Credit to my parents #

In this post, I describe this as my car and in the most technical sense it is. However, it was an incredible gift from them and they helped fund or guide all of the early work on this car. So it’s my car that they poured a ton into. Throughout this I also write ‘we’ and that’s because my father spent as much time as he could helping me get things going. Without my parents, this would never have been possible.

Origins #

This car came to me as a present from my parents near the end of my time in college. It was a roller with a pile of parts and not much else. Immediately, I fell in love with this car. The ‘69 Mustang in Royal Maroon had always been my dream. In my childhood bedroom I had a poster with each Mustang generation on my wall. That year and color had always stuck with me. I’m not a die-hard for Ford and many of the other years are not that great. Most of my other favorite cars typically come from Chevrolet and company. Originally, my dream was a fastback. However, I’ve come to prefer the short and tidy rear of the coupe. Although, I might be a little biased…

This car had previously been the project of a gentleman I, unfortunately, never learned the name of or got to meet. So my knowledge of the car before me is gone. (If you are reading this, please contact me! I would love to show you the car as it is now and learn about its history.)

From what I can find this was a base model coupe with an automatic. I believe the original color was Acapulco Blue.

What’s in the pile? #

As I mentioned, it was a roller, but that isn’t really fair for the condition it was in. Most of the body had been repaired or at least seen a coat of primer. This meant I essentially got to skip the bodywork section of rebuilding this car. Which for me, especially at the time, was a huge deal. Of course, it wasn’t rust free but everything else was a rub with the flap disk and a sprinkle of primer from being good enough. At the time, I lived in southern Maine so seeing anything older than 10 without being rotted to the ground was crazy!

The car had just enough parts attached to be considered a car but that was about it. It had a Fox body 8.8 rear axle with no brake hardware except the outer drums. There were rear leaf springs but no shocks. The inside contained the dash pad, headliner, gauges, and some trim. Under the good, if you couldn’t tell by the picture, was empty. Aside from a few electrical connections and front suspension, there wasn’t much to be found. Compared to some others, this is loads of stuff. However, no engine was certainly going to be a challenge for a college student.

One of the biggest worries about getting an old car is the glass. I was extremely fortunate that all the glass in the car was free of cracks or large scratches. One window has a chipped edge but it’s hard to spot.

Things didn’t stop with what was attached to the car. What came with it was what seemed like the owner’s entire collection of Ford/Mustang parts. This included an entire disassembled 351w, a C4 transmission, body and center section of a 9" rear axle, a ton of trim pieces, seats, center console, and lots of original hardware. For me, especially having the original pieces of interior was amazing! Of course, as expected, some things were missing. Some outer body trim like headlight rings or front marker lights were not included. What I did have was a great start to building a fantastic car!

Well… now what? #

While the car came with most of the parts to start building the 351w, it wasn’t the original to the car. Plus, most of my mechanic experience at this point was maintenance on small machines like sport bikes, snowmobiles, and ATVs. My confidence and wallet weren’t quite ready for a full engine build. However, my father knew someone who would be willing to sell a running 351w.

(I’m not really a pictures person so you’ll have to excuse the lack of pictures for this section.)

The engine #

So the both of us drove up to central Maine to pull that engine out of a 1984 Ford F-150. My father had previously owned that truck and we felt confident it would work, at least long enough to enjoy driving the car. The only major difference between the setup we were going to use was this engine was setup to use the Duraspark II system. Not a huge deal and people even change to this ignition system later.

Aside from an incident with a tractor and hacking the exhaust off with a sawzall, there wasn’t much of an issue grabbing the engine. We put it in the back of the truck and headed out.

Once we got it back on an engine stand, I swapped the pan, blew off the mountain of dirt, installed new plugs, and set it aside to put in the car. It had an edelbrock carburetor that did have to get blown apart but that wasn’t too bad. The truck it was in had been sitting but we knew it had been running relatively recently at the time.

The transmission #

As I mentioned earlier, the car came with a C4 and I didn’t have any history about it. The main goal at this point was just to get the car running and driving. So we proceeded with the idea to use this transmission. I took the pan off only to discover some water sitting in there. It wasn’t a lot but it was enough that I was concerned. The dipstick was missing and hadn’t really been covered. This worried me because I wasn’t sure if the water had evaporated out and had gotten way up inside the transmission or if it was just what I saw. The bottom of the valve body had a tiny spot of water contamination but overall seemed ok. My father and I felt confident enough it would for a little while and planned to change it out later.

Firing up #

Once we had the engine and transmission, we could put those in the car and start making our way to firing this thing up! There was a ton to get going including converting the wiring to work with the Duraspark II system. Luckily, there was some forum posts about doing exactly that. It took a while focusing on chasing down all these small things like fuel line, electrical runs, belts, and heater core bypass lines but I rushed through as much I could. Eventually firing it up for the first time! I was honestly shocked it ran great out of the box.

She’s a runner! #

Luckily, other than having to fill them with fluids, the transmission and rear end worked without issue. We had pieces of driveshaft from the parts pile we were able to make work so that saved a ton of time getting this thing down the road. Using what was already in the car is the summary of everything else we needed to make the car drive. The front drum brakes got rebuilt and new lines run. We didn’t really bother with setting up the rear brakes because everything was missing and it was almost certain to get swapped with the 9" that came with it.

I drove the car like that for a couple years before I moved away and stored the car in my parents garage. Even to this day, I’m still using the C4 that came in the car. Although I do yearn for an overdrive with 3.70 gears in the 9".

Hot Rod Power Tour 2023 #

The car wouldn’t see any major changes until HRPT 2023. In January of that year, I finally made the moves required to go on this trip. Ever since I heard about it, I knew I had to try it at least once. This also gave me a reason to spend more time on the car get around to fixing some of the major issues with it.

Preparing #

Things got serious because I knew this trip was going to be hard on this car. I wanted to do it ‘for real’ and to me that meant driving the car all the way down and back from southern Maine. Which for us would essentially triple the length of the trip. My main concerns were the transmission which I had been worried about since I put it in and the rear end. The rear end worried me because one of the changes I made was putting the 9" in. I didn’t replace anything except the outer wheel bearings and threw it together. The axle housing had to be cleaned out and I gave the third member a good clean and prelube but there was a good amount of play. The decision to swap it came from me wanting to finally put rear brakes in the car but the cost to replace everything put me in disc brake conversion territory. If I was going that far, I might as well convert the 9" instead. So that’s what I did because I had already ordered the conversion kit for the front with a new master. The thought of saving some money and reusing the master did cross my mind but I found out because of the pressure differences between drum and disk brakes, that wouldn’t really work.

Next focus was front suspension. Other than replacing a blown out idler arm, I hadn’t really touched the front end. Well, with 3,000 miles staring me in the face, I figured it was time to do something about it. I replaced the entire front suspension including the springs and swaybar. I stuck with original height springs and swapped to a larger sway bar. Not anything race ready but something to stiffen things up a bit.

I also changed to manual steering. The original ram and valve system was leaking everywhere. While the system actually worked well, I didn’t want to deal with having the entire system rebuilt. This is part of the reason I changed to manual steering but the other part is it working better with a Borgeson power steering conversion. This replaces the original steering box and integrates power steering into it. This was awesome and worked great! After I changed out the headers. We tried bashing them in because the box barely touched but after a test ride, the heat started to boil the power steering fluid. We tried the quick fix of installing a transmission cooler inline but it wasn’t enough. Luckily, I was able to order a set of Patriot headers from Summit in time for me to swap them the day before we left!

The final major hurdle in making this car more reliable was cooling. I knew that cooling was going to be the biggest obstacle for me on this trip. I ordered a dual electric fan kit that seemed to fit the radiator I already had. The installation went alright but it did require some custom solutions to make everything work. It included an additional switch for controlling the fans and a relay so they could run directly off the battery.

Of course, I took the time to clean up some of the other things on my list for this car. This included some dress up items like the carpet and a trunk liner. Since I was pulling everything for the carpet anyway, I also added some sound deadening material, the middle exhaust hangers, which required drilling holes in the floor, and new tires.

Going on tour #

Things went pretty good for 20 miles before the new fans decided they were done with life and died off. Not a great start… Luckily we were able to grab a replacement fan nearby. It wouldn’t be the last item to get replaced on this trip either.

TODO: Almost missing registration, Skyline Drive/Blue Ridge Parkway, sleeping in a parking lot, Morrison Motor Car Museum, dead starter, bad electrical, and failure.