Fox T-Bird/Cougar Forums  

I wouldn't cave to the 5.0 conversion crowd, I did and it is fun but I miss my old car.

I did the T-5 swap in a carport with a $40 socket set and two jack stands.  After I did the swap I had horrible clutch chatter...  caused by broken motor mounts, after changing them all was fine.

I did the T5 swap behind the 88 3.8 5 years ago, I did a write up on it back then.  If you haven't come across it yet here is a link to it.

http://foxtbirdcougarforums.com/showthread.php?t=6042

I now have the 88 XR7 I wanted so bad back then but its not the same.  I don't have any passion for the car like I did with the old 3.8 SE.

I had 4.10 gears in mine, it was a little excessive but it would pull pretty  hard.  I would go with 3.73's now, at this point that would be the single best upgrade you can perform and for nearly nothing.  Find a ranger at a pick a part junkyard take along the axle tag information from http://www.therangerstation.com and have a field day, just avoid 4.0 4x4's as they could have the 8.8.  After a gear upgrade and T-5 swap you would need to address the low rev limit of the 3.8.  Mine would float the valves at a 5k rpm.  A good set of valve springs would be the ticket here.  I also had a 155 LPH fuel pump, mostly because it was a Walbro and could be had for like $20 more than a stock replacement.

The 3.8 can be a fun engine to have and still get good mileage.  While N/A the stock speed density engine in your car will never be a real speed demon those three things I listed will make the car a completely different animal.  If at that point you care to go any further with the N/A 3.8 find some idiot who thought that a $400 set of headers was a performance upgrade for his Sn-95 mustang 3.8.  Word on the street is the early style mustang 3.8 (94-98) header is good for 300 HP.  Just by looking at them you can tell they are a real improvement.  Jegs sells an H pipe for an Sn-95 3.8 mustang that fits the stock mustang headers and allows you the use of mustang cat backs.  I've not tried it myself but there should be no reason that it wouldn't fit, some work may be needed at the transmission hanger.  You may have to buy a mustang transmission hanger.  I would get someone's decent shape fox mustang take off cat back and do the necessary mods to make it fit, extending this and cutting that.  Shouldn't be to much work in a driveway or just take it to a ler shop, they should be able to make the mustang cat back fit well.  As temping as it is I wouldn't go with a flowmaster or any other loud ler, the 3.8 has one of the most horrid-terrible exhaust tones on the road.  Plus the mustang cat back will be fairly quiet and be more than you will need N/A.

I always wanted to convert to Mass Air but its much more difficult on a 3.8 than a 5.0, the 3.8 being bank fire as apposed to sequential.  All mustang 3.8 MAF computers are sequential.

Also advance the timing, it was a great free performance upgrade and I was still able to run 87 gas with a great seat of the pants improvement.
 
 

I'm sure I'll own another 88 3.8 car down the road.

I think the Turbo Coupe pedal assembly is different than a Mustang setup is (like I used for my 5 speed conversion). The Turbo Coupe used a hydraulic setup didn't it,using a different pedal assembly? I need to look that up.

and I can't wait to see the results.