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.

Another show season is over. I attended far fewer shows this past season, mainly due to the wet and rainy weather. I did get to spend some time at the shows I did attend with my good friend Randy. We have a lot of common interests, so we never seem to run out of things to talk about. Other than cars, we also share interests in ham radio and photography. Randy is usually building something and I always like to hear about what his next project might be.

This winter I hope to be able to tackle some nagging issues on the car. I feel that most of the door locks/handles and window mechanisms could use some more fine tuning adjustments. They all work, but not as consistently as I would like. The driver’s side seat back could fit a bit better. The gas gauge is pretty inaccurate due to the replacement sending unit. I want to install a coolant overflow, even though the car never came with one. And finally I may choose to install a subwoofer. But I haven’t completely made up my mind on that upgrade yet. It just might be convenient to do it at the same time I take apart the interior for the other upgrades.

Everything I mentioned above is optional and I may or may not have the time and motivation to complete the jobs. As of now I already have the coolant overflow and gas gauge calibration parts on hand, so I hope to at least complete those two jobs. How much else I get accomplished will depend on the weather, my mood, and my health.

As far as car shows next season goes, I plan to attend some of the larger shows that I may have considered too far away in the past. I probably won’t make it to all of them, but here’s my tentative list so far. Some of the dates haven’t been set yet, so I plan to update this list as more information becomes available.

For a while I had been noticing that something was binding in the front suspension.  It would typically show itself as a problem after the car had sat overnight.  After sitting, if I drove over a dip in the road I would hear a loud clunk in the front of the car.  After that it would not reoccur until the car sat overnight again.  In an attempt to locate the problem I let the car sit overnight and then used a jack to raise the front of the car one side at a time.  Sure enough, I found that the driver’s side wheel would raise off of the ground when I jacked the car up, and would then drop down with a loud clunk.  Further investigation revealed that my front shock was sticking after sitting overnight.  Once it broke loose it would stay free until it sat for a while.  So the front shocks were the cause of the binding.

The shocks I was using are Koni shocks that I purchased at a Ford dealer some time back in the 1980’s.  The reasons I selected Koni shocks are that they were used on the Shelby Mustangs and that they can be rebuilt.  A quick search on the Internet and I was able to contact several authorized rebuilders.  What I found out is that even though the shocks could be rebuilt, unless I needed them for a numbers matching restoration the cost was more than just replacing them.  So instead of rebuilding the Konis I purchased a set of Bilstein shocks from Street or Track.  I also contacted OpenTracker and purchased front coil springs, upper control arms, and lower coil spring seats with roller bearings.  I also purchased some alignment tools and a coil spring compressor.

My original plan was to replace the control arms and springs, lower the upper control arms, and then do a home alignment.  Unfortunately right at that time I developed bursitis in my left knee and it became infected.  My health issue caused me to re-think my plans.  I ended up just replacing the shocks and the coil spring seats.  The control arm lowering would have to wait for another time.  I chose to still replace the lower spring seats because the ones on the car were squeaking and not moving freely.

After I replaced the shocks and spring seats the front end moved much more freely with no binding.  A lot of the squeaking noise was gone now.  With the spring seats quieted down I could now hear some squeaking coming from the front sway bar bushings.  I removed the bushings, cleaned everything up, and applied some lube I purchased from Energy Suspensions designed for use on polyurethane bushings.  That cleared up the sway bar squeak.  I went ahead and replaced the rear shocks as well even though they didn’t appear to have any issues.

I’m writing this a month or two after completing the job.  My knee is feeling much better.  The weather has been fairly wet and rainy so I haven’t had a good opportunity to really test out the suspension changes.

I had mentioned previously that my highest priority repair for the 2017-2018 winter season was to fix the rust I had spotted on the front frame rail.  I located a shop in Rockville that could patch up the frame for a reasonable price.  This included treating for any additional rust that hadn’t developed into a problem yet.  They are a relatively new shop attempting to establish a name for themselves as a specialist in muscle cars.  They completed the job quickly, and hopefully I won’t have more rust issues for a long time.

While my car was in the shop, they informed me that the rear universal joint was bad.  I was a bit surprised to hear this since I had replaced it fairly recently.  But they were able to demonstrate the issue by grabbing the driveshaft and moving it up and down.  The play in the u-joint was obvious.  After I got the car back I replaced the u-joint.  I gave the car a test drive and it drove smoothly on the highway, so I’m considering the u-joint repaired at this point in time.

Since it was an easy and quick job, I chose to upgrade my interior lighting to LED for my next project.  The first trick was to find and order the correct replacement LED bulbs.  I used my shop manual to find the correct bulb information for the existing lights.  Then I used the search function on superbrightleds.com to find an LED equivalent.  For people who don’t have access to the shop manual (and I highly recommend getting one if you plan to work on your car), here is a link to a bulb chart.

https://averagejoerestoration.com/1967-mustang-light-bulb-replacement-chart/

The bulbs I planned to replace were the dome light, console lights, and under-dash courtesy lights (which I’ll talk more about in a moment).  The following chart shows the factory bulbs and the recommended LED replacements.  I included the license plate light in this chart since I planned to replace that one as well.

What I found when I installed the bulbs was that I didn’t agree with all of the recommendations.  I felt that the license plate light would be way too bright (325 lumen) and the dome light was not bright enough (125 lumen).  I ended up switching the two and am happy with the outcome.  I’m still deciding about whether the under-dash lights are too bright, but for now I’m sticking with the recommendation.  I may swap them both to the 125 lumen model.

As part of the project I also chose to install the under-dash courtesy lighting which was optional from Ford when these cars were new.  I found the sockets online at Auto Krafters.  They may not be concours correct, but they looked close enough for me.  Here is a link to the sockets:

http://autokrafters.com/p-20348-under-dash-courtesy-light-kit-60-68-galaxie-63-66-falcon.aspx

I also found this thread that included a picture of how the sockets should look when installed (hopefully Photobucket won’t be a problem for viewing the photos):

http://www.stangfix.com/threads/67-under-dash-courtesy-light-wiring-question.18651/

The wiring for the sockets was already present in my car, and the driver’s side mounting hole was present as well.  On the passenger side I shared an existing screw to mount the courtesy light.  I may come back and drill the correct hole sometime down the road.

Replacing the license plate light bulb would normally be a simple job.  But I discovered that the license plate light shield on my car was badly deteriorated and needed to be replaced.  That required removal of the rear bumper, which required removal of my spare tire and part of my trunk carpeting.  After I installed the light shield and reinstalled the rear bumper I cleaned up the license plate hardware and installed the new bulb.  Testing of all my lights, both inside and out, showed that everything was working as expected.  At this point all of my lighting is LED except for the headlights (which are Cibie housings with H4 bulbs) and the fog lights (which are standard sealed beam bulbs).

Actually, as I write this I realized that the seat belt warning light is still an incandescent bulb.  Guess I missed that one.  Maybe I need to look into replacing it as well.  In the mean time I have more important winter projects to take on.  I need to get started on them so I can finish in time for spring.