Front brakes

Not complete yet - please check back tomorrow.

Rear Brakes

I bought a Wilwood disk brake kit for front and rear.  I went with four-piston calipers and 12.19" rotors.  The Wilwood kit was very complete with lots of little parts in it.  I went with the cheaper kit, so the calipers are basic black.  I did spend a little extra to get drilled and slotted rotors, not because of better performance but because I thought they would look better through the wheels than plain rotors.  A bit of vanity on my part.

Here is a pic of the rear kit as it arrived from Wilwood.  Note the bags and boxes of bolts and small parts that came with the kit.  One thing I really liked about the Wilwood kit vs the Baer or SSBC is how they use a mechanical drum parking brake instead of trying to activate the caliper pistons.  The parking brake assemblies are on the left.  They fit in the hub of the rotors, on the right of the picture.

The kit went on real easy.  The only difficulty I had, which wasn't too difficult, was routing of brake lines.  Here is the parking brake installed on the rear axle housing.

I had a machine shop press on new axle bearings and retainers.  The next pic is with the axle installed.

The rotor supplied with the kit fits the 5.25" lug pattern and the 5.5" lug pattern, hence the extra holes in the rotor face. 

View of the back side of the rear brakes.  The hard brake line is the original line.  You can see in this pic that it is nowhere near close to where the caliper will mount, on the two brass fittings on the bracket to the left.  The bracket on the right is where the parking brake cable will go, attaching to the lever sticking out of the back about where the existing brake line is.

To solve the brake line issue, I installed steel flex lines on the right and left of the rear axle.  I did not take many pictures of their installation, I will try to get some more later.  Here is one pic showing the flex line, and one of the tabs I welded on to hold them in place.  I welded four tabs, two on each side.  The tabs were fabbed from cheap sheet metal.

That is the last picture I have for the rear brakes.  Like I said, I was not very disciplined and taking photos, at least not as much as I had intended when I started this project and blog.  You'll just have to take my word for it that the brakes went in easily and work well.  The only tricky part was installing the parking brake cable.  It was not hard to do, but took some time.  At least gave me the opportunity to get my friend Mike to weld up some brackets.  He had not done any welding before, but he still did fairly well.  Unfortunately I do not have any pictures.

Strut Rods

I left off previously talking about the issues I had with the Global West strut rods.  Before i get into it, let me clarify that the Global West strut rods are very high quality units, I was extremely impressed with their engineering and quality.  The issue I had is I ordered mine from Summit Racing for a 1971 Mustang.  As it turns out, Global West does not make strut rods for a 1971, the latest they go is 1970.  I did not know this at the time I ordered them.  By the time I had discovered the problem, I had owned these strut rods for almost a year, so it was too late by Summit's return policy to get my money back.  I would be hit with a 20% restocking charge.  So I called Global West.  They were not sure, but thought that the 1970 strut rods are the same length as the 1971, so all I would need to do is turn down the spacer on the front clevis to make them fit.

I didn't take pictures of the full process, but here are some.  I took a measurement of the hole in the front frame where the forward clevis mounts.  By my measurements I needed to turn down the spacer by 0.030".  Here is a pic of the forward frame.

 I turned down the spacer by jigging it up on my drill press, spinning it at 3000 rpm, and using a grinding stone to work them down.  It took about 30 minutes a spacer since they appear to be hard steel, and I would take breaks to let them cool.  Here is a view of the mount with the back side of the clevis pin and the turned down spacer going in.

 Picture of the port side (left) clevis installed.  As I said, it is a nice high quality part.  Too bad they did not work.

And here is the end result with the strut rods installed.  This pic was taken with the rod fully collapsed resulting with the wheel being as far forward in the wheel well as possible.  As you can see in this pic, the wheel is still too far back in the wheel well.  My first indication that the Global West strut rods for a 1970 will not work in a 1971.

Instead of trying to further mod the Global West strut rods, I decided to buy a set from Street & Track built for the 1971 Mustang.  Here is a pic as they arrived.  Another well engineered and high quality part.

This pic shows the Global West strut rod (on the right) next to the Street & Track strut rod (on the left).  Both are high quality units, but he Global West seems to be of heavier construction.

Close up shot of the clevis end of the strut rods.

Close up of the lower control arm mount side of the strut rods.

The Street & Track strut rods were very easy to install, no mods needed.  Again, the Global West strut rods would be real easy if one were installing them in the car they were designed for.  The pic below is with them installed and at about the middle of their adjustment range.  The wheel location in the wheel well looks much better now.  It's amazing what the right parts can do.

The test drive with the Street & Track strut rods went well, they seem to work and are a great improvement over the stock units.  Now I have a set of slightly used Global West strut rods that I want to sell.  I paid $380 for them from Summit.  A 20% restocking charge is $76.  Since these are good units I would much rather sell them to a fellow hot rodder for about $300.  That way I get most of my investment back, and the buyer gets a great part at a significant discount.  In fact, since I turned down the spacers and they will probably need to be replaced, I'll go even a bit lower on the price.

It runs!

Well, over the past few months, I've made great progress on the Mach 1, but little progress on this blog.  I'm taking vacation this week for the 4th of July holiday, so one of my vacation goals is to update this blog with new status, pictures, and videos.  I'll open by saying I got the car on the road again.  The new brakes and suspension feel good, the exhaust is doing what it should although I wish it were a bit more louder, the new wheels and tires fit and look good.  Here are some pictures and videos to get started.

So one of my heroes died yesterday....

The world is a little less bad ass today. Godspeed Mr. Shelby, and thanks for everything!

Story here.

Wow, has it really been so long since I've posted an update?  I'm getting lazy.....

I have made significant progress with the brakes, suspension, fuel system, wheels, and tires.  So much that I am intending to drive the car this weekend! :-)

I'll post the full story and lots of pics later this weekend.

I've made some good progress

No pictures yet, but I made some good progress this weekend with more to go.

My friend Mike came over to help me get the rear axle and springs out, which we did.  My camera batteries were dead, so no pictures but they are charging now.  I'll get pics as I reassemble.

We opened the rear end while we had it out.  It was surprisingly clean inside with no apparent wear on the gears or bearings.   The carrier assembly was gooped in with liquid gasket instead of a proper paper gasket, so I suspect that the previous owner may have done some updates or repairs, which is why it looked so good.  We reassembled with a proper gasket, and scraped off about 30 pounds of road grime.  I took a wire wheel in my drill to it last night to clean up the grime, and in the process took off some of the original finish.  So for now, I sprayed flat black Rustoleum on it just to protect the bare metal.  Sometime later I will take the entire axle to be refinished, but for now I just want to get the car on its feet and on the road.

We counted gear teeth, and found 44 teeth on the ring and 16 on the pinion, which means a 2.75 gear ratio.  I have no idea what the car came with, but I will be putting lower gears in it.  I'm guessing 3.5 or 3.73, somewhere around there, but have some time to do some research.

It's colder than hell, at least for Texas, but I'm going to work on it some more this afternoon with the goal of getting the new rear springs attached and the unit back in the car.

I'll post more later.