Yeah! Progress!

Upper control arms are 90% done.  The paint is drying overnight, final assembly tomorrow.  Pics and story then.


Feels good to be doing some good honest work again....  :-)

Wow, has it been so long?

It's amazing how life, and perhaps a little bit of laziness, can interrupt the best of plans.  It has been a long long time since i posted anything here.

It is sad to report that I haven't posted anything on the Mustang since I have not touched my Mustang.  Almost make you want to cry. 

The good news, however, is that after two almost solid days of work, I can actually see my Mustang in the garage again.  How, and why, did I ever collect so much clutter and junk?  The garbage guys are going to hate me this week, I'm putting lots of stuff by the curb.

If things go to plan, I will be posting updates this week as work starts again.  But, I may end up recycling back to the first paragraph of this post.

On another note, do you think the Mustang may be jealous of the new car?  Nah, probably not...!

Damn, I miss working on my car...

Too many events and other projects getting in the way.  Our backyard is mostly finished, at least for now.  I have a bit more work to finish our new deck, then its time to hire someone else to do our gutters, expand the driveway, and refinish the pool.  I have all of the parts I need to put the front and rear suspension together, I just got to get on it now.

I'll be posting more pictures and progress soon.  First thing is to clean and organize the garage and tools from all of the other projects finishing up.

I have discovered one thing though - I like metal working better than wood working.  Just don't tell my wife, with all of the thousands of dollars of woodworking equipment I have...! 

Lots of parts

Despite being silent on this blog for about a month now, I have been doing lots of work on the Mustang.

We went to southern CA last week for National Championships of hockey, in which my daughter's team was playing.  Upon our return, I had seven boxes of parts waiting for me.  Springs, shocks, sway bar, links, etc.  I did a little cleanup on the car and the garage, so now I am ready to lay out these parts and start assembly.  I'll take lots of pictures as I go.

Standby for more later this week and this weekend!

Big sigh of relief....

John from Opentracker got back to me.  The UCA is salvageable with the roller kit.  Woohoo!  That's $200 that I don't need to spend now!

I'll be ordering the roller kits this weekend for UCAs and LCAs.  I'll take pictures and stuff as I make the mods.

Maybe not as bad as I thought.

Something I had decided I was going to do a couple of weeks ago is install roller bearings in my upper and lower control arms, spring perches, and build an adjustable strut rod with a heim joint.  The instructions for the roller perches is on Daze Cars, who also sells a kit with all of the parts.  Also on Daze's site are instructions for building adjustable strut rods.

Opentracker Racing Products sells kits for the roller bearing conversion for the upper and lower control arms. 

The damage from the welded UCA bushing I posted earlier greatly concerned me.  My initial thought was that the arm is scrap, so I would be spending another $100 or so to get a new one.  I know from my research that to install the roller kit in the spring perch you cut out the old center tube and install a larger one, so any damage to the old tube does not matter since it will be replaced.  So I started thinking that maybe, just maybe, the same process is used to install the roller kits in the upper control arms, making the damage I found irrelevant.

I called Opentracker today and spoke with John, who I believe is the owner.  I explained my situation to him, and he said it probably would not be a problem since the installation is very similar to the roller perches, in that the holes in the UCA are enlarged to 2" to fit a tube to hold the new roller bearings - the damage I have will be cut away.  John offered to make an evaluation of my arm if I would send him pictures, which I just did.  The pictures are below.

If John says it looks salvageable, then I will be ordering his roller kit and start getting the suspension back together within a couple of weeks.

Big sigh of relief.......

More to follow.

More disbelief....

Wow.  Would you believe that sometime in the past some bozo thought it was a good idea to weld the upper control arm bushings to the upper control arm?  See the pictures....

It looks like the UCA cracked or the bushing pulled out, and instead of removing the arm and fixing it right, they just reached in with the welder and zapped it back together.

The other UCA looks good, but this one is going in the scrap pile.  Sorry Honey, but I need more allowance this week...!

Bent strut rods.....

Wouldn't ya know, I have bent strut rods.  The bill just keeps going up and up....

So now, I have decided that I will replace and upgrade suspension components, and put the old drum brakes back on - for now.  Once the bank account recovers a bit then I will get into the four wheel disk brakes.

I did some more research on the power brake booster and master cylinder.  Believe it or not, the regular Oreilly Auto Parts has the best deal on the parts.  And the stock front disk brake master cylinder has a bore of a little over an inch, exactly what the tech at Wilwood said would be needed to pump enough fluid for their brakes.

Research vs Work....

I have not made much progress on the car itself since my last post, but I have done what feels like days of research on what I am going to do and how to do it.

I found out that the brake kit I have been favoring from PST is actually a Stainless Steel Brakes product, just with their name on it.  A buddy at work put the SSBC brakes on his 67 and did not like them due to the rear calipers leaking around the parking brake lever.  Got no satisfaction from SSBC, so he swapped them out for a Baer brake setup which he apparently really likes.

So I checked into Baer brakes.  Their website is down (has ads on it that I would not want my kids to see) so I called them to discuss my goals and desires.  Chuck at Baer was extremely helpful.  He looked up the kit options available for me, and discussed pro's and cons of each.  We also talked in depth about master cylinder and power booster options.  He said he would email me the part numbers and some information.  He did that, plus included a complete set of pictures, drawings, templates and installation guides.  Wow - score one big point for Baer and their customer service!

Next was Wilwood.  I keep seeing their name pop up all over the Mustang forums.  I did some research on their website and found candidate kits.  I then called them to discuss the kits and to make sure that I am looking at the right ones.  I forget the tech's name, but he did good.  Although not as good as Chuck at Baer.  The guy at Wilwood answered my questions, but could not get him into a dialogue like I got from Chuck.  So adequate customer service, but nothing too exciting.

Next I called SSBC.  I never got to a human, just stuck on hold for about 15 minutes before I gave up.  Guess they don't want my money.

So based on customer service, it should be Baer who gets my business.  Unfortunately, their stuff ended up a bit more expensive than Wilwood.  In fact, quite a bit more.  The complete Wilwood set, front and rear, is going to cost me about $1700.  The complete Baer setup for roughly equivalent components is $2050.  Hmmm, what to do now?  $350 is about two wheels, or an intake manifold.  Do I spend the money and reward better service?  Or save the money for other parts?

So, trying to balance all the variables, and looking into the future, I am going to go against my nature and buy the Wilwood setup.  Sorry Baer!  But hopefully someone else reading this blog will now give you some consideration, and some business will come your way as a result of your willingness to spend time with your customers.

I also did a bunch of research on suspension and handling components and upgrades, but that is a subject for a later blog.

Tomorrow I go watch Alyssa play in her ensemble and solo competition in the morning.  After that, it's home to work on the fence some more in the backyard.  Then its clean up and organize the garage.  Then, if I have energy left, I'll work some more on the car and perhaps start ordering parts.

Half of the front suspension is out

Well, for once we are getting a tax refund.  So to celebrate I am replacing the brakes on the mustang with power disc brakes at all four wheels.  While I have it mostly apart, I thought this would be a good time to upgrade the springs and some other suspension components.  So this weekend I did some exploratory surgery.

The driver's side front suspension is now completely out.  Here are some before and after pictures.

Above is where I started, with a well worn stock suspension and sucky manual drum brakes.  You can see in this picture that I have already replaced the brake lines.

 Notice here the almost non-existent sway bar link.  Typical of what this car has in it....

 ...and this is what it looks like now.  See all the dirt on the floor?  That is what fell out while I was working on it, plus just a little bit of scraping with a paint scraper.  I suspect that this car has gained a couple hundred pounds since it was new from all of the dirt accumulation.  It is nasty.

The lower ball joint is toast, but it is riveted on to the lower arm so the entire arm will be replaced.  The upper arm is actually in good shape.  Change the bushings and ball joint, clean it up and powder coat it, and it will be ready to go back in. 

If I am going to do a Shelby drop on this car, now is the time.  I am doing some research on exactly how to do this on a 1971 Mach 1.  I have lots of clear guidance for 1970 and earlier Mustangs, but lots of contradictory information on 1971-1973 Mustangs.  I'll report back on what my decision is hopefully later this week.  Here is a close=up shot of the UCA mount holes.  It looks like there is room to drop them, but there is a small recess on either side that the UCA sweeps through.  As long as there is no interference in these recesses a Shelby drop should be possible.  Will it be beneficial?  Dunno. Yet.

The passenger side will come out over the next evening or two.  I expect the same results with it.

Thanks for reading, more to follow shortly!  :-)

It's been awhile....

It's been too long, but I finally got a chance to work on the Mustang today.  Both kids helped me get the Pypes header back exhaust system installed.  Wasn't too hard to do, just took some careful cutting and measuring to get the pieces to match up with the Hedman headers.  The system is in, it's very solid.  It sounds pretty good with the RacePro mufflers, but honestly I was expecting it to be a bit louder.  Probably good that it is not too loud though.  I have a couple of leaks that need to be fixed, but after that the exhaust should be done.  I'll try to post some photos and videos soon.

I have been doing lots of research on the Coyote engine, and what it would take to install it in my 71 Mach 1.  I did not realize that the Coyote, and the Ford modular engines in general, are wider than the older small blocks, and wider than some of the large blocks.  It looks like to get the Coyote to fit I will need to do some major surgery to the car, including cutting out a significant chunk of the front shock towers.  So, bottom line is I have decided to stick with my 351C.  If it goes as planned, I will be rebuilding the engine late this year, with a target of about 500+ hp.

The next project is power front and rear disk brakes.  As I mentioned before, the manual four wheel drum brakes it has now just suck.  I have got to get something better and more reliable on the car.  At the same time as the brakes, I hope to be upgrading the suspension, but that may have to wait for the bank accounts to catch up.