1965 Ford Mustang

[67ChevyRedneck]

I then made some brackets for my radiator. I formed a C out of some flat bar then just added another piece to the top with some plug welds. Should look cool when painted black.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Last, I added my 2 speed fan to the radiator.

[JRANGER]

Very nice work

[67ChevyRedneck]

Hope I did this right... it's back on.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Starting to look like a motor again.

[JRANGER]

looking good

[67ChevyRedneck]

Thanks! I wish I could fire it up this weekend, but I'm just going to get all the crappy stuff out of the way now.

Things that need to be fixed:

I don't know how the hell this happened, but the rear u joint hoops on my driveshaft got damaged. I had a bad vibration over 50mph when I first installed the T5. I knew it was the drive shaft immediately, had that kinda vibration in other cars before. So I got under the car and I could wiggle it at the back and forth, a lot. Crap. So I pull it out to replace the u joint (which was brand new and the drive shaft had just been balanced) and when I installed the new one there was still a little wiggle room and I could slip it in without tools. Not good. The vibration went about 97% away with the new u joint at highway speeds, but I can still wiggle it so I'm bringing it back to the DS shop. They said they can install a new rear hoop section and re balance it. There goes another ~$100 unnecessarily. I've installed new u joints in at least 10 drive shafts and never had an issue, the latest was my Z71 about 50K miles ago. I think I must have lost a needle bearing in the first u joint, I guess the vibration could have stretched the inside of the hoops???

Then, as I've mentioned before I have another vibration, in gear, out of gear, clutch in, clutch out, stopped, driving, etc all in the same rpm band. I'm convinced its my cheap ebay flywheel. Read a lot of cheap flywheel horror stories on VMF after I started researching my issue. I have an $$$ Ram clutch and flywheel, USA made, to go in... so I'm pulling the trans, this weekend. What fun? I also called Ram directly and they helped me pick out a flywheel and clutch that mated my 50 year old engine to my 17 year old trans properly. I even had to buy two different sets (types) of their bolts to install the pressure plate.

I'll also be checking for a rear main leak. Fingers crossed the oil at the bock of the block was from it running down from the intake (it was leaking pretty bad) but it's possible I installed the rear main seal wrong, so if that's leaking I'll have to pull the pan again to fix that too.

I also have to upgrade my alternator to the 100 amp one I bought to power the electric fan and all the other crap I've added to the car.

The 2 speed electric fan needs to be wired up as well.

I'm trying to get all this stuff taken care of over the next few weeks as I've convinced my wife to go with me on the Hot Rod Power Tour this year. Entry fee is paid, hotels set up, and she has the week from work blocked off. I want this trip to go as smooth as possible or she'll never go with me on a long trip in an old toy again. So, I'd like to be done with the major mechanical stuff by mid April so I can get a good 5 or 6 weekends to drive the piss out of it before the tour. If I have any doubts we'll be taking our 2011 Mustang instead, which I DO NOT want to do!

[67ChevyRedneck]

Yet another side project:

To properly install a cowl brace on one of these cars, you're supposed to weld a bracket to the top of the cowl like this (not my car):

[67ChevyRedneck]

So, since my car has a nicely painted cowl, I decided to install the brace under the cowl.

Great idea right? Nope. Didn't think that one through... with bolts only going through the top of the cowl the other end of the bracket would just make popping sounds on turns/bumps, etc. I should know better, not sure what I was thinking.

So I came up with a fix! Remove everything, strip the paint on both the cowl and the back of the bracket, and drill 3 holes for large tapered coarse thread body bolts and fill the whole back/top of the bracket with 3M panel bonding adhesive! Hopefully, that takes care of the bracket squeaking/popping issue!

[67ChevyRedneck]

Finally, some real progress last night.

New Rear Main seal is in as well as new pilot bearing, RAM flywheel, clutch, and pressure plate. The bell and starter are also mounted and wired up.

I'm stuck at work for most of this weekend... otherwise I might have been firing it up sunday night :/

[JRANGER]

get to it! screw work lol jk

[67ChevyRedneck]

She lives!

It's actually been a couple weeks. I wanted to make sure everything worked before I jinxed myself!

So far it appears the rear main is leak free as well as my intake!

The one wire alternator is working well, charging over 14V.

The electric fans seems to work really well. I filled in the gap between the radiator and condenser with foam water pipe insulation and it pulls a lot more air now. It was in the lows 80's on Saturday and I let it idle in the driveway with the A/C on high and it never got above 190 (installed new 180 thermostat and set fans to come on around 190.) I hope it still works as well when it's 95-100* out!

[67ChevyRedneck]

I thought I had posted these here, but I guess I forgot:

1 & 2: Getting radiator ready for final install.

3. Wiring mess. I've added/changed so many things, I undid the main harness loom, tidied everything up, and re-taped it.

4. Filling condenser/radiator gap. Before I did this there wasn't nearly as much "pull" through the condenser when I did my battery hook up test.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Since I'm hopefully done being covered in dirt and grease from this car I redid my DS seat this weekend, to include clean/prime/paint/re-grease the seat tracks and installing the trim as well.

I do need to pull the PS seat and redo the tracks and install the trim.

[Zoomin]

What a nice ride! And just in time to enjoy summer too. Congrats!

[67ChevyRedneck]

I've done so much work to this car to get it ready for the Power Tour, I didn't even take time to take pics, I'll update it later, but I got the new tires on and the nose raised back up to stock height. The new tires fit the car so much better and with the nose back up I have no more rub issues!

Crap, didn't realized how bad the pics sucked until now... phone usually does better than this.

[JRANGER]

still looks good though

[67ChevyRedneck]

She made the entire Hot Rod Power Tour!

3,424 miles overall. I got some great shots I'll post up later.

Of course, I had to have something happen. Something is frying my points condensers. I'm getting a random voltage spike to the Coil - we all think it's the ignition switch going out (several different coils were tried, including swapping to a 12V. It died on Wed and on the way home on Saturday. Luckily it was a quick fix.

[JRANGER]

showoff! lol

[67ChevyRedneck]

Yeah man! Gotta show off my girl(s)!

Here's a few more from along the tour:

The first pic was taken by a guy from Mustang Monthly. We were on their website and there's supposed to be a little blip on us in the October issue... I imagine it will be like Classic Trucks does their car show coverage, probably a 3" pic (likely the one below) with a couple sentences about us below it.

http://www.mustangandfords.com/event...aton-rouge-la/

[67ChevyRedneck]

More:

[67ChevyRedneck]

Mas:

[67ChevyRedneck]

Another Power Tour is in her immediate future.

The 2.8 is a great cruising axle, but is limited fun beyond that.

Now that I have OD, I'm going to kick it up a notch to a 3.25 Trac Loc.

I cheated and bought a rebuilt unit because I don't want to build a rear axle.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Then I got the rear axle out.

Only took a couple of hours to get everything out, except for the last bolt... the bolt had seized onto the sleeve and refused to come out. another 2 hours later I had that stupid bolt out.

Good thing I was planning on new springs anyway.

[nlped]

I've been following your truck build and saw the blurb about this car this morning. So I've spent the last 2 hours reading about it...& then it stopped...a year ago