My First SVO
(last updated 02/25/04)
OK, now that you know about the car, a little about my SVO's...
I bought my first SVO in 1989 from the original owner. At the time, I had never heard of the SVO but he told me it was rare, so I thought, let me take a look at it. He brought it to work one day and let me take it for a test drive. Well, suffice it to say, that was all I needed - I wanted it right then and there. Just the feel of the car, the responsiveness and the potential resale value drew me to it.
My 1986 Dark Grey Metallic SVO (color
code 1D)
Although the car was almost 3 years old, it only had 12,000 miles on it. I found later that some of these were hard miles but he had taken excellent care of it - didn't need any work done to it at all. By the way, that is a functional hoodscoop! It feeds the intercooler.
For those into SVO's, this car was ordered out of Seattle Washington, and bought at the Joe Hayward Ford Dealer in Dallas, Oregon (not Texas!). It still has the Hayward license plate frames on it... It was ordered with every option available at the time, basically the sunroof and leather interior - that's all - everything else was standard on these cars! I still have all the original paperwork, window stickers, sunroof case, owners manual, Koni adjustment brochure, locking lugs, etc. Oh yeah, this is one of only 388 made in this color in 1986 (the only year this color was made).
The original owner had done a bunch of customizing to it:
- Kamai aerodynamic side and rear skirts
- a real Ford 140 MPH speedometer (unavailable now) - the original speedo has markings to 140 but only had numbers to 85 MPH
- cruise control (I never use it tho!)
- built-in radar detector (used all the time)
- alarm
- painted the spoiler, skirts, and front bumper the same color as the body
After driving the car for awhile as my daily driver, I decided to make some changes to it myself. The original tires were Goodyear Gatorbacks - they are rock hard and have no wet traction to speak of, which is a problem in soggy Oregon... but I digress. I also wanted to lower the car because when you stomp on the gas pedal and the turbo spools up, the car wants to walk sideways - also not a good thing on wet Oregon roads. While I should've played a bit more with the factory Koni adjustable shocks, I decided to "upgrade". So, I did the following:
- removed all the springs, shocks and struts
- installed lowered Tokiko springs
- installed Tokiko shocks and struts
This ended up being a mistake - see Tokiko doesn't make springs or struts for the Mustang SVO, rather for the Mustang 5.0 which are a bit heavier in the front end with a V8. So while the car rides fine on the track, you can't drive it on the street very comfortably - it's a real kidney buster. It also drags on any normal driveway or speed bump. OK, it's not that bad but you do feel every bump in the road... The camber is out in the front also (neg. 2 degrees or so) - which is fine for the track but not on the street.
Only 17,000 miles!
Other mods I do like:
- replaced the Gatorbacks with Riken's Z rated tires (altho the next set will be Bridgestone R730's)
- replaced all the fluids with synthetics (Red Line in the tranny, rearend, and powersteering. Motul synthetic brake fluid)
- Hawk Carbonic semi-metallic brake pads on all four
- This car has ALWAYS run Mobil 1 10W30 synthetic motor oil - believe me, this is INSURANCE!
OK, so I have this cool car but it was too nice and rare for a daily driver (also it attracts a lot of police attention) so I parked it in the garage for 8 years... I drove it every now and then but it basically sat. I was thinking one of these days I might sell it and make a killing.
So, there I was in the spring of 1998 and what happens? The weather gets nice and I want to take the car out - and do. I had so much fun driving it that day I said, this has got to change! But I don't like driving it on the street - too many idiots out there that don't give a darn about their own vehicles and you just can't stretch this car on the highway. OK, I did get it up to 135MPH on the highway going to the coast but when you're passin' cars like they were stopped, you kinda wish you had remembered where that St. Christopher medal is if you know what I mean. I'm involved in SCCA and hear about these events where you can come out and drive your street car at the track - safe because the events are controlled, they are NOT races. I've always wanted to drive Portland International Raceway (PIR) and now someone will let me do it? Where do I sign up?
On September 26th, 1998 I got my chance to drive PIR in my SVO. What a blast! And I got the bug - this is the only way I really enjoy driving this car. One of these days I'll get someone to take a picture of me coming sideways thru turn 9 and I'll post it here. They have these events about once a month from April through October, so next year - I can't wait!
The track day was a bit revealing - I don't have to worry about throwing this car around, it rides like it was on rails no matter how hard I pushed it. I also found out it is NOT a good idea to let your car sit for 8 years... the radiator was 80% plugged, among other things. Needless to say I've learned my lesson...
So now, I'm deciding on what to do next. I'll definitely put the original Koni's back on the car, but I'm debating on whether I want to keep it lowered (using Eibach springs) or put the original springs back in (I keep everything I take off this car).
Recent Mods:
- new cross-drilled front rotors and carbonic brake pads all 'round
Here's a list of future mods:
- restore to original factory specs everything but body work.
- Kenny Brown subframe connectors & jacking rails
And I'm not letting this car sit - it gets a regular workout these days. See you at the track.
Home Page | History | The Red SVO |
Memorabilia | Photos
A Day at the Track