Another one!!! 1991 Ford Probe LX

Years ago I bought this 1991 Ford Probe LX with a manual gearbox



The Panda Express got a stable mate in 2018 and I've never really told it's story here but it's just as interesting, and this one has video!

The story on this car, it was owned by a serviceman who was in our military who stored it in a hangar while he was away, then picked up by someone else and now I have it. It has 3 pedals and before I took ownership of it, it had a 4 inch thick stack of receipts and repairs it had done one it, and that was before my deep pockets were thrown at it.

*battery dies, will return to this later*

Man I do love those

As with all good 30 year old cars, they have been neglected in some way or form. The crank pulley on this car was welded together because one of the previous owners found out you have to drop the whole F-ing passenger side of the motor and the subframe just to change it. It did get its first oil change here, and one of the motor mounts was also replaced this go-around. This would have been very close to the purchase date of March 2018.

Here it is being baptized at one of my favorite local hot dog stands.



And here it is, 2000+ miles away, in Omaha, NE. This car spent some time at our truck company's terminal in long term storage as a terminal car until I found out they salt their roads in Missouri, and promptly ended that deal.



Now the REAL baptism begins, and yes I went completely flat out full chat, balls to the wall. I wished I could have seen the look on the people's faces who were standing here about 30 minutes earlier when I came barreling through at maximum attack on stock suspension and Chinesium tires belching black smoke and winding out the arthritic 3.0L Vulcan to 6k.







Cherohala Skyway, this wasn't full tilt but I wasn't exactly doing the speed limit either.





It started to develop problems that only very recently I solved, it would act like it was out of fuel or losing spark. I initially thought it was the ignitor module overheating, so I replaced the ENTIRE ignition system on vacation in an Autozone parking lot and set the timing in under an hour for the WHOLE JOB. 1980's American engines may have been gutless, but they were easy to work on.

These look fantastic lowered and sitting on Ronal R9 knockoffs. 

I thought about doing something like that to this one but I've decided to make it a time capsule car, my Panda Express already fills the track car look quite well and it has the parts and street cred to back it up. I have decided though, if the original Vulcan gives up the ghost it's either getting SHO swapped or I'm building another Vulcan with bigger balls than this one has.

I had a ragged out one of these in high school and told myself later in life I'd find a manual one in good shape, and this ended up being it.

Check out that exhaust pop and burble going into the tunnel, RIP my valve seals, probably.

At this point, immediately after filming, it died. Same thing with the ECU having to be reset for it to work. After getting home I noticed the radiator was leaking from the bottom and it was the original copper one that left the factory, so I replaced it, thinking my engine was getting hot and setting off the ignitor shutdown and overheating issues. That still wasn't it!

Fast forward to today, some leaky door seals and a new passenger window regulator later, as well as (apparently) a big ass hole in one of my drains at the firewall dumping water into the floor of my car, and I found the problem. The car had a Check Engine Light for a while and I figured it was EGR it would come on going down the highway and turn off. Then it started coming on and staying on after starting. I figured out how to pull codes using a paper clip on Ford EEC-IV ECUs which involved shorting two connectors at the firewall on the diagnostic port (next to the thing with the sticker and the letter J on it) and I got codes 522 and 538.



By themselves, those codes are not a big deal but together, after some internet sleuthing, lead to a bad ECU and apparently its a thing on ALL Ford EEC-IV ECUs in the late 80s and early 90s, the capacitors on the fuel pump relay circuit inside the ECU quit and this fuel starvation thing is what happens. Most cars just shut off, but mine would idle because my valve seals are probably so shot (hence the popping and burbling on decel) that it continues to dump fuel into the engine even though the fuel pump isn't working.

When I removed my ECU I found I had a California ECU judging by the model number, so not only did I fix my problem, I gained 5 or 10hp.



No more check engine light



Now that it is mechanically sorted out, I can kill the blower motor transistor and AC fan under the dashboard by cleaning the firewall drain with a pressure washer and discovering a huge leak in the drain that dumped 3 inches of water onto my floorboard and all over those two assemblies. WHOOPS!

You will definitely see more of it here as this project moves on to the bodywork stage as it has a few water intrusion leaks inside.

Vulcan powahhhhh!  I had that engine in a Taurus. Not fast, but impervious to my dumbass lack of mechanical sympathy. Always wanted to see one built up just for the hell of it.

I know there's a guy who sells Vulcan speed parts, but a SHO swap would also be hella sweet.

We know the same guy. He has an Eaton M90 manifold kit and I have an M90 blower already, i may install it on general principle.

jdogg said:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/4kFSYK9nSjs?rel=0

Check out that exhaust pop and burble going into the tunnel, RIP my valve seals, probably.

Ah yes, I recognize that Mexican tunnel. It's the Túnel de Montaña del Río Este...

Been a while but bit of an update. Surprise, those plastic capped parts warehouse radiators are JUNK. Got two years out of this one.

As with all parts replacements I do I always look to see if there's a better one out there instead of buying cheap junk. Apparently some one makes a two-row all-aluminum radiator for these.......sort of. They are for the turbo model, and it just so happens with a little bit of finessing and swearing that they work on the V6 model too. The stock fan doesn't line up exactly but I plan to fix that with a set of slimline fans because it still gets a bit hot idling and the stock fan doesn't really move enough air for a radiator this big.







Nice and cool while cruising. This is in 95*F Florida with the AC blasting too.



Also ended up doing an alternator, but had to special-order the alternator for it. Got it apart though, gave it a good pressure wash. Also replacing the leaking power steering pump.





Once all of this is sorted it will go to a body shop for rust removal. It's starting to leak water in during heavy rainstorms and I know where the leaks are.

How rare is it to have a 3.0L Vulcan and the 5 speed standard transmission? I cant fathom they made more than a handful.

In reply to kevinatfms :

They pop up for sale from time to time. There's one in VA right now. They use the same G5 box from the turbo MX6 and Probe.

I've owned both and the V6 is the one to have for daily driving it has much better bottom end than the turbo. Top end is where the turbo model shines.  V6 also has uber-cheap parts since they used that motor in millions of cars and trucks. At one time in the States you could get it in over half of Ford's lineup.