69gmachine

I've been remodeling my house for the past several years, but for the last year it's been almost a full time job. I don't have time to play with my car right now. I've also been helping my son build a 95 V6 Mustang (with an '01 engine, trans, wiring harnesses and computer) so he'll have his own set of wheels. I've been learning a lot about fuel injection, computer controls and PATS, the stupidest idea Ford has ever come with. I hope to return my car next spring. I'll be back when I do.

Part of the problem is the original design with the shock and spring mounted on top of the UCA. The other problem for you is a very heavy engine. Even without spirited driving I think you may benefit from the extra bracing, not so much for corner carving, but just to prevent the towers from leaning in and flexing at the UCA pivot. Don't waste your time with the ones with a bend in the middle, they're just for looks as the bend acts like a spring. IMO, If you use the export brace you don't need the MC bar except for all out racing on slicks. If you remove the force acting on the towers by placing the shock and spring on the LCA that would help quite a bit, but that may be more than you're willing to do to that car. Another thing to consider is what tires you're using. If you have relatively skinny P235-15 street tires, the tires will flex and the whole car will just slide and not transfer much of the load into the chassis at all if you're really generating a lot of force around a turn. To illustrate my point, you can use any of the G-meter apps on your cell phone and you'll likely find that what you consider spirited driving on the street doesn't amount to much force at all. You may not want to make many mods given its an R code, but anything you could do to lighten the engine weight would help. Just my .02

If you get there early you can park in the surrounding neighborhoods for free. If you want/need to park close you can pay for parking right outside gate 1. Unless you paid to put your car in the showfield there really isn't any spectator parking. There are several small local restaurants downtown. I can't remember the names of any of them though. Nothing stood out as spectacular, but most of them are decent. Several of the regular chain restaurants are out on I-81. The place is huge, I think 81 acres or so. Before my knees fell victim to arthritis I would walk the entire faigrounds at least 3 times looking for deals. If there is something in particular you're lookiing for, do your research to find out what it's worth so you don't overpay. If you see something used that you really like and the price is fair, buy it. It may not still be there later. The vendors selling used stuff often ask wildly different prices for their stuff, so you have to know if it's above or below market value. I'm going to clean out my garage.

It didn't come with a 31 spline rear, but unless you're the original owner, there's always a chance someone has replaced it. Just check the axle hub end. If it has a recessed squared oval in the center it's 28 spline, if it's solid with 3 holes drilled out they're 31 spline (of course this only applies to original ford axles).

I'm in the process of adding new inner wheel wells to the lip of the existing well to add an extra 1/2" so my 315s can move without fear of rubbing. I think it's a lot easier to add room to the inboard side and not have to mess with the body lines. However, I did have to go with a narrower rear so I could use readily available 11" wheels. I'm planning to retain my fold down rear seat and hoping that I don't have to modify it so it still fits. It's going to be close. I agree with your sentiment regarding the look of 335s, but I also want my tires to be functional. The Azenis 615K is the stickiest 200 UTQG rated tire you can get IMO, and the biggest size it comes in is a P315. I don't think a BFG G-force rival (also rated at 200) even made the top 10 at the Ultima Battery street car challenge last year.

It has been my experience that the gauges seldom go bad. Most often it is the sending unit or the wiring. I don't know what constitutes "perfectly" good, but if it passes the grounding test and goes full scale, then try using a 30 ohm resistor to make it go half scale to convince yourself to look elsewhere. As for the tach, it sounds like it's shot. This is the exact same failure mode mine exhibited. I would consider upgrading to a 3 wire tach conversion. The factory tach carries the current to the coil so you don't want to keep driving on it waiting for it to completely fail. The speedometer is most likely disconnected at the dash cluster (but you should do the verification tests to make sure nothing is missing). Remove the dash cluster. Disconnect the cable at the tranny so you can pull enough length through the firewall to establish a solid connection to the cluster BEFORE you bolt it back in place. It's very difficult to ensure a good connection while it's bolted it.

I have to say I'm pretty skeptical of the value of mutliple bonding straps on a radiator. The purpose in this application is a simple DC bond to prevent a dissimilar metals galvanic action. Using a non conductive coolant (distilled water) and providing an alternate path to ground will minimize if not eliminate the potential current flow and resultant corrosion, no argument there. If we were concerned with one of the straps losing it's bond and they just want to have a back-up then OK, but 8? Just not seeing it.

Buddha, disregard request for how you measured. I see that is Ford's spec from curb to curb. Interestingly enough, the 2011 (and I would suppose 2005 through 2014) Mustang has a curb to curb turn diameter of 36.7 ft, only slightly less than 45 years ago. The 2011 BMW M3 has an even larger circle of 38.4 ft.

Buddha, Can you tell us exactly how that was measured? I'm assuming that's the inside diameter of the turning circle, but I would like to compare your numbers to mine (eventually anyway... I can't find my previous measurements and it may be a while before I'm back on the road). The decreased turn radius definitely seems to be a personal preference. Personally, I couldn't tolerate the giant circle mine made as I was cruising in a large caravan and needed to make some tight u-turns. The only way to decrease the radius if you're using a J-car rack is to substantially shorten the steering arm. Even if you have the necessary travel, if you use the stock spindle you still need 3 turns lock to lock to make the minimum radius. I can make it in 2.5 turns with my shorter steering arms. So not only do I have a tight turn radius, but I have a noticeably higher turn rate.

Dynacorn just released a new rack that is based on the GM J car rack but with all new components. The housing is billet aluminum and can swivel 360 degrees. The rack gears are helical cut chrome moly with 7" of travel. It's a bit pricey as might be expected at nearly $3K. It's interesting that they based their design off the GM J car rack. They also mounted the center take off centerlink in front of the rack as I did in my design. Nice looking piece, but then you would expect that for the price.

I recently pulled my 31 spline nodular 9" out to replace with a full floating rear. It only has about 5k miles since a complete rebuild and I've changed the fluid once already since then (had to replace the gasket due to a leak). It has 3:70 gears and a traction lock, and works perfectly. I've never drag raced it, only autocross and cross country trips. I'm in southern Maryland. $900. Let me know if your interested. There are no brake drums as I was using rear discs.

I should have said a little more steering wheel input rather than a lot. 2.9 turns is not bad at all.

I had the same experience with replacement original parts years ago. At that time there were only rebuild services for the gearbox and control valve and slave cylinder, but they lasted less than a year. Since installing my own coil over front suspension and rack and pinion steering, I have driven cross country and raced (autocross) my car and nothing has needed to be replaced after several years and thousands of miles. Once you switch to a rack, I can't imagine anyone would ever go back to a gearbox. I would also concur with this assessment. It is almost impossible to place a late model Mustang style rack high enough in the chassis to work with a stock style rear steer spindle and not have severe bump steer. I have no expectation that anyone would remember that I have an alternate design rack and pinion system that uses a centerlink but it has no bump steer issues even with very large (P275-17) low profile front tires. Like Randall, I use the GM J car rack because it's rear steer, readily available and inexpensive. Unlike Randall's, I don't modify the rack in any way, which keeps costs down. Since I've never driven either a TCP or Randall's rack equipped car, I can't compare either of them, and I hope your comparision is based on an actual test drive and not just a data sheet comparison. The J-car rack does however have less travel than the stock drag link, so I designed a rear steer spindle assembly to work with it using the Wilwood forged spindle that uses the '70 up Mustang pin. This resulted in a much quicker turn rate as well as a smaller turn radius that's comparable to any modern sports car. Even though the TCP rack has the necessary travel to work with the factory spindle, the long factory steering arm requires a lot more steering wheel input (turns) to result in the same turn radius as my design. That equates to time when you're on an autocross course. If all you do is cruise around town, this is probably not a concern. I have not made a production run of the centerlinks yet, and I only hav one customer so far (one of our members). He's using it with the factory spindle and doesn't mind the loss in turn radius. If there was sufficient interest I could make a run of the centerlinks.

Now those are just too cool not to use them! Add some shag carpet and you'll have a period correct hippie car restoration.

Although it will bolt in, the Cougar under dash wire harness is completely different as the connector at the gauge panel is in a different location. Not only would you need to use a Cougar under dash harness you would also need to use the Cougar taillight harness with sequential lights, so it's not a simple bolt in. Or you could use an aftermarket wiring kit.

The original Ford Holley with annular primaries is an awesome carb when properly tuned. I would try to find out what's wrong before replacing it. I'm running one on my 408 and it is perfectly matched to my engine. I get great gas mileage (relatively speaking of course) and mine doesn't run rich at all. All the plugs look nice every time I've checked. There is a ton of information on tuning a 4150 style Holley on the interweb.

upper and lower ball joint taper remained the same from the '60 Falcon (Mustang precursor) through the end of Mustang II production in '78 even though the MII spindle is a completely different design.

My guess is that you had the body supported when you tightened the shackles with the rear sagging down on the springs. Loosen the shackle bolts, support the rear with jack stands under the axle, simulate the weight of a full tank in the trunk and then tighten the shackle bolts.

Until recently I've been running the 17x9 Mach 1 knock offs on the rear with 275s and no spacer. Fit is excellent. I'm in the process of changing out to a full floating rear with an overall width of 58.25 so I can run 18x11s and 315s. I'm grafting new inner wheel housings on to the existing ones to move them in just 1/2" on each side.

Not knowing what the rest of the parts you need are, the bearings on the '70 spindle have a larger ID than the '69. The OD is the same, so you can swap them out to make a '69 hub work on a '70 spindle and vice versa. If you are buying replacement '70 hubs (or 1 piece rotors), just make sure you get '70 bearings and everything will all bolt together no problem.

You're probably right about there not being a hard and fast rule, but the grain pattern is difficult if not impossible to reproduce without using the original ford tooling. NPD claims they use some of the original tooling to reproduce the fold down seat side panels. If you compare them with the other reproduction versions you should hopefully see a difference in the grain pattern. Comparing other reproduction rear panels to the originals I can clearly see a difference, but since i'm not doing a concours restoration I don't really care. Most people won't look that close or care either. Only the paint daub and sticker crowd will require that level of fidelity.

There are several vendors that make good quality ready to drop in billet distributors, but I wanted the stock look. It wasn't really a matter of cost for me.

In my experience the Duraspark II as delivered by Ford is rock solid reliable. However, the cheap rebuilt units from a typical auto parts store replace the pickup and don't stake it properly. If there is any movement, or if the gap isn't set properly, performance will suffer. Even some of the "performance" rebuilders don't do a good job of making sure the pickup is mounted properly. It took me forever to figure out that was the cause of my problem (with a rebuilt unit from a "professional race shop". When I swapped out the guts with one from a used junkyard truck with the 10L reluctor arm, the low speed performance came alive. I had tried swapping to a smaller cam, I replaced the aluminum flywheel with a steel one and neither seemed to help much. After I rebuilt the dizzy myself, it performed brilliantly, and I re-installed the big cam. So, if you get a rebuilt unit, go find an original ford plate with the pickup already mounted to swap out. There's nothing to go bad on them so short of being in a fire, they'll last forever. The other thing I would recommend is adding a second bushing to the bottom to keep it stable. Any machine shop can do this, or just buy one from Davis already done.

I suppose if you never intend to use all the potential power you have with a 500 plus HP 408, then sure you can get by just fine with a 3/8 fuel line, but then why the heck did you build that motor? I also use the Rob MC fuel pickup with 1/2" aluminum line from the tank to the puel pump, but then transition down to 3/8 line from the pump to the carb. I don't drag race, but I did run out of power (as compared to a pair of Roush 427 supercharged Mustangs) while climbing a large hill (or small mountain). They rode behind me for a while then decided they didn't want to go that slow (around 70 mph) and just motored right past like I was sittin' still. At that incline when I pressed harder on the gas, I didn't get a noticeable response and had to let them go. I never thought that I would ever encounter a situation on the highway where my engine didn't have enough grunt to keep up with anyone while going the speed limit (70)!

Never heard of Tom's axles, but even if they are as good as Strange, the fact that he didn't comply with your request is reason enough to get your car out of there ASAP.