In 1967 the Mustang didn’t have anything to catch coolant overflow. It just dumped any excess coolant onto the ground. That may have been OK in 1967, but today dumping coolant on the ground is heavily frowned upon. I experienced this first hand when I slightly overfilled my coolant, drove on the highway for 30 minutes, and then stopped at a gas station to fill up the tank. The excess coolant ran out onto the ground which caused quite a stir with the people watching me fuel the car. I was told my car had a serious coolant leak that needed to be repaired right away. Explaining about the car’s lack of any coolant overflow catch can only resulted in very puzzled looks. The best (and most environmentally friendly) solution was to retrofit some form of coolant catch can.

I did some research online but couldn’t find a catch can or recovery system that blended in with the engine compartment the way I wanted it to. This was discouraging because I didn’t want something that really stood out. After plenty of measuring and research, I chose a stainless steel catch can which I purchased on eBay. Here is a picture of what I purchased.

To install the catch can I made up an L shaped bracket using some sheet aluminum. I drilled holes on one side of the bracket to line up with my fan shroud mounting bolts and two holes in the other side of the bracket for the catch can. I put some weatherstripping between the bracket and radiator just in case the bracket rubbed on the radiator. Then I bought some neoprene tubing to go from the radiator overflow to the catch can. The end result does stand out a little more than I would like, but overall I’m OK with the modification.