[ajzride]

I have a lot of pictures still to post on the fender to door alignment, but since I haven't solved anything yet, I've decided to hold on off posting all of that until I have something useful to post. At this point, I think I am going to have to consult a body shop to figure my fender to door alignment. I've got close to 20 hours working on the drivers side door/fender and I still can't get them to line up.

[ajzride]

In the meantime, I decided to install a new instrument cluster. I had some posts earlier in this thread about cleaning up and painting a 1965 cluster with the round speedometer, but I was never able to decided how I wanted to mount a tachometer inside of it, and I got a good deal on a six gauge cluster, so I decided to scrap the OEM setup and install the aftermarket ones.

Here is a link to the gauges I picked up, however I got them from craigslist for about half this price.

Mustangs Unlimited - The Premier Source for Mustang, Shelby and Cougar Parts and Accessories

I was also able to find this little jewel, which made this project a cake-walk.



The first order of business was to install the new oil and temperature sending units. When it came to the oil unit, I decided I wanted to keep a mechanical gauge under the hood, just for piece of mind, so I installed a T to allow me to run both gauges:



The Big cylinder hanging off of the end is the unit supplied with the gauge cluster.

For now I have the mechanical gauge tie strapped to the fender well, but I plan to make a nice mounting flange for it and hang it off of the valve cover.



On the inside my goal was to leave the factory wiring 100% intact, in case I ever need to put a factory cluster back in. So basically, I pulled the old cluster out by unhooking all of the wires from the cluster. Then I pulled all of the light bulbs out of the sockets (so they would not light up when I secure them under the dash). After everything was loose and all of the lights were out, I used some electrical tape to cover the sockets of all the lights, and the tips off all the connectors, so nothing could ever ground out.

The next step I took was to use some quick-splice connectors to cut pig-tails into the wires I wanted to hook up to my new gauge cluster. These splices use two vampire fangs to cut into two wires, with no stripping. Even better they are easy to remove, just pull them apart with some needle nose pliers and use a small piece of electrical tape to cover where the tap broke the insulation. On the end of each pigtail, I put a quick disconnect.



The gauge cluster came with a wiring diagram tapped to the top of it, and I had the nice little picture above for the stock piece. Only a few notes really about wiring. First, almost all of my under hood wiring has been gutted, so I had to run fresh wires for the oil, temp, and tach. Second, I didn't really see a dedicated "lights" wire, but you can use any one of the light bulb supply wires.

The only things that are not working at the moment my gas gauge and my high beam indicator, but those have never worked so I guess I will have to chase some wires next time I get out there:

[B's04gt]

Badass work man!

there's a black 69 mustang with a 302 and a 5 speed around me for 6grand. I want it soo bad!

[ajzride]

While the postings have been slow, I've actually been making better progress than I had been back during the fall.

I am still awaiting some help from an experienced paint+body man to help me align my panels, so I have been plugging away at my punch list.

After installing the gauges, I put on the new steering wheel:



Next, I might have solved my overheating problem.

I had my timing set at 14* base (idle @ 900 RPM), today I decided to adjust my timing based on total advance rather than base. With my timing where it was, the car would heat up to over 245 F (max on my gauge) in less than 30 minutes and still be climbing. Today I adjusted my max advance (@3500 RPM) to 36*, which brought my base (idle @ 900 RPM) up to 21*. This seems a little too advanced to me, but I didn't hear any pinging or knocking, and temperature held steady under 200 F for over an hour. Throttle response and power below 2000 RPM also seemed to improve significantly. Hopefully this has solved my temperature and low end power problems.

Lastly, I really want some nice high back buckets for the car. Even though the seats I have were recovered by the PO, I'm not a fan of them. So I managed to score a set of Scat Procars for $0 (yea, zero). They are the older style with the leg support extension on the bottom insert, and the twisty knob to adjust recline.



I'm going to try and recover them myself, so I've spent the last few days disassembling the drivers side seat, and taking apart the covers to make a pattern. I bought some cheap cloth to make a practice set of covers with, and so far I am happy with the results. I've made a set of covers for all of the center inserts, and I'm working on the bolsters now. Once I start working on the real leather covers, I'll make a nice follow along.

[RebelTide]

Sounds like you're on the right track with your overheating problem. Most people with overheating problems try everything ever listed in a repair manual, or the garage guy's spin on how to fix it. You just hung in there long enough and got lucky. I'd rather be lucky than good, sometimes. The timing numbers you're talking don't sound right to an old man. If you have a 6 degree initial advance at the crank, your total timing should be all in at 2800 rpm and 28 to 30 degrees total advance. You won't have a heating problem due to timing with these figures. As you have found out, 36/38 degrees total advance is a lot for a street car. Try 10 degrees initial advance, have your distributor set up to give you 30 to 32 degrees at 3200 to 3400 rpm. I've done it for years. The other thing it sounds to me like is, you have a vibration dampner that has slipped. A repair manual will show you how to find top dead center (TDC) and see if the zero mark on the dampner lines up with your pointer like it should. I'd bet the dampner you have on there is an old one that's running on borrowed time. Buy a new made-in-America brand-name dampner. Install with new bolts. Good luck, and Roll Tide!

[ajzride]

The dampener is a new unit from summit, it is a universal with 3 sets of timing marks, which i checked when I installed, and it was within two degrees of lining up with the timing mark. So unless I've gotten way out of line and I'm reading the wrong set of marks, the harmonic balancer is not the problem.

I think a more likely scenario would be my 20 year old timing light being out of whack. Perhaps I'll go see if auto zone rents timing lights, and compare it to mine.

However, I agree, something does not seem right, 20* base with no vacuum is odd.


EDIT: Another thought. I was having problems with my vacuum advance advancing my idle too far and causing the engine to rev up to around 1400 RPM at idle, so I disconnected it. Perhaps I should plug the vacuum advance back in, and retard base timing from 14-16 back to 10-12, and then let the vacuum pull it up higher (closer to the 19 or 20 that is giving me better temperatures) and see if I can keep my idle back down around 800-1000 with the retarded timing?

EDIT EDIT:: There appears to be a good bit of OPINION out there that the Thumpr Cams need high teens for initial timing:

http://www.hotrodders.com/forum/cam-...ns-176729.html

http://www.allfordmustangs.com/forum...umper-cam.html



Based on your handle, I think a Roll Tide is in order.

[ajzride]

First off: I haven't had any more problems with temperature since adjusting the timing, stays 200 - 215 at any speed, any RPM, even idle in the garage.

Second: Cheap chines parts suck!! Yesterday I took the 'stang further than it has ever been before, about 30 miles (one way) to my dad's house, and good old murphy reared his head. I was letting my dad test her out, and things were going really well. I was getting to actually enjoy just being pinned in my seat without having to focus on rpms and steering and shifting etc etc etc.... and about the time he hit 3rd gear, dad goes "well that is not good..." Clutch was all the way to floor and not coming back up. Turns out we sheared off the Frame side clutch pivot rod We had to limp home in 3rd gear, and rip the z-bar out. Since I couldn't pickup a new bracket locally, we re-welded the one I had, but all told i lost about 4 hours.

Third: I have finally made significant progress on my body work, which has been my major hold up.

The problem I was having was that my drivers side fender, was sitting about 1/4" higher than the drivers door, even though the door was adjusted up as high as it could go, with no way to lower the fender. In the end, the culprit was the bottom of the fender, where it attaches to the frame rail. Because the bolt is such a pain in the rear end to install (I dropped three of those stupid slide in nuts down inside the frame rail the first time I installed it) it was the one bolt that I never took loose in my close to 30 hours of messing around with that fender. What was happening was that when I would tighten the bottom bolt up, it would push up on the fender, causing it to lift (and to an extent bow out). What I wound up doing was putting about 3/4" of washers between the frame rail and the fender, this allowed me to tighten up the bolt, but not push the fender up. It is something that is really hard to take a picture of, but here is my best shot:



Unfortunately my gaps are still nowhere near satisfactory to me, and I don't think there is any more adjusting I can do. At this point, I am going to have to start filling the gaps in.











My question is this:

What is the best way to handle filling the gaps. I have an article of Modified Mustangs and Fords where they use body filler to close the gap, and then fold a piece of sandpaper over and sand a line down the middle, giving an ultra tight gap. I have also seen where you weld some coat hanger on the edge, and then grind it back.

The body filler seems to be the easiest to do, and will give the tightest gaps, but it seems like it would chip really easy. But if it is so fragile, why would they be showing you how to do it in a magazine dedicated to the hobby? What do you guys do?

Thanks

[ajzride]

Today I got the headlight buckets mocked up and prepped for fitting:

[ma67cpe]

looking good

[ajzride]

I've not done any body work for a few days because I plan on welding some metal to the doors to adjust the gaps, and I just got the welding machine from Dad's today. However I have been messing with the tuning.

I'm rich at idle, the idle set screw was so far in to keep the engine at 900 RPM that I was bypassing the idle circuit and getting into the transition circuit. Today I opened up the secondary throttle plates so that I can close off the primaries some, but I got them too far open and didn't have time to pull the carb again and back them out some.

I'm also still running warmer than I want to. Even with 20* initial timing, I still idle at 210-220F and I think I should be around 190-200F. The main reason I feel I am too hot is because when I shut the engine down, it "diesels" on me, spitting and sputtering for 10 - 30 seconds. Is this due to my 210-220 temps?

I'm really tired of fighting this cam to get my motor tuned up. Always hot and always rich. I know the cam is not ideal for my engine anyway due to my low compression, and to be honest, it doesn't sound as good in person as it does in the cell phone videos. I loved the sound when I heard it on youtube, and for a few days I was really thrilled with it. And it does sound really good from 20 feet away, but in the car or next to it there is so much valve train noise it sounds like an old John Deer some times.

I'm considering a cam swap, which should help with being able to the tune the thing out, and add more power. I've had three cams suggested to me:

Comp Cams XE268H
Comp Cams 270H
Lunati Voodoo 268/276

Important car specs
9.0 Compression
750 VS carb
AFR 185 Heads
4 speed top loader

Do any of those look like they would be a good fit for my car?

[ajzride]

Well, I wasted almost an entire weekend. I tore the top of the motor apart to change the cam, and things were actually going really well, with fewer than usual hiccups, but I should have know that wouldn't last. I had the whole thing back together, and was refilling the radiator, when I poured in a gallon of coolant, and heard it splashing onto the ground. I went back and tightened up all of the water pump and timing cover bolts, and it slowed to a slow trickle, but it is still leaking a little.

I decided to go ahead and pump up the new lifters tonight before I forgot about it, so I killed power to the distributor and rolled the motor for about five minutes until I started to get oil out of all the pushrods. The problem is that by time I started getting oil out of the last few rods, it was milky white.



Now I have to rip the entire front end of the motor apart again to fix the leaking timing cover, and I have to try and flush all of the watery oil, so that I don't wipe a cam lobe breaking in the new cam.

Oh and I have to buy another $20 bottle of break-in additive.

[ajzride]

This is what your oil will look like if you dump a quart of coolant into it:



I ripped the front end back off today, cleaned all the gasket surfaces with a scrapper, then 400 grit, then brake cleaner. Used half a tube of RTV this time, I can't afford another leaking timing cover:



Hopefully tomorrow I will get the harmonic balancer and all the pulleys put back on, then I can install the radiator and pray it doesn't leak.

If I'm dry tomorrow night, I'll be breaking in the new cam.

[BA Mustang]

Ive had it worse before. One time it leaked so bad that about a pint or so of water came out of the oil pan before any oil did. Mine was because of the mating surfaces between my intake and head though.

[ajzride]

Originally Posted by BA Mustang Ive had it worse before. One time it leaked so bad that about a pint or so of water came out of the oil pan before any oil did. Mine was because of the mating surfaces between my intake and head though.

How did you flush? My current plan is to:

Drain, change filter, fill, turn over with starter for ten minutes to circulate.
Drain, change filter, fill, run for 30 minutes
Drain hot, change filter, fill.

[BA Mustang]

I didn't flush it out, we just let it sit for a day or two before draining the fluid.

sent from mah phone

[ajzride]

Okay, back together with no leaks, fired it up and broke the cam in, no serious problems so far. However, I need longer pushrods with this cam. I was already a little short with my last cam, and I am really short with these. There is a ton of rocker slapping, guess I'll be taking care of that this weekend.

Video for posterity:

IMG_1970.MOV - YouTube

IMG_1970.MOV - YouTube

[B's04gt]

Upside video FTW

[ajzride]

Turns out it was not the rockers that were making all of the noise. I had forgotten to lock-tite the fuel pump eccentric on and it was backing out, getting really loose. Ripped it back apart again today, for the third time in a week. Hopefully I've gotten everything straight this time.

Obligatory video:

New Cam - YouTube

New Cam - YouTube

[ajzride]

Today I decided to work on the side scoops. First I had to remove the chrome trim that was there. This requires removing back seat and the door sill plates to remove the interior side panel:



There are three bolts that hold the trim on, that are accessed from the inside:



The top hole:



The bottom two holes:



The nuts are 3/8, and you can get to the top and bottom one using a 1/4 in drive ratchet. But the middle one you have to use and end wrench, and you have enough room for a half a turn, it is rather tedious.

After the trim was out of the way, I test fit the scoops:





The passenger scoop fits really well. The drivers side is terrible, so bad I don't think it can be used. I will have to call KAR tomorrow and see about a replacement.

[Blue67coupe]

Originally Posted by ajzride Today I decided to work on the side scoops. First I had to remove the chrome trim that was there. This requires removing back seat and the door sill plates to remove the interior side panel: The passenger scoop fits really well. The drivers side is terrible, so bad I don't think it can be used. I will have to call KAR tomorrow and see about a replacement.

I can't say i'm too surprised. My hood is from them and the fitment is fine but the work on it to make look good was insane. Wasn't even gel coated