Sure, 532 ci goes a long way in shoring up driveability, but can you really call something with a 273/280-at-.050 solid-roller cam a true street car? From the very beginning, we've made no bones about the fact that our 1993 Ford Mustang street/strip car will lean more on the strip side of the formula than the street side. After all, few things are as pathetic as a car that can't figure out if it's a street cruiser or a drag machine, and consequently, drives like junk and lays down miserable e.t.'s. Even so, when the mission at hand is achieving covert speed, scaring off potential challengers with a gutted interior isn't a good thing. Although installing a custom 10-point rollcage required completely removing Project Fox's innards, the resulting austerity was enough to convince us that we had to put it back in. Fortunately, with some careful fat trimming, it's easy to have a full interior while still shedding some weight.
Installing a custom rollcage...
Installing a custom rollcage involves completely gutting the interior. Reassembling it isn't interesting enough to document the process step by step, but it does require cutting holes into the carpet and dash for the bars of the 'cage to pass through.
The simple plan called for chucking the portly stock front seats for some lightweight buckets from Procar, installing a set of RCI five-point harnesses, replacing the fuzzy stock gauge cluster with Auto Meter instrumentation, and modifying the stock center console to accommodate a TCI shifter. To maintain as close to stock appearance as possible, the factory carpet, rear seats, dash, and door panels were reused. Likewise, the power door locks and windows were retained. While aluminum seats would have yielded additional weight savings, the prospect of sitting on a slab of metal during the 200-mile round-trip to the track isn't very appealing. Furthermore, we thought that confining all the gauges in the stock location, instead of having an assortment of pods spread throughout the cabin, would lend a far less cluttered look.
Granted, the interior rehab was rather straightforward, but Fox Mustangs aren't Torinos or Chevelles, and have rather cramped interiors. As a result, installing the bulky seats required a fair amount of finagling, and the rollcage and stock door panels occupied a good chunk of the available real estate. Headroom was at a premium as well. The solution was bending up some elaborate door bars while constructing a rollcage that snakes between the seats and the door panels. Custom seat brackets were also fabbed up to position the seats as low in the cabin as possible for maximum headroom. Many thanks again to Bill Buck Race Cars in Austin, Texas, for helping out with the interior rehab.
If you don't have $800 to...
If you don't have $800 to spend on a set of seats, Procar's buckets are an outstanding value at $156 each. They're offered in both vinyl and fabric upholstery, and can be had with gray, yellow, red, and blue accents. At 28 pounds, they're 10 pounds lighter than the stock Fox Mustang seats.
Procar also offers generic...
Procar also offers generic sliding seat brackets with its seats, but due to the limited headroom inside the Fox cabin, we decided to fabricate a custom set using two bars of angle iron. Slotted tabs welded to the angle iron anchor the seats to the floorboard, and allow for roughly 2 inches of adjustability. That's not much, so the brackets were measured up with the driver's preferred seating position in mind.
NHRA rules require SFI-approved...
NHRA rules require SFI-approved five-point harnesses for cars running 11.99 or quicker in the quarter-mile. With the seats bolted down, the RCI harnesses were snaked into place. The lap belts bolt to the factory seatbelt anchors, while a new hole must be drilled into the floorboard to attach the crotch strap. The RCI belts feature 3-inch webbing all around. Note the kink in the door bars necessary to clear the seat bolsters and door panels.