bnickel

hey Rich, when ya gonna post some new update pics? i haven't seen anything on your car for at least 2 years or more

not as bad as lime gold but it's not far from it either......my 69 cougar is aztec aqua and even my wife hates it.....LOL, as a matter of fact one the previous owners and also a friend of mine is gay and even didn't like the color much either......now that's saying something when a gay guy and a chick both hate the color. sorry, couldn't help throwing that out there!!!!....LOL my GT was originally lime gold and was actually painted black jade whan i bought it, i kinda like the black jade but couldn't stand the lime gold. so it's now acapulco blue. haven't made up my mind whether i'm gonna paint the cougar acapoulco blue or winter blue, yet but at the moment i'm leaning heavily towards winter blue

he's an aussie, and that zed-28 was an original 70-1/2 RS Z-28, rare car here in the states and probably one of one or maybe two in japan if i were guessing

well i've always been a sucker for a fairly stock looking engine bay with a ford dark blue block engine but with an aluminum intake instead of a painted cast iron piece and black sheetmetal, brackets and pulleys. i also like to throw in a few chrome accessories here and there like valave cover breather/oil cap, radiator cap, thermostat housing, dipstick, master cylinder cap, air cleaner wing nut, etc.

hmmm, well acapulco blue is my all time favorite but i also like winter blue, presidential blue, wimbledon white and of all things black jade, my coupe was originally lime gold but earl scheib had painted it black jade long before i got it and the lady said she was sure surprised when she went to pick the car up and saw that they had changed the color....they weren;t supposed to but she said she liked it so much she didn't bitch about it to them to much, just enough for them to give her a discount. i'm actually having that good old internal debate right now, all along i've been planning on painting my 69 cougar acapulco blue but lately i've started leaning towards winter blue in part because the car was originally light aqua, us mustang guys call it aztec aqua, which we all know is sort of a baby blue green or really light turquoise color, so i was thinking that painting it winter blue would be staying more true to the original color than acapulco blue and im not repainting it light aqua, my wife doesn't even like that color...lol. so the debate continues, acapulco blue or winter blue? this car is also a factory two-tone car with a white painted roof which i plan on keeping as it will probably help keep the car cool in the summer.

i think advanced plating in nashville can do the GT caps but you should check with them to be sure if you decide to that route. i got lucky with the used one i got off ebay and the center is actually in really decent shape i just bought a repro 69 pop open cap and used the base assembly from that on the ebay cap and was good to go. i had to replace my original due to a jacking accident back in high school. I was jacking it up with the bumper jack that came with the car when i bought it (obviously not even close to original, but didn't know that at the time) and the car rolled forward and the bumper jack pu a nice little dent in the original GT cap....i broadened vocabulary considerably that day...LOL I still my original hanging on the wall here in my office and will hold onto it forever as a memento once i finally get the car sold, which i'm not trying to do really hard at the moment until the economy bounces back a little more.

honestly the only way that car would be salvageable would be if it was a GT or big block car, but even GT and big block coupes are limited to how much they are worth compared to even a plain jane v8 fastback....ask me how I know.......

in 86 the 460 was only being used in 3/4 ton and up trucks so finding a buyer may be pretty tough, the 4180 is kind of an odd duck as they were built to ford specs for motorcraft by holley and weren't ever used on anything but ford cars and trucks, even the marine engines used a standard style holley carb.

i've never really been much of a fan of the stock classic mustang steering wheels, especially when other classic cars got such cool looking wheels....mostly GM cars of course.....go figure. so I always change out my stock wheel for something else, lately it's been mustang II type sport steering wheels. I have one in the stang now and I have a leather wrapped mid 70's cougar XR7 leather wrapped version for the 69 cougar. however I was also able to get my hands on an original FIV secura steering wheel, just like you could out of the many shelby catalogs back in the 60's and it even matches the factory woodgrain in the cougar pretty well too. I won't be using the fake woodgrain though. I'm working on converting it over to real wood veneer througout, in fact that's what i've been working on for the last couple of weeks. it's coming along rather nicely too and the stain i'm using matches the steering wheel almost perfectly. i'm using a mahogany veneer that i got at Lowe's and one of it's recommnded uses is actually dashboards so i thought tht was pretty cool. i'll throw some pics up once i get it all done, hopefully it turns out as sweet in real life as it does in my head....LOL

well that one's a bit high, they generally go for about half that, i got mine for around $250 and that was before the bottom fell out of the financial world.

they are not what you'd call super rare but they are fairly hard to find. you could buy them from any of the old Shelby catalogs back in the early 70's and there have even been repro's made of that intake as well, I think Blue Thunder actually still makes one now. I think the only way to tell if it's an original is if it has the Buddy Bar logo on the underside. the really rare one is the Shelby 351c version for the Dominator carb, those are worth some decent coin, not that yours is worth chump change by any means, generally they run in the range of 350-500 bucks depending on condition. NOS ones like yours can go for almost $1000 or more.

I have one as well, though mine is actually the Ford Muscle Parts versions that has the FORD lettering instead of the Shelby lettering but the parts numbers are the same for both versions.

ya know, i did say most!!!! LOL.......both my GT and my Cougar had the rubber 2 piece shaft originally. the Cougar still has it's original one and the Mustang now has the one piece shaft from my old 70 cougar that had a 351c 2v and FMX trans, BTW, both 69 Cougar and the GT both have 351w and FMX as well. so it's quite possible that they were only used on auto trans cars and not manual trans cars. I think 69 may have been the last year for the 2 piece unit, because as i said the 70 cougar had a one piece.

modern driveline has a really nice hudraulic clutch setup that is supposed to be a direct bolt-in as well

hey Tom, is your weatherstrip and trim piece on the back of the front window or the front of the back window? I ask because there is a difference in the weatherstrip. if it's on the back of the front window it is indeed the correct piece for 69 but if it's one the front of the 1/4 window it's for a 70 model, it will work fine on the 69 but the rubber weatherstrip piece is different, it also the same piece used on 71-73 mustangs/cougars as well

I think I would miss the Eliminator too. I know I miss my old 70 cougar which was just a base model 351c 2v car but it did the decor with houndstooth option and PS, PDB and AC so it was a pretty nice car, especially after the clevie blew and I replaced it with the 351w 4v from the GT for a while....what a difference it made, of course at that time the windsor was still pretty fresh with only a 15,000 mile since the builup and the cleveland was all but worn out when I got it. Jerry Heasley is a pretty nice guy and he actually took a bunch of pics of my car for an article he did in one of the AutoTrader mags, it was just an event coverage article but the lead pic of the story was the engine bay of my car and there was one other pic of my car in the article

that's probably one reason but honestly breaker plates are relatively cheap, around 15 bucks or so and these distributors are pretty simple to work on as well. I always try to keep the OE dizzy and vacuum advance can too. I have a really cool adjustable vacuum unit that replaces the original hose nipple fitting on the canister that allows you to completely customize the vacuum advance curve with an allen wrench just like the aftermarket advance canisters but you get to keep a concours appearing engine bay with this unit. http://www.cougarpartscatalog.com/adjf01.html have the mechanical advance curved at a good speed shop or do it yourself with a dial back timing light and a helper and one of the Mr Gasket advance spring kits and you're good to go. I thought of one other you might check while looking at the breaker plate too, remove the distributor cap and grab the rotor and see if there is any excessive play also get a helper to crank the engine and watch the rotor spin to see if you detect any play that way as well, if there is more than a few thousandths of play then the bushings in the dizzy are worn out and the unit needs to be rebuilt or replaced. I'd recommend having it rebuilt as opposed to a reman unit from autozone or places like that. the reason is because the rebuilders generally set the dizzy up with a generic advance curve, if you send it out to be restored or rebuilt you'll be able to keep the correct advance curve. if it needs rebuilt or restored I'd send it to this guy http://428cobrajetcars.com/new_parts he's not exactly cheap but I've heard nothing but praise for his work.

You should still check out that breaker plate assembly, they can and will stick when they start to get worn out and just because the vacuum advance canister is good does not mean that the breaker plate is in working order. just FYI

Car Craft also seems to have a thing for cars that don't really like look they ought to be sleepers but in fact really are.....LOL

i would check the breaker plate in the distributor, i've had them start to stick when they get old and the nylon bushings wear. I'd start there, also check to make sure the vacuum advance is actually advancing. the best way to do this is with the engine running and the vacuum advance disconnected and plugged on the carburetor side connect a handheld vacuum pump to the advance unit, and pull a vacuum on it, the engine RPM should increase, if it doesn't the vaccum advance diaphragm is bad. you can perform the test the same way by using your mouth to pull a vacuum and hold it with your tongue if you don't own a vaccum pump, you can also get them pretty cheaply at places like harbor freight. I actually had to replace both the breaker plate on the stang a couple of years ago and the breaker plate and the vacuum diaphragm both on the cougar just last year when I was trying to get it fired up from it's 12 year nap even though the car only has 64,000 original miles. I guess age and probably sitting for so long did it in.

ask and ye shall recieve http://www.1969stang.com/gallery/bnickel69gt

you also have the wrong throttle cable bracket. the one you have is for the 2v carb setup. youcan buy new 4v throttle cable brackets from just about all of the vendors be warned though they are a bit on the pricey side...usually about $55-60 or you could just use a universal one like from Holley, Spectre, Mr Gasket, Etc....

try pulling the shaft and rotating it 180 degress and reinstall it. sometimes that will help cure vibrations such as you describe. FTI.....one thing about balancing a mustang driveshaft, though, is that most early models stangs have a 2 piece driveshaft. I know it may look like one piece but in most cases what you have is sort of a shaft within a shaft and only vulcanized rubber connecting the two of them. if you have one of these it will be quite obvious by closely examining the differential end. if you have one of these types of shafts they cannot be rebalanced, the only option is having a new one made for the car. most of the high performance stangs got a one piece shaft, Boss 302, 428cj, 351c 4v possibly the 390 but i'm not 100% sure on that one. the 69 351's all got the 2 piece unit as did all 302 2v, six cylinders, 289's on 68-older, etc. so unless you have a big block car it's very likely you have the 2 piece shaft.

Quick question Danno, I have an old 6 button Alpine that I'd love to use in my 69 Cougar, was perviously in my 70 Cougar, but one of the rear channels quit. Can you repair that kind of stuff? Also this is one of the lower end models that doesn't have any pre-amp RCA jacks. Would you be able to do the aux input mod for Ipod and maybe add some RCA outs as well? I'm guessing that If I were to run all 4 channels with RCA's it wouldn't matter much if the line levels were all working or not would it?

you can also get them at the local auto parts stores as well, I'd suggest NAPA