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Project Personal - Reed's 1991 Capri
ReedStemen:
Hi, my name is Reed. I'm in my early 20's and have owned about 10 cars. My dad and I work on cars for fun and fix up old clunkers. My current daily driver is a silver 1991 Mercury Capri. I'm the third owner and bought it right at 100,000 miles. This was never supposed to be a project car, just a daily for me to get by while working on my 1991 Toyota supra turbo project. As fate would have it, it soon became a project when the auto transmission went into nuclear meltdown mode. I have spent one month and $650 on swapping a 5 speed in my dad's garage, and it has been a great experience. I had been doing other work to the car before this and it has turned into my daily driven project car that I now enjoy more than my supra in terms of "fun factor". I names this car "Project Personal" as I have learned many life lessons from this little car... More so than other sports cars I've rebuilt in the past. The realization set in of how lucky I am to have a dad that cared to show me how to work on cars and is willing to help me. I realized how nice it is to have family and friends whom are willing to loan me their cars when I didn't have a car to drive. I realized how lucky I am to have a girlfriend willing to put up with my shenanigans. Finally, I discovered that a car needs to be build the way the builder wants, as many people will not like and/or criticize the work. This is why I am building this little car up for me and the way I like it. This is Project Personal. I will be uploading pictures of stuff I have done to the car and will be adding as I make more changes.
-Reed
grantduffield:
Reed -
First things first: Welcome!
I suspect folks are going to be very interested in the automatic to 5 speed swap. I know I am.
Chicken:
From the lessons you've shared in your post, it sounds to me that you're ahead of many project owners. Good for you!
ReedStemen:
Ok fellow Capri people, here's my little hotrod. Paid $1100 and I put $500 into some new tires on used 15" wheels as soon as I got it in summer 2013. This replaced my Buick century which was having many mechanical issues. Ironically the guy I bought it from had bought a Lexus SC400 off of me... Small world. Downside to car was/is a salvage title from a wreck and rebuild and auto trans, but it's all good.
ReedStemen:
If my pictures aren't showing up right let me know as I'm not much of a "forum guy" and will probably mess something up. Anywho, I put a couple thousand miles on the car right away. The previous owner had recently replaced the upper engine mount, ignition components, fluids, fuel filter, and a few other bits and pieces. It was running pretty good but I can't drive a stock car... Tweaking (not to be confused with twerking!) is necessary. First up over fall season was this pile of goodies.
Auto trans fluid and filter, auto trans pan gasket, spark plugs, new rotors and pads, cadence audio door speakers, mobile one high mileage full synthetic oil, purolator oil filter, hidden antenna modification, full LED interior modification, and a new headunit.
So this is how round one went: mediocre. Ok, I did a full refresher on the auto trans just to have it go into nuclear meltdown mode a month later. The auto parts store got me the wrong rotors and I had to wait a week for the correct ones to come in. Guess mine are the bigger ones? Also I found out about the poor engineering design of having the rotor on the backside of the hub which requires full disassembly. I decided not to install the muffler and enjoy the song of a strait side pipe. Bad idea. Improved LED interior lighting? Yes please! Until I shorted out a light bar by making a mistake on my wire routing and driving a screw through the wire.
So, not so hot on the first go, but I recovered.
Here we see the brake swap and bleeding in progress.
Cadence compared to factory. One was blown and the other was held in with duct tape. A little TLC got the audio squared away.
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