smh00n

I just realised this has been converted. Was the vibration there before the conversion? Maybe something is not aligned?

Damn I knew there would have been an easier way.

I think the torque convertor would manifest in an engine vibration. I don't know the answer, it sure sounds like a rotating issue but exactly where is the question.

Prequel - before the rebuild. I've had this thing going on 8 years now and for the first 4 or so it sat not touched. One issue I did have was the tail lights and turn signals. For reasons that escape me, our Bureaucrats have deemed that all cars must have 2 operating stop lights at all times. We can use the red light as per original but not the system where all lights dim for the indicators. Hence, we have orange indicators that work separate to the stop lights on all cars. Even the current Mustang gets special tail lights and even mirrors specific to Australia. I know there are cars out there with the US-style lighting, but they are in breach and I don't want the Po-Lice stopping me and hassling me. The previous owner had done what is common here - converted the reverse lights into indicators by re-wiring and putting in orange bulbs. I guess y'all know that a single tiny little bulb in a big old 70 tail lights housing doesn't do much in terms of light in daylight, and having the indicators down under the bumper means the jerks following you posting influencer content on their phones can't see. A couple of near-misses when turning made me decide to upgrade the whole thing. My first effort was buying a 3-bulb conversion which I think are made by Scott Drake. Good in concept, 3 times more light than before. Still the issue of the indictors remained and I wasn't happy. I hacked the wiring so all 3 lights came on for stop and tail. (The wiring had already been hacked during the 'rebuild' so I felt guilt but only moderate). They also do not fit without trimming and coercing so I rate them 3/10. And then, when I pulled them to go to Plan B, they had started to melt the lenses; I hit the interwebs for inspiration. Some of the things being done were individual LED put on a board and wired up with resistors. Pretty much the same as the ones being offered in the US. I thought that was a good idea, as the US-supplied ones still cancelled the stop lights when indicating, giving me no benefit. Looking at the US ones, I thought I could build my own panel and have the stop, tail and indicator all in one unit. So I started looking for bright LED that could run on 12V and be suitable. I found a little joint in Tasmania, https://www.ledsales.com.au/ and he was really helpful. He had the LED I needed along with resistors, voltage reducers and other neat things I still needed to learn about. When I told him my plan was to mount 96 LED on a board, in them in series and have a third used as indicators, I think I won dumbass of the week. For those not in the know, LED need a certain amount of power to run, they have to use all the voltage supplied and they go bright and dim based on the power. Or some chat like that, it still makes my head hurt trying to understand it. Basically, every dot on this template is a solder point, and a tiny one at that. He rightly pointed out that what I proposed was a lot of soldering, a lot of resistors to run them, and a lot of work. He suggested a COB LED. COB is Chip On Board and they look like this Now armed with a New Plan, he found these which had the right light volume (LED are rated in brightness, the details escape me right now) and we figured that with the red lens of the original lens, these would produce a decent light. Moving right along, they do. I used 3 COB per light; 2 would be stop and tail, 1 would be indicator. I was hoping to use all 3 panels as tail lights but never did it. Maybe the next upgrade will see it. The beauty of LED is they go bright with the power you give them. For stop lights I give them the full 12V. For tail lights, about 9V does it. The COB is basically a single LED, so I only needed one resistor per circuit to sort it out, and not 200,000 with individual LED. I spent a lot of time working out what voltage would be the best for each circuit, which is done by the value of the resistor you use; I also used one-way resistors to stop the full power from the brake lights going to the tail light. I thought I was pretty smart on that one. One issue I had was power fluctuation. As I see the battery voltage on the Sniper dash, I had fluctuations from 11.9 to 13.9. Realising having flickering tail lights would also attract The Law, back to the LED man I went. His solution? A little chip that drops voltage down to a constant value. So I got some 12V ones and worked them into the start of the circuit. Now, regardless of the power being pumped out I would have a steady 12V to the lights. V1 saw all the resistors and constant voltage things mounted onto the lexan sheet. I don't have a shot of this but I started getting concerned that vibration might affect the soldering, and the fact the entire light needs to be disassembled for service. Enter V2 please. 10-odd bucks at the hobby electronic shop later, I had a alloy, waterproof housing. From the bottom; The 4 light circuits (Stop, tail, left and right indicator) come into the housing, and are plumbed into the constant power resistor things. These are earthed and I have put them all out to a common earth, and the reduced power travels underneath the lexan sheet to the 4 main resistors which reduce the voltage for each circuit. There are 3 rated at 10 Ohms which are the stop and 2 indicators. The single at 56 Ohms is for the tail lights. I have 3 wires coming out; remember the ability to power an LED to adjust the brightness? On the left, you can see the one-way resistor that stops the full beans from the stop lights entering the tail light circuit. With the tail lights on, it receives less power due to the higher Ohm value resistor and when you activate the brake circuit the full power hits the circuit and lights up the LED brighter. I have chopped up the rear harness even more and inserted a plug into this box. From the box another plug runs the wiring in a new harness to the lights Here you see the nearly-complete board inside the light housing (professionally marked LH you will see) with the wiring in place. Red wires are stop and tail and go to the 2 inner panels. White is the indicator and goes to the outer panel only. I was concerned about the amount of heat needed to solder the wires to the COB, so my soldering is low rent. For that reason, I didn't run the tail light wires to the outer indicator panel, but perhaps a later upgrade may see that done. I did buy 2 spares so I can test one to destruction if needed. The finished product does what I wanted; however, I didn't take into account the resistance in the wiring so the lights are not as bright as they were on the bench. Luckily, with this system I just need to unplug the alloy box, and re solder in new resistors. IMG_3455.MOV

Yep, what was supposed to be a quick easy 2 week job went bad quickly. Some of it I could have just ignored like the Borgeson stuff. Some of it was my fault through not knowing, but this is the first Mustang I have really seen up close let alone work on. I just get pissed when you have to hot rod the supposedly hot-rodded bits you bought.

It's alive! Finished the little chores; new brake hoses made up and put in. The 'rebuild' saw later model hoses fitted which had the wrong brackets and were real tight on full lock so now I have new hoses with the correct Mustang bracket (incidentally, the same as our Falcons up to about 1973). The original bolt holes were flogged out so I pit some 1/4" rivnuts in for UNC bolts, not screws as I think were original. New brake pads, a few minutes pressure bleeding the system. Next, I went to put the export strut brace on. It went well until it didn't; The frame appears it is twisted or bent. Hardly surprising on a 50+ year old car but still annoying. I have a Monte Carlo brace that does seem to fit so maybe I need to look again at the export brace to see why. I just chucked the 2 piece ones back on and thought no more about it. I also researched new spark plug leads. I have Dart Pro 1 heads on it with angled plugs, and the original MSD wires with straight boots were hitting the headers, and starting to melt. They were also damn ugly and too long so were all over the place. No one seemed to have anything that worked, until I thought I'd try a local place with a good rep, https://www.iceignition.com/ They had a set of leads with 45° boots that were made to go around the rocker covers. They also recommended a set of pedestals to keep it all tidy. The best news is the leads are 9mm, the pedestal set was cheaper than other shops had them at, and they were on my doorstep at 11am the next day. Best $220 I ever spent. I'm going to miss the near-daily deliveries of bling in the future. These are a Redline brand wire retainer. Compact, neat and a good design. The only criticism I have is the cap screws are too long for a Ford head, and because they are a decent stainless steel, its hard to cut and clean the threads up. I might yet swap these out for studs as I have studs on all the other holes. This was the worst side with the MSD wires. In the top right are the brake pipes coming from the brake master cylinder, the wrapped hoses are the power steering hoses and there's not a lot of room. Passenger side. Appeals to my minor OCD issues. ICE said not to retain the first clamps but I did anyway, as I like to break the rules. Another benefit of the ICE wires is the plugs to the cap are a lot smaller than the MSD ones, so you can cross the over on the cap and they don't get all jammed up. I am a fan of ICE now and will look at the whole system next time I need one. Some under-rocker-cover-action. Coz I can :) I also hooked up a oil pressure light, as the gauge is very slow to react when it does work. I used an el-cheapo LED light that I mounted on a stainless steel flat that I bent up to bolt to the ignition block and routed up under the shroud. It's a temp thing as I am probably going to get a set of Dakota gauges and maybe a new aftermarket bezel and will mount it into the bezel. The switch is in the OEM oil pressure hex thingy, I drilled and tapped a new hole and ran a wire through the temp/coil/oil harness. I've only driven it for about 20 minutes around the district and can offer you these thoughts; * The Borgeson power steer is a massive disappointment. It is heavy at parking speeds, but with a couple of thousand revs it lightens up. Hard and uncool to do so when you are trying to park. At speed it is nice, a decent weight to it. I will see if I can get a smaller pulley for it. The pump has a minor leak. It looks like I need to put mount studs on it, which are 40 bucks a set over here. Very annoyed they are not supplied with the pump, for the price of a takeaway lunch Borgeson could include them. * This thing is crisp and likes to rev. With a new engine, gearbox and diff I need to take it easy but with the little bit of running and not putting a load on it, it wants to go. The flywheel is like a NYC pizza pie in thickness but it does have enough torque to lug down to ~1,500 in 4th and still pull cleanly. It has a serious bumpity bumpity bump bump bump idle to it. * The TKO600 box is nice. Gearing is great, no big rev drops on changes. Driving a LHD manual transmission car for the first time has it's own challenges but so far so good. I have a Hurst shifter for it which is a bit long and rat-roddish so I may have to investigate alternates. * 3.50 gears may be a bit low. 5th on this box is only 0.82 overdrive so it will be humming at highway speeds. Maybe 3.25 would be a good compromise but I'll see how it goes. I can't see me doing interstate trips regularly so it may be nothing to worry about. Glad I didn't use the 3.89 I originally bought for it. * I used a 24" radiator and so far have not seen it top 195° when idling. I have set the fans to come on at 185° and the second one at 190° and it seems to keep it cool. Perhaps my ebay special radiator I last used wasn't as good as I thought, or maybe a new block with no crud blocking the tubes is the reason. Either way, I hope I don't have cooling issues. * It's loud. Probably too loud and I am going to see if I can get quieter mufflers. Possibly using Flowmaster Super 44's, but I'll take it to the exhaust shop that supplied me all the pipes and see what they have. He rolls around in a 80's Chev Caprice so he is down with hot rodding. Next step is to get it inspected and re-registered then start rolling it around on longer runs until I know it's reliable and not going to embarrass me. So here it is, idling away. The rear springs will hopefully drop a bit more. The hood scoop is off as I have yet to put in the LED flasher kits and it's got shed (barn?) dust after being tucked up for 4 months, but it's mine and I did it myself. IMG_5558.MOV

I would spend some cash with another driveshaft place and have them check the shaft. If it is at 2 different speeds it's definitely harmonic. Thinking out loud below; Have you tried changing gear when you feel it? So keep to 80k but increase engine revs; try both second and first gears. Does applying the brakes change it? If you drop it into neutral is the vibration still present? Can you swap wheels front to back, or if not, side to side to see if that changes it? Does it feel more towards the rear or the front? Could it be a wheel? Is the vibration a constant rattle or does it cycle from minor to major? Does it do it when cornering or just straight line? Perhaps take off both rear brake drums, spin it up and see if the axles are true. I still suspect there may be housing damage. A 9" is a big sucker and if you had bent axles it's had some sort of hit in the rear so maybe the tubes are out of alignment?

I've just done a Borgeson power steer swap. Not impressed, as heavy as manual steer at parking speed, big and bulky box and a lot of expense. The parking speed weight will probably disappear with a smaller pulley as when I rev it it lightens up, but not what I expected.

Not sure the exact process and what it affects, but it's part of the MSD box so the engine cranks as per normal but just does not fire. The fuel pump runs, the sniper dash lights up, all looks normal. Just an in-built kill switch. Great idea, except when you forget you switched it and you try starting your car with everyone within a mile radius watching your every move.

It might be worthwhile pulling the housing and having it checked for straightness? More of a make sure nothing else is going to stuff you up step.

Post-empting the above post, the list is certainly getting smaller. I gave up on the alloy radiator. I couldn't get top mounts for it without fabricating them, mounting it to the side of the front panel was a pain and the lower mounts were never going to work. Not knowing what to do, except spend another $1,000, the heavens opened and a bright beam of light guided me to a local Mustang forum where a bloke was selling a OEM style brass 24" radiator that had recently been serviced. Score. So I bought that, had it sent and it was put in yesterday. New hoses, a filter and hopefully things are cool. I finished the exhaust yesterday. Not pretty as I'm not much of a thin wall welder but it is in and no leaks. I invested in some nifty clamps which came in handy with only 2 hands and 3 joins. Prior to that, my welding helmet failed and it was too dark to see. So I buy a new one. Excellent, I can now see in colour and welding is nice. But then they turn to birdshit. Why? I have a half bottle of gas. Except, I can't hear gas flowing. Why? The regulator has failed and shows half a bottle when there is zip. Zilch. Nada. Another 1 hour round trip to the gas shop. I made a goof many years ago and bought centre entry and exit mufflers. I should have got offset as the main pipes are too close to the driveshaft Above is a shot of the X Pipe which I bought pre-fabricated, but as it is a straight inlet and exit, it made for extra cuts and welds. I have tightened up the rear hanging mounts (which are not original ones) but if they work loose then I'll have to go to plan B. In my steel shed it is pretty loud, and while I'm a paid up member of the If its's too loud, you're too old club, I may change to offset mufflers to get a nicer result. This morning, I ran new fuel lines to the Sniper, plugged all the spark plug wires in, set it at TDC for the timing, filled oil and water and turned the key. With a few bangs and pops it started, filled the shed with smoke from the oil in the cylinders and then settled down. The tappets need to be re-set but there are no leaks. It sure as heck is crisp and revs quick. I had one vacuum port unplugged so hard to gauge the idle lope, but as the video shows it's got a definite lump to it. As it's still on axle stands I put it into first gear and it ran smooth with no noise from gearbox and diff. Couple of things to fix now, before I can get it re-registered; Get a new PCV hose as the old one was cracked New spark plug wires as the current MSD straight plug ends don't like #7 & #8 and I need 90° ends New front brake hoses made up, as the later Falcon calipers I have put on it need longer ones New front brake pads Once all that is done I can do some test runs to make sure all is good and then enjoy it.

4 months of work, blood, sweat and swearing. The car fought back lots of times. The bank account went down big time. Wife seriously not happy with every weekend spent in a shed. But was I happy with this? F&*K YEAH. First start.mp4

Yes, the white wire I have connected to the cigarette lighter. Push it in, grounded. Sneaky, right? Except now the whole world knows.... I am using all MSD ignition; billet distributor, 6AL CDi box all hooked up to the Sniper. Effortless, never had an issue.

I have Holley Sniper and it has a ground wire that I have hooked up. Engine turns over, does what it is supposed to do except fire.

Good intel. I will look at doing the NSS. Along with the fact it's a stick, that might confuse the kids who might attempt to boost it when I'm parked on the street.

....Or, you could just buy one of these. Amazing what you find when you search 1970 Mustang back up switch harness. This looks like it is made/supplied by Scott Drake, it is a 4 speed harness and has the correct plug. $40US is a bargain I reckon. One supplier told me it had been discontinued so lucky another one had stock. The manufacture date is 2016 so it may well be obsolete. Looks good, it has the NSS loop

I read somewhere else the 6 cylinder radiators had smaller radiator outlets. If it is the radiator you are having issues with, perhaps that's the reason?

Busy weekend with lots done. Cleaned the diff housing with degreaser and a pressure washer. Dropped in new axle seals. Didn't bother painting it, it's just a diff... Put the rear springs back in, I bought new rubber bushes for the front but the rears were already new Scott Drake repro's. There's a bit of movement so I'll see how they feel and might put in polyurethane ones. One bit of carnage I found was the ubolts have a bit of a bend to them, so I'll buy new ones. Made up new brake lines, the old ones had corrosion at the fittings but they are original so not a bad run. As I was lying on my back trying to put the drive head in I was kinda glad I stuck with the 8" and not a 9". Fitted up my new driveshaft and we have a full drivetrain again. This is a new 3" tube with a billet 1350 front yoke and a billet 1350 diff yoke. I got over $3,000 invested into the driveshaft and diff! Next, the exhaust. I baulked at 700 bucks for a shop to do it, but after today I'm thinking that's cheap. I spent $280 on 45° angles, a X-pipe and 3 foot of straight pipe. I'm running a 2.5" system, with the mufflers dropped just before the diff. (I like a loud and proud V8). After 5 hours of work I the driver side into the X-pipe, and the passenger side lined up, but need another 45° to finish the passenger side. Real hard work getting clearance, a nice run and avoiding the speedo cable. I had put heat sleeve on the speedo cable but I might add another layer as it is about an inch away from the pipe. Next is running pipes back to the mufflers, but I'll need a bit of a kick up to make it nice. The job list is getting smaller, I just need to finish the exhaust, get it back on the ground so I can measure the front brake hose length and have them made, get some brake pads then bleed the system and it should finally be off axle stands for the first time in 4 months.

You and me both. Made in China, pressed stainless, probably cost 30 cents. That's why I only bought 3.

That's a 70 set up with the driver outlet. If you can cross reference from a Mackay branded hose, either a CH959 or CH924 will fit. The difference is how long the 'tail' is that comes out of the radiator. This has the correct kink in it to clear the OEM power steer belt. I don't know what the outlet sizes are, they are the original size. That power steer setup is just all wrong. Junk it and start again.

The guys that did my shaft (I dropped you a PM) made sure I knew about that little issue of losing the washers. Hopefully this fixes it for you.

Galston, up north

Been a while since posting. I have been copping some serious static from my wife for neglecting chores around the house so I took a weekend off to do some much-needed tasks like tree pruning, mulching gardens and pulling weeds. Let me clarify static - nothing is spoken or done, there is just this aura that emanates from her to me and the pressure waves go through your body. Y'all know what I'm saying. Progress so far has been one forwards, 2 backwards. The pulley for the Saginaw P/s pump arrived, but the offset was too deep and I couldn't use it. 96 bucks gone. Whilst waiting for the pulley to arrive, I hooked the power steer up and threw some fluid in it. The reason for putting fluid in it escapes me, as it is not ready to start, but lucky I did as the whole lot fell on the floor overnight. One reason was I didn't tighten the mount bolts on the rear of the can up, and as the bolts go into the reservoir the fluid found the path of least resistance. But, when tightening up the bolts I still had a leak. The interwebs seemed to favour the fact that as the kit was supplied with bolts and not studs like GM did, the seals behind the can were not sealing and leaking. So I started looking at studs. Down under, we get bent over by nearly every vendor and all I could find was a set for a Pontiac for 40 bucks. Plus freight. I found an old guy who did power steering and spent well over an hour in his shop. The first thing I learnt was Saginaw pumps are basic; when you pull the reservoir can off there are 3 seals that sit in recesses in the actual pump body to seal the reservoir. Well, lucky me, the two orings (square section seal actually) were ripped behind the mount bolts and that's what caused the leak. Next was the pumps supplied by Borgeson have some foreign matter in them and they are not clean. With new seals and a bit of hope I put the pump back on, put in about a half a quart of fluid and put a jug under it. After 2 weeks no red stuff so maybe I won that one. I am going to risk the smaller section pulley and hope it does not make life miserable. Next I got the driveshaft back. This is a whole new shaft with 1350 joints and a billet FMX yoke (which is what is used on a TKO, don't get ripped by buying a 'TKO' yoke). It's only money, but a weeks pay money hurts. The diff and axles went off to the diff guy for a rebuild, 3.55 gears and a True track, whilst the rusty wheel bearings will be replaced. I started to drain the housing of oil, and was not surprised at all when I felt chunks in it. Oh well, another amateur item in the 'rebuild'. So, I pulled the housing out to clean it properly. Along the way I will replace the brake pipes as they look original and have some corrosion on the ends. I hate tube nuts, they always seem to round off on me even with correct tube spanners. Whilst looking at the rear, I decided to take out the springs and get them reset and dropped. Good thing too, the front bushes were old and the clamps were all loose. A day later I have newly reset springs, no rattles and an inch lower than the day before. I think it will look how I want now, both tyres (tires) just under the guard lips. Next, the radiator. Rightly or wrongly I bought an ebay special radiator for it previously, which had clogged up with the crud in the old motor. This is 26" wide and quite tall - about an inch off the hood base) so are a big unit. As they are only $180 to buy, I bought another one. But when I go to fit it, they have a 38mm lower tank width (about 1 1/2") and a 60mm (or 2 3/8") top tank and no original clamp bracket will fit. I can space the original lower brackets out with rubber (or make up a new C bracket) but the top is stumping me. There's not enough material on the OEM bracket to straighten and re-bend to fit and the aluminium options here are not attractive. But, today in speaking with a work mate he has a small sheet metal folder so I may be able to knock something up on that. Mounting it on the side of the front panel is an option, but it needs spacer brackets which will look ugly, so I will try to stay with the upper and lower clamps. I then bought some 2.5" exhaust pipe to start making up a new exhaust. The shop had a pre-fabricated X pipe cheaper than 2 x 90° bends, so I grabbed that. But, the inlet and outlet are straight and not angled so I need to do some funky cuts to get them to line up. I left that for another day when I was in the mood. The plan for the exhaust is to stop it at the mufflers and use drop pipes. If it's too loud you're too old. Did some online shopping; new front spring bushes, front brake hoses with the correct brackets, red tracer wire for the reverse light wiring and a 90° cable end terminal to neaten up the starter motor cable, as the shorty headers won't allow a right hand terminal due to space. I put the steering wheel back on, to complete the dash. As I used a RH drive boss for the new wheel, the indicator cancel lugs were in the wrong place. I bit of fencing wire - true - and some precision measurements had it on the spare lug on the indicator switch and now my turn signals cancel at the same spot either way the wheel is turned. The registration ran out March 5, so I only have 3 months to have it inspected and re-registered without hassle.

Phew. Super mind-bending day at work and just read this. I appreciate it, have not thought about keeping the NSS active but probably not a bad idea. The video is simples, nice easy bit of work. I'll digest it later when my brain is not telling to go to the fridge and take 3 beers in quick succession (like a Doctor says take some pills and call me later, beer fixes my issues)

My TKO sits right across on the passenger side too. Using all MDL mounts. Seems to sit well front to rear in the hole, but not side to side.