One of the goals for 2015 was to eliminate the nasty oil leak I was getting from the top of the motor. I could tell it was coming from the front so my first thought was the notorious Ford small block front intake gasket was leaking.
So I purchased the valve cover and intake gasket sets. I also decided while I had all that apart I would change out the thermostat and the "L" shaped water pump to intake by-pass hose.
My son pulled the valve covers off while I started on the intake. After we got it all apart I cleaned up the block and heads to prep for the new gaskets and had my son clean the intake and showed him how to install it to help prevent the front and rear gaskets from leaking.
It was when I picked up the valve covers to clean them and replace the gaskets my heart sank! To my dismay I discovered the real reason for the oil leak, some one in the cars past had over tighten the valve covers and had broken off the top front tab on BOTH valve covers!
These valve covers where unique factory to the 1983 5.0 H.O. motors and are hard to come by. They where modified for the 1984 production my making the cover thicker to prevent the kind of breakage I had.
Sadly I can not find any factory or after market reproductions of these. For now I have pulled the covers off my 87 to use since it will be changed to the style used on the 93 SVT Cobra once it is back n the road.
A guy at work has a aero nose Mustang convertible he has put together a stroker motor for. He is always taunting me that I should go all out like his motor for my Mustang and the RS.
I always tell him IF I was going to build a mostly straight line track car I would but my Mustang is going to be my daily driver street car and the RS I am trying to preserve as close to original as I can.
While I don't condone street racing we decided to run our cars for the fun of it one May morning during shift change at work. Yes I thoroughly get beaten both times but we are talking a modified stroker motor against a 30 year old stock 5.0 so I have nothing to be embarrassed about. Besides if I'm gong to get trashed better by a Mustang than an import!
I get a better launch on this run, but still nothing but tire spin and smoke all through 1st gear!
Will be interesting to see how Zoey runs against him in the future.
More work done this year was getting rid of some of the banging and noise from loose and worn out suspension parts.
I replace the factory front sway bar bushings and the sway bar end rod and bushing with polyurethane bushings. As you can see in the picture the end rod bushings where pretty worn out and the sway bar bushings where none existent!.
Additional front end work will be to replace the a-arm bushings, ball joints and struts.
September I bought a rear hatch with good glass in it.
The hatch on the Capri right now not only has severely bubbled tint on it but the glass it self has started delaminating and you can not see clearly through it. So for the sake of safety I am going to swap out the hatch, but I will be keeping the old one just in case. The bubble hatches are extremely hard to locate and I wouldn't want to use the flat hatch and take away a unique characteristic of the 83 - 86 Capri.
In October I put my son to work installing the new hatch. We have worked out a deal that the car will eventually be his and that the hatch and door panels are his birthday gift.
Best part of the new hatch other than acually being able to see through it was discovering in December that the rear window defrost still worked!
I also got some new interior door panels for the car when I bought the hatch. While these are 1985 style panels they are in better condition than the originals and are at least the correct color.
These will go in the car once I can repair or replace the drivers side window regulator.
In November I did some repair work to the grill trim. It was badly chipped and had a large dent in it on the driver side (see the picture at the top of this page).
So after a little metal work, sanding and painting it was looking good as new.
Of course on a club Drive-n-Dine meet it got a fresh rock chip in the same spot that originally had the large dent, go figure!
In December I came across the other Capri in town again. Unfortunately it's year wasn't as good as mine.
Before the year ended I decided to touch up the black trim on the rear of the car so it wouldn't look as bad even though the whole car needs new paint.
When removing the license plate to paint behind it I found conformation that the Capri likes to be Ghostwolf!
That is all for 2015.
Everyone thinks RS stands for Rally Sport and while the 1st generation European Capri RS where used in rally races, rally sport is a Camero term in my book. For my Mercury, even though I have been beaten in a couple races, and I know it is not the fastest car out there, my experience with the car tells me RS is for Rocket Ship!
