New 1 piece oil pan gasket, hardware and pan is installed. I really like this blue.
Also painted the rear drums. Need to get the correct wheels cylinders and parking brake cables before I can wrap up the rear brakes.
Played with some engine dress up options. It's gonna get some kind of fuel injection but the rest is all options.
I did not paint that 2nd manifold. I plan to strip it back to natural aluminum.
Got the rear drums all back together. New parking brake cable too. It's back sitting on the suspension now as well.
Now unto the front tear down and clean up.
The orange and black is going away on this car. Tonight I replaced the instrument bezel and the gauge lenses. No more hideous orange. Unfortunately, I'll have to take this apart again as the gauges need some work.
I took a small detour tonight and worked on the 69 Mustang in my backyard. This was my friend's first Mustang. It's the one he left for me as sort of a gift for restoring his widows car (the 68 I am working on now). It means alot to me as it was his car he used to cruise and drag race. I will restore it to its former glory sometime down the road.
In the meantime, I'll tinker and throw some parts at it. It hasn't run in about 25 years.......until tonight. So far, I replaced the plugs, wires, and rebuilt the Holley. I had already barred it over and even spun it with the starter.
I rigged up a battery and some jumper wires. Shot it with some ether......and it came to life instantly. I only ran it for like 5 seconds and then restarted and ran for about another 5 seconds. It's got open headers so it's pretty loud. I was amazed. I didn't hear anything bad in the short time. It was great motivation to move forward......after this 68 is done.
I replaced the solenoid and fixed a few connections on the 69 this morning. It still has no juice via the key. So, I rigged up some temporary wiring, filled the carb with gas and bam......it started again. It idles decently and I ran it for about 20 seconds. I repeated this a few more times. Sounds good so far......doesn't even smoke.
Back on the 68, I revisited the rear brakes. I removed the self adjustment parts from the front and installed those on the rear. This makes the shoes adjust automatically with the parking brake.
Then I removed the front sheet metal. I am surprised how solid this car is. I scrapped off a ton of loose under coating and road grime.
Part of the Mustang stash includes these two 351 Cleveland engines. Unfortunately, they have been left outside for many years. I really want to rebuild one of these as the future motor for the 69.
This morning I tore into them to find what I suspected. It was a horror show. Lots of rust and crud.
The blue one has newer 30 over pistons (although one of the 8 is different). It's heads are 4V open chamber and have screw in studs and guide plates. Has CompCams roller tip rockers and TRW forged pistons.
The red one is also 4V open chambers. This motor appears stock. No mods that I can see. It's also a disaster.....rust and alot of motor sludge. Had water in the oil.
Hopefully, I can save one and build a cool motor for the 69 one day.
This is the rebuilt motor that came with the 68. It also came with the 289 2 barrel motor that was in this car. I took the intake off the rebuilt motor as an option for the 5.0 that's going in.
Of course, it had the orange and black paint scheme. I stripped the manifold back to raw aluminum. The last pic shows the manifold getting it last coat of stripper.
I used Rust converter on any rusty areas. Then undercoating over everything. I need to weld in some new metal under the battery mount still. Then clean and paint the engine bay.
The area under the battery mount was rusted out. Surprisingly the reinforcement piece under there was still solid. I cut out the rust, welded in a patch, then welded in the reinforcement piece, then alittle filler and primer. Much better now.
