Archive for January, 2011

Back to Business

Posted January 17, 2011 By jack

Sigh…… back to body work. Engine rebuilding was much simpler: attach this, torque down that, lubricate part, etc. But removing accessories and trim is just downright aggravating; the car must’ve been made in a way to keep people from trying to take it apart. All bolts are hidden and impossible to access, screws are normally stripped, and there is no one single reference that outlines every necessary step of the process. To make matters worse, some idiot went and glued the whole damn car together with some non-drying goop.

I finished with the rear quarter-window removal about two months ago before Dad and I started the engine rebuild. Moving back to the body now, the next step was removing trim. The side scoops came out easily, as they were only attached by four bolts right behind the interior panels I removed a couple months ago. The chrome quarter-window trim, however, was much more complicated. First, the door sill weatherstripping had to come off. This was attached on both sides with three bolts in the 1/4-window area (one of which was partially hidden under some sheet metal, so Dad handed me his trusty Dremel tool which I used to grind away the small amount of metal hanging over the nut to get a socket to fit over that bastard) and at least one metric ton of the aforementioned gunk.

I didn’t bother trying to get the sticky stuff off of weatherstripping I am planning to replace anyway. After the rubber door seals were off, I could remove the chrome trim on the upper door sills. This, also, was tenaciously held in place with the dreaded sludge. After removing all of the retaining screws, I used a putty knife Dad gave me to carefully separate the chrome trim door surround from the car. But I couldn’t leave the toxic waste all over two chrome pieces I was most likely going to reuse. On one, I made the mistake of attempting to soften the slime with Goof-Off before scraping it off with the putty knife. Bad idea. The Goof-Off softened it so I couldn’t take it all off in one piece any longer. On the other trim piece, I was able to scrape the bile off in clumps, only leaving behind a thin layer I would clean later.

With both the weatherstripping and chrome parts removed, I could finally take out the 1/4-window trim. They came out pretty easily. The snot all over them didn’t.

The whole time I was working, Dad cleared off the accumulated debris from our workbenchs so we could actually utilize them. He also set up our abrasive blasting cabinet, so we can clean parts to reuse. Before we finished for the day, I emptied and inventoried all of the stuff we had in the Mustang’s trunk.

Next weekend: trunk lid and gas tank and filler tube (oh my!)

VOILA!

Posted January 3, 2011 By jack

Engine Complete? CHECK!

Fini! Terminado! Finito! DONE!

(Drums, please!) The motor is finished!

Didn’t think I’d be saying this a whole year into the project.  I mean, how long can engine reassembly take? Ah well, I’ll just have to pick up the pace. My goal is to finish the whole project by the time school starts next year (sometime in August). More than half of the total hours will be put in during the summer. Hopefully I still have the drive to finish my car. No pun intended.

On this fateful day, we started at the garage at about 12:30 (sleeping in late will have to end tomorrow, unfortunately, when school starts up again). The day was started by restocking our supply of Canada Dry at TLG (an essential part of our diets). Ace Glass Services stopped by to replace the cracked windshield on my dad’s Carrera 4 while I fit the valve cover gaskets to our shiny new Edelbrock covers. Dad helped shellac the gasket to cover surface, and I put on the baffle plates for the breather and PCV system that will be installed later.

Nice Mutton Chops, Dad!

Time to screw down the valve covers. Uh oh! There wasn’t enough clearance to torque down the bolt/lockwasher combos that came with our engine bolt kit. After trying, with no luck, to remove the washers, Dad showed me how to use the bench-grinder to grind down the rounded side of the lockwashers. Many sparks later, we torqued down the valve covers and proceeded to install the carburetor. First screwing in the carb posts and sliding on the heat dissipator/spacer we bought at Vic Hubbard’s out in Hayward (great one-stop auto store), the carb went on and the nuts tightened it down. Until the engine is in the car, we can’t connect throttle or choke linkages, so we moved on to installing the water and fuel pumps.

Water pump went on without a hitch.  We bolted it on over the gasket with RTV sealant on both sides and moved on to the fuel pump.  After extensive hunting through the 1969 shop manual, I finally found what I had told Dad all along, that silicone sealant needed to be used on both surfaces of the gasket. We turned the crank until the pump arm fit into its slot, and greased the end with assembly lube where it meets the cam. After the fuel pump was properly torqued down, I installed the crank damper bolt and then rotated the crank with a finger in the #1 cylinder spark plug hole to find TDC (following the compression stroke) to drop in the distributor. However,we decided it made no sense to spend too much time dialing in the ignition timing with the engine just hanging on the stand, so we decided to leave the distributor off until the engine is back in the car.

A job well done.

cleaning the original FoMoCo parts for eBay

Rob, our Mustang Man stopped by to check out progress, and Mom brought over Cousin Lisa and her boyfriend Adam to see the Garage. Glad to see everyone, please come again.