foothilltom

http://picasaweb.google.com/tdayton/MustangStuff#5375029876450205490 Perhaps this will help. I just took this but have to run off to work, but yes, there's a spring (hopefully visible in the pic) that returns the handle to its neutral position. Tom

Oh man, I can feel your frustration from here! I'm not in the same league as you and these gents (still wondering what "mag the block" means), but I can certainly relate to being frustrated to the point of insanity at numerous times during these projects. Slimey has it right: take a break. Regroup. Consider your options with the machine shop. Your luck is going to turn around and you'll have a bitchin' car.

Hey Print Dad, I researched this a little bit for my son's car as his dash pad was cracked pretty badly. I wound up buying a replacement only because I found on on Craigslist for real cheap, but in case you didn't know, they make a hard plastic "shell" that fits snugly right over the top. It's a lot cheaper than a new dash pad and I'm told they look really good. As far as actually repairing the cracks, I don't know. You'd think some kind of plastic filler would be a start, but it would be tough to get that to match the surface finish. Good luck. Tom

Hey Print Dad, I'd really appreciate anything you have to say on the brakes. Just FYI, I bought a new MC today per the last discussion about the "stuck pedal". After removing the MC, the pedal now moves to the floor! Who woulda thunk. I won't be doing anything until this weekend, so take your time finding whatever you have. Thanks in advance, Tom

Hey flight96, I had turn signal issues with my boy's coupe and was eventually solved by replacing the turn signal switch (embedded below the steering wheel). The switch is like Rome: all roads go through there. I was amazed to see how many wires go through that switch even though it's primarily for the turn signals. A bad one will effect a number of things (the wiring diagram will bear this out) including instrument and brake lights as I recall. It's kind of a bummer to replace, but when you finally do see it, you'll understand how fragile it is. Of course, it could just be the signal flasher and that's easy to swap first. In my case, the flasher was still good even in a rust-bucket like my boy's car was. For what it's worth... Tom

Hey gents, thanks for the great responses. Here's an update: The smoke was most definitely spilled mystery oil. PrintDad, you definitely said it would smoke in your reply but I plumb forgot. The *amount* of smoke was alarming only because we were in the garage (doors open but still confined space) and my son was in charge of telling me if there was fire while I cranked her up. Anyway, after rolling her outside and starting her up again after the cleanup, the smoke was much, much less then eventually disappeared entirely. Whoo! I'm feeling my way around all of this stuff, but after new points, cap, rotor, plugs, timing and dwell set, she is actually idling @ 750 rpms and smooth as silk. I am pretty excited to have gotten this far. The radiator has a few cracks in several places, so that has to be replaced, but it's good enough for my initial warmup tests. I have my original gas tank back in after having it boiled out (the shop had done the work the same day I dropped it off, so no new tank for me just yet, Pak). So now I'm off to the brakes (per my other thread). I'll pick up the story there for anybody that's interested. Thanks again, guys. Tom

I felt the same way about eating beef after watching a History Channel show on slaughter houses. A couple of days later, I was over it. Get yourself a firewall and enjoy the hell out of your car.

Howdy gents, Now that the motor is purring along, I thought I'd take a stab at the brakes, and I'm once again scratching my aging noggin. She has stock front disc brakes from what I can tell. Oddly, the pedal doesn't move more than an 1/8th of an inch or so. I mean, it's damn firm and there are no brakes whatsoever. There is no travel either direction. Stranger still, there wasn't a hint of brake fluid in the MC...like it had evaporated completely. Does the total absence of fluid result in a rock-firm pedal? I would have thought the total opposite (pedal to the floor) if there is no fluid in the lines at all. I filled both sides of the MC and was going to bleed the right-rear first, but then the wife reminded me of an engagement (dammit) and I had to go. But now that night has fallen, I'm sitting here wondering how I'm supposed to bleed the brakes when I can't even press the pedal down. Recall this baby sat for 20 years. Does the power booster or MC just go bad with age? They *look* brand new for what that's worth. Will a tiny amount of pedal be sufficient to bleed the brakes? Will they "soften" up or is this a desired state for power brakes. As always, am grateful for the edumacation I consistently get here. Tom

I had my boy make a firewall in HS metal shop last year. We painted it and installed it. It made his Mom feel a lot better, though we all understand that these cars are fundamentally not as "safe" as modern cars (air bags, ABS, what have you). Not trying to be funny in a serious situation, but I found myself seeing my kid's Mustang prior to the restoration when they were showing the burned out cars.

Excellent! Thanks to both of you. I had no idea you could instruct google to limit to a site. How cool is that. Thanks Pak for the syntax. My stupid questions will be reduced by a full 6% now :) Tom

Hey gents, I'm wondering if there are some secrets to effectively searching this forum. My experience has been that searching usually returns a huge list of matching threads and I wind up trolling through a whole bunch of information to finally get what's relevant. This is great when I have the time (and I've learned a lot along the way), but when I don't have the time, I wind up posting a question that has probably been asked many times before. So my question is: does the search feature support the "match all words" kind of thing? For example, if I searched on "radiator recommendation 351", I would hope to only get threads that have ALL of those words instead of *any* of those words. I've tried the "advanced" search page and I haven't seen any dials that would let me refine my search of match on all words. Any advice on effective searching would be much appreciated. In the meantime, I find this forum to be the only thing that keeps me from losing my mind on my project. I'm grateful for the patient, informative responses to my often inane questions, but would like to be able to use the information that is clearly embedded in the archives here. Thanks, Tom

Hey Pak, I'd be happy to buy your wheels and Bnickel's console. Let's work out a price and get it done. Obviously, I'm knee-deep in getting this thing started/rolling/stopping, but I can find room in the budget for these two items for sure. Thanks! tom

Lafugate's picture is excellent and should help you immensely. However, it's quite another thing entirely to make that first slice to your headliner, so I would use his picture as a frame of reference, then trust your finger. Poke along until you find the threaded hole. Stay with it until you find it exactly as it'll take some time to get your bearings. Then make a nice easy cut with your x-acto knife and you're good to go. It'll be great. Tom

Yeah, there was definitely a similar smoke that came out of the exhaust for the first few seconds after the first start. That cleared up and then we started seeing a pretty good amount of smoke from the headers/valve covers area. It was too diffuse to get a fix on the origin and I was already late for a dinner thing with the wife, so we packed it in. Come to think of it, I was squirting that Mystery Oil in the cylinders with a $2 oil can that leaked pretty good. I definitely spilled more than a few drops, so I wonder if that could account for it. I'll give it another try tomorrow and see if the smoke eventually dissipates which would make a great case for burning off the headers. I just didn't want to run the engine in the face of a serious problem. Thanks for pointing me that direction.

...and not in the good smokin' way, either. I started her up today after 4 days or so of slowly going through the steps outlined by PrintDad in another thread (oil the valves, rocker arms, pistons, hand crank, etc.) and damn if she didn't actually fire up. I had my boy in the garage (doors open!) and he gave me the "cut" sign after a bunch of what appeared to be "gray-ish" smoke billowing out of the area of the headers and valve covers. We played this game twice and it was smoking pretty damn good from my vantage point, so I decided to shut it down for the weekend and go back to the "bat cave" and mull over the next move. My layman's instincts tell me this smoke is exhaust, but I have no idea if this is a sign of serious issues or the result of burning off all that "Mystery Oil" I jammed down the cylinders. All told, it ran for about 30 seconds today. Anybody have any suggestions for what this might be? Do header gaskets get bad with just age? I could replace those for sure, but I figured I'd get the collective wisdom here to set up my jobs for next weekend. She lives though! The 351 sounded pretty tame with the stock exhaust setup. Definitely needs some mufflers here at some point. My boy (whose 302 sounds nastier) kind of gave me that "WTF" look when it ran so quiet. Just wait, boy.... Tom

Well, I tore off the vinyl top of a Grande' couple a couple of years back to discover a roof panel that was essentially disintegrated (but that's another story). The vinyl comes off pretty dang easily. As I recall, there are only a few "trouble spots" where getting over-zealous with the ripping could damage some stuff. You'll need to remove the molding around your windshield, front pillars, and obviously the molding in the back. Assuming you don't have a big rust problem, you'll be greeted with spot welds and rivets that you'll need to address. Part of the fun is doing it yourself. Right? You didn't say, but I'm assuming you're looking to remove the vinyl to go hardtop? If you're replacing the vinyl, I have nothing intelligent to say.

Hey bnickel, I'm very interested in buying up any of your GT parts that you won't be needing. I'm running out to dinner with the wife, but let me take a closer read and we can start up a private chat? Thanks! Tom

I *am* glad I didn't walk for $400! I was surprised that the Marti report didn't mention the stripes, but perhaps that paint code equates to base color and stripe? Probably not. In any case, the car is Black Jade and the door codes matched. There may have been talk of another color, but not from me. I really like that color as well. There are some pretty rough spots, so I'll be repainting this somewhere down the line, but too many things to do first. Just called the PO and he says he can't recall storing the console or wheels separately, so that may be a dead-end. I asked him to keep his eyes peeled when he goes through the rest of his storage. I suppose I should start the process of finding a console at some point. Good advice about restoring as close to stock as possible. The interior will be my greatest challenge as it's in *really* good shape and I'm loathe to mess with it now anyway. All in good time, but I have no plans to further modify it...just get stuff working and see how the budget sits. In the meantime, I'm pleased as punch (which I hear is pretty dang pleased).

Hi gents, just got my Marti report this morning and it confirms this little sleeper of a coupe is a GT. I'm very excited about that. Just passing on the good news. Tom http://premiersoft.com/powpow/mustang/gt/rptMain_205.pdf Oh, and does anybody know what the "Console" option means? After review, I clearly do not have the "Visibility" option, but I want what Console means...

Hey Pak, I should have asked about that before I drove it down there. $85 did sound sort of steep, but I had no idea a new tank ran only $100. Grrr. I'll call them this morning and stand them down if they haven't started. My "old tank" for what it's worth has no drain plug but it really is"shiny". Methinks it's not the original tank and was replaced close to when the girl went into storage. Other than it's shiny and new looking, is there any case to be made for boiling it vs. replacing it?

Hey Bnickel, she most definitely has disc brakes...and from the pictures I've seen, it looks like a factory setup. Alas, I don't see any of the "visibility" options you mention, though I swear I saw a Parking Brake light that said "Brake system" illuminate when I was going through the various lights. I'll go back out tonight and check closer for the rest of the lights. If this is helpful, there are large anti-sway bars in the front and rear...and my son's coupe most definitely didn't have these. The leaf springs are "beefier" and the front suspension seems to be heavy-dutier, for what that's worth. Finally, I DID order the Marti report the other day. Sounds like a few days and I'll know. I ordered just the basic $17 report. I'll definitely let you know cuz if this is a GT, I'm going to be very stoked. Tom

Thanks, Limey. You were right on all fronts: the sending unit filter-bag was all nasty. Nothing would have moved through that. I cut it out and had to run a fish-tape through it to knock out the gunk. I rinsed with Acetone then blew the sweet bejeezus out of it with the air compressor. Same with the fuel lines all the way up to the pump. That's when I ran into my little issue. I brought the tank down to the local radiator place today and they're gonna boil it out. $85 which sounds reasonable, I guess. I'll take the carb off tomorrow and see what I have there. I'm guessing a rebuild is in my future. In closing, the smell of 20 year old gas is amazingly powerful. I had my tank in the front yard and we could smell it from everywhere. Thanks for the help today. A good day all things considered....one step closer to turning the key!!! Tom

Hey Fordrevhead, that's great info, thanks! I will absolutely use that to re-install. Thanks very much. Tom

As the late (and beloved) Gilda Radner might say (in character of Emily Litella): "Nevermind". I found this cool pivoting socket extension and after rotating the pump itself (taking out the easy bolt), I could just squeak it on there. So the bastard is out. Sorry for bugging y'all. But in an attempt to salvage my dignity on this post, I'd like to ask this: Would I be well-advised to just replace the fuel pump for a car that sat for 20 years? A little bit of brown lacquer-gas came out, but the pump itself looks new. I suppose all the badness could be inside. What do you think? Buy a new one? Thanks! Sheepishly, Tom

It's just like old times...my fingernails are dirty, 10's of small sheet metal cuts on my hands, I'm swearing a lot more again...yep, good times. Slowly going through the fuel system to rid this Rip Van Winkle of 20 years old gas and I want to remove the fuel pump. All is well except: How the hell does one remove the 2nd (closest to the firewall) bolt that keeps this SOB on the block? It's conveniently located (by a designer who I'm hoping is rotting in hell right now) such that it is impossible to get a wrench on it, or any socket-combo that I have. It's *just* out of reach of all my tools. My M.O. is to stop working, post something here, and wait for wisdom before attacking again. Should I remove the Power Steering Pump to get better access? I could post a picture (i will if need be) but am hoping somebody who's done this recently can remember the right magic. I should mention the engine is in and I would prefer not to pull it...at least not for this job :) Thanks as always, my clearly-crazy-bastard-comrades-who-restore-these-cars. Tom