cleaning up the cluster

I haven't spent much time on 68 lately, but when opportunities have arisen I've been chipping away at some of the smaller projects I started back before the latest garage move. The instrument cluster worked fine (in 2009...) but I wanted to smarten it up a bit. I know most people replace the stock gauges with something more modern, but I decided to keep mine stock, while doing some subtle customization.

Started by dismantling the cover. The fluorescent paint on the speedo was sun-faded, so I started by taping-off this area and applying some of the special paint I bought from NPD (with a Q-tip, natch).

I very delicately "clocked" the speedo back to zero, hopefully without breaking it (!)

The worn "camera case" bezel was dismantled and re-painted with the same black Sign Painters 1-shot lettering enamel that I used on the heater control panel.

The gauge trim rings were painted with the ford maroon paint that has been used throughout the interior (this was done forever ago....)

I tried to polish up the original lenses, but I couldn't make any impact on the now-crusty plastic. I ended up buying a scott-drake repro set through my buddies at Mostly Mustangs.

Installed the appropriate segment of the replacement wiring harness. 

Very happy with the finished look:

mounting the motor

If you remember, I put the 351W back together over the summer (with a lot of help from my buddy Chuck!), but we stopped short of adding the intake manifold and valve covers.

By November these parts were still not installed, but we were ready to install the engine in the car regardless. The main driving force for this was that once again it was time to move garage (and house) and I wanted the powertrain back in before the transfer. A few weeks before the install I acquired a pair of 351W motor mounts from my buddies at Mostly Mustangs and tested the fit with the zinc plated mounting bolts that came with the six cylinder setup.

The lower mounts were attached finger-tight to the cross-member, and the upper brackets were bolted to the engine block according to the detailed instructions from Rich at Mostly Mustangs. Incidentally, on Rich's advice I also enlarged the holes in the upper brackets by about 1/16th of an inch in order to make attaching the engine a little bit easier - this really helped.

The folks at Mostly Mustangs also sorted me out with an appropriate block plate which will replace the six cylinder version. I cleaned up the plate using the previously well-rehearsed wire wheel method.

A couple of weeks went by before the BIG day, and then we got off to a slow start when we had to chase around half of Oakland looking for a cam plug. We also had to take a detour to Chuck's shop to pick up some clutch bolts and an alignment tool (I think the original bolts disappeared with the I6). After that it was straight into the assembly, and I (mostly) forgot to take progress photos. The now-shinny block plate and my high performance flywheel were cake to install and so was the clutch. Incidentally, the clutch was donated by my BAMA buddy James, the same person that was responsible for this project getting off the ground*.

Next we broke out the Tremec T5 that I bought from Chuck about three years ago. I don't think either of us every imagined it would take this long to install it.

Attaching the transmission was actually a real pain, even with a clutch alignment tool. We tried to do it with the engine on the hoist, but in the end we had to lower the block down onto a pallet and slide the transmission and bell housing on that way. We had a minor crisis at this point when we lost one of the bell housing bolts. Fortunately, after my team of four searched every inch of the garage several times, the bolt was discovered in my back pocket. Phew!

Plenty of room in there!

Thanks to Chuck, John and Amy for helping with the install and to Amy for taking photos and somehow attaching the transmission cross-member.

(*It's actually a bit harsh to blame this project on James).

A different kind of motor

With my 351W out of my garage, it was finally time to start thinking about reassembly...or at least getting the rest of the car ready for reassembly, which is obviously something quite different. I'm pretty sure it's a requirement of any worthwhile Mustang restoration that you "do the heater box" while the motor is at the machine shop. If not, it should be! My version started with liberating the heater box from its packing crate. I've moved house garage twice since the heater was put to bed, so it was fortunate that I packed it well.

The last time I saw my heater box was in early 2010, so I was actually a little bit shocked to find out how crusty it was. But then again it will be 45 years old in August. Unfortunately, I forgot to break down the unit....which meant all the metal parts missed out on my batch refurb/painting process. Oh well...

Started by removing everything from the heater case. Ford did not design the heater unit to come apart, so the tear down involved drilling out plenty of pop rivets. The blower housing was a bit rusty: especially in the places where it wasn't originally painted (like the whole car!).

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There were a few cracks in both halves of the case...but nothing a bit of superglue couldn't take care of.

The first major positive of this mini-project was the chance to once again fire up my favorite dewalt angle grinder and its knotted wire wheel. All the metal parts got a good going over before you could say "rust removal". Well not quite that fast, but you get the idea.

The flapper unit was a challenge too far for the wire wheel though, so I legged it over to Mostly Mustangs in Oakland and swapped a six-pack for twenty minutes fun in their blast cabinet. Lovely.

The cleaned up metal parts were wiped down and painted with primer, and then I laid down several coats of the same black paint I used on everything else.

I painted the exterior brackets and some of the other parts with my favorite Eastwood brake gray. This is an old BAMA trick that is designed to make sure everyone knows you took the entire unit apart...and it's use is most definitely not restricted to the heater box.

Initially I wasn't going to paint the heater box, but it didn't look right next to the cleaned up parts....so I hit it with two coats of black fusion-for-plastic paint. I even painted the inside...

All the Mustang supply places sell a kit for replacing the foam and rubber heater parts. There were a couple of extra bits in mine, so it's worth figuring out exactly where you're going to stick each piece before you start gluing up the foam.

Speaking of glue, I used the 3M "Yellow Weatherstrip & Gasket adhesive." (Part #3M8001 if you order from NPD).

You want to apply the adhesive to both surfaces, and it helps if you've got a spreader. I had to improvise with a bit of folded over card board from the packet the glue came in. It wasn't ideal.

Wait five minutes or so, and then slap the two surfaces together. The opportunity for repositioning/lining up is minimal once the two surfaces are in contact.

I used a bunch of different sized pop rivets to get it all back together.

When it came to the heater core I was tempted to put the old one back...but ultimately I decided to replace it. I also bought a pair or reproduction end caps, which were missing from my unit.

All back together....and back into the box. I'm more than three years into the project now and the pile of boxes of parts finally includes more stuff that is finished than still "to-do!"

The driver side ventilation duct was in similar shape to the heater unit (and it was packed in the same box), so I took care of that at the same time.

The seal for the duct does not come with the heater kit, so you need to buy that separately. It goes on the same way though, and I used a few bulldog clips to hold it in place while the adhesive cured.

Onto the heater motor. The part# clearly starts with C5 (65), so it's reasonable to assume that it's original.

It looked in poor enough shape to to be original too....plus I accidentally chopped the terminals off when I removed the motor from the car. Oops.

After the wire wheel did it's work and the case had been re-painted, I soldered on two replacement wires and reattached the original terminals.

I also added the (almost) correct colored plastic sleeves which I got front my new heat-shirk tubing kit. The bolts which hold the two halves of the motor case together were zinc plated long ago.

Finally I sourced a replacement plastic plenum chamber from NPD. There wasn't strictly anything wrong with the original cardboard one.....but I decided a while back that I'm not going to put anything back which smells like "old car," so the original cardboard chamber had to go.

The ducting for the defrost vents went the same way....