A few friends did the IRS swap, one on an SVO. A friend worked at JBA Headers Speed Shop for years. A guy that was basically the CFO took me for a ride in his 95 Cobra with Griggs GR40 World Challenge setup & a bored/stroked 351 out to 427. He also had an Ed Curtis cam & that's what sold me. His car just made torque everywhere & was extremely docile for regular driving. Stuck like glue in the corners too. Spent a lot of my days off just hanging out at the shop. Didn't help that my fav taco shop was right across the street
. I really miss messing around with that car. Never left me stranded...even when I blew up the T5, drove it home making all kinds of noise.
I do wish I participated in more auto-x events & more time with instructors at the track. The car could really move, I just didn't have the seat time to really utilize the power & grip
Could talk about it all day
I have a similar T-5 story! I blew mine up at the drag strip! I was making my maiden pass after doing H/C/I on it and wasn't doing any real lifting between shifts, as I wanted to break into the 12's. Car still had the stock 3.08's out back. Well, she made a bit of a noise coming out of first after launch, but I didn't think much of it (was running MT ET streets) and wound it out through 1st and 2nd, railed 3rd, went to shift and it was like NOPE!. Wouldn't come out of 3rd. So, I just dropped the clutch and held it to the floor and went out the end at 6,250RPM on the limited at 106Mph. Only cut a 13.2 though, due to those shenanigans. I stopped on the return lane, and it would come out of 3rd. As soon as I got moving, it wouldn't come out of 3rd. Tried 4th, same thing. Drove it home with 1st, 2nd and 5th, which was super exciting, as you'd wind it way out in 2nd and then she'd bog into 5th. The fluid looked like metal flake paint, had shifted the internals back about 3/4 of an inch.
What caused it? Well, I had done the Aerostar aluminum driveshaft swap. Not a problem, it fit perfectly, but, instead of using the offset u-joint, I had found a yoke that fit perfectly, and had the same splines. Well, turns out that yoke (can't remember what it was from) wasn't hardened like the stock 5.0L yoke and it twisted like a licorice stick, binding to the tailshaft and with the motion of the suspension, when the car came down when I hit the clutch to pull it out of 1st, dragged the internals of the trans back.
Bought the right u-joint after that and ran a stock yoke on a 4-banger trans, which I blew the tailstock off of when powershifting and the stock yoke split. I THINK I screwed up and ran a 4-banger yoke though (not my stock 5.0L yoke) which is why it split. I thought I was using my yoke (we had a few piles of parts at my buddy's place) but I found that later, still attached to my stock D/S later on. Mistakes were made with parts cars, many of which were 4-bangers.
Ran my stock yoke after that and no problems. Had my original T-5 rebuilt, sold it when I parted out the car, hadn't even had a chance to use it yet. Had bought the Steeda tri-ax shifter for it (had been running the Mac shifter previously, the Steeda was much nicer).