My car was in the shop being worked on, but I was not doing much more than ordering parts, cleaning , and painting some of the old interior parts.  I had also recovered some of the seat cushions so I wasn’t completely idle.  But I wasn’t particularly involved with the mechanical work being done.  That was about to change as I had the opportunity to spend a day at the shop my car was at and help with some of the work being done.

I made the drive out to the shop which took about an hour and a half.  Once I arrived we got right to work.  First Val showed me a fixture he had welded together that mounted in a floor jack and was designed to hold the rear differential securely so it wouldn’t roll around while being lowered out of the car.  It was a pretty clever idea and we would have the opportunity to test it out that day, as the first job was removing the rear end. After admiring the fixture we got to work removing the rear end.  Or more accurately, Val got to work removing the rear end and I got to work observing and helping whenever he needed an extra set of hands.  That wasn’t very often as he is used to working by himself.

The first order of business was to remove the rear differential housing.  Val made quick work of disconnecting the brake hoses and the parking brake cables.  Next up was the U-bolts that hold the differential housing to the rear leaf springs.  These were a mismatched set of too long and short parts that will probably end up being replaced.  An air powered impact gun got these off without too much drama.  The rear shackles were next on the list.  They were fairly rusted and did resist being removed.  The exhaust system was in the way, but since it is scheduled to be replaced The tail pipes were sacrificed to make some additional room around the rear shackles.  With quite a bit of persuasion the rear shackles came off.  We were then able to remove the differential housing from the car.  It was pretty well caked up with 45 years of leaking fluid, mud, dirt, and road salt.

Next Val showed me how to remove the differential from the housing.  The first step was to drain as much fluid out of the housing the we could by removing the filler plug and turning the housing so that the filler was pointing down into a drain pan.  Now he could proceed with removing the differential.  This involved disconnecting the brake lines from the wheel cylinders.  Then he unbolted the rear axle retainers and used a slide hammer to remove the rear axles on each side.  After removing the nuts and copper washers that hold the differential to the housing he was able to remove the differential from the housing.

Here was the part where I had the opportunity to get my hands dirty.  Somebody needed to scrape away the 45 years of caked on dirt, and that person was going to be me.  After about 30 minutes with a putty knife and a small scraper I had chiseled away the majority of the caked on gunk and you could actually see the differential again.In the mean time, Val had been working on unbolting the front leaf spring bushing so that we could remove the rear leaf springs.  I had a new set of springs that we wanted to install when the new differential went in.

Unfortunately the front bushing were firmly rusted into place.  The first bolt had snapped cleanly off.  A sledge hammer and punch couldn’t dislodge the bolt.  Val turned to an air chisel which also failed to make the bolts come out of the bushing.  Finally Val resorted to the Sawzall to cut the bolt out of the bushing.  After some maneuvering and a few choice words the leaf spring came free.  One spring down, one to go.

The second spring started out being a bit more cooperative, which ended up making it more difficult to remove.  The nut on the spring eye bolt came off without snapping the bolt.  Unfortunately the second spring bolt was as rusted just as firmly into place as the first.  This meant that Val had to use the Sawzall to cut both ends of the bolt off.  That meant that this side required twice as much cutting as the first one.  But in the end the spring did come out.  That marked the end of the rear differential and spring removal job.

It was too late in the day to tackle the transmission which was next on the agenda.  Instead, Val offered to show me how to install the outer door handles and locks. The previous shop that had worked on the car had installed a set of metal rods that extended up out of the door handle holes so that the door could be operated without the door handles and locks in place.  These rods always snagged on my clothing and cut into your hands when opening the door.  I had a bag of parts with the original handle and lock parts.  It was easy to identify which side of the car the door handles fit on.  The door locks were trickier because there was nothing on them to identify which side they fit on.  We took an educated guess which ended up being wrong.  Val demonstrated on the driver’s side door by installing the door handle and lock.  After a bit of adjustment everything appeared to be working and it was my turn to do the passenger side door.

I got the door  handle installed and with a bit of adjustment it was working fine.  Now it was time to move onto the door lock.  I dropped it into place and connected it, but the rods inside the door seemed to be interfering with the door handle rods.  Turning the key to lock and unlock the door resulted in a limited range of motion where the key would only turn one quarter turn.  After some head scratching and experimentation we determined that the door locks were installed on the wrong side of the car.  After we switched the lock mechanisms to the opposite sides the passenger door worked fine and the driver’s side door required some tweaking of the rod inside the door to get a fuller range of motion.  In the end both doors were working fine.

After that work was done for the day.  Val showed me some rusty spots on the car that he planned to tackle.  There was nothing major and were areas where most Mustangs of that vintage have issues with rust.  He also showed me that he had a new power brake booster to install.  One recommendation he made was to install sub-frame connectors to try and regain some of the chassis stiffness that had been lost over time with all the patching that was done to the floor pans.  I agreed and he will order and install a set of the connectors.  After that I made the long drive home.  That was enough dirty hands for one day.

Val contacted me to let me know that the steering and brakes were working fairly well and that he had test driven the car.  The ride was rather stiff and he wanted me to drive it myself and see what I thought.  He also wanted to hear my thoughts regarding the car’s ride height.  If we were addressing the ride by replacing springs that would be the best time to address ride height as well.  Val noted that the rear springs have an issue with spring wrap up on hard acceleration.  This came as no surprise to me as spring wrap up has been an issue with this car since I have owned it.  I already had a new set of springs ready for Val to install.

I looked my schedule over and chose a day to make the trip out to Val’s garage, which is about a 1.5 hour drive from my house.  After finishing with my appointments for the day I made the drive.  It ended up taking 2 hours because there was a traffic accident that stalled traffic for about 20 minutes.  By the time I arrived I was hot, sweaty, and tired.  Val was in the process of aligning the front end for the test drive.  The rims on my wheels were so bent up that he had temporarily installed another set of front wheels so he could get a fairly accurate alignment.  He told me that the camber on my car was way off.  Somebody had set the toe-in on the car without setting the camber.  This resulted in one tie rod shortened about as far as it could go and the other lengthened an equal amount.  He straightened out the alignment and installed my wheels back on the car.  He started the engine and backed the car out of his garage for me to test drive.

The first thing I noticed is that the steering wheel was a bit too close to my stomach.  Seems like I’ve gained a few pounds over the years.  Val had also warned me that the clutch was chattering and would need to be replaced.  I started the car forward and the clutch chattered like crazy.  It was hard to get a balance between not stalling the car and moving forward without shaking me to death.  But we were off.  The engine ran pretty well.  Val had fixed some vacuum leaks, and had warned me that the power brake booster sounded like it had a leak as well.  I could hear what sounded like the booster leaking a bit.  Looks like I will need a new booster as well.

I approached a cross street and tapped the brakes to stop.  Wow, those brakes are really sensitive.  The car had no problem stopping, but it required an extremely light touch on the brakes.  Time to turn on to the cross street.  Since the car has manual steering I knew my arms would be getting a workout.  There was a bit of play in the steering but it didn’t wander around.  I got a bit of speed up to see how the car was riding.  I didn’t want to go too fast as there were people walking around the neighborhood.  The street was fairly smooth so I couldn’t get a good feel for how stiff the ride really was.  And since the car has no interior there were all kinds of squeaks and rattles.  Since the car didn’t have much gas in it I headed back to the shop.

When I returned Val asked me how the car drove.  My response was that it was not that great and that I couldn’t believe I used to drive the car like that.  My answer was really more in response to the chattering clutch, touchy brakes, whistling brake booster and all the squeaks and rattles than to how the car drove.  I think that after Val has made some progress I will try another test drive and try to look past the squeaks and rattles.  I think I was just overwhelmed and tired from the long ride out to the shop.

After my test drive Val and I looked underneath the car for rust.  There was a strange hole cut in the frame that neither of us could explain.  Val pointed out a few areas that would require patching.  The exhaust system was rusted and would need to be replaced, which I was aware of.  We decided to install the springs I provided and address the ride height after the car had a full interior installed, as that would affect the ride height anyway.  Val agreed to look the car over some more and prepare an itemized estimate of what needed to be repaired and approximately how much it would cost.  I went ahead and ordered an exhaust system and new exhaust tips in the mean time.  Progress is being made, but there’s still a ways to go before I get the car back.

I checked in to see how my car was progressing and found out that the biggest reason for the steering play was due  to the steering coupler that was installed on the car.  It had several issues.  First, it was installed incorrectly and could come loose while driving the car.  That was bad enough, but there was still more.  The steering coupler on the car had some type of polyurethane insulator on it that had deteriorated over time and had pretty much fallen apart.  This part was not an original Mustang part, but I had purchased it at the Ford dealer as a genuine Ford part that was a replacement for the 60’s Mustang part.  Val said he had never seen one like it before and had never seen one where the insulator had just fallen apart into pieces.  The original coupler wasn’t useable as half of the splines inside it were ground away.  That was probably the reason I replaced it many years ago, but i honestly don’t remember.  Val said the bad steering coupler accounted for most of the play in my steering.  He also told me that he’s been tied up with another car and should be getting back to working on mine later in the week.

My car was towed to the shop on a Friday.  I didn’t expect to hear much of anything until the middle of the next week as I knew that Val was working on several cars at once.  To my surprise and delight I received a call the next Monday afternoon.  The first item to discuss was the brakes.  Val had removed the master cylinder to see where I had gone wrong.  It turns out there were two issues.  The first problem was that when the push rod fell out of the brake booster I didn’t install it back in correctly.  So when the brake pedal was being depressed it wasn’t pushing on the master cylinder.  Hence no brake pressure.  After correctly installing the push rod there was pressure in the rear brake lines.  However there was still no pressure in the front lines.

Val said that he spent some time loosening up and tightening fittings trying to track down where there was and wasn’t pressure.  After spending some time doing this he was able to narrow the problem down to one of the flexible brake lines that connects to one of the front calipers.  Although the hose looked fine on the outside, it had deteriorated on the inside enough to block any brake fluid from getting through, even with the amount of pressure that the master cylinder was capable of producing.  This problem wasn’t unheard of, but was something that neither Val nor I had ever experienced.  Val put in an order for all new flexible brake lines so that he can replace all of them.  Hopefully that will square the brakes away.

Next item for discussion was the steering.  There was a bit of play in the steering that needed to be addressed.  There was also a problem with the rag joint that connects the shaft in the steering column with the steering box.  I was able to locate the original rag joint and I mailed it off to Val.  He planned to pull the steering box and inspect it on the bench.  Then he would call me and give me the options for repairing or replacing it.  If it was rebuild-able that would be one option.  If it required replacing then some additional options might be available.  Several companies make power steering conversions for that car that use more modern steering components.  What parts needed to be replaced and how expensive they were would dictate what path to take. But I can tell you that a power steering conversion with modern components really sounds pretty nice.

As far as rust on the car goes, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I had thought it might be.  No structural rust issues cropped up.  There was some surface rust underneath, and there might be a few spots that would require either welding in patches or just cleaning up and coating with a rust preventative.  I found that very encouraging because even though I thought the car was pretty much structurally sound I always had the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that the car would be deemed too far gone to fix.  Hearing that there were only very minor rust issues was the best news I could hope to receive.

I’m still waiting to hear back about the brakes and steering.  Right now the car is waiting for the brake lines to come in.  Hopefully I’ll have more to report in a few days.

It was time to start diagnosing the failed braking system.  A quick visual inspection showed there was no fluid in the master cylinder.  The system is sealed (or at least it is supposed to be sealed), so the fluid had to have leaked out somewhere.  Looking at the back of the master cylinder where it bolted to the power brake booster assembly I saw quite a bit of corrosion.  It looked like the master cylinder had been leaking.  So I set out to remove and replace the master cylinder.  I’ve done this job before on this car so I felt fairly confident in my abilities to perform the task correctly.

One thing that had been bothering me for some time is that the master cylinder on the car was a different form factor from any of the others I’ve used in the past.  This master cylinder is an inch or more wider, which leaves very little clearance around it.  This became an issue when I tried to remove it.  I ended up having to remove the driver’s side valve cover to get enough room to maneuver the master cylinder. When I did finally get it removed from the car it showed signs of leaking in the back.

I purchased a new master cylinder at the local auto parts store.  This one matched the form factor of some of my past master cylinders, so I was much more comfortable with it.  It was also much easier to wrestle back into position and bolt on.  In the process of removing the old master cylinder the push rod in the booster fell out.  But I put it back in and bolted everything back together.  Then I ran into my first snag.  I was unable to get one of the brake lines threaded into the master cylinder.  I struggled with it for several hours, and then gave up for the day.

The next day I decided to remove the master cylinder and brake line and assemble them off the car.  Then I installed the master cylinder with the line already attached.  That all went fine except that the push rod in the booster fell out again several times.  It was also a challenge to attach the brake line to the distribution block, but that went a lot better than the previous day’s challenge of attaching the line to the master cylinder.  Everything was now buttoned up.  I didn’t have enough time to move on to bleeding the brakes, so I left that for the next chance I had to work on the car.

When I did finally get around to bleeding the brakes I had no pressure.  I spent quite a bit of time with a vacuum pump but had no success.  When my son came home from school I asked him to pump the brake pedal for me.  Still no success.  Finally i loosened up the brake lines at the master cylinder and pumped the pedal.  Still no pressure.  I was out of time once again so I left it for another day.

Another day never arrived because I got a call from Val who said he was ready to work on my car.  He came over to my house and we pushed the car out of the garage.  The car hadn’t seen the light of day in so long that I think it blinked a few times from the brightness of the sun.  Here’s what the car looked like as it was coming out of the garage.

Once it was out of the garage, Val looked the car over.  I shared with him my list of goals and tasks for the car.  After we talked for close to an hour he put the car on a trailer and towed it away.  Here’s a few more pictures showing the car going on to the trailer and sailing off into the sunset.

After Val has had a chance to fully assess the car I’ll post the results.  His first task will most likely be to finish up my unfinished brake job.