunch of stuff to go with it! I immediately snapped this pic and told my wife "I gotta have it!".

    Well I set up a test drive and turns out I knew the current owner and the owner before him too! It was basically a three owner car. A man bought it in 1990, then gave it to his son in early 2000's, then he sold it to the man that sold it to me. I got a bunch of stuff with the car. The front bumper, service manuals, the original Fiberides, magazines from 1989, extra window trim, full decal set, extra boost gauge, a stock controller, extra driver side fender in red, driver side ground effect, and a couple other things I can't remember right now. Needless to say my truck bed was full of stuff when I bought the car!

    As far as mods, it has a 15 psi tune from FWD Performance and a smaller underdrive pulley.

    Goals for the car are just to make it run real good, it already does mechanically. It can obviously use some cosmetic issues addressed (some have been done already ). It just needs some good TLC to put on parts that I already have. It is my daily driver right now, and that's the whole intent. Have a fun but reliable daily driver!

    Here she is in all her glory when I first layed eyes on her! This was back in October.





    I've done a couple things to it already and looks a hundred times better but I
    ll slowly update this thread to not overload it!
    Last edited by silverWS6; 05-22-2016 at 08:44 PM.

  2. #2
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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    Sweet! Nice find!

  3. #3
    Rhymes with tortoise. Turbo Mopar Staff cordes's Avatar
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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    Nice find. I'll be eager to follow your progress.

  4. #4
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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    Nice ride! I have #299, but it is very rough!

  5. #5
    Supporting Member Turbo Mopar Contributor 2.216VTurbo's Avatar
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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    Great first Shelby-some would say The Best! It does have some sort of aftermarket exhaust right? Factory unit was intentionally restricted to control turbo shaft speed. Who wants that right?

    AJ (no More Alan) 84 Rampage RT TIII/568 Quaife 87 GLHS dealer optioned Red 16V Masi/568/Quaife
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  6. #6
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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    Quote Originally Posted by DaveSkrab View Post
    Sweet! Nice find!
    Quote Originally Posted by cordes View Post
    Nice find. I'll be eager to follow your progress.
    Thanks! I'm thrilled to share my progress with you!

    Quote Originally Posted by glhs875 View Post
    Nice ride! I have #299, but it is very rough!
    Nice! Rescue it!

    Quote Originally Posted by 2.216VTurbo View Post
    Great first Shelby-some would say The Best! It does have some sort of aftermarket exhaust right? Factory unit was intentionally restricted to control turbo shaft speed. Who wants that right?
    You know, I know the exhaust has some very minor work done to it. It definitely has a slight growl though! I was reading that the VNT is very sensitive if the exhaust isn't restrictive enough and it'll cause it to overboost very easily. I don't know how accurate this is though.

  7. #7
    Rhymes with tortoise. Turbo Mopar Staff cordes's Avatar
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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    It's very accurate.

  8. #8
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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    So shortly after buying the car, I of course had to go over it. Check plugs, air filter, and what not. Well the plugs were gapped super tight, at like .20 or something. I gapped them to .35 like I'm used too and put them back in. The previous owner also gave me a brand new air filter so I threw that in as well. Oil was recently changed so I didn't worry about that too much.

    Well she hated the new gap on the plugs. When I would get to 4k rpm it would fall on its face, I did some short research and thought "oh no I'm overboosting" darnit! I came back home and put the plugs back to .20, took it out again, and it was fine! It was time for new plugs as the old ones looked pretty beat! I grabbed some stock plugs and wires, gapped them at .35 and threw them on. Ohhh boy did she like that! She was running like a champ and even got a smoother idle.

    I was excited to see a Holley throttle body





    Turbo has seen better days too but it doesn't look too bad for a stock VNT






    Up next was the steering wheel, the paint was chipped and the leather was covered by some UGLY steering wheel cover. I didn't even take a picture of that thing, it wasn't worthy! I immediately discarded it. I removed the steering wheel, the whole time praying that a crew wouldn't strip. I was lucky. I then removed it and debated how I was going to fix up the black surface on it. I hit it with some sandpaper, just enough to smooth out the rough chipped spots. I then put some blue tape around the edges of the leather and stole the tin foil from the kitchen. Wrapped it in tin foil and it was ready to go! I was going to put some aircraft stripper on it but I was scared to get it on the leather so I opted not to go that route. After it was wrapped up, I hit it with some black spray paint. It turned out okay, it was a bit too shiny for my taste. I bought some flat black rattle can paint to paint the window edges and I'll probably repaint it when I do that. The leather on it was beat too and I couldn't afford to have it redone. Then came SEMA. I was watching SEMA and on one the build, the steering wheel appeared to be wrapped in a wrap of some sort. Much like the heat wrapped that applied to headers. I went over to DICKS and found exactly what I was looking for, I bought two rolls of black tape. Same tape used to wrap the end of baseball bats or tennis rackets. I went to town on the steering wheel and hit the shifter knob to match. About the shifter know, it was missing the top piece that shows the gear gear pattern. I hated having just a hole there. Off I went to LOWES and found exactly what I was looking for, a small plug grommet type thing. Much like the stuff used to hold down trimp pieces, those annoying little tabs that are always super hard to remove without a set of pliers! I cut one up to fit in the whole and slid it on, that took care of the whole and after I wrapped, you can't even tell its there. That's really all the interior needed besides fixing a tear in the back seat, unfortunately its right on the Shelby fabric so I don't know how I'll fix that without finding a door panel or something with the Shelby fabric.





    Here you can see the cracked, old, and beat leather and the now shiny wheel!



    Then wrapped, this stuff has been holding up well and it'll be easy and cheap to redo when needed till I can afford to red the wheel with leather again.


  9. #9
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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    Well today was fun, I got a quick reminder on getting a fire extinguisher for this car too. I was leaving work and I immediately smelled gas as soon as I fired up the car. Well I got out to check it out and on of the lines was squirting gas all over the place, just the rubber piece. I drove it the couple miles home and pulled the hose off real quick to discover a puncture on it. Went down to AutoZone and got some 5/16 fuel hose, valve cover gasket, and a new oil cap. She'll all better now. However, anybody know where I can get a OEM oil cap? These aftermarket oil caps are garbage and leak.





    Well on past projects, I HAD to fix the color on the wheels! I hated the color on the wheels and I felt like they clashed with the car and just made it look dated. I know the car is 27 years old but I felt like it needed gold wheels again and the brakes needed a makeover. I wish I took a before picture or progress pics of the brakes. The brakes had recenetly been done up by the previous owner so there was no need to take them apart. I just went to town on the calipers with a wire brush and some simple green. Then I hit them with some caliper paint after I did some covering with plastic and tape If you zoom in on the picture on post #1, you can kind of see how bad they looked.



    The wheels, I used some Vintage Gold PlastiDip and it looked exactly how I wanted it. I want to paint the wheels this color but I'm not set on these wheels. I need some wheels that are more correct to the era. I do have the original Fiberides but I'd be crazy to daily drive on those, right?!



    After the brakes were painted and the wheels dipped, it looked so much better!



    I also added some "hoonigan" stencils for shits and giggles

  10. #10
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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    I also finally looked over all the stuff that the previous owner gave me and I have some cool stuff! I also have a couple magazines form 1989 that have articles on the Shelby CSX! I'll take pics of those later.













    Along with all this stuff was the original sales receipt, pretty much all the original sale paperwork.

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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    make sure the replacement fuel line is 30r9 rated for fuel injection, alot of the parts stores will sell you the lesser grade hose and it wont hold up. also there is a nice shelby wheel for sale on turbododge that would look really good in your car

  12. #12
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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    make sure the replacement fuel line is 30r9 rated for fuel injection, alot of the parts stores will sell you the lesser grade hose and it wont hold up. also there is a nice shelby wheel for sale on turbododge that would look really good in your car
    I just saw that! That one is in waaaay better shape than mine. I have to buy a coil right now though and I just bought a timing light, my other car is also asking for a LS6 valley cover lol hopefully it's up for a little longer and I'll snatch it up!

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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    make sure the replacement fuel line is 30r9 rated for fuel injection, alot of the parts stores will sell you the lesser grade hose and it wont hold up. also there is a nice shelby wheel for sale on turbododge that would look really good in your car
    In addition to that, make sure that you purchase EFI hose clamps rather than regular worm clamps.

  14. #14
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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    Good idea! Those worm clamps really dug into that hose. I might as well do both hoses and go over the rest of the system, who knows where else these clamps are.

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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    Question for everyone:

    The gears are a bit sloppy in my car. I know the a555 shifter cables are hard to come by? What can I use or where I purchase some new cables? I'm assuming this will give me a tight gear feel again! Thanks!

  16. #16
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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    Quote Originally Posted by silverWS6 View Post
    Question for everyone:

    The gears are a bit sloppy in my car. I know the a555 shifter cables are hard to come by? What can I use or where I purchase some new cables? I'm assuming this will give me a tight gear feel again! Thanks!
    I believe some of the guys have had them made by Push Pull. Aftermarket is about your only option now unless you can find some NOS ones.

  17. #17
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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    I'll admit, the car caught my attention when I first saw it but once I Googled it and stumbled across images of complete CSX cars with the front bumper on them. The previous owner had purchased a new bumper cover from Kaminari but had never put it on in fear of ruining it with a speed bump or driveway. Well my other car (02 Trans Am) is a bit low, I've "learned" how to drive a lowered car over time. There was no doubt that I was going to put the front cover on this car. I also didn't have room to store it. I was going to take it to a shop and pay to have them spray the cover. That didn't end up happening. I actually started to research home auto-painting and came across automotivetouchup.com, I saw great reviews on their service and paint and decided to order up some of their paint. I got some paint and clear and decided to tackle this on my own.

    The bumper was already in a white shade. I sanded this down till it was smooth and had no imperfections. I prepped it and I went to town. I was really impressed with the color matching, it was spot on and after I give the car a good buff, it'll look real good!





    Before:



    During:





    After!





    The bumper was attached with 3M tape and some automotive screw in pins attached to the bumper in wheel well area. It's on there real good.

    I also went ahead and put on the driver door skirt(?). I was trying to figure out how it went and I checked out the passenger side, it was just held on by screws. I went ahead and got some matching screws, I also added some 3M tape and put it on also. Needless to say, that changed the look of the car a whole lot! I almost put on the Fiberides to have her looking completely stock but I quickly talked myself out of that idea

    A little comparison shot, it's in different lighting but it gives a good comparison from the first day I got her to about now.



    Now, I have to get that driver side fender on and give the whole car a good polish. I know this old paint has some good shine in it! Minus the roof, that part is real cloudy

  18. #18
    Supporting Member Turbo Mopar Contributor 2.216VTurbo's Avatar
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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    Looking good! You did cheat a little tho, shot that pic in the golden light 5 minutes before sunset heck even my VNT almost looks good in that light-almost Mine needs new paint something fierce

    AJ (no More Alan) 84 Rampage RT TIII/568 Quaife 87 GLHS dealer optioned Red 16V Masi/568/Quaife
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    86 GLHS #110 RoadRace Built 89 CSX-VNT Recaro Car
    89 Turbo Mini 'Woody' 85 GLHT 'RedBox'
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    My profile page has over 20,000 views, I'm somebody LOL

  19. #19
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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    Well as much as I've been enjoying this car, I have to let it go. My other car needs some stuff and it's tough having 3 vehicles with a 1 car garage. I'll be making a For sale thread and posting it on the local craigslist too. If anyone is interested, I'm in OKC and I'm willing to travel 8ish hours to deliver the car or meet halfways. There still is a couple things I want to do to it before I sell but but look out for the for sale thread!

  20. #20
    Moderator Turbo Mopar Staff Vigo's Avatar
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    Re: '89 csx-vnt #104

    Youre leaving it better than you found it, so good on you for that.

    Dont push the red button.You hear me?

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