Nose heavy fox

Im looking for some tips on weight transfer with a heavy nosed fox. Car is an 87 and absolutely nothing has been done in the front to lose weight besides strange drag brakes. Has a Mild 466 with c8's, factory k member, factory control arms, 94-95 spindles, 4 cyl springs, and Lakewood 90/10's. The rear however has the full team z strip series suspension with the relocated uppers, the adjustable lowers, and their arb, along with strange sa shocks. It'll be a footbrake car as well.

I haven't made a pass yet as the car is still on jack stands being assembled. I figured with it still on jack stands now would be the time to ask if anyone has had success with a similar front end setup as mine or if anyone has any foresight into how this thing may react or what they've done to make a similar combo work.

I know the only way to know for sure is to get it together and go run it but any tips or lessons learned from experience would be greatly appreciated. I'm not hard headed and I'm all ears! Thanks

It's probably not as bad as you think it is to be honest. What tire are you running?

I hope it's way better than im thinking. I'm trying to "massage" a 28x10.5 et drag under it. Key word-trying lol

Its been done successfully before.

BFH.

Yeah I'm sure I just need to get it together and play with it. I've got a real nice railroad "donated" bfh doing work on this thing. Almost as small as a regular claw hammer, almost as heavy as a mini sledge, cares not about sheet metal. They'll fit one way or another.

Doing the weight math on a big block Fox will tell you it's a tire spinning, nose heavy pig that won't get out of its own way.

Doing a launch in the same car will usually tell you something else, as long as it's a decent combo.

Go to any drag strip on any race day, look around and ask yourself, "Why are so many guys running Fox Mustangs with every conceivable engine combination? These things are like belly buttons."

Answer: It's a pretty good racecar right out of the box.

A little advice on your "massaging"....this is what I had to do. Driver side rear wheel, roughly in the 8 o'clock area to about 10 o'clock inside the wheel well, bash the shit out if it there, the inside of the tire rubbed there. Do the same to the passenger side. On the 1/4 panel wheel well, there is a lip inside there, you have to get rid of it. Some people talk about rolling it back using a baseball ball sort of like prying against your tire to do that. I tried and was scared I was going to damage the outside metal so I went ahead a cut it out with a die grinder. I run a MT drag 28x10.5x15 also. I also had a little interference when the tire grew and put a groove in my tire face all the way around it so I had to cut away some body metal, basically it was at the back of the rocker panel in front of the tire. I now have 1 1/4 inch clearance with no rubbing there. That is measured at the seam where the rocker and 1/4 panel meet....of course you can't just take metal from the rocker and not the 1/4 otherwise it would look like a totally F'd up abortion.

Here's my build link: https://www.429-460.com/t4799p165-my-build-my-fox-transformation-lotsa-pics#261795

Good luck

To roll the fenders with a bat put it at the back of the tire and roll the car forward and let the bat follow the tire in the fender while adding pressure down it will roll nice and easy...

gmsmkr wrote:To roll the fenders with a bat put it at the back of the tire and roll the car forward and let the bat follow the tire in the fender while adding pressure down it will roll nice and easy...

Ahhhhhhh....I see

take the metal bumper off the front and put the facha back on that will get rid of like 35-50 lbs off the nose

I run a 28 x 10.5 x 15 in a stock tub with very little massaging. I removed both front and rear bumpers. I put a small home made front bumper (3/4" OD tubing) up front just to brace the bumper cover. I have stock front brakes with lakewoods/coilovers. I have an AJE tubular K-member and QA1 tubular lower arms. The lower arms alone were good for 14lbs off the nose. My back end consists of a 9" diff/drums with strange 10 way single adjustable shocks and, adjustable uppers and SSM lift bars....Nothing fancy but it hooks and goes dead straight 95% of the time.

Thanks for all the positive feedback fellas. I certainly don't feel like I'm at too much of a disadvantage like I did when I began this build. This is my first honest to goodness build as everything prior was taking whatever mustang I had at the time, throwing some radials and spray on it, and beating it like it owed me money. I knew about the ball bat trick but have been caught up between trimming them and rolling them. Honestly I was leaning towards rolling them but was concerned about tire growth on the big end so I wasn't sure which path to take, or maybe a combination of rolled fender and trimmed rocker/rear bumper would work. I'll probably just wind up trimming them as I tend to go overkill and become a worry ward if I'm not 100% certain something is going to work and nobody wants a tire going down.

How much on average does a full on race slick tend to grow at speed?

Bigblockfox468 thanks for the how to on trimming. I've read through your whole build thread and I'm very impressed. Tried to get the launch videos working but my phone wasn't having it. Bummed about that. In the thread it had mention that you were heading to Owensboro for your engine build/dyno. I'm assuming that's owensboro, ky?

butterbean wrote:take the metal bumper off the front and put the facha back on that will get rid of like 35-50 lbs off the nose

An '87 should have a fiberglass front bumper, they are very light.

Jess

They do but they aren't very light. Mine was on a diet when I removed it but it was still kinda soggy.

I still have to take off the fenders and front bumper to hide the new wiring so that'll be an opportune time to deal with the front bumper. I never really thought about that. Guess I'll have to start looking at smaller stuff to remove or modify from the car for weight savings. I had already planned on gutting the dash of everything that wasn't a necessity like the blower motor, heater controls, and miles of efi wiring. Hopefully I can dissect the factory harness apart as to keep the factory head light/tail light harness in fact for use.

BigRigTech wrote:They do but they aren't very light. Mine was on a diet when I removed it but it was still kinda soggy.

87-93 fiberglass bumpers are way lighter than a 79-86 steel bumper. Guess I should have said that first.

Jess

When I pulled my Fiberglas bumper someone had already taken the sawzall to it LOL

Some 79-85 cars had a aluminum crash support also.... But it was heavier then the glass supports

The aprons from strut tower forward are almost 23lbs the lower core support is another 20lbs the crash support is another heavy item also you can drop almost 50-75lbs off with all this gone inner fenders just get in the way cut all extruding bolts off flush (not the heads)

I wouldn't worry too much about separating the taillight wiring harness unless you're set on using the factory switches. Wiring those lights to something like a Painless switch panel is a snap...and neat as a pin.

I was pretty set on using the factory switches. I have an arc 8000 switch panel I was going to run everything else off of but I still want the brake lights/turn signals/yadda yadda to all work because Id like to be able to drive it on the street from time to time. Motor/converter is still mild enough that there's no reason I shouldn't hit the street with it. The only drawback is the spool Id say. My understanding is that there's two harnesses in the car. The chassis and the computer/efi harness. I've been told they meet at three differnt locations. I find those, simple as pie right? Haha famous last words I reckon.

just pull all the efi from pass side and unhook from computer and your done the chassis harness runs down driver side and hooks to starter relay it's the green wire that runs the hole chassis fox is very simple chassis and works great

Awesome! Thank you for that. I figured everything got its power from the junction there on the starter relay, just didn't know which wire. I plan on moving the relay inside mounted to the firewall behind the dash along with the ignition box. Trying to hide as much as possible by running inside the inner fenders, and anywhere I can conceal the routing, and do it as tastefully as possible.