The weather is starting to get colder and the 2017 show season is almost over.  The car performed fairly well this season, although I didn’t get to drive it as much as I would have liked to.  I did get to make a longer trip to Cruisin Ocean City, which was about 500 miles round trip.  The car does have some remaining issues I need to deal with, as well as some upgrades I’ve been hoping to perform.  With the driving season coming to a close I need to prioritize what I want to accomplish over the winter.

My highest priority is some rust repair on the front frame rails.  I’ve already spent some time attempting to locate a shop willing to take on that type of repair.  Most body shops aren’t willing to even look at the car, much less repair it.  I did manage to find one shop that was willing to take on the job.  A second shop also looked at the car, but the owner has some health issues and they have been very slow in getting back to me with answers to my questions.  At this point it appears that the 1st shop will most likely get the job.  But I’m not 100% decided yet.

Here are some pictures of the rusted frame rails.

Other than the rust repair, my biggest issue is all of the squeaks and creaks coming from the front end of the car.  The entire front end was rebuilt back in the mid 1990’s, just before the project went dormant for about 15 years or so.  Even though the car was just sitting, it appears that the bushings in the coil spring seats has deteriorated, causing metal on metal contact.  This has been an issue in the past, and I have replaced the spring seats more than once.  The fix this time is to install new parts that use roller bearings rather than rubber bushings.  This will eliminate the bushing that wears out and also permit the suspension to articulate more easily due to the reduced friction.  I purchased my lower coil spring seats from OpenTracker Racing.  Dazecars has a good explanation of how to build your own on his web site.

Here is a picture of the roller spring seats from OpenTracker Racing.

While the spring seat is being replaced I plan to also lower the upper control arms by 1 inch.  This modification is commonly known as the Arning drop or the Shelby drop.  This was a modification developed by a Ford engineer, Klaus Arning, and incorporated by Carrol Shelby into the early Shelby Mustangs.  This modification raises the car’s roll center, which causes the car to resist body roll in turns.  There are no downsides to the modification other than the need to have the front end aligned after the modification has been completed.  Since I will be removing everything needed to perform the drop anyway, the job is all labor with no new parts required, and I need to have an alignment done after replacing the spring seats, it makes sense to do the modification along with the spring seats.

Here is a more detailed write-up of the Arning drop modification.

While I have the parts removed, I will inspect the front shocks and the upper control arms.  If needed, I can have the shocks rebuilt.by Koni.  If the control arms are bad, I can either get stock replacements, or go for a pair of roller bearing control arms.  The roller bearing arms have the advantages of not requiring periodic lubrication and having less friction which will allow the front suspension to articulate more easily.  The price difference is fairly significant, so if new arms are warranted I will need to give the choice some additional thought.

These are the roller upper control arms from OpenTracker Racing.

The last winter project I have planned is to complete my upgrade to LED lighting.  Almost all of the exterior lighting is done except for the license plate light.  None of the interior lighting has been addressed yet.  I plan to replace the license plate bulb, the dome light bulb, and the three console light bulbs with equivalents LED bulbs.  I also plan to install under dash lighting using LED bulbs and reproduction sockets similar to a factory option that was available in 1967.  I already have the sockets and an assortment of LED bulbs to work with.  I bought the bulbs based on a replacement chart on the manufacturer’s web site.  However I don’t think I agree with some of the recommendations, so I may switch things up a bit.  When I’m done, I will document my decisions in a future blog posting.

It is the summer of 2017 already and I’ve only attended 3 or 4 shows due to weather or other commitments.  I had the opportunity to attend the Mustang Mania show in Columbia MD and was excited to attend as a friend of mine usually attends that show as well.  I got up early, packed up some drinks, loaded up the car and was all ready to go.  Unfortunately the car had other plans.  I was unable to get it to start.  I thought that maybe the gas in the fuel bowls had dried up, so I squirted in some.  The car started right up. ran for a few seconds, and then died.  I repeated this process several few times with the same results.  Thinking I might be out of gas (the gauge read pretty close to empty) I poured a couple of gallons into the tank.  That didn’t help.  Since the fuel bowls on the carb were still empty I suspected either stuck floats or a bad fuel pump.  Tapping on the floats didn’t help.  I removed the fuel line from the fuel pump inlet and there was plenty of gas there.  A vacuum pump was easily able to draw fuel out of that line.  Next I disconnected the fuel line from the carb and put the end in a small container.  I cranked the engine but no fuel appeared.  At this point I gave up on the show and went back inside to order a new fuel pump.  I ordered a new Carter replacement pump through the Summit Racing web site.  A few days later a new pump arrived, and several days after that I got it installed.  The car started up right away and I let it run for several minutes.  It appears I have corrected my “no start” issue and am ready to attend shows again.

I have also noticed some difficulty shifting the car into second gear.  I have trimmed the carpet back some more around the shifter, but that didn’t seem to help.  My next step is to try adjusting the stop bolts.  I’ll try that next chance I get and report back if it resolves my issue.

Another upgrade I wanted to make is to upgrade my exterior lighting to make it more visible.  If you were to stand behind my car in the daylight and observe the tail lights you would notice that they looked fairly dim.  There was nothing wrong with them.  It’s just that the lighting on newer cars is much brighter.  That meant that people who were not used to the incandescent lights on my car may not notice them as quickly or easily in a panic stop situation.  My front turn signal/marker lights weren’t much brighter.I felt that upgraded lighting was something I wanted to do when the timing was right.

There is a gentleman named Gary on the Vintage Mustang Forums who goes by the handle gtonavy.  He has developed LED lighting for the classic Mustangs and started a company known as Vintage LEDS. Many of the forum members use his lighting and give Gary and his products nothing but rave reviews. I have been watching the forum posts and Gary’s Web site for some time now, but wasn’t ready to pay the price for his products. When Gary offered a holiday sale I decided it was time and placed an order for his sequential LED tail lights, LED front turn signal/parking lights, and LED backup lights.

Gary had all the parts in stock and shipped them to me quickly.  Once they arrived I tested each one out on my bench using a 12 volt power supply.  Other than blinding myself (these lights are really bright) everything worked fine.  I had some minor issues installing the lights in the car as some of my 50 year old sockets had some corrosion.  The tail lights were adjustable so I made sure I had them set to my liking before I put everything back together.  As an added touch, I replaced the hood mounted turn signal incandescent light bulbs with LED bulbs.

Now all of my exterior lighting except for the fog lights, headlights (which I converted to H4) and license plate lighting is LED.   The lights are much more visible in the daytime and I’m satisfied with my purchase.  However I do still need to align my headlights and fog lights to make sure they are working the best that they can.  I plan to get that done once the weather starts to warm up in the Spring.

Since my last post I have been going around in circles with my instrument cluster. I installed the new tachometer in the cluster, modified my wiring, and then reinstalled the cluster in the dash. I started the engine and the tachometer wasn’t working. I triple checked my wiring and couldn’t find anything wrong. The Tachman had sent me pictures of him testing the tachometer, so it led me to suspect that I had done something wrong in the installation. So out the cluster came and I returned it to my workbench. This tach is designed to not return to zero until it receives power, so I would have expected the needle to move when power was applied. I applied power to it using a 12 volt power supply and there was no movement of the tach needle. So I removed the tach from the cluster to check my wiring. Everything looked fine, and when I applied power the needle moved to zero. After reinstalling the tach in the cluster housing I repeated the same test and it failed. I loosened up the screws holding the housing in place and the tach tested as working. Tightening down the screws caused the tach to fail. Now mind you, I wasn’t using gorilla strength to tighten the screws. I was just making sure they were snug. So my solution was to find the point where the tach was secure but not too tight to work.

After all of this trial and error I installed the instrument cluster once again. This time the tach worked fine, the dash lights worked, and the gauges appeared to be working. So I went for a test drive. One thing i noticed was that the temperature gauge was reading very low. Almost like the thermostat was stuck open and the engine was not warming up fully. I grounded the sending unit wire for the temperature gauge and it read full scale. The smart thing to do at this point was to check the thermostat. Instead I ordered a replacement. After all, the temperature gauge and sending unit had been working fine, and a stuck thermostat wouldn’t be a big surprise on a car that had sat with the same coolant for 15 years or so. Plus, I wasn’t looking forward to pulling the instrument cluster out again.

The new thermostat arrived and I first tested it out in a pan of water on the stove using a thermometer. It worked just as it was expected to. After installing it in the car I started the engine and warmed it up. The thermostat remained closed until the engine warmed up and then opened. I looked at the temperature gauge and saw that it was still misbehaving. Obviously I had replaced the thermostat in error. Time to do the testing and diagnosing I should have done from the start.

The best place to start would be to verify the gauge and sending unit. The sending unit is designed to vary its resistance based on the water temperature. To test the gauge I used resistors of several values to simulate the sending unit at various temperatures. I was able to get different readings from the gauge, but I didn’t really know what the characteristics of the sending unit are. A search on the Internet turned up a chart showing the expected resistance values for given water temperatures. Here is that chart.

I selected resistors I had on hand that matched the values in the chart as closely as possible. When I tested the gauge using these resistors I found that even though it read full scale when grounded it didn’t even come close to matching the chart. I had an old instrument cluster stored away in my garage so I tested the temperature gauge in that cluster and it matched up pretty close to the chart. So I swapped gauges and reinstalled the cluster for testing in the car. This time the temperature gauge worked as expected. I buttoned everything back up and called it a day. Too bad that I just remembered I forgot to reconnect the speedometer cable. Guess I get to take everything apart one more time. Oh well, maybe the 4th time will be the charm.

In case anybody is interested, here are the readings for my old and replacement gauges compared to the chart above:

And here is the tester I made using spare parts and cardboard:

The car show season for 2016 has ended and I have put the car away for the winter. That means it is time to start on some projects to address some nagging issues with the car. Two things I know I want to address right off the bat are the non-functional rear quarter window and the tachometer that only reads 500 RPM. If I have more time and energy I’ll look into the noises I sometimes hear from the front end of the car.

My first order of business was to remove the instrument cluster so I could send the tachometer and speedometer out for a rebuild. There are only about 6 screws and one nut holding in the instrument cluster, so it came out fairly easily. Then I disassembled the cluster and removed the instruments to send out for a rebuild. I had previously contacted the tachman about repairing my tachometer and rebuilding and calibrating the speedometer for me. He said he would be able to handle the job, so I packaged the two items up, sent them off, and waited for him to contact me with an estimate. In the mean time, I cleaned up the cluster and replaced all of the bulb covers, since some were melted and the rest were cloudy.

A few days later the tachman called to let me know that the meter in the tachometer was beyond repair. He gave me two options: replace the meter with a known good one he had in inventory or convert the tachometer to a 3-wire design. The 3-wire conversion was significantly less expensive than the used meter, so I chose to convert mine to 3-wire. For the speedometer he said he would restore the odometer wheels and replace the face plate with a good one he had since mine was faded. All of the work could be done in the next day or two, and then he would send everything back to me. That was a much faster turn around than I was expecting.

In order to make it clear what the 3-wire conversion on the tachometer means I need to lightly touch on how the factory tachometer is connected. The majority of tachometers connect to the negative side of the ignition coil in parallel with the points. The tachometer I had was designed to connect in series to the positive side of the ignition coil. Since the tachometer is connected in series, a failure of the tachometer could potentially result in the the car’s ignition being disabled. that means that the 3-wire conversion had an added benefit for me. The down side is that I needed to make some minor changes to the wiring to accommodate the converted tachometer.

While waiting to get back my parts from the tachman I ran a new wire from the negative side of the coil through the firewall and up behind the dash. I was able to run the wire through the firewall where an existing wiring harness was. I pushed the wire into the center of a bundle of wires that went through a grommet at the firewall. Then I pulled the wire through from the interior side of the car. I added a wire from the ignition switch to supply 12 volts when the key was on and an additional ground wire. Then I installed a factory style 3 pin connector on both the newly refurbished tachometer and my new behind the dash wiring.

For the broken rear quarter window I took the entire mechanism apart and cleaned everything thoroughly. There was a lot of new grease since I had soaked everything with white lithium grease in my past repair attempts. I cleaned all of that off and also scrubbed off all the 50 year old dried up factory grease. The window glass was badly scratched, with scratches so deep I could catch my fingernail in them. The trim around the window was also badly scratched. So I decided to replace the window and trim. CJ’s was having a sale and I got the window at $100 less than the regular price. After reassembling the mechanism and installing the new window I spent quite some time adjusting everything to make sure the glass fit right. I found that if you follow the procedure in the shop manual the adjustments aren’t really that bad. I had to go through the procedure multiple times since each adjustment can affect the others. But in the end I’m very happy with the results as the window alignment is good and it rolls up and down smoothly.