Beginning to End

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Radio Installed

Last week before I packed to go to camp I went over to my parents house to finally install a radio to fill the hole in the dash. If you remember from an older post, the holes that the knobs go through had been worn down from vibrating over years and years. I ultimately had to weld in a washer on each side and then grind down the front to ensure there was a smooth surface to work with. Since I had to use the washers behind the radio, it messed with the spacing a little bit. In assembling the radio, the order or parts from back to front is the radio, a nut, the dash, a washer, a nut, the tuning bezel, then the radio knob. Since I now had a washer on the backside of the dash, it caused the radio to sit back in the dash further which prevented the radio threads from coming out through the dash as much as they needed to. In order to remedy that situation, I left off the nut the would have sat on the backside of the dash. With that left off everything else went on just fine.

Since the power steering belt has been squealing as long as the car has been running I finally decided to buy the correct bracket for it (I was previously using a modified 1970 Mustang bracket). Unfortunately the belt still squeals which drives me insane so I need to explore other options for fixing this problem. I'm going to try a different belt (solid vs. ribbed), and if that doesn't work, I'll try different pulleys on the water pump and crank; right now I have cheap chrome ones from Ebay.

I was fortunate enough to be able to take my sister-in-law's dog along for a ride in the Mustang after I installed the radio (which isn't hooked up because I have no speakers in the car). She loves getting out especially when it involves hanging her head out the window of a car. She also likes to use arms as literal armrests. 

'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.

Motor Troubles Continued and Tach Installed

I swung by the Electronics Warehouse in Riverside to pick up a relay socket, rely, fuse panel, and wire in order to install the keyed hot fuse panel to run the additional items that needed to be run. The fuse panel holds six fuses and it is powered by a standard 5-prong 40 amp relay that is powered by an 8 gauge red wire that comes directly off of the positive battery side.

Right now I have three things running off of the new fuse panel:

1. Electric choke on the Edelbrock 1406 carburetor
2. Override switch for the electric fans
3. Tachometer

I labeled each of the wires so that I know which one goes to which item. I figured that I would forget otherwise since they're all red. The keyed power source for the relay is the ignition switch off of the fuse block. I'll probably move over the volt gauges to the switched wire box too the next time I'm over. The less I have on the solenoid the better.

This is the schematic that I used to know where I was supposed to wire everything:

My dad took the passenger side head by the shop today and they told him that everything checked out okay--in other words there were no cracks or leaks. He pulled off the other head and will take it down tomorrow to have them check it out. There was one discolored spot on one of the heads that looked like it could have been caused by a water leak. It is the far right cylinder in the below picture. The top portion inside the gasket is a little redish which could have been caused by water. If there is a leak there, that would explain the pressure building up in the cooling system.

Here is a picture of the other side of the motor torn down:

While my dad was pulling off the other head, I had already gotten started on running the wiring for the additional keyed hot fuse panel in order to install the new Equus 8068 tach that I bought to match the other aftermarket gauges under the dash. It took a little while to get all of the wires properly run, but it was done right. I mounted the relay and the fuse block to the firewall under the dash in a spot that was still easily accessible to change fuses if necessary.

I had to use a large clamp to mount the tach to the steering column, but I cut a thin piece of rubber to fit underneath the clamp to act as a cushion between the clamp and the column. It looks quite nice with the other gauges (although I still need to wrap the wires to keep it cleaner looking.

I made sure to install the green bulb covers on the tach before I took it over to my parents house so that it matches the dash lights and the additional lights under the dash. Here is a picture taken with my phone so it's harder to capture the brightness of the gauges, but you get the general idea.

Motor Troubles

It appears that I have pressure in my cooling system because the overflow tank is filling up so much that it is dumping out onto the street while I drive which is draining most of the coolant in the radiator while I drive. The overflow tank looks like it's boiling (even when the motor is off), but the water temp in the overflow tank is only around 130 degrees (according to the laser temp reader). My dad thinks that it could possible be a crack in one of the heads. We didn't have them pressure checked while they were off and instead only had them planed.  Before I pulled apart the motor tonight, I took a video of the exhaust system which I think sounds perfect.

We started by pulling each spark plug out to see if there was any water in any of the cylinders. We didn't see any water. Next we pulled the distributor and then all hoses and other things in the way of pulling off the intake manifold. We checked the seals to see if there was any sign of a breech between the water port and the exhaust port. 

We then looked at the heads to see if there were any tell tale signs of a leak. We didn't see anything that would make us suspect that anything was amiss.

 

The last thing we did after dropping off the passenger side header was pull the head to take it down to the machine shop and have it pressure tested for cracks. These heads were rebuilt about 12 years ago and had minimal miles put on them and then were re-sealed and planed about a year ago so they should be good, but we've got to figure out what the problem is and this seems to be a good place to start.

 

If the passenger side head checks out, we'll pull the driver side head to have it pressure tested. If that comes out good then I'm not sure what comes next...the block???

First Drive to Work

I decided to drive the Mustang to work today (35 miles each way in Southern California) and it was pretty nice. The only downside was that I don't have a worked speedometer in the car nor do I have the tachometer hooked up. I work 5am-2pm so I was on the road while it was dark. I'm looking forward to the drive home since it will be daylight and I'll get to see other people's reactions to the car.

The oil under the car isn't from the Mustang. It doesn't appear to have any serious oil leaks that would cause that kind of stainage.

Since cutting the front springs to help the front end settle down, it looks like the camber has begun to go negative (which is a good thing):

Before I had positive camber which isn't desirable. Not that it has gone negative, I can have my buddy set it properly. I'm told that it should be between -2 to -3 degrees. It looks like the tires have moved outwards whereas they had been aligned to have toe in. I guess that's what happens when you lower the suspension of a car. I should be able to have the car realigned tomorrow.

Exhaust Install

I had my wife follow me to SoCal Mufflers in Riverside today so that I could drop off the 'Stang and have the exhaust system installed. The owner of the shop was the one installing the exhaust and he told me that it would only take two hours to install which I thought was great. Unfortunately it took a little longer than two hours to install...it took closer to five. I ended up walking back down there from my house to pick it up before they even called me. Once I arrived at the shop, I could see the owner taking a video of the exhaust while it was still on the rack. It did turn out pretty good.

1. 2.5" alumanized steel pipe
2. X-pipe 
3. Dynomax Ultraflo mufflers with 2.5" offset inlet-2.5" center outlet
4. Pipes over the axles and turned down right before the valance.

Total cost for the mufflers and to have the exhaust run= $143(mufflers) + $343(pipes) or $486 with tax.

Dynomax Ultraflo's of '66 Mustang

 '66 Mustang X-pipe

Here is a video I took this morning. Sorry about the belt squeal...its the power steering belt and I plan on getting it fixed soon.

Passenger Door Panel & Other Fixes

I should have had a softball game tonight but there is some sort of tournament going on that prevented regular games from happening tonight so I got to work more on the Mustang. I feel like I accomplished a good amount this afternoon/evening. I stopped by the local DMV to pick up the month tag that they neglected to give me when I was there getting my personalized plates on Monday. I literally walked in and walked out with my tags in under three minutes.

I headed to my parents and got to work right away on installing the door panel since I installed the window regulator Tuesday. First I cut a piece of plastic to fit behind the door panel like I did for the other door and then used caulking to seal the door openings. I poked holes for the door clips and the arm rest base. I lined up each door clip and then started putting them in one at a time. The handles went on fairly quickly as did the arm rest base.

If you remember from my "Frustrated" entry, the passenger side headlight only worked intermittently. I installed newer style Halogen headlights although they are a sealed headlight like the older ones were. Hopefully this corrects the headlight flickering problem that I had on the passenger side.

If you also remember my frustration about the dash lights not working, I figured out what the problem was after pulling the dash apart. One problem was the ground had come disconnected on the back of the gauges. The second problem was that the fuse box is slightly corroded and was preventing a good connection for the fuse which stopped power from flowing to the dash. I think I've got both issues corrected now. I added the green covers to the extra tri-pod gauges so that they would match the dash gauges (blue covers with yellow incandescent bulbs.)

We also took care of at least one other important issue tonight. My dad bought a threaded sleeve to connect the end of the adjustable clutch cable rod to another extension piece  in order to make it so that the clutch isn't partially disengaged when the pedal is fully out. Before the clutch was never fully engaged and when you started to depress the pedal, it would immediately disengage the clutch. Now the clutch begins to engage closer to the bottom of the pedal rather than all the way at the top. I only rolled forward and backward in the driveway, but didn't get to take it for a test drive. I'll be picking it up tomorrow evening so that I have it here and ready to take to the exhaust shop Saturday morning.

Update 09/02/13: A new clutch setup was installed including a longer 96-04 Mustang cable. The post about it is HERE.

Unfortunately the speedometer cable was melted through right at the point that the open headers drop off the exhaust. while I had the gauges out of the dash tonight I unhooked the cable from the back of the gauges and will replace it once I have the pipes ran this weekend. Fortunately the cable is only about $20 at any local auto parts store.

Next on the agenda is to run a keyed hot fuse box inside the car from a relay in order to run some extra wires (i.e. electric choke).  I'll also need to polish the car again and put a fresh coat of wax on it as well as get the windshield guy to seal it correctly (3rd times the charm).

Cut Springs & Window Regulator

Since the front of the car still sat too high despite the Shelby/Arning drop and the 1" lowering springs and after reading some posts on vintage-mustang.com I decided to cut about 2/3 of a coil (about 10.5") off of each side. I marked the coil at 1/2 and 3/4 and split the difference. A full coil measured at roughly 17" which puts the cut at 61.7% of a full coil.

This was a picture of the front end before I got started. This was after the alignment was done as best as it could have been done. The gap between the highest point of the tire and the bottom fender lip in the picture below is roughly 2.5".

This is a picture after I cut 10.5" of the coil off and put the car back together and then drove it to settle the suspension. The gap between the highest point of the tire and the bottom of the fender lip is now 1". I think its important to note that the tires are set in enough so that they don't touch the fender and the fender lips are rolled at the top anyways. The suspension could possibly settle another 1/2" or so.

'66 Mustang

I also had the opportunity to remove the old regulator and install the new Scott Drake one that I bought from CJ Pony. I removed about eight bolts and took out the entire assembly (regulator and scissors) in order to install the new one. The regulator is held onto the scissors with a small metal spring clip. I made sure to put a lot of grease on the pivot points and the regulator spring.

The window now rolls all of the way to the top and the gaps are great. There is almost no gap between the rear quarter window and the front window.