Plates and Alignment

I spend about 2.5 hours in line at the DMV yesterday after work just to pick up my personalized California license plates for the 'Stang. They gave me a new 2013 registration sticker but failed to give me a new month sticker so now I need to make another trip to get my sticker. The plates look awesome mostly since they're brand new and shiny. 

I picked up my car from the alignment shop although my buddy said that there wasn't much he could do for it in its current state although he got it within speck. It currently has .5 degree camber on the driver's side and -.5 degree camber on the passenger side with no shims. ideally the tires will sit with anywhere from -2 to -3 degrees camber, but with the current height of the front end, the tires are allowed to tilt in. My next step is to rent a spring compressor and pull out the front coils so that I can cut off about 1/4 coil on each side. I plan on doing that this afternoon. 

I also need to lubricate the speedometer in the gauge cluster because it is awfully loud when I drive. My hope is that takes care of it and that I don't need to do anything else...a little graphite should handle it.

Drive to Alignment Shop

A friend of my is a partial owner of a muscle car shop about 20 miles from me and they also so alignments so it was a no-brainier to use him to have my '66 aligned. One of the guys that works at his shop is a friend of mine too and he picked up his alignment knowledge from a guy that had done alignments for 35 years and has been doing it for some years himself. We both go to Sandals Church so he figured that we could just leave from there to drop off the car so that he could get started on it tomorrow afternoon. I had to swing by my parents house to pick up the car on our way to church. I had just put on the rebuilt Edlebrock 1406 (600cfm) carburetor yesterday morning, but hadn't had a chance to test drive the car. The old carburetor is on the right in the picture below. You can see the difference in size of the ports.

The electric choke needs to be re-wired as I put the hot side on the "I" terminal on the starter solenoid and it is causing the volt gauge inside the car to mis-read. I have to run it off of a relay that is fed by the positive battery post and triggered by the ignition switch. There is a great article about how to run additional keyed-hot posts HERE. The car started right up and drove great down the road to church (about 6 miles.) I had tweaked with the tie-rods on Saturday too in order to minimize the toe-in effect that they were causing the tires to do. Since I didn't test drive it, I was anxious to see how it drove since I was going to be driving about 15 miles to the shop and on the freeway no less. It handled like a champ.

My wife wanted to take a couple of pictures of me sitting in the car once we pulled in the parking lot at church.

She said that I look like a giant driving the car. I'm 6' 3" so I probably look a little ridiculous driving the car when people see me cruising down the road. We took it from here to my buddy's shop American Muscle Cars where it was locked up in the garage. We covered it with plastic to keep any dust off of it from the body work on other cars. The engine was still hot so it caused the plastic over the car to lift up like a hot air balloon.

I should be able to pick up the car either tomorrow or Tuesday afternoon. I'm going to pick up my custom California license plates tomorrow on my way home from work and I'll put them on the car once I pick it up. The mufflers are scheduled for delivery on Tuesday and I have an appointment to have the exhaust installed on Saturday morning. If I have some additional time I'll put in the new window regulator and the passenger door panel. 

New Rebuilt Carb and Window Regulator

Although I just put on another carburetor, it actually belongs to my dad and his 351 Cleveland motor that he'll be putting into his '67 Mustang so I had to buy my own. I did some searching on the web and came across a gentleman on Ebay that rebuilds used Edlebrocks who so happened to be selling a 1406 600cfm for $175. He lives in Arizona so I knew it would get here pretty quickly and even with shipping it was only $190. Unlike my dad's carburetor, this one has an electronic choke which is awesome!

The back probably looks like any other carburetor. Nothing to see here. This was the description of the item:

Edelbrock #1406 electric choke. Unit has been dissasembled and thoroughly cleaned inside and out. New needle and seat, new accelerator pump and gasket kit has been installed. Floats have been set to factory correct height. Includes new base gasket as well.

This has not been run on any engine since its rebuild. YOU will have to set up, fine tune, and re-jet as nessasary for your application. Unit has stock jets and rods and will perform like a factory stock unit.
 

I also received my Scott Drake window regulator in the mail yesterday along with my fender bumpers. I've read that the Scott Drake part is much better than the other versions out there. Once I pull out my existing regulator and install the new one, I'll be able to put on the last door panel and armrest...the interior will look complete!

 

Frustrated

Yesterday wasn't such a good day in the life of my project. I had called the local muffler shop (DeAnza Muffler) around 10:30am to confirm that I would be driving the car to the shop to have them look it over in order to give me an estimate of the full exhaust install on Saturday. They called me back after about 15 minutes and said to bring it in at 3:30pm. I arrived promptly at 3:30 and they had closed shop early for the day and neglected to call me to tell me that. Needless to say, I called three different shops in the area to get quotes and will be going with someone else.

It began to rain pretty hard so I parked the car under my mom's canopy for her car so I could get some work done on it. The windshield guy from Los Compadres located at 3639 Rubidoux Blvd had come back out to seal the lower driver corner since it was leaking, but guess what was happening with it today? In case you couldn't guess, it was leaking from both front corners! Now I need to call them again (951-781-8074) to have them fix it. They have been very unresponsive to my complaints and it has been a horrible experience working with them.

The front suspension had begun to settle down after it's drive drive and fill up at the local gas station, but after my dad took it for a spin, the front-end started raising up again. It is about 3 inches too high and I can't figure out why. The spring looks to be seated correctly and everything else is bolted down. I don't know what the problem is. I pulled off the front tires to take a look and make sure that everything was in order and it seemed to be fine. 

After I started wrapping up my wet afternoon working on the car, I realized that the passenger headlight wasn't working nor were the main gauge lights (although the extra tripod gauge lights were working and they run off of the same wire that runs to the main gauges.)

All of this just adds up to major frustration. There are so many things to do and such little time to get them done. I've been very busy with other stuff and I won't have much time to work on it the rest of the week.

On an even worse note, my wife's last living grandparent just died about an hour ago in her home. She was recently put on hospice and we knew that it was a matter of days. We have made a lot of trips out to visit her in recent months and we could see that her health was deteriorating mainly due to the leukemia that she was diagnosed with some months back. Unfortunately she didn't have any desire to accept Christ and unless something changed on her death bed her opportunities to accept Him have run out. It is certainly a sad day. Prayers for the rest of the family and their salvation are appreciated.

New Carburetor & First Test Drive

First things first, the holly four barrel carburetor that I originally put on the car was acting up and was causing the car to run horribly. Fortunately my dad had an Edlebrock four barrel carburetor in the garage that he was planning on using on his 351 Cleveland motor that he had rebuilt. 

4 Barrel Edlebrock Carburetor

After attempting to tune the carburetor a little we decided that it was time to take it for its first test drive. My dad hopped in the passenger seat and we drove it around my parent's neighborhood to check the brakes and transmission. Once we drove around for about 1-1.5 miles we took it on a main road and took it to the local 76 gas station.

1966 Mustang Fuel/Oil Pressure Gauge

The tank is a 1970 Mustang 22 gallon tank that we put 5 gallons in a couple of weeks ago when we first fired it up. Today it took slightly over 19 gallons which means that it still had 3 gallons left. The total bill came to just over $80 with gas prices edging closer to $5.00/gallon. We'll see how the gas mileage does once the car is properly aligned.

1966 Mustang Speedometer

By the time we got home we had put just over 3 miles on the rolled back odometer. I wish I had paid more attention to the speedometer to see if it was accurate, but there wouldn't really be any way to tell. I'll have to have someone drive next to me to see if the speed is accurate. 

Once we got it back to the house we adjusted the timing  and idle. I asked my dad if he wanted to take it for a spin and he declined. About 15 minutes later he asked if I was ready to go for a ride (I guess he changed his mind). He drove it down an old one lane road with lots of stop signs. He was able to really test the brakes by accelerating quickly and stopping hard. After we turned the car around after about 2 miles we saw steam coming from under the hood and smoke coming from the rear. He pulled over and after a little investigation I saw that the smoke was coming from both rear brakes and the steam was from the overflow tank that didn't have a cap. The smell from the brakes was just hot brakes (not oil) and the water from under the hood was just because it splashed out of the overflow tank. We got it home and adjusted the rear brakes and we'll get a cap to put on the overflow. 

I took a bunch of pictures of the exterior of the car since I haven't taken any in a while. After driving it around a little, the suspension settled in the front (although I think it has more to go). Adding 19 gallons of gasoline helped the rear sit down quite a bit.  We adjusted the tie rods three different times after driving it around because the suspension kept on settling. 

1966 Mustang Quarter Panel

1966 Mustang Passenger Quarter Panel

The power steering pump was leaking from the back because the stud that the hose screws into was just loose enough to let some of the fluid leak out. It took a 15/16th wrench to tighten it up, but it stopped the leak.

1966 Mustang Front End

The windshield was leaking in the lower driver's side corner so I had the windshield installer come back out to seal it although it felt like I was pulling teeth to get him to come out to me. He tried to get me to drive out to his shop, but at the time the car wasn't registered or insured. He was going to come out the next day to install the top windshield trim, but he never showed nor called. My dad installed it today while I was at church teaching the 5th and 6th graders.

1966 Mustang Windshield

Registered & Insured

I was able to have my insurance agent come out to take pictures of the car in order to get it insured on Thursday afternoon. After looking over the car he seemed fairly impressed and said that everything was done well. I received my temporary insurance card via e-mail this morning and during my lunch break I swung by the Irvine AAA office which has DMV services. They gave me my registration tags for 2013 and also gave my an insurance quote that allotted me 7,000 more driving miles each year with the same financial limits as my other insurance policy and all for $50 less a year. I e-mailed my current insurer to find out if they can match the policy...if they can't I'll have to switch because currently I am only able to drive 3,000 miles a  year which isn't much when you live in southern California and there are so many beautiful places to drive with a 5-speed transmission.

The current plan is to see if we can get the Mustang on the road Sunday for a test drive. Once we're sure that it is reliable enough to cruise around (mainly that it stops) I'll set up an appointment to have the exhaust installed. I was quoted $560 to install 2.5" x-pipe over the axles with dual mufflers and hangers. Hopefully that holds true. Here is a clip of a similar mustang with the same basic setup and mufflers that I want except the mufflers won't exit the rear:

Heater Box & Fender Extensions

I received most of the parts I ordered from CJ's the other day except the passenger window regulator. I brought home the old blower motor and after testing it to see that it worked fine was able to clean it up and paint it. The heater box has four studs that stick out which the blower motor simply slides onto and is held down with four nuts.

In order to mount the box under the dash, those same four studs slip through the firewall and another four nuts will be used to secure the box to the firewall itself.

Before the new aluminum heater core went in, I laid down the foam pad that helps to cushion the heater core. You can see the cage that moves the air when the motor is running.

The next step was to lay in the heater core so that the inlet and outlet went out of the heater box through the holes you see to the left. I then laid another foam pad across the top to cushion it.

The defroster plenum is held onto the heater box by four screws (two on top and two on bottom):

The heater hoses should be run through the firewall and connected to the heater box before it is mounted under the dash since it would be nearly impossible to hook up the hoses after the box is installed.

The only other mounting point for the heater box is a bracket the mounts right next to the fresh air inlet under the dash. Unfortunately the motor wasn't working properly and neither was the switch so I'll have to replace both at the tune of about $160. I pulled the heater box back out and will re-install it once I have both parts.

The fender extensions were also repainted by my dad the other day and I was able to install the weatherstrip and mount them on the car. The color turned out great.

The fan override switch under the dash now works great and even lights up when it is on. This will control the two electric fans by turning them on if the relay doesn't work for some reason.

I took a couple of other shots of the interior now that it is mostly complete. It still needs the new window regulator on the passenger side so that I can then install the door panel and handles. It will also eventually need a radio to fill the hole in the dash.