Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Mastering the Brakes

Yes, I finally carved out some time to work on the 'Stang and I plan on making some more time to do that in the near future. On Monday I took some time off from work since my dad was on vacation and we finished installing the brake system. I had to pull the master cylinder off the car since it was beginning to rust due to recent rain. I cleaned it up and painted it black to match the rest of the engine compartment and then re-installed it on the firewall. In order to get the master working, I had to cut, re-flange and bend all but one of the brake lines, but by the time I was done everything fit correctly. We did have some trouble with leaking lines at first, but it was simply a matter of tightening the fittings at the master, proportioning valve or brake hoses. Together we bled out the lines so that there was no air in the system and we now have fully functioning brakes (with the exception of the emergency brake which can't be hooked up until the transmission cross-member is installed).


Once the brakes were finished, we set the intake manifold onto the motor and torqued down the bolts at 23 ft-lbs per the specifications book. We used the same manifold that I had on my first Mustang which was a four-barrel Edelbrock Performer RPM . We used FelPro intake gaskets and some new silicone gaskets for the front and back of the intake along with some extra gray silicone for good measure.


The next step will be installing the engine and transmission which are ready to go. My dad said that he would take some time to put the motor on the engine hoist and join the T-5 transmission and clutch setup to the motor so that we can just drop it all in at the same time. I have both motor mounts and the transmission mount ready to install so it'll be nice to actually use them. Not sure when we're going to drop the heart of the car in, but I would imagine that it is going to be soon.