'66 Mustang Radio Purchased

As close as the car is to being "complete" I still have a few things to accomplish. One of those things to do is to install a radio to fill the gaping hole in the dash. I don't have any speakers installed in the car, but I want to have the radio there to make the car look complete. Maybe one day I'll install a higher tech radio that will allow me to hook up my phone to play music or even play music via bluetooh from my phone. Until that time, I really don't care if I have music in my car that plays from a radio in the dash. 

I ordered a batch of three radios from Ebay for about $50 including shipping. I used parts from a couple of them in order to make one complete radio. I polished the chrome and plastic window so that it looks nice and clean. I'll check the light before I install it to make sure that it will come on when the headlights are on, but this is as much as I'm going to do to it before installing it.

I'm guessing that I'll have the time to install it sometime next month since the rest of my month is booked up with my birthday, a camping trip with friends and then summer camp with Sandals Church as a counselor. The weekend after that I'll be "on call" with work. At least I have a radio to put in the car now!

EDIT 07-11-12

Come to find out, an AM Mustang radio that has a dial starting with "6" is for a 1965 Mustang and a radio that has a dial starting with "5" is for a 1966 Mustang. The radio will still fit in the dash, but allegedly they are slightly different. They also take different mounting brackets. I've read that one radio is 6" deep and the other is 8" deep. Just thought I'd throw that out there in case you were interested.

Exterior Pics with Springs Re-Cut

Although I haven't done any work to the Mustang since my post yesterday, I did have the opportunity to take a few pictures of the car since the work I did yesterday which included: installing the Rosehill Performance adjustable strut rods, and cutting another 5.25" off of a coil spring. I don't really have many pictures of the car posted since it was pretty much completed a few months ago since I was waiting for a co-worker to do a complete photo shoot with the car Things have been getting delayed.The below pictures were taken with my Droid Razr Maxx so they aren't the highest quality photos ever, but they are still a crisp 8mp in 1080p!

Adjustable Strut Rods, More Cut Springs & New Adjustable Relay

Today was a busy day for working on the Mustang. I haven't really done a project on it on a couple of months and knew that there were some things to be done so today was the day to do them. I picked up the car from my mother-in-laws garage last night and parked it in our garage until this morning. I left the house around 9am and took Petey along with me to my parents house where I would be completing the work. The first thing I did was raise up the front of the car, place jack stands under the frame and remove the front tires. The first project I was going to tackle were the adjustable strut rods. The directions had me remove the main nut that bolts the strut rods to the frame.

Stock '66 Mustang Strut Rod

The next step was to remove the steering stops from the lower control arms. I hadn't pulled these the first time I had the car apart so they were covered in grease and general nastiness so I used the wire wheel to clean them up. I then primed and painted them so they better matched the new adjustable strut rods they would be mounting on top of.

'66 Mustang Steering Stop Re-painted

I had to install the strut rods in pieces which meant that I had to take it apart since I put the tubing together before I brought it over. The directions required that I put some anti-seize grease on the threads before I put it all together.

Once I had the threads greased and the tube threaded on, it was pretty simple to bolt on the rod to the lower control arm. Before removing the old one I measured the distance from the frame to the grease zerk fitting on the lower control arm in order to maintain the same distance once I had the new strut rod installed.

Rosehill Performance Adjustable Strut Rod '66 Mustang

I was able to take the springs out by simply twisting them since I had cut off 10.5" of  a coil last time effectively dropping the ride height about 1.5". This time I just cut about 5.25" of a coil from each side. I need to have it aligned properly now that it has the adjustable strut rods which allow an adjustment of caster. Once it's aligned I'll see how much he front end dropped.; I only needed 1/2" - 1".

In an attempt to get the belt squeal to stop I shimmed out the power steering pump a tiny bit, but that didn't help; it still squeals. I tightened the exhaust at the collector since the car was in the air and I wasn't able to get to it before. My dad did almost all of the work rewiring the new relay in for the electric fans. the one we had on the car only worked when I manually flipped the switch to turn on the fans. I noticed that it works now because the fans came on not too long after the car was started. I need to adjust the relay so that it doesn't come on for a little bit longer. It stays on until the temperature has dropped ten degrees and then it comes back on again.

Adjustable Strut Rods- Ordered

I finally ordered a pair of adjustable strut rods to replace the stock strut rods on the '66. I've read that since the stock ones mount onto a piece of rubber or polyurethane, it prevents consistent handling due to the strut rods ability to flex under stress. There is also very little ability to adjust the caster which leads to improper alignment in the front end.

I decided to go with the adjustable strut rods from Rosehill Performance Parts since people that have used them have had good things to say about them and I spent about $150 less than the ones offered from Street and Track. I'm assuming that I'll receive them sometime next week which will allow me to get them installed sometime this month if all goes well. Once i have them installed I'll have my buddy Jeff B. from American Muscle Cars, Inc. re-align the car. 

Adjustable Strut Rods 65-66 Mustang

One problem that I have been experiencing with my steering is that when I brake the car pulls to the right. Another problem I've been having is that when I'm driving on the freeway and I run across uneven pavement, the front end starts walking all over the road (not a good feeling). I'm hoping that these new strut rods and fresh alignment will correct the issue. While I have the front end apart, I'm going to cut just a tad more off of the coil springs to drop the front end another 1/2"- 1". This should be one of the last major modifications I make on the car for quite some time. I'll drop a radio in it once I find an original one that I can clean up.

Upgraded Fuse Panel

My dad cut out a fuse panel from an unknown vehicle and I wired it into my Mustang in order to do away with the older style fuse box. 

1965-1966 Mustang Stock Fuse Panel

As you can see from the picture above, the metal connections can become corroded over time which will prevent a good connection on both ends of the fuse. I was running into this problem with the instrument light fuse and was quite done. Here is a picture of the back of the fuse block as provided by Veronica of the blog mentioned in the paragraph below.

1965-1966 Mustang Fuse Panel (back)

 

If you haven't noticed the link at the bottom of my page for a blog titled "The Proper Care and Feeding of Ponies" you need to check it out. Veronica posts a lot of very valuable information that will help you with most any project you have regarding your early model Mustang. For example, I used her post about the fuse block to better understand which wires did what. You can read the post HERE.

Before I cut any wires I made sure to study the existing fuse block as well as the newer model fuse block to map out where I wanted to put each wire. The newer fuse block was made up of multiple heavier (10-8 gauge) wires that fed 2, 3 or 4 smaller wires. It was like having multiple fuse blocks built into one So far I've only used five of the twenty positions, but its good to know that I have room to expand should I need/want to. I put a piece of blue painters tape on each wire near the fuse block and used a black marker to write what the wire was for and the color scheme of the original wire. I tried to keep the wire colors similar, but I only had so many wire colors (red, black, white, green). Here is the finished product installed on the firewall behind the fresh air vent between the driver's kick panel and the parking brake:

Upgraded Fuse Panel1 on 966 Mustang Firewall

Like I mentioned, there were twenty spots to run wires, but I only used five and this is where I used them:

1. Constant Hot- Cigarette Lighter/Emergency Flashers
2. Constant Hot- Dome Light (interior light since there is no dome light)
3.  Open
4.  Open
5.  Open
6.  Open
7. Instrument lights (Triggered by power from the headlight switch)
8.  Open
9.  Open
10.  Open
11.  Open
12.  Open
13.  Open
14.  Open
15.  Open
16.  Open
17.  Open
18. Switched Hot- Heater Box
19. Switched Hot- Accessories
20.  Open

I also tried to snap a picture of the keyed-hot fuse panel that I wired up and put under the dash by the center console. I wrote a post about it's install last week, but to refresh your memory, I used a five blade standard automotive relay which pulled power from the positive side of the starter solenoid and was triggered by the ignition switch to feed multiple other items. So far I have the tachometer, volt gauge, electronic choke, electric fan override, and one other thing running off of it.

Keyed Hot Fuse Panel '66 Mustang

My dad was kind enough to make a pit stop on his way home from work and pick up a bolt that would work as a stud in the back of the corral on the grill. He was able to cut it to fit and then installed the horse so it looked a little more like a Mustang.

Driving the Mustang

Today was a busy day with Lauren working and me having a "teachers meeting" after church and then having the 5th/6th grade movie watching party. I had a little time to swing by my parents house before Lauren got off of work which allowed me to get under the car and set the toe a little better. If you remember, after I lowered the front end, the toe turned outward instead of staying inward so I had to adjust the tie rods outward allowing the front of the tires to move inwards. I turned the driver's side rod two full revolutions and I only turned the passenger side one full revolution. after a drive around the neighborhood, it looks like the toe is in a little too much now.apparently its very sensitive.

I did have my older brother take a video with my phone so that you can actually see what it's like to ride inside the nearly complete Mustang:

Another thing I checked today was the accuracy of the speedometer cable. The city put up one of those speed sensing signs  to make you aware how fast your driving and I know that it is accurate since I always look at my speedometer in my daily driver to see if it's right. Low and behold, it said that I was going 65 in a 45 zone and my Mustang speedometer said that I was driving 65! Perfect!

Engine Running Again

Lauren had to work this St. Patrick's Day so I went to my parents house to work alongside my dad and get the motor put back together on the Mustang and get it running. We had to make a couple of trips to Auto Zone in order to get the correct drive belts. Both the alternator and power steering belts were a little too long causing them to squeal although they were as tight as they could go. I don't know it's application, but the alternator belt is a Duralast V-Belt #15390 part #303842 and was $8.99. The power steering belt is a Duralast V-Belt #15490 part #304154 and was $8.99. I discovered that the vacuum advance was hooked up to a dead port on the carburetor. In other words, there was no vacuum off of the carburetor so the hose to the distributor was doing us no good. Once we hooked it up to the other port on the front of the carburetor it bumped up the idle a good 500-600rpm. We were then able to adjust it back down. 

I pulled a lot of the wires under the hood that were on running off of the starter solenoid keyed power source and hooked them up to the new fuse box that I ran under the dash. I ended up moving the wire for the electric fan relay, and volt gauge to the fuse box under the dash. I completely disconnected the amp gauge in the dash because it always reads right in the middle anyways.

While I had the car up in the air I changed the speedometer cable and wrapped the exhaust pipe on the driver's side since it is hear the clutch cable, speedometer cable, fuel line and parking brake. I also bolted up the exhaust pipes to the headers.

I hooked up the tachometer to the coil wire since I don't have an MSD ignition box to hook it up to. The switched power is run off of the extra fuse box. The tach seems to run smoothly and appears to read accurately. Once it's warmed up it has been idling around 500-600rpm. 

Both heads were checked and there were no leaks in either. We re-installed them with new gaskets and all appears to be normal. I think we can chalk up the pressure problem to having a bad head gasket.  There was no sign of bubbles in the overflow tank. My dad is going to adjust the valves tomorrow and I'm going to adjust the toe since both tires are currently pointed outward instead of 1/8" inward.