Although Fox body Mustangs are slowly rising in value, you can still pick up a relatively clean one for a decent price. Cheap, manual, rear wheel drive, V8. What could be better, right? Those were my thoughts exactly as I handed over $3800 of my hard earned cash and became the new owner of a 1990 Mustang GT. I’ve owned the car for a little over a month now and you know how many days its been running and driving?
Three.
The first day that it was legally registered and tagged, I set out to send some rubber to tire heaven and let the bald eagles fly. Instead of converting more of my already worn out all-seasons to vapor, the Mustang promptly ran out of gas and died. I blame myself for this one, since I should’ve guessed that a 27 year old fuel gauge probably wasn’t too accurate.
After getting a ride to the gas station, I went back with a jerry can to fill her up with more freedom juice. I hopped in to fire her up. Click. Nothing. No big deal, I thought, maybe I ran the battery down from trying to crank it so much.
My girlfriend came to the rescue and I jumped the Mustang. Success! She fired right up. Girlfriend leaves and I’m off to continue my tire slaying mission. I immediately notice that the Mustang now drives like complete crap. It felt like it had less horsepower than a Miata running on two cylinders. Luckily, I was right near the shop I work at so I just left it in the parking lot and caught a ride home.
Saddened that my car would no longer leave 11s, I did some research. I came to the conclusion that the fuel pump may have sucked up some rust from the bottom of the tank. Since the previous owner had included a spare pump with the car, I decided to go ahead and put it in with the hope that it would solve my problem. The next day I limped the car into the shop and with the help of my techs friends, I managed to drop the gas tank without blowing anything up. New fuel pump goes in, tank goes back up, and its ready to go. I fire it up, excited that the Stang would live once again in all its glory.
As you might be able to guess, the new fuel pump did absolutely nothing to solve the Mustang’s problem; but I did learn how it feels to have gasoline in your hair. So there’s that.
Will the Fox body ever live again, or did I kill it for good? We wait until the next paycheck to continue throwing money at it to find out. Stay tuned!
I know exactly how you feel, seems like my fox 82 Mercury Capri RS has seen about as many days of good driving as your 90 fox. Sad part is I drove mine all the way from Cleveland to the Detroit area (about 150 miles to my house) with zero issues. Got home and problem city!
Exactly what happened to me! Seems like as soon as I spent the money to tag and insure it, it stopped working.
Very familiar…How do people keep these things on the road all the time?!
I thought these were super reliable! Well, maybe they are before people mess them up! haha
I should’ve known that random wires in the engine bay were a bad sign.