
It’s The Simple Things… Belt Tensioner and Air Dam
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While working on the video for the suspension we talked about the air dam not being attached properly. It’s a simple zip tie affair with the 89-93 rear air dam on the Foxbody Saleen’s. We talked about it in this video.
Then we followed up that video with the second half of the suspension because we had to call in the reserves to get the front springs in. In this video you can see where we got the air dam back up.
So how is that done? We failed to show it in the video so we’ll show you here.
In the comments on one of the videos a discussion was started on how the zip ties attach to the chassis. Come to find out, there are two ways.
Method 1: Many of the Fox Mustang gas tanks will have small holes on the corners that allow a zip tie to go through it. This has been how all of our cars have been done. The 89 Saleen, 1993 Saleen, and how we did Almost 4 the SA10 replica based on those two cars.


That is a very obvious way if your gas tank has the holes at the corners.
It seems that there are production variances with the Foxbody Mustang gas tanks and not all of them have holes. That brings us to the second way.
Method 2: Use two zip ties that loop together. One goes through the hole in the air dam and the other goes through the exhaust hanger that attaches to the chassis of the car.

The image above is from a sub 500 mile 1989 Saleen SSC. The car is as original as it gets. So it seems Saleen did do this both ways depending on who was working the production line and if the gas tank had small holes in the edges or not.
While we were at it we went ahead and changed out the tensioner. The one that was on this 1990 was a Chinese replacement. Thanks to a good friend we were able to score an original style.
While the Chinese belt tensioner has a sealed bearing and may be a little cleaner, it is not correct. The correct setup is a two piece design with a sealed bearing. They do tend to wear out over time so hopefully someone comes up with a way to rebuild these or someone reproduces an exact replica. The chinese ones look out of place on a stock vehicle to us.






Looks like we need a smaller belt.
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