Droppin' in the Drivetrain

Today was one of Lauren's weekends to work in December so I packed up Petey (since he had two seizures last night) and took him on over to my parents house to do some more work on the Mustang. He seemed pretty content sitting out in the sun while I worked.

This was the day that we were going to join together the 302 motor and T5 transmission and slip it into the car. The first thing we had to do was set up the hoist and take the motor off of the engine stand. Once we did that, we pulled out the transmission to get it for instillation. We had to install the pilot bearing before doing anything else so we cleaned out the hole in the back of the motor and applied some grease to work it in. We then set the engine spacer plate onto the back of the motor and then bolted on the flywheel. Once we had the flywheel on, we were able to mount the clutch and pressure plate which went pretty smooth.

Newly threaded bellhousing

Next we looked through buckets of bolts to find the bolts we would need to join the bell housing to the back of the motor. Once we found the six bolts we needed, the bell housing went on fairly quickly It took us a while to find the right sized bolts to hold the transmission body onto the housing because we were searching for a bolt that didn't exist. The previous owner of the housing must have put the wrong sized bolts in and stretched out the threads causing the ones that were supposed to be used to fit loosely and the next higher size bolt to be too big. Our only option was to re-thread the bell housing.

Bolting up the transmission to the 302

Once we tapped the four holes we were able to join the transmission body to the motor. You can see me trying to put in one of the bolts through the transmission and into the bell housing. We had tried to fill the trans with fluid, but failed to realize that the hole for the spedo-cable allowed most of the fluid we put in to leak out. I'll have to look into which cable it needs (1966 Mustang of 1986-1992) before trying to fill it again.

When we raised the drivetrain using the engine hoist and lowered the front of the car to make sure we had enough clearance to move the engine into the engine compartment. It barely scrapped its way in taking off a little black paint off of the oil pan, but it made it in. We had to put it in sideways with the rear of the transmission pointing towards the drivers side and the engine entering the compartment from the driver's side. Once it was over the radiator support, we lowered it in and began setting the motor mounts.

My dad did most of the work under the car by trimming the T5 conversion cross member to clear the e-brake bracket. He also had to drill the cross member because the hole on the passenger's side didn't perfectly line up with the hole in the body. While he did that, I greased and slid on the harmonic balance and put on the valve covers. Once we had the the transmission mounted, we were pretty much done for the night. I tried to wipe down the engine compartment since it was getting dusty. I also touched up some of the brake lines that had lost some of their paint.

Top view of the shifter coming through the floor

Although the T5 works great in older Mustangs, the shifter doesn't line up perfectly with the hole in the floorboard. Sometimes the hole needs to be trimmed in order for it to work properly. I think we got lucky with my car because it seems to just barely fit. Once we install the driveline we may find that we need to trim it, but for now it works. The picture to the right shows that it is closer to the front passenger's side corner (as it fits in all older Mustangs).

Motor all bolted up!

The 'Stang is coming along nicely. I'll probably need to spend some money on it now to buy things like a radiator, alternator, battery, distributor, spark plug wires, water pump, hoses, air filter, oil, etc, etc. For now its looking beautiful and I'm excited to get it running soon.