michael2938

On Dearborn cars it should be on the front radiator support somewhere. Passenger side I think. Not sure about other plants. -Mike

Not me. I just assumed it was because I was on mobile. Weird.

Your picture isn't showing up on your post. I think that he was asking.

I agree

Title matches the vin on the dash and fender.

Curious if anybody else has seen anything like this. -Mike

Zachary?? Yeah, I'd be the same way. Of course it's a problem I will never have. :)

It's still on the car, but I could see smoke coming from the internal switch itself. I'll probably swap it out with another one next week. As long as the headlights are off, it doesn't get hot/smoke and everything else that apparently goes through it works (e.g. brake lights). I didn't see any burnt wires anywhere and the switch connector looks fine. -Mike

I went to this show today -- it wasn't too bad, but I was disappointed in the vintage cars there. I counted 99 total cars at the show, and 20 of them were '73 and earlier mustangs. There were two '69's and 3 70's. The best of show winner was the other '69 - a Boss 429 in perfect condition. It was the best Boss 429 I had ever seen in person and very deserving of the win. Of course when you don't drive the car, it's much easier to keep in that condition.

Well it seems the dash light issue is a problem in the fuse box. It was one of the few things we didn't take off the car when it was restored. I have a spare fuse box from a parts car I will be replacing it with. Has anybody ever done this? I'm wondering how much of the dash I will have to take apart to do it. And if it's not one thing, it's another. I was driving the car yesterday and suddenly smelled something hot and then had some smoke coming out of my dash. After taking the pad, cluster, and radio out, I finally traced it back to a bad headlight switch. It is barely a year old! On the bright side, I drove my car my a total of 250 miles today without issue and have her safely in my garage again :)

I agree that would be annoying if most of the windows were up. Seems pointless to me since if they were going to do a concours judging on it, they ought to be opening the doors and really getting up close with the car anyway. So yeah, for a show like that, whats the point? I'll have to keep an eye out to see if I come across any shows like that.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I did some research a while back and figured this came from a '74 Galaxie, but I can't be 100% sure. And I forget what the compression was rated at, but it will work for what I wanted right now anyway.

Thought I'd give you guys an update. Turns out the guy who had the '69 351w actually had a 302, so that didn't work out. With memorial day off this week, I was able to get 3 days to work on the car with my father in law. We brought the car to his shop on Monday, pulled the engine, rebuilt the '74, and had it back in and running last night (Wed). I finally got to see what the inside of my engine looked like, and it was an absolute mess. As far as we can tell, it looks like a rod cap nut came off somehow. In the pile of broken parts I found a bolt without a nut and no damaged threads, so this is likely the culprit. Of course, I have no idea how that happened as when the engine was rebuilt it was torqued to the right specifications using a torque wrench. Anyway, here are some pictures. And here are pictures of the cleaned up and rebuilt '74 and going into the car. Fired up pretty easily last night.

I bought a majority of the stuff I needed from CJ Pony Parts and NPD. If you are not in a rush and can buy parts well ahead of time, buy them from CJ's only when they are running a sale and you will almost always find the lowest price across any of the companies. Outside of a sale, they tend to be on the higher side. When I needed something quickly, I usually went with NPD to avoid any potential backorders from CJ's.. -Mike

Actually just heard from someone locally that might have '69 351w we could use. Will be checking on that this week.

Yeah, I understand. The problem is that I would otherwise be out of a car for a majority of the nice weather months, not to mention spending at least $2k+ I don't have. I don't expect it will take more than a couple hundred dollars and 3-4 days sometime in the next few weeks to get back up and running. This way I can plan out a longer term build and do it the way I want rather than be rushed into it. I did get a chance to tear down the '74 engine a bit. It's dirty, but so far no real issues as far as I can see. The only thing I am not sure about is these pistons. I'm assuming these are lower compression than the stock '69 351w 2V pistons I have. I haven't actually pulled my engine out yet, but I know for a fact at least one of those pistons and rods is destroyed.

If my car is running by then, I'll be there. If not, maybe I'll tow it in?? :)

Yeah it actually looks like a big chunk of land is now missing... and all of it is farther away!

Here's the '74 351w. Not much to look at, and have no idea how the inside looks yet.

Are you using any of the original Alternator, AC, Power Steering brackets and pulleys from a 69?

I can't explain it, I just don't understand what happened. When starting it, the car fired up for a split second but would not stay running. On the third try, it fired up hard and immediately wasn't running right. Sounded like the RPMs continued increasing for a second or two (foot was not on the pedal). I turned the key off as quick as I could. Thanks for the link on Ebay, I think I'm going to see if I can use the '74 block I already have as a replacement. Its good to hear the weight balance would be the same and I could reuse my existing balancer and crank pulley. What about the alternator, power steering and AC brackets? I know the alternator has a different spacer only for '69. And I also know all the AC brackets for a 70 351w are all different, but I can't remember why.

Thanks, Danno. After blowing the engine earlier today (as posted in another thread), I've lost motivation now to try and fix my dash lights. But I'm sure I will come back to this in the near future.

Yeah, I don't really understand what happened. It seemed to have been running fine when I drove it to a car show today. Then when I went to leave, it decided to crap out on me trying to start it up. It was cylinder #8 that blew. I'm not sure my wife would like the coffee table idea, but I might be able to do something crafty with the other 7 pistons. :) I'm trying to figure out the easiest way to fix this. I had a '69 block in the car, with the 3 bolt harmonic balancer/crank pulley. The later 351w models had 4 bolts. I have a 74 351w that I could probably swap in there, but not sure if I am going to have problems with all my pulleys and things lining up properly.

yep, you got it. The round part was just a cap from a pulley that somehow came off--its the least of my problems. The piston sticking out of my oil pan on the other hand.... anybody in the midwest have a spare '69 351 block? -Mike

I'll give you hint... I picked them up off the ground under the car. :( I've had a bit of a bad day.