Beginning to End

This pretty much sums it all up in one wonderful scrapbook.   Click "Full Screen" in the top right corner of the below window for a full screen view that looks more like a power point presentation.

Click here to view this photo book larger

Start your own Shutterfly Photo Book today.

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.