transam396

hi I'm new to the forum . I'm looking at a 88 mustang gt 5spd hardtop, it's been sitting in a basement for about the last 2yrs from what i can remeber the body, paint and insides were all in good shape it comes with the factory gt wheels and some aftermarket wheels that are similar to the saleen style wheels of that time frame .
ok now to the downside of the car is the fact that the owner thinks it has a blown head gasket.
How prone were these cars to cracking heads?
he said he would sell it for 3 grand but i'm thinking of offering him 2 for it.
from what i can see the stangs of this era are saling for anywhere from 5 to 10 grand of course the 10k's have turbos and such as that.
I'm looking for a fun little car to mess around with and would prefer to get one that hasn't been beaten to death
So what do yall think is 2k a fair price or should i shop around?

schwindty

2-3 K is reasonable even if the head is cracked you can pick up some used e7's for next to nothing, head gaskets are easy to change its a 3 hour job for a able minded man.

transam396

well that eases my mind some well alot acutally.
when you say e7's i'm going to assume that you are refering to a head part number is that the factory head that comes on these cars?
and one more question wouldn't it be better to do both head gaskets at the same time to keep from havine other problems?

Crazyfast50stang

Just do a compression check on the heads. Someone here will be able to tell you what PSI it should be at and that will tell you if you need to do the other head gasket or any of them in that case.

transam396

Well i'm pretty sure that it has either a blown headgasket or cracked head because the owner said it has some water in the oil i'm just curious whether or not these 5.0's were prone to cracking heads or just blowing the gasket .
is there anyother reason that the motor should be getting water in the oil?
also back to question about the e7's saw some on ebay off of a 95 model would those work on a 88 and would there be any performance gains or pretty much the same

schwindty

No performance gains, you can get some thumper heads which are worked factory heads for like 400 bucks for the pair which is cheap as hell and will have gains, any stock part will have no gains, other than the COba Upper and GT-40 of course