Mike P. gave me a heads up on the Carlisle coverage in the most recent issue of 5.0 Mustangs and Super Fords. I picked up an issue on my way home from a Mustang show today.

With  little digital zooming one can see our tent and a few of our cars. This picture is from the Friday of the show.

They also have a picture from Saturday but it is about a quarter of the size. Overall, it is good coverage in a 5 page article. If you don’t subscribe, you might want to go out and pick up a copy.

Just today I finished a big project which was an attempt to assemble every part number for the unique parts that make a feature car different from a standard Mustang LX 5.0 Convertible. I did this by browsing a Mustang parts database. This included interior and exterior parts.

I probably don’t need to tell you that it wasn’t easy.

There was no consistency in the descriptions used. Some did use “Feature Car” or “special edition” but many did not but could be differentiated due to the use of colors (white, yellow and red) in the descriptions where standard parts were black.

Some things that stand out as interesting in terms of the naming (not that I advocate changing how we commonly refer to these things):

• “Performance” white was used over “Vibrant” white for the 1993 parts
• What we usually refer to as “piping” on the 1992 interior was referred to as black “welts”
• The spoiler was identified as being part of “Convertible performance package”

The  parts lists appear on this site as part of the Frequently Ask Questions pages. I also added parts diagrams where relevant as well as a few new pictures of parts that I have assembled since the lists were last updated nearly five years ago.

If you can think of any parts missing from the list, I would be happy to attempt to identify part numbers for them.

Links: 1992 Feature Mustang FAQ (with parts list), 1993 Feature Mustang FAQ (with parts list)

A while back I asked in the forums how hard it was to swap a faceplate on a 1993 Mustang CD stereo. Around the time, I had purchased an NOS faceplate just to have it in case I find a stereo that is working but has a worn faceplate. I was still waiting for it to come at the time.

Even though I don’t have a full replacement I figured now was a good time to investigate the feasibility of a faceplate swap. It turns out the swap is pretty simple. There are just four plastic clips holding the faceplate to the stereo.

No screws need to be removed. Just carefully pry it off from the top or bottom.

Once the faceplate is off the circuit board is exposed.

I often mention the difference in the edge vs. other Ford CD faceplates for the same stereo. Here is the one I have from an ’93 Explorer where you can distinctly see the difference with the rounded edge for the Explorer.

It is interesting to note the part numbers of the Mustang and Explorer faceplates. Both have the same apparent part number, F32F-19A023 B.  The difference is the number in the circle preceeding the part number. The Mustang version has a “1″ in a circle. The Explorer has a “2″.

I was checking out the Mustangs Unlimited Web Site. I usually hit one of the three or four shows that they have a year. On their home page, they have a photo from one of the cars shows that they have hosted.  The picture they picked is not the ubiquitous car show picture with rows and rows of Mustangs. One lone black fox body convertible in a row of empty spaces. A smattering of other cars are around. Pretty boring. Right?

The more looked at the picture, the more I realized that it seemed oddly familiar beyond the usual “yeah, I’ve been to that parking lot.” My car was in there. If I enlarge the photo, you might be able to see me and the rear of my car.

I figured out that the picture is from June 2009. I parked next to a yellow feature car purchased by Tom F., its new owner, less than a week before. I had my son with me that day. It was a great time for father and son. And, oh yeah, I won third place that day. Great memories.

As part of the wrap-up of Carlisle, the thank you message I received from the person who does club coordination included the list of clubs and the number of attendees for each. It seems wrong to share it all, so here are some interesting facts about the clubs at the 2011 Carlisle Ford Nationals:

- There were 38 clubs
- We (Fox-Body Feature Mustang Club) had 6 registered members
- The top three clubs:

- Focus Rising (89 members)
- Merkur Club of America (70)
- Team Shelby (64)

- The team that won the “Coolest Club Hangout” award was the Yellow Mustang Registry. They had 32 members.

Once again, the Ford Nationals went by too fast.

Like last year, I took to Twitter to share the experience of Carlisle as it happened. I added a few new followers during the three days of Carlisle. Since twitter is so time associated, my tweeted pics are in a set on Flickr for historical purposes. Of course, the set only covers the tweets that included pictures, but, I think that those are the best.

Attendance turned out to be about the same number as last year. This made me happy. Even down to the last minute, it seemed like this could have been a lightly attended year. I think the good weather encouraged people to get out. Luckily, there are a lot of Mustang owners in Pennsylvania!

In addition to me, the attendees were as follows:

Amy H. (from MD) – Fri, Sat – 1993 Canary Yellow
Bill F. (from PA) – Fri, Sat, Sun – 1993 Canary Yellow
Bob H. (from PA) – Sat, Sun – 1990 7up
Jim M. (from PA) – Fri, Sat – 1992 Vibrant Red
Luis (from MD) – Sat – 1992 Vibrant Red
Mike P. (from MA) – Fri, Sat, Sun – 1992 Vibrant Red
Neil K. (from PA) – Sat – 1992 Vibrant Red
Tim H. (from PA) – Fri, Sat, Sun – 1993 Vibrant White

Read the rest of this entry »

On this eve of setting off for Carlisle, I wanted to point out that Carlisle has a decent social presence on twitter and facebook. You can find links to their stuff here.

As a bit of self-promotion, I will also be doing tweeting of my own and you can find that here. Please follow me on twitter. I did the same thing last year and posted when I saw something interesting. This year my posts will be going to flickr. Last year they went to twitpic where you can still view them.

Yesterday I received the club tent map for Carlisle. Different from previous years where we have been listed as TripleWhiteFox.com, this year we are listed as the “Fox-Body Feature Mustang Club”.

We are at location “J” of the red section which is the Mustang show field. Entry is through Gate 3 where you will take a right and go to the third row down.

We’re getting close to show time!

The full map is here.

I tweeted about this event when I first heard about the Coyote 5.0 swap at Carlisle. I was just reminder of it when I received a “Fast News from Ford Racing” last week. Apparently, if you correctly guess how long it will take to do the swap you could win $1,500 in Ford Racing parts.

Predict How Long It’ll Take to Swap a New 5.0 into a
Fox Body Mustang and Win $1,500 in Ford Racing Performance Parts!
You don’t need to be a mechanic to enter the “Coyote Countdown” engine swap contest at this year’s Carlisle (PA) Ford Nationals – you just need a good guess to win $1,500 in Ford Racing Performance Parts. The winner must most accurately predict how much time it will take for Kurgan Motorsports to swap out the original engine from a partially restored Fox Body Mustang and replace it with a brand-new Ford Racing “Coyote” 5.0 V-8. The contest showcases how easy it can be to swap a Coyote 5.0 using Ford Racing’s crate engine (M-6007-M50) and wiring installation kit (M-6017-A504V) into an older Ford vehicle.

Before the swap takes place at Carlisle, you must submit your guess online HERE.

Enter online, winner need not be present.

Link: Carlisle Events: The Coyote Countdown

I received my gate pass a couple of days ago.

I haven’t heard from a lot of people about whether they are attending or not. If you are attending and I haven’t added you to the official list, please let me know that you are attending and which days. With our busy schedules and gas prices being what they are I can see why some may be unable to commit until the last minute.

This year I refrained from sending out any mass emails. I figured that the audience for this site knows we are doing this since this is year number 5. Maybe that was a bad assumption?

I was thinking about how to get the word out so, in order to find who was talking about Carlisle 2011 and Mustangs, I Googled “Mustang Carlisle 2011″ and was surprised to find this site as the number two entry.

Searching for “Carlisle 2011 Mustangs” puts this site first. Interesting.