danno

If you want a new key switch, DigiKey has dozens of different ones. Try this link http://www.digikey.com/scripts/dksearch/dksus.dll?FV=fff40011%2Cfff8005d&k=key+lock&vendor=0&mnonly=0&newproducts=0&ptm=0&fid=0&quantity=0&PV545=12&PV69=4

You can test the oil, temp, and fuel gauge easily by making a ground connection on one side of them. You can only make the ground connections for 10 or 20 seconds, longer and you will burn it up. You should make this ground connnection on the side of the gauge that connects to the 14 pin connector, not the other side. Be very sure about this or you will burn up the regulator on the back of the gauge panel. Don't bother with the ampmeter, they never work anyway. Most never worked from day 1 in a brand new car. Even if it does work a little, it is a lot more complicated to check. I seem to remember that if you put a flashlight battery across the ampmeter terminals, it should move in one direction. Reverse the battery, and it should move in the other direction. But I am not sure about that.

It sounds like you need to do some voltage checks. You could have a low voltage that is causing the radio to die when you load the electrical system by running the motor faster. Your alternator should be able to keep up with it. What happens if you turn on the lights? Does the motor die? The ignition problem might or might not be related to the electrical problem. I would certainly check both the vacuum and mechanical advances on the distributor. You will need a timing light to do this right, but you can check the vacuum advance by diconnecting the tube from it to the carb base, pull the dissy cap, and suck on the tube you pulled from the carb. You should see the timing plate move in the dissy. The mechanical advance should be checked also, if you pull off the dissy cap and plate you can see if it looks ok, but a timing light is the true test. Could you have an obstruction in the exhaust? A pinched exhaust pipe might also give these symptoms. Could it be running a rich mixture in the carb? Pull the top off it and look to see the float is stopping fuel flow when the chamber is full. Can you smell gas in the carb when you shut off the motor? I am sure others on the forum will have other things to check. Good luck...

What can cause this is one light bulb socket that is not grounded. Check this at night, and see if they glow with the headlights off? Also check it with the headlight switch in the park lights only position. It is common for one of the sockets to loose a ground connection and do this.

What accessories does your car have? Does it have AC? Power brakes? tilt steering wheel?

Yes, there is supposed to be a gap there. That is how the light from the dash light bulbs in back reflect through this gap to light up the face of the gauge. If it all fits and you have no extra parts, you are probably doing it right!

I am working on my ampmeter. I am an electronics engineer, and I am seeing if I can do a simple modification to it to get it to work. It is possible to get a one wire alternator to work with the ampmeter to show a charge, you need to hook your new alternator up to the correct wire to old alternator. But if your ampmeter does not work even when brand new, why bother? Bruening is right, 10 gauge is small. But generally you will be ok with it. It could get hot if your battery is completely dead and you jump start the car. Otherwise, it will be ok. As for a voltmeter or ampmeter, if the lights get dim, or the radio stops playing, then I know I have a serious electrical issue. Also, a working voltmeter or ampmeter are only good if you happen to be looking at it. Sometimes idiot lights have advantages.

I think the flywheel could be the source of your problems. I thought it was the same for a 302 or 351 windsor. There could have been differences between a FMX and C4 flywheel though. If your tranny is removed, see if you can put a wrench on the crank pully and turn the motor over. You should be able to. If your tranny is not removed, you should be able to move the remove the starter and move the teeth on the flywheel. If your under hood wiring is a mess, then using the other loom would work. There were not that many differences in underhood wire harnesses. I think they had one for a V8 with or without tach and a 6. The same underhood harness was used for all "non tach" V8s; AC or no AC, convertible or no convert, with all motors and body styles. The loom for a car with a tach has a 4 pin connector to the alternator. So if yours has a 3 pin connector to the alternator and is from a V8, it will be fine. The large 10 gauge black wire is probably the one for the convertible top. They have a large black wire that connects to the battery terminal on the starter solenoid, it runs back through the firewall behind the carb. It is completely seperate from the underhood harness discussed above. It did not go under the carpet, though. No factory wires went under the carpet. The black wires out of your harness are probably not grounds! They used black wires for positive voltages then. So ask more questions and find out first.

The regulators on the factory cars were very reliable, but yours could be bad. But the odds are it is not the regulator, it is a wire problem somewhere. Put a jumper cable between the chassis of the alternator and the minus terminal of the battery, and see if it charges then. Also take the wires off the battery and clean the terminals and wire connectors with a wire brush. They should be shiny when done. Also remove and clean the other ends of the battery wires. This is critical, and must be done before you proceed. Also, if you installed a new alternator, are you 100% sure it is connected correctly???? If connected wrong, it can still work in the manner you describe. So clean both ends of the battery terminals, Also, as previously mentioned, to not remove the + wire to the battery when the engine is running, this can fry things. If you did it and everything is alright, you might be lucky. Take the alternator in to any local car parts place and they can test it to see if it is still ok. Do you have a digital voltmeter? That is the place to start. What is the voltage when the car is running? Is is slowly going down? So clean both ends of the both battery cables with a wire brush. Take the alternator in to a shop for testing. Verify your alternator is connected correctly, and after all these are done, if it still does not work, buy a new regulator. But then.... regulators are cheap and easy. You can try it first.

What in the world are you doing that needs anything more than 60 amps? I have mentioned this before, almost nobody needs anything more. Even if you have a 100 or 200 amp alternator, it will typically never put out that current. If it is not putting out 100 amps, it will not load the belts. I am not sure what your electrical power needs in the car are, but I would say that alternator never gets close to 100 amps in normal driving. If you have a belt slipping, you probably have a mismatched pully size or a bad belt. Air conditioner compressors take a lot more power, and they only have one belt on most cars.

I will explain a bit about the factory ampmeter. First of all, the meters were junk from day 1. They almost never worked and anyones car, or worked poorly at best. If you install a new alternator and a new wire from it to the battery post, your ampmeter is automatically disconnected. Your factory alternator did not connect directly to the battery post on the solenoid, it did so through a resistance wire under the alternator. The key is that you are connecting your alternator directly to the battery post on the solenoid. If your ammeter did work a little before, it will still work to show a discharge. If you have the lights on, and the motor off, it will show a discharge on the battery. But with your alternator wire connected to the battery post on the solenoid, it will never show that the car is charging. So your ampmeter will never show charge, but it will show discharge. When it is operating correctly, an alternator will only supply what is needed to operate the car. So suppose it is hot and you are driving at night with the AC on. The lights take about 15 amps, the AC clutch about 8 amps, and the AC blower about 15 amps. Your radio might take 10 amps if you have a large amplifier, and the motor takes 2 amps. So you add it all up, and you are at 50 amps. So your alternator will maintain a constant voltage on the battery and will be supplying the 50 amps it takes to run the car. These hugh alternators are an unnecessary overkill 90% of the time. Most people never need anything more than the what the factory alternator did, 60 amps. If you have a bunch of added things like halogen headlights, a radiator fan, and hugh amplifiers on your radio, then you might need a bigger alternator. Having said all that, I can understand wanting a big alternator. It will not hurt a thing to have it, and they are simple and cheap. I might also do it when mine blows up. But don't worry about the ampmeter, if you run the alternator wire to the battery post on the solenoid, it will be fine. I am sure of it.

Another method that could use is a real small grinding wheel on a Dremel tool. Just grind away at it. There might not be enough room, some of these other suggestions seem better. I have used my dremel to cut off stripped nuts, it should work for this.

It sounds like you have an electric choke. If the choke is turning on and off, that will change the voltage on it and the dizzy. Try disconnecting the choke, and the fluctuation should go away. The electric choke takes a lot of current when the car is cold and they first turn on. As they heat up, the current goes down. When they are at high current, the voltage drop in the wire to your distributer will be higher, so you will read a lower voltage. The gauges and radio should be designed with overvoltage protection built in. But even though they should have it built in, it does not mean they did. They will sell more stuff it it blows up due to a failure unrelated to the radio or gauges; another reason not to design it with the protection built it. My guess is you can purchase an external voltage limiter just in case the alternator fails. Contact the manufacturer of the radio and gauges, and see what they say. Electronics in your home have lightning proection built in, it is the same kind of protection as what you would need for a blown alternator. It is called an overvoltage limiter. The voltage regulator in the old gauges was not to protect them from an alternator fail, it was to provide a steady gauge voltage for a wide range of vehicle operating conditions. It gave the gauges the correct voltage, no matter what the battery voltage, air temperature, engine speed, etc.

If you have a good voltmeter, measuring the voltage on the battery is also an effective method. If everything is fine, it should be about 14.4 volts with the motor running. When you turn on the lights it should not drop very much. If it drops to under 13 volts, then you have a weak alternator. An alternator can have a diode that fails, and when this happens everything in the car will still work fine, until there is a heavy load on the battery. Turning on the lights is a heavy load. Your alternator is putting current into the battery, but the lights are taking more current out than the alternator can put in. When this happens, the voltage goes down. Have you noticed a squeel on the speakers of your radio? This is a symptom of a bad diode in the alternator. The symptoms you describe are typical of a bad diode in the alternator.

The shop you are taking it to should have insurance for anything in their possession. As long as they have it, they should be responsible for insurance. This can vary for each state, and some shops might still argue or not comply. I also agree with Bob, it sounds like you better get that baby insured now. All you really need is comprehensive to cover theft and fire. You should not need liability or collision yet. If someone will cover it for comp only, that is really cheap. I change my policy to comp only every winter when I have the car in storage, and it is about $5 a month.

I have one if you are still interested. I bought a junk wire harness a long time ago because I needed some stuff from it. I don't know what a fair price is, maybe $10? Plus a couple for shipping? I can get you a photo tonight.

Ouch, that mustangs unlimited part is awfully high priced! It is just a piece of plastic and a couple wires. I might have one from a scrapped harness I have that I could part with. I will look and let you know. Danno

It is a 2 pin connector. I hope i can explain the way it works. Your brake light on the dash has 12 volts going to one side of the bulb whenever the key is in the run position on the ignition switch. The other side of the bulb goes to this brake switch. If the brake switch gets off center, it makes a connection to ground through the metal on the disti block to the chassis. The other wire on the brake switch goes to the ignition switch. This wire is connected to ground whenever the key is in the start position. This lights the brake light whenever the key is in the start position. The 2 wires to this switch are connected together inside this switch. This way if the switch is disconnected, the brake light will not come on when the key is in the start position. So the pins should be connected together all the time when you measure the switch. You certainly have that. They should also be connected to the case of the switch whenever the switch is not centered. I hope that explains it. These switches are real simple and hard to imagine how they could fail. Put an ohmmeter between one of the pins and the mounting hardware. When it reads zero ohms, the switch is centered. Good luck, let us know if it works. Danno

Mach1 was discussing the testing of the switch, and my guess is the switch is ok, the position piston was not centered when it was rebuilt. I have never done it, but I think that is what is needed. You need to re-center the piston or valve, you might search this site for how to do it.

I am just throwing this idea around, but could it be the distributor mechanical advance? My guess is that you have checked the timing at idle AND at high revs to verify it advances. Maybe the advance with engine speed needs adjustment?

I have a couple of suggestions to check. If you have jumper cables, jump from the minus battery terminal to the chassis somewhere. There is a good chance the ground wire from the engine to the chassis (on the back of the motor) is bad. If you have a good battery, the problem is not with the charging system. A car will start and run for a long time with no charging. I would also clean the teminals on the battery with a wire brush. Too many times I have seen these get dirty and not make connection. Even though you think they are connected, if the terminal is oxidized, you will not get any voltage out of it. Do you have a voltmeter? You can buy them cheap enough and it will give you a real good indication for where the problem is. If you do not know how to use it and what to look for, you can ask us.

I have a lot of experience with electronics, I often provide my opinion if asked for or not. Tachman could do the conversion, or you could get an adapter. The factory tach was really just an ampmeter. The more amps the coil takes to spark the engine, the higher the tach went. New tachs work from the points, the higher the engine speed, the more often they open and close (or click) the higher the tach goes. It is fairly easy to make and adapter to convert from point clicks to amps. Unfortunately it would take time to design this, but once designed could be built for $20 or less. I really wonder if Tachman actually changes the tach method, or if he just puts an adapter on it? Whatever he does, the price is reasonable. If he was not doing this conversion, or if his price was unreasonable, I could do it. But it looks like that is your only option. If you would want me to look into this a bit more, I could. You have me curious now. I have the factory tach and harness. It is kind of late now, because it looks like you already have the harness, but for a lot of reasons like this I recommend most to stay with the factory harness. There really was nothing wrong with them, and if it has problems it can be repaired at usually a much lower cost than the price and work on installing an aftermarket system. The aftermarket harness can be easy or difficult, and it all depends on your own knowledge of how electronics works. It sounds like you will be fine after you get the tach figured out. If you have other questions, let us know! Good luck.

I understand what you are saying about the holes being too large for the gasket that goes under the mirror to cover. Another option that etel64 mentioned is to make the gasket under the mirror a wedge shape, so the long edge at the top is wider than the bottom edge. Or maybe run a bead of black silicon along the gasket at the top so it is a little wider, then let the silicon set up before installing.

First of all, are you 100% sure the mirror is from a Mustang? Often they substitute a mirror from a Torino or Tbird and this exact thing happens. The bases on those mirrors are different than a Mustang. If it is a Mustang, cut a piece of 1/4 inch thick steel about 1 inch wide and 10 inches long. Tap holes in it to match with the mirror. Then open up the holes you already have so the mirror will mount correct, and attach the mirror to the plate on the inside of the door panel. You can put a bit of epoxy to hold the plate in place if the mirror is ever removed. If you do not use a glue to hold it, the plate will drop to the inside of the door panel if the mirror is removed. I used the plate method on mine, because my car did not come with racing mirrors.

I tried a new idea that might work for you. Buy one of those ATO type fuses that are used in new cars. They are those type of fuse that have flat connectors on it, and the body is different colors of plastic. It turns out the spacing between the connectors on those is about the same width as one of those 4 amp short fuses. These are easily available. Plug this in right between the spring clips and your old fuse that is blown. Give it a try and report back! I think it could work!