the next next bit

April 2016: things were really getting moving along nicely at this point. Every trip to the garage consisted of opening up a previously restored part or a packet of zinc-plated fasteners; followed by adding them to the car and connecting the electrical wires.

As previously mentioned, most of this work was not recorded, but several oddities did make it into the record.

temperature sender (Autozone, c. 2016).

choke block-off plate (Summit Racing w/ custom fasteners).

Bolted on my carburetor. This is a Holley 650 which a friend from BAMA rebuilt for me.

Engine Compartment (w/ Holley 650).

Engine Compartment (close-up).

This is how my chrome-plated single-wire alternator and supporting bracket setup looks from above. I didn't really need a chrome alternator, but one became available from one of the BAMA guys at the same price as a standard new one. Gutting the setup right took a bit of experimentation. I ended up making some custom spacers out of whatever I could find; these we be replaced at some point, I hope.

Installed and wired in the custom horns. I was planning to re-install the originals, and I did paint them, but they were never going to be up to the job. And anyway, the new ones have red trim.

It was about this time that I started to have serious concerns about the height of the engine and whether I was going to be able to close the hood. A quick inaccurate check with a piece of tape confirmed it - the air cleaner stud was sticking up an least an inch longer than it needed to be.

So...now what? Well, apart from custom motor mounts, the best idea I could come up with was a dropped base for the air cleaner - just like the one below in fact. Simple. Except it wouldn't fit past the distributor cap.

I tried a couple of other options, including an off-set base and an off-set/dropped base but neither would fit, mainly thanks to the Holley 650 poking out its corners. The briefly half empty shelves at the back of the garage began to fill up with air cleaner parts. Look closely in the bottom left corner and you can see the factory air cleaner assembly from Jimmy Hoffa's 67 K-code fastback.

From lengthy online research I established that the off-set/dropped base I had on my garage shelf was the only such item available on the entirety of the interwebs. And since it didn't fit, I was stuck with looking at other options:

1. Custom engine mounts - the thought of having to take the engine out again, even if this would work, was not appealing.

2. Hood scoop - I did actually look into this idea, but none of the fiberglass hood scopes on the market are as wide as my gigantic air cleaner. And even if they were, it would be a lot of work and would look stupid.

3. The BFH. After full consideration, I decided to customize the off-set/dropped base by whacking it with the BFH until it fitted over the carburetor. This actually took two attempts with a hiatus of several days while I waited for the replacement to arrive.

By the time this was finally resolved, in the summer of 2016, I had also re-installed the radiator and hooked up all the hoses. The engine compartment wiring was essentially complete.

now we're talkin'

Finally back to work in my new garage, and it feels great! In the last three garages, I've installed fluorescent lighting, but this time I wanted something more portable. I ended up with this LED tripod light from Northern Tool. The tripod is on the flimsy side, but it's fine for what I need and I get more than enough photons wherever I want them. I can see myself using this light (or one like it) for a lot of future projects.

Perfect working conditions :)

Right now I'm concentrating on getting the 68 running again as soon as possible - I want to take it to some BAMA events before the car goes for paint - so I've skipped over a few things that I'll have to come back to later.  One of those was the driveshaft, which I acquired used from my good friends at CP Designs. Normally I would have taken the time to paint it gray to match the rear differential housing, but I don't have anywhere I can use as a paint booth right now. Plus it's not exactly the most difficult part to remove later. The optimum length of the driveshaft with the T5/8 inch rear end is 52 ½ inches from the tail housing seal to the center of the u-joint at the pinion of the differential. I had to buy appropriate U-bolts because the originals were designed for the six cylinder rear end.

Around the time I installed my SSBC brake setup and new brake lines, I also installed the wider bore ⅜ fuel line I'll need for the V8. The only problem with this, apart from some of my amateurish bends, was that I directed the fuel line to the original location - or in other words, to where the fuel ump used to be when the car had a six cylinder engine. Oops! Rookie error! I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to figure this out if one of my friends hadn't noticed.

Six cylinder location at steering box

I had to take the fender off to get at the incorrect fuel line, and while I was thinking about how to make a replacement piece, and whether my custom drilled mounting holes in the frame rail would still be usable, I found myself drifting off in a completely different direction.....

Looks nice, but still incorrect

The steering box: back when the 68 was actually running, the steering was as sloppy as a soup sandwich. On a hot day. I'd always planned on figuring out a rebuilt or replacement box closer to the end of the project, but for the purpose of moving the car around I had re-installed the original part. And so, as I was staring down at the misdirected fuel line, I realized the time had come to deal with the steering box - apart from anything else, it was in danger of becoming seriously inaccessible as the engine compartment filled up.

The options for a steering boil down to:

1. Rebuilding the existing box
2. Buying a rebuilt box from NPD and using the original as a core to obtain a discount
3. Buying a after market steering box
4. Upgrading to power steering
5. Going for a full-on upgrade to electric power steering as some other folks in BAMA have done.

I pretty quickly came to the conclusion that a rebuild is best left to a specialist, and I'm not planning any power assists to start with, so it really comes down to either #2 or #3. After shopping around the various mustang parts houses I managed to find a Flaming River aftermarket box for less that $500 from Mustangs Unlimited, including free shipping. This is about $50 more than it would cost to buy a rebuilt box from NPD and pay to ship them the core. The flaming river steering box is on the left in the picture below. I decided not to paint it gray like I did the original.

Here is is in situ

After the steering box was installed, I moved on the the instrument cluster which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. I had to loose the heater control panel and add the dash pad before the cluster could be eased into place. I'm really happy with the (very slightly) customized look.

Next I popped in the chrome-plated export brace that I picked up on a visit to Turlock in 2011 and have been storing in various attic spaces for the last four years. I say "popped in" but in truth it was quite a fight. For a start, installation necessitated removal of the shocks and for another it did not line up exactly right - although it was a lot nearer now the engine is back in place. I basically forced it into position by getting some of the bolts started and pulling the chassis into alignment as the bolts were cranked down. Another job done!

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:

sounds great!

New year, new plan: I just know 2015 will be the year the '68 runs again! I've got mixed feelings about the decline in the number of posts I've been writing about this project in the latter three years: of course it's mainly due to "other things" taking priority, but I also think that my posting style has evolved such that I can cover more progress in each installment. There, that sounds much better!

The trend is down.

Even though I spent most of the Summer working on the shed and deck projects, I did find a few hours here and there to chip away at the car. One of the things I worked on was the audio system. When I got the car is was still equipped with the original am-only radio and the solitary center-dash peanut-sized speaker. Clearly this would not do.

Original water-stained maroon package tray

starting to look better...

Test-fitted the speakers

After cutting the speaker holes, I covered both sides of the modified package tray in thin foam which I attached with the 3M yellow weatherstrip adhesive. After that I wrapped the package tray in the special material I will be using for the interior accent pieces. I'll be keeping the exact design a secret for the time being. Later I installed the revamped package tray and speakers in the car.

I hand re-painted the original radio bezel and test fitted it with the radio unit I bought from Custom Autosound. I've not heard the unit play yet, so I can't review it, but I will say that I was very disappointed with  the company's customer service (both my emails remain unanswered) and with the lack of speaker wires included in the package.

Installation in the dash was pretty easy. I installed my custom speaker wires for the two rear speakers. I'll be installing custom control knobs for the radio in the future.

I'm using a "hide away" antenna which I can either hide in the glovebox or at the edge of the dash pad. I also made the connections for my cell phone and MP3 player which are straightforward with this package. I made sure I left plenty of extra cable so I don't have to keep the phone in the glovebox while it's charging.

Getting the glovebox door aligned correctly was a bit of a chore. It's been almost four  years since these parts were painted - they were actually done at the same time as the interior portion of the doors. I'll be installing tweeters in the door panels or at the kick panels later.

Lovely-jubbly

waiting for the heads

OMG It's been FOUR months! There have been a number of "down" periods on this project - and many more periods of intensive work - but that last few months have been somewhere in-between: short bursts of work punctuated by longer periods of...nothing. Oh well...

At the end of my last post I found myself unexpectedly in need of a valve job and without a machine shop. There are ways to find these things I guess (like the interwebs), but, as mentioned countless times already in this blog, I like to start by asking the guys in BAMA when I need something. What was unusual about this time around was that instead of finding a machine shop, I found a specialist head builder that was already in the club! In fact, the owner of Heads by Steve in San Ramon has decades of experience building heads, many have which have been run in NASCAR teams.

So I cut a deal with Steve to do the valve job, install 7/16 inch screw-in studs, and port match the heads to the gaskets and the intake manifold. When the heads came back a few weeks later they were just....well....immaculate.

And the ports were just so smooth, I could see the increase in power!

While the heads were away, I was marooned at home, surround by lots of boxes filled with shinny new engine parts. This spurred me on to crank through some of the half- and three-quarter-finished mini projects I'd previously abandoned. The first one was the tail lights and trunk wiring harness, which I couldn't face after the painful process I endured below the dash. The tail light buckets were refurbed, and painted brake gray (outside) and brilliant white (inside) back in the Green Room days.

The concave tail lights were the feature that first attracted me to the 67/68 cars in the first place. I acquired a bunch of extra OEM trim pieces from my buddies up the Street at Mostly Mustangs and picked out the best six pieces. I replaced the rubber pads, although attempting the glue the new pads to the trim pieces with weatherstrip adhesive was an abject failure. The studs and nuts were zinc plated way back when...

The tail light connectors were, of course, not included in the Pathetic Painless wiring harness, so I adapted the originals. I did the same with the back up lights. And the fuel tank sender connector....and most of the stuff in the engine compartment too no doubt. The Pitiful Painless harness was actually too short to reach both tail lights, so I did a bunch of chopping and joining of wires that I would rather not have had to do. In the middle I ran out of the wire connectors supplied in the P...p...p...FUCKING AWFUL Painless kit, and had to run to Home Depot. Grrrr!!

I also completed installing the Dynamat in the passenger compartment and taped the joints. Long-overdue!

Next time: Engine Rebuild. I mean it this time!!