I continued working on cosmetic stuff while I was waiting for my car to go into the shop.  I painted the rear quarter interior trim panels.  I also painted the ash tray and trim that goes across the top of the dash pad.  Then I spoke with the mechanic who is going to work on my car.  He asked me why I’m not driving it yet.  I pointed out that he had told me to hold off on installing the gas tank until he could work on the rusted trunk drop off.  Eventually he convinced me that I could install the gas tank without caulking it.  That would allow me to test drive the car but make it easy to remove the gas tank again for the rust repair.  The other bonus is that I could possibly drive the car to his shop and save myself the towing charge.  After some thought I realized that this was a good plan.

I went ahead and bolted the tank into place without using the strip caulk that goes between the tank and the trunk.  Then I made a trip to the local gas station with my lawn mower gas can in hand and purchased a couple of gallons of gas.I poured the gas into the tank and noticed a slow drip coming from the fuel gauge sending unit.  I drained the tank and removed the sending unit.  After checking the o-ring I reinstalled the sending unit and poured the gas back into the tank.  It still leaked.  Time to drain the tank once again and check the sending unit.  This time I used some light grease to hold everything in place and tried again.  It still leaked.  By this point i was getting good at the drill of filling and draining the tank.

I was getting a little frustrated but decided to give it another try.  This time I used some silicone to hold the o-ring in place.  I reassembled everything and tried again.  It still leaked.  I drained the gas and disassembled it once again.  Finally I carefully cleaned everything and applied a liberal amount of silicone sealer to the o-ring, the gas tank, and the sending unit.  After reassembly I added what I had left of my gas.  This time there was no leak.  I started the engine and let it run for about 5 minutes to make sure gas was flowing from the tank and the gas level was actually up to the sending unit.  No leaks and the engine continued to run which indicated gas was flowing from the tank.

Now I felt I was ready to attempt a very short test drive.  or so I thought.  I got in the car and put my foot on the brake pedal.  It sank right to the floor.  The car had no brakes.  So now I had another project to tackle.  Diagnosing the failed brakes.  That was now next on my list of things to fix.

The weather warmed up a bit and I decided it was time to try and get a few odds and ends squared away.  The major jobs that need to be done mostly hinge on the work I plan to farm out.  Since that work is on hold until April I chose to work on some cosmetic items that don’t really impact getting the car running very much.

The first thing I chose to address is the fact that the ignition coil is mounted facing the wrong way.  I had attempted to turn it around to face the correct direction, but ran into interference with the hard fuel line.  Today I removed the hard fuel line and adjusted it to gain a little more clearance.  I also needed to shorten the flexible fuel line to help gain a better angle.  This barely gave me enough room to turn the coil around and mount it.  Things are fitting pretty tight but it is workable.

The voltage regulator that was on the car is a replacement that was installed by the restoration shop 15 years ago while they tried to diagnose my charging system.  The one they installed is functionally equivalent to the correct one for my car but it differs cosmetically.  The correct one for my car is black with silver lettering.  I had a brand new one on the car before they swapped it out.  The one they install was blue with yellow lettering.  I swapped my old voltage regulator back in.  I also had a set of mounting screws that were unmarked by the vendor I purchased them from 15 or so years ago.  I thought they were for the starter solenoid and the voltage regulator but I couldn’t remember for sure.  I should have marked them, but I never expected it to take over 15 years to get around to installing them.  When I compared and test fitted them they were correct, so I replaced the rusty original hardware with the shiny new hardware.

The horns that had been on my car didn’t work because somebody played a prank on me back about 30 years ago.  Somebody sprayed WD40 into the original horns and they never worked again.  I’ve tried to replace them several times, but the replacement horns I ordered never seemed to match the originals very well.  The set I ordered this time looked really close to the originals.  At least until I tried to install them.  The holes in the mounting brackets were drilled slightly off.  I debated whether I should return them or try to re-drill the holes.  I ended up making new holes and then installed them using the new hardware I purchased.  The fit still isn’t as good as the originals, but i now have working horns.

The last thing I chose to do was to start stripping the paint off of the interior rear quarter trim panels.  My original panels disappeared while the car was in the restoration shop.  I purchased some used ones at a local Mustang parts dealer.  My car has a red interior and the replacement panels I bought were colored black.  That meant I needed to repaint the panels.  But before I could repaint them I needed to strip off the old black paint.

I had some paint stripper, but I had heard that oven cleaner worked well to remove paint.  I tried it on one of the panels, but the paint wasn’t affected.  So I moved on to the paint stripper.  The first application of stripper removed a fair bit of the paint, but not enough.  I applied a second coat of the stripper.  That removed quite a bit more of the paint.  I cleaned off the panels using isopropyl alcohol and some fine steel wool.  A lot of the paint was removed, but there were still some stubborn spots.  I was out of time, but I’ll try using a wire wheel in my drill to see if I can get them a bit cleaner and also try to strip off some of the surface rust.  Once I get the metal prepared I plan to spray on some self-etching primer and then the correct red color.

We had some more nice weather and I had the opportunity to do a little more work on the car.  There isn’t really a whole lot to say about the work I did, so this post will be fairly short.  My time to work on the car is limited for several reasons so I’m only attempting to tackle small jobs each opportunity I get to work on the car.  Once Spring is here in full and I get past some other pressing issues the work should move a lot faster.

My goal for this session was to replace the rear universal joint.  I knew the one currently in the car was bad since I’m the one who got the needle bearings out of place when I last installed the driveshaft 15 years ago.  I thought I had gotten everything correctly in place, but there was a vibration when I drove the car.  I had a new part in my parts inventory so I was ready to go with the replacement.

I placed wheel chocks in front of and behind the front wheels, raised the rear of the car, and put jack stands under the rear differential.  With the car safely supported I slid myself underneath, tools in hand.  I thought this job would give me a good chance to use my ratcheting box end wrench set.  Unfortunately there wasn’t enough clearance around the universal joint retainers to use the wrench.  I used an open end wrench to loosen and remove the retainers.  That permitted me to remove the rear universal joint and slide the driveshaft out of the transmission tail housing.

With the driveshaft out of the car I removed the clips holding the universal joint in place.  Then I took a pair of sockets and used my bench vise to push the u-joint end caps out of the driveshaft.  I took my new u-joint, removed the bearing caps, positioned it in the driveshaft, and pressed the bearing caps into place.  Then I installed the new clips to hold the bearing caps in pace.  Everything moved freely, so I cleaned off the transmission yoke end of the driveshaft and slid it back into the transmission tail housing.  Using my new retainers, I installed the rear u-joint into the rear differential and bolted everything into place.  Since the car has no gas tank I couldn’t take it for a test drive to make sure the installation was completely successful.

That probably sounds too easy, and if you thought that you are correct.  The driveshaft install went fine and I would be done except for the fact that the rear end had fluid dripping from it.  That means there is a leak and it needs to at a minimum have the seals replaced.  In order to do that, the driveshaft will have to come out once again.  Not a big deal job to remove it again, but nobody really likes doing a job twice.

As to the fluid leak, I was actually already planning to have the rear differential rebuilt.  It hasn’t been touched since I bought the car in 1974.  I’m betting that whatever fluid is left inside it has been there untouched since the car was manufactured in 1967.  I also know that this car was originally equipped with a “traction lock” differential, which is Ford’s trade name for a limited slip.  On some occasions the limited slip would work.  On others it would behave as if I had an open differential.  I would be ecstatic to have it work as expected, but that repair is beyond my abilities.  So this job will have to wait until the car is towed to the shop and I can have it professionally rebuilt.  I’m hoping that will start sometime in April, but I never really know for sure what kind of stuff will happen to delay that shop visit once again.

Between now and then I plan to work on some fairly easy cosmetic stuff.  The weather is turning cold again and the weather service is predicting some more snow.  So it may be a few days to a week before I get much more accomplished.

I planned to pull the drive-shaft and replace the universal joint today, as the weather prediction said it would be n the mid 50’s with a 0% chance of rain.  Unfortunately it was in the 40’s and raining when I had a chance to work on the car.  So I switched gears and decided to work on a problem I was having with the in dash tachometer.

The factory tachometer for the Mustang is a different design than the typical tachometer.  It is installed in series with the positive side of the ignition coil.  Most tachometers connect to the negative side of the coil.  Since this tachometer is in series with the primary ignition circuit, if it fails the coil will not receive any voltage.  It also requires a ballast resistor with a resistance of 1.5 ohms, which on the mustang is in the form of a nichrome resistance wire that is located between the tachometer and the primary side of the coil.  For a more detailed description and wiring diagram, there are several resources on the Internet. One I can suggest is The Tach Man who also repairs and calibrates the factory tachometers.  I haven’t used his services, but there is some good information on his page.

My car did not originally come with the factory tachometer.  I added it many years ago.  The under dash wiring harnesses were different for cars with the factory tachometer, and are very difficult to find.  When you do find one it will be very expensive.  So I chose to modify the wiring myself, as there really aren’t that many differences between the two.  I made the changes and everything worked for years.

Then I took the car into the last restoration shop, who saw that I had done my own wiring and were adamant that it could never work.  It didn’t seem to matter to them that I had been driving it that way for over 10 years and it was working fine.  They said it absolutely had to be rewired with a factory harness.  The clincher for them was that I had just installed a new engine at that time and when I started it for the first time the charging system didn’t work.  After they “looked at it” the alternator wiring harness melted.  They replaced it with a new harness and went to work from there, replacing the under dash harness, the engine compartment harness, and the voltage regulator to no avail.  Finally they replaced the alternator, which was most likely the original problem, and the charging system worked again.

With the charging system working I checked the tachometer and gauges and they all appeared to be working.  It wasn’t until much later that I observed that the tachometer wasn’t displaying the correct engine RPM.  It consistently read low, and seemed to be limited to about 2500 RPM maximum.  The car went into its’ 15 year garage vacation at that point and I never had a chance to look at the problem until now.  The fix turned out to be very simple.

When the new engine had been installed.I replaced the ignition coil with an aftermarket high performance coil.  What I hadn’t realized was that coils have different primary resistance values.  I had several factory coils including my original one.  They all measured 1.5 ohms primary resistance.  The new ignition coil measured 3.0 ohms resistance.  Since the tachometer is wired in series with the positive primary side of the coil and the ballast resistance wire the resistance affected the tachometer reading.  Factory stock would be 1.5 ohms for the ballast and 1.5 ohms for the coil.  Now I had 1.5 ohms for the ballast and 3.0 ohms for the coil.  I purchased a new Pertronix coil with 1.5 ohms primary resistance and installed it.  Lo and behold the tachometer now appears to read correctly.  When I have a chance I plan to hook up my tachometer/dwell meter and compare the readings with the factory tachometer.  But for now I’m happy that my tachometer is reading a lot closer to the correct engine RPM.  That and I have a nice new coil.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll get the opportunity to work on the universal joint, weather permitting.

When I initially started the engine I hadn’t installed the new gas tank yet, so it was running off of the gas in the fuel bowl only.  When the gas in the bowl ran out it would stall.  I came back with the plan of inserting a fuel line into a gas can and running that to the fuel pump inlet, creating a temporary fuel source.  I wanted to keep the engine running long enough to warm it up and adjust the timing.  I filled up my gas can and ran the hose to the fuel pump.  I primed the fuel bowl and started the car up.  It ran for a minute and then ran out of gas.  I repeated the process of priming the fuel bowl and starting the engine 4 or 5 times with the same results.  I checked the sight plugs on the carburetor but fuel didn’t seem to getting there.  I tapped on the needle and seat to try freeing it up in case it was stuck.  I started the car again but still no joy. Time to do some diagnosing as either the fuel pump wasn’t working or the needle and seat were stuck.

I removed the fuel line from my gas can and placed the nozzle of my squeeze bottle of gas into the fuel line.  I suspended this above the engine compartment so that gravity could feed the gas.  I primed the fuel bowl and started the car again while watching for any fuel flowing out of the squeeze bottle.  The engine ran out of gas once again and stalled.  I tried it with my finger over the gas line to see if I could feel any suction created by the fuel pump.  That test failed as well.  I was beginning to suspect a bad fuel pump.  I removed the fuel line from the carburetor to see if any gas was getting up to the engine.  The line looked dry.

At this point I remembered that I had a vacuum gauge that could also measure pressure.  I bought it back in the 1980’s and only used it a few times as a vacuum gauge.  I had forgotten about it and even more importantly I had forgotten that it also measured fuel pressure as well as vacuum.  I attached the gauge to the fuel line and cranked the engine.  At first there was no pressure, but then it rose to 3 psi and finally made it to 4 psi.  Some gas started sputtering out as well.  So it looked like my fuel pump was working.  My next suspect was a stuck needle and seat.

I hooked the fuel line back up to the carburetor and gave the needle and seat a few more taps with the handle of a screwdriver.  Then I primed the float bowl and started it once again.  It sputtered a bit when it started to run out of gas, but then the engine sped up and kept running.  I let it idle for a few minutes and it smoothed out pretty well as it warmed up.  The fuel pump and carburetor were working as intended.

I let the engine warm up and made sure the cooling system was working.  The temperature gauge sat at about where I remembered from the past when the engine was warmed up.  The radiator and hoses got warm so I knew the thermostat had opened.  And the thermostatic fan clutch stiffened up and caused the fan to turn faster.  There was a fair bit of smoke coming up from both sides of the engine.  I shined a flashlight down both sides but couldn’t see any obvious oil leaks.  My guess is that I dripped some transmission fluid onto the exhaust manifolds when I squirted it into the spark plug holes.  The smoke is just the transmission fluid burning off of the exhaust.  If so it should burn off and stop smoking.

After the engine warmed up and the choke came off I shut down the engine and grabbed my timing light.  I started the engine back up and checked the timing.  It was set slightly retarded.  I shut down the engine, loosened the distributor clamp and started it back up.  I advanced the timing a few degrees, shut it down, and tightened the distributor clamp back down.  Starting the engine and double checking my work showed the timing right where I wanted it.  I may advance it a few more degrees after I test drive the car and see how it runs and whether it pings.  But for now I’m satisfied that the engine is ready and waiting for action.  I’m also fairly confident in the starting system and the cooling system, although I do need to change the 15 year old coolant even if it is still green.  The charging system appeared to be working as well, but i need to do some further testing before I’m fully confident that it is working properly.

There’s still plenty of work left to do.  Next up on my list is a replacement of the rear universal joint.  That shouldn’t be a terribly difficult job.  But I’ve regretted using those words before so I should probably wait and see how it goes.