Lessons learned from my torque box repair
 

I had the driver's side torque box starting to tear away from the floorboard on my car. (too many 4k rpm launches on sticky tires) So I purchased the Wild Rides Battle Box repair kit from Holcomb Motorsports to repair them before they really got bad. I highly suggest that if you've got a 94-04 Mustang that you race a bit, or any Fox Mustang that you check the condition of your torque boxes, first of all.

The installation was fairly simple, a day or two before, I broke out the directions, and made sure that I had everything needed before I started. The 2 main things that some people aren't going to have are:

#1: on 94-04 cars, you have to cut away part of the torque box reinforcement, so you have to have something capable of cutting steel. A sawzall isn't ideal here, because of space constraints. A plasma cutter would be preferred, but I used a 4" grinder outfitted with a cut-off wheel purchased from a local hardware store.

#2: you have to have a 3/8" drillbit to make the final hole, most sets don't go up that large, so check first. You'll also need various other smaller sizes to make pilot holes, and gradually enlarge them to 3/8".

Everything else is basic handtools for the beginning.

I started out by jacking the car up as high as possible, making sure I had enough room to work with the drill and grinder. From here, the instructions were dead on. They even showed the areas that needed to be cut for the lower plates to fit through. Great instructions. The only thing that I've seen dummies do, is to try to drill the holes all from the bottom of the car. Make your pilot holes from the bottom, and then move to the back seat area, and drill downwards. It's a lot easier, there's a lot more room to work up there.

The only thing not covered in the instructions, and the question I had was:

"What do I do with the ABS sensor wires?"

They are located under the rear seat, and unfortunately, the upper plates for the torque box repair covers the hole for the grommet where they were installed through the floorboard. Space around this area to run a wire through is at a minimum, there's a lot of moving parts around there. I found a great place to mount them, but unfortunately, couldn't relocate the factory 1.5" rubber grommet to there because of space. So I just drilled a hole, used a smaller grommet, and then used some silicone around the wire to make sure no moisture could get into the car.

After they were fully bolted in, I took the car with no back seats in it to a good welder, and had him weld them in place, along with the rest of the factory torque boxes.

Total cost for torque box repair: $70 for the kit, $40 for the welding, $4 for a 3/8" drillbit, and $6 for a whole pack of cut-off wheels. So $120 and about 2 hours time (beer breaks included), and I'm back on the track again, better and stronger than ever.

Where's the pics? Great write up. We need pics, we are slow :D

Yea it always help to be prepared, I hate that running to the store for some little something.

Good fix with the ABS! And a great review and advice. After pics? :D

When the car is back up in the air next weekend, I'll get some pics of the repair. Panhard bar install next weekend, so there'll be plenty of pics.

This is a good write-up. Good work. Thanks. Pics would be the primo addition. The thing I have a question about with Tq. boxes is "is this a drag racing type of thing, or a road race mod also?" Just don't know the types of stresses seen with open track vs drag race with quick hard launches.

I would imagine either one. Road racing puts just as much stress on the lower control arms over time, which is what leads to the torque boxes ripping away. Mine were easy to spot, I pulled the back seat out, and the spot welds under the back seat area, near where the seat belts were bolted in were pulling away. A couple were all the way pulled out, and a few more were actually distorting the floorpan as they pulled away.