[hgs_notes]

Today was mostly working with the battery box and putting on some of the little panels. It goes slow with painting, modifying, etc.

I put the tires on the car yesterday and unfortunately they are a little too wide. The body is 71" wide at the top of the rear wheel opening. The tires are 73.5" wide installed. I knew this was a possibility and I could have bought the 10.5" wide wheels that had too much backspacing and used spacers but I wanted a more dished wheel, especially for the rear, so I went with the 6" backspacing on the 11" wheel.

Factory five said in the manual that 10.5" fits on the narrower fox body axle. And that I can replace the axle shafts and caliper brackets in the later axle and get 1.5" narrower. I can also machine the mounting flange of the wheel for more backspacing. It should get me very close to a proper fit. And then the body can also be modified.

I don't have a good pic of the tires on the car, lack of room in the garage. Eventually you all will see.

Also today I hooked up the VSS to the gause controller, and wires for the other gauges. I started it up and let it warm up to see if the radiator fan would start. It kicked on at 180f. The oil pressure on cold start pegs the 80 psi gauge. It worried me a bit the first time but a google search told me it was normal for these engines and the pressure would drop as it warms up. It did and seemed to settle at 28 psi at idle. The temp slowly kept climbing though so I shut it down at about 200-205. I need to burp more air out of the cooling system. The speedometer worked, I put it in gear while on the stands. Voltage showed good. The only thing that didn't work as-is was the fuel gauge but I haven't set it up yet for the ford sending unit.