I currently have all of the other components lined up for purchase as they're needed, I will be needing a fuel tank with sending unit, fuel line, motor mounts, exhaust headers and an exhaust system.  The rest is already here, scattered around in a pile of junk that was removed from the cars or just dumped there after it was no longer of any use to us.  One of the things is an aluminum performance radiator for high perf V8's, perfect for our setup.  Some radiator hose and fuel line and other tubing is also on hand to aid in setting up the cooling and fuel system on the car. 

  

Another thing that I found while pulling the diesel engine out of the Falcon was the radiator that was mounted in the Falcon may be a potential candidate to go in the Mustang.  The radiator didn't look bad, wasn't damaged in a way where it would be rendered useless, so now my next thing is to see if I can incorporate that radiator into the Mustang and if so, I can go ahead and sell the aluminum radiator to acquire the extra money to get the components needed to finish this project. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are still a few other things I had to finish up before being able to say the car is done and is ready to officially hit the road, like hooking up the tach, fixing that noise, clean out the car and do some test driving. 

 

Unfortunately on the way back up to the driveway the engine sputtered and died.  It started back up for a fast second then died again.  After a couple more attempts it wouldn't even sputter.  I sprayed some ether in the carb and it did start up for a fast half second again but still dead, which told me that the damned thing wasn't getting fuel.  The tank had 5 gallons of fuel in there, which it couldn't have gone through that fast, so the only thing I can see is that the sending unit is not straight up and down like its supposed to be and the pickup isn't down far enough to pick up the fuel.  So at this point I will have to pull the tank, again. 

 

 

 

With the fuel and oil pan problems out of the way, I did more testing, mainly to get the transmission straight.  At first I had problems getting the tranny to shift into 2nd, then after topping the tranny off good, I was able to get it to shift into 2nd while going up and down the driveway.  Unfortunately I couldn't get it to go into 3rd when I did drive down to the main road.  I checked the vacuum modulator, adjusted the bands, even changed the obviously waterlogged tranny oil, all to no avail, the tranny still wouldn't shift into 3rd, in fact, the damned thing is now stuck in 2nd.  It will go into reverse when you shift into that gear, but when shifted into drive, its in 2nd and stuck in 2nd.  At this point I figured that the water that got into the tranny caused some damage that I may not be able to recover from, so at this point we're gonna hit up the junkyard for another tranny that will hopefully function for us. 

 

 

 

 

 

At this point the tranny is the only real thing keeping the Mustang from hitting the road.  Once the tranny gets installed, and hopefully works, I should be able to really put the car through its paces.  The only other things I really need to look at are the proper operation of the fuel gauge and the electrical connections.  The last thing I need while driving is having some bullshit electrical anomaly due to a shitty connection that worked its way loose.

 

 

 

Another minor yet somewhat annoying issue is the lack of a smooth throttle response; appears that the distributor isn't getting a good vacuum for the ignition advance diaphragm.  When I test drive the car, I have to lightly depress the accelerator and once moving I can further depress the accelerator to continue ramping up in speed.  I tried everything I can think of to correct this problem, I may try to work with advancing the timing and doing some more tuning with the carburetor.  My next move will be to try and fabricate a 2 bbl intake manifold from a 1bbl intake, my theory is that the extra airflow from a 2bbl intake may improve on the vacuum issue, who knows, we'll see how this all plays out.

 

Overall it didn't really take too long to do this, and now with the carpet in, the inside will be a bit more pleasant to look at, maybe a wee bit quieter and/or cooler or warmer (depending on the climate),  and will help preserve the metal floor a little better as our wet muddy feet will not keep leaving moisture on the floor.  The next thing that will be getting done on the car will be installing an aftermarket shifter, as the original one inside tends to be flaky and not engage at certain points, so rather than keep playing with this flawed shifter, we figured we would just put a better shifter in.  Another thing that will also be getting done in the very near future will be restoring the gauge panel to its original state by installing the printed circuit board on the back of the gauges, where we can use the plug that went in the back of the panel to connect the gauges and indicator lights to the car's electrical system.  Right now the gauges are kind of hooked up in a Mickey Mouse manner, which may or may not last or hold up for too long with all of the bumping around that the car would typically do on these country roads. 

 

 

 

With that, we did take the car out for several drives.  Like we usually did, we drove "around the block" so to speak, in the immediate area near the house, which the round trip still amounted  to probably four miles give or take, all the way back around to the house.  Then on one occasion, I took the car to town, ran an errand while I was at it, then drove back, taking the long way, probably racking in a run of well over 25 miles, without a single problem from the car at all.  Everything ran fine, temperature was low, engine ran smooth, car shifted and got up to speed pretty good, the only thing is, we still don't really know what speed the car is traveling at, since the speedometer, is inaccurate, and doesn't really register above 40 mph, the needle just bounces, like something is slipping.  Thats one of those things that we will have to work on, but for all intents, the car is pretty much ready to hit the road now.

 

 

 

At this point, we will probably be putting the car on the road very soon, we're just waiting for a few things to pass first before concentrating our effort on that act, so just in case something happens, we won't be overwhelmed with the task of either recovering the car ourselves or funding a tow truck.  Of course the car is still far from done, we still have plenty of body work to do.

 

 

It took a couple of attempts to get the ammeter wired right.  The first time I had it set up where the alternator was recharging and was showing a discharge.  I then realized that the alternator had to be wired up on the load side of the ammeter in order to show the reverse direction of current flow when the alternator is charging.  This did work, so now the old Mustang has a working ammeter, we can now monitor the charge status of the vehicle.  At this point, its now time to put the car on the road.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So to sum everything up, the damned car is a paperweight once again, as I wouldn't really know if one of the forward gears is also missing since the reverse gear is non-functional.  Either way, I'm not driving a car w/o reverse, damn that.  I'm just going to have to suck it up and get the tranny problem addressed while I try to get the other cars up. 

 

 

 

 

 

The fuel gauge is unpredictable for the most part, once it gets to the last 1/3 to 1/4 tank, the gauge is all over the place.  The oil pressure gauge goes all the way to the high end when there's good pressure.  On one end, I could say that I just keep the fuel tank topped off, and as soon as the gauge hits the 1/2 tank mark, fill it up, no questions asked.  If the oil pressure gauge starts moving away from the right end too much, then its time to see what's going on. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I managed to acquire a 3 spd tranny for the 200 6 cylinder off of ebay for the total of $250 with the freight.  While waiting for that to come, a guy about 80 miles from us had 3 of these 3 spd trannies, one of which had the 6 cyl bell housing on it, along with pedals, clutch forks, shifters, boots, linkages, etc for $100.  Of course I had to jump on this deal.  So with that, I had to get a flywheel, clutch disc/pressure plate, and some other hardware to help complete this job.  This is where it starts to get sticky.

 

Well its been over a year since the last entry for this project, as well as others.  The main reason behind it is due to the idea that I've been working on several projects, all at the same time, for the whole time and still am.  The last time we visited the Mustang project, I was planning on installing a 3 spd manual tranny into the car after having countless problems with the C4 auto tranny. 

 

Well that batch of trannies and parts that I bought from the guy in MS turned out to have almost everything needed to do the job.  I even had the shifter assembly to bolt to the tranny.  The tranny I got off of ebay turned out to be one I couldn't use, at least not with the stuff I had.  The tranny didn't have the mounting holes for the shifter assembly, while the trannies I got in MS did.  So I ended up using the best tranny out of the batch. 

 

The main thing that was holding me back from doing the job in its entirety was the lack of a clutch and flywheel.  Well, not knowing a lot about these 3 spd trannies, I ended up getting an 8" flywheel from a guy on a Mustang website that caters to 6 cyl Ford engine vehicles.  Its a flywheel that uses an 8" clutch actually.  I also got a clutch from another site as well to accomodate the clutch.  I got as far as bolting the flywheel and clutch assembly to the engine and upon trying to mate the tranny to the engine, found out that there was a difference in 3 spds thru the late 60's.

 

From the early 60's up til 67 or 68, the 3 spd trannies used were a smaller, weaker one that was specifically for the 6 cyl engines, using the 8 inch flywheel/clutch.  After that point, Ford upgraded to a beefier 3 spd that could be used with both the 6 cyl engines and V8's.  That newer tranny used a flywheel with a 9" clutch.  The 9 inch flywheel is a flat flywheel while the 8" flywheel has a cavity to accomodate a recessed clutch, no interchange whatsoever. 

 

Well after a couple of choice words, I went back to ebay, and lo and behold, I actually found a 9" clutch for dirt cheap, so of course I jumped on it like a tick on a dog.  With that I had to acquire the clutch set as well, which wasnt too bad, just cost a couple of bucks to get since there were understandably no used clutch pressure plates around. 

 

With the parts in hand, I was finally able to assemble the whole powertrain together.  I didnt even have to change driveshafts either.  I had to do a little trickery with the Z bar for the clutch pedal and associated rods going to the fork.  I literally had to fabricate my own version of all these parts, cutting and re-welding the rod going from the clutch pedal to the Z bar.  I was pretty much through with trying to find the "right" parts to complete this shit and just wanted to get the damned car on the road already. 

 

One other thing that I had to do was get the shifter set up.  Since the tranny with the integral shifter (bolted to the tranny) wasn't the 3 spd that was used on the mustang, nothing sat right.  The mustangs used a remotely mounted shifter.  I ended up having to cut the hole in the center hump to accomodate the new position of the shifter, and bolting down a metal patch over the section of the hole that wasn't needed.  Afterward, to help make things look more "professional", I retained the Mach 1 center console, but removed the flat section in the center of the assembly and replaced it with a piece of plywood cut to fit.  I cut a small opening for the shifter to poke up through and bolted down the shifter boot to the plywood board.  I spray painted the board black so it matches the rest of the center console. 

 

Well after getting everything hooked up, which also included a new starter since the flywheels being different along with the bellhousings, required different starters from the automatic rigs, I fired the car up and put the car into reverse, at least what I thought was reverse. 

 

The funny thing with the 3 spd tranny from the late 60s/early 70s, is that the shift pattern is WAY different than what a normal tranny uses.  The reverse gear is in the upper left, straight down is 1st, upper right is 2nd and lower right is 3rd.  It took me a couple seconds but after figuring it out, I had the car off the ramps and ready for some test driving. 

 

The only "annoying" flaw that I notice from the whole rig, even to this day, is when I start off in 1st.  If I don't rev the engine enough and let off the clutchjust right, the whole car will shudder until everything is rotating fast enough to move forward.  If I let off the clutch like Im going to accelerate at a faster rate, such as getting onto the highway, I can usually get the car off without the shuddering.  This of course means that city driving sucks ass, with the stop and go from light to light, I'm shuddering quite a bit.  Its a minor inconvenience, but with this car I don't do a lot of city driving, and unlike city driving in Chicago, city driving in MS isn't really near as bad, especially if you do your driving at certain times of the day and avoid certain areas. 

 

I've been driving the car for a good year so far with the manual rig and about the only problem that I had was pertaining to the starter getting a stripped drive gear which I was able to swap with the drive gear from a core starter I had laying around.  That whole problem came about due to excessive cranking from a failing fuel pump.  After replacing the starter, sometime later on the pump finally got to a point where it died.  Luckily I had a spare pump in the trunk with my other parts and tools so that problem was quickly taken care of. 

 

Well as usual with these projects, this isn't the end of the line.  I discovered that there are conversion kits that allow one to mate a T-5 manual tranny to a 6 cylinder engine using the bellhousing from the old 3 spd tranny.  The hardware does cost, of course, and it'll mean that I'll have to have some driveshaft work done most likely, at least the yoke will need replacing, along with the tranny mount.  I'll probably cut up and weld onto the existing mount to allow it to accomodate the T-5, but for all intents, I have to acquire everything this time before I take on this project, I don't want a repeat of the conversion from the auto tranny to the manual tranny.  Plus, I will wait til I have another fuel saver vehicle road ready so while this car is down, I'll still be able to drive around w/o going broke.  This isn't a critical project but it is one that will be considered very soon. 

 

Well its been a year since the last entry on this project, which is still an ongoing project, but one that is being put to use in the process.  The only negatives in this project is that I hadn't had a chance to really start doing any major body work, and in the meanwhile the body has suffered more so, partly on the count of a few deer strikes.  What I'm really waiting for is to get a couple of the other vehicles into play where it'll allow me to mothball this vehicle where I can start doing body work to it.  Of course I'll also have to have some money available at the time so I can buy the panels and be able to get the work done in a short amount of time versus having the car set up for a year while I try to save up money to get the body panels needed for the job.

 

The other negatives that have affected this vehicle is the deterioration of the frame and other structural areas of the car as time progresses, partly on the count of riding on some of these crappy roads between the house and my job as well as the city in general. 

 

Not to long ago I had to do some patching to the left front frame rail right where the steering gearbox bolts to, on the count of some fractures and general rot that allowed the gearbox to actually move some when the steering wheel was turned.  Another issue in the same area involved the shock tower having a little damage where the upper control arm was able to shift in a manner that all but killed the car's handling.  On both occasions I had to put the car down for a couple of days while I pulled out all sorts of flat steel and other scrap metal to cut and weld up the patches and reinforcements to make the repairs to the afformentioned areas of the vehicle in order to restore the solidity of the car's structural integrity. 

 

The most recent issue with the car's framework was when the torque box, if I'm correct of the terminology, completely gave way on the left side, allowing the front shackle of the leaf spring to break through what was left of the floor and rest inside the interior of the vehicle, which also resulted in the rear of the car dragging its ass like it had a ton of concrete in the trunk. 

 

That was a "fun" project due to the fact that I was going to have to jack the car up enough to drop the leaf spring, while not having anywhere in the rear to actually jack the car up, then still fabricate a new framework to go in that area after I cut away the damaged rusty metal. 

 

I was able to jack the car up from the rear most section of the front frame rail on both sides, which was sufficient to get the car up enough that I was able to disconnect the spring mount that attaches the spring to the rear end.  At that point I spent time whittling away at the area, removing metal until I had a wide open area, a raw clean slate to work on.  I also had to grind on the rusty metal to expose the raw metal so my welds can take a better hold as well.

 

What I ended up doing was recycling the leaf spring mounting bracket that was attached to the side of the frame rail, removing as much of the bad metal as I can, then welding up 3" flat steel on the right side of the bracket and on the front, then drilling the hole through the flat stock to accomodate the large bolt that will be used to mount the leaf spring, then welding it in place of the old frame rail section and the torque box.  I also welded another 3" flat stock section to the other side of the frame rail then cut out a section of the metal to create an opening to allow the bolt to pass through the frame rail to go into the spring bracket on the other side.  It's a goofy design that Ford created that was flawed from the start but I had to work around those design parameters.  Finally I completed that with a piece of 2" flat stock on the bottom to create a new section of frame rail, attached to the old stub of a frame rail.

 

With the spring shackle/bracket and new frame rail mounted in place, I had to install a piece of sheet metal to serve as a new section of floor to replace all that had rotted and had to be cut out.  Some scrap office divider metal was used for this purpose as the sheel metal was pretty thick to start with.  After cutting and fitting the sheet metal in place and welding it in, I then took a couple of triangular pieces of sheet metal that have bent edges to add a lot of rigidity to the overall piece, and welded them to the top of the sheet metal floor patch, then welded the tops of the triangles to the upper structural support of the rear quarter panel.  This effectively created a bracing that would stop any upward movement of the whole spring shackle/frame rail section.  This will all be covered up by the interior side panel that will go back in place. 

 

There's still some more patching that has to be done, mainly on the rear floors, where more sheet metal will be used to fill those areas in.  I did to some minor patching in the trunk area around where the fuel tank mounts in as well as a couple of vertical supports at the rear most section of the trunk plus a couple of small areas of the trunk floor as these areas broke free some, allowing the sections of the trunk floor to shift and move around, creating a lot of noise whenever the car hit rough roads.  Also it helped at more integrity to the opening that held the fuel tank, since a tank holding 15 gallons of fuel isn't exactly feather light. 

 

As can be seen, the work continues on the Mustang, probably will never end for all intents, but then again, that would make life with the car pretty boring if I wasn't doing anything with it (yeah right).  In the end its a labor of love.  More to come.