Rich Ackermann

Not sure what the hole is for, but looking at a picture of mine before I disassembled it, looks like the threads of a screw coming thru the hole. I had small round rubber insulators at the base of each gauge terminal post and a thin gray strip of cardboard over the posts and between the metal gauge cluster body and the circuitboard. Pics below..

Vic, Just a suggestion, with metalic two stage paints, have seen instances where painting fenders, headlight buckets, and trim parts when they are not sitting in their "natural" position as they would be on the car, causes the metal flake in the paint to be effected by gravity. In another words, painting a headlight bucket by it laying down on a table, instead of hanging it vertically, gravity causes the flakes to to lay flat as the paint dries. When put on the car the paint reflects differently. That what happened on my 73 Mustang's Medium Copper Metallic when the hood trim was painted. You can see it if you look closely at the pics below...

Here is a picture of the green wire with a black round female plug at the firewall. John is correct it is part of the harness that includes the wipers, tach wire, neutral safety switch, oil and temp sender wires, and PRNDL shifter light. The other end of the green wire should terminate near the airbox blower motor with a single square spade plug, along with a couple of other related green wires with square plugs.

Hi Vic, Yes, I used Ford 1971-73 rubber door jamb boots. They have plenty of space to run wires, they look stock if that matters, and they fit in the stock door jamb and kick panel positions on a 1969-70. The factory grommet hole sizes are larger on a 69-70 than the 71-73. If you have the luxury of drilling fresh holes, than the kick panel hole is 1 1/4" and the door jamb hole is 1 5/8". You can use the factory dimples if you have them. IF you are retrofitting them into a door that already has factory holes, then I suggest cutting off the grommets from the 69-70 harness and inserting the 71-73 boot ends into each of the 69-70 factory grommets or inserting them into another grommet of similar size. I had a factory door and a repro door, so unfortunately I had to do one of each. Inserting the boot ends into the factory grommets worked well, but just for added assurance, I used some black 3m rubber weather-strip glue to make certain they stayed together. They are many to choose from on eBay. Here is a set of 1987 Ford boots that look to be the same as the 71-73 boots.. https://www.ebay.com/itm/325160428669?hash=item4bb512647d:g:n0EAAOSwwp1iZDXr Then again you could find a set of aftermarket boots. https://www.keepitcleanwiring.com/catalog/Wire-Management/Billet-Door-Looms/KICDLOOMBLBK/12-Inch-Black-Stainless-Steel-Door-Loom---Pair Below is a picture of the 71-73 boots installed in my 70 Mach 1 (Top Left) using the factory holes, Installed in my 73 vert (Top & bottom RIght), and a pair of boots (Bottom Left).

Congratulations and good luck! Is the paint shop painting the panels on or off the car? I used a Mach 1 hood stripe temp from NPD. The shop laid down the black and then a mat clearcoat on, after painting the body color/clearcoat and sanding the clearcoat over the stripe area. The mat clear holds up real well to the elements and does not become shiny from wax. Others folks use Hotrod black. It has a nice rich black Mat finish that also holds up well. My rear trunk lid stripe is a tape stripe.

1969 Mach 1s had Quad tips and 1970 Mach 1s had oval tips.

You might want to pull a plug as see if there is any carbon build up. If there is, better off taking time to clean them all. If you have not done so, I would strongly recommend installing a relay connect it to pink wire and to the battery for 12v and use your red/green ignition wire to trip it. That wire was not meant to carry a lot of current and its not a clean power source to be used with the ECU. You will know if you have a power issue by looking at the voltage number fluctuation on the hand held. below 12v even for a moment is bad for the ECU electronics. Good Luck

I can't explain why it been working for years, but the green/red wire (904 on the Ford wiring diagram) is correct for constant voltage during the start and run ignition switch positions. Assuming you have your factory ignition/ Prove-out wiring is intact, The correct wire to connect the Pink ECU wire to is one that provides constant 12v during start and run ignition switch positions. The red/blue striped wire (32 & 32A) on the Ford wiring diagram) does not, it only has power in the start position. The green/red stripe wire (904 on the Ford wiring diagram, not to be confused with the #16 red/green striped (or sometime called the pink #16A resistance) wire depending on which of the two wire diagrams you look at) has power when the key is in the start/prove-out and run ignition switch positions, and that's the one to connect the pink wire to. Also I suggest tapping this wire as close to the ignition switch plug and run it to a relay and have the relay tripped by the red/green wire and supply the 12v to the pink wire to the ECU. This will take the additional 12v current draw to the ECU and ignition box (if you have an MSD or Hyperspark ignition box) off the factory green/red wire and ignition switch and insure that the pink wire is getting 12v directly from the battery. Here are a few wire diagrams showing the Start/Prove out for a factory tach and non-tach car.

I believe the pink wire should be connected to the red/green striped #904 ignition start/run wire. This wire has power in both the start and run (on) positions. Other causes for the engine shutting down after a short time, might be.... What is your AFR (O2 sensor) reading at idle? If the AFR value is not fairly steady on your hand held display then you have an exhaust leak before, at, or right after the O2 Sensor. At idle any leak, even a pin hole leak, in these areas or at the exhaust manifold will cause ambient air to be drawn into the exhaust causing a erroneous lean condition reading in the Sniper's closed loop system. The Sniper ECU will try to compensate by adding in more fuel. This in turn, will make the AFR too rich, so the ECU then reduce the fuel to lean it up, and the Lean/Rich cycle begins again. All this will begin to foul your plugs and you will have high carbon (unburned fuel vapor) out your tailpipe(s). Check your plugs for black carbon build up. If so, then find that leak or leaks and stop them all. I weld the O2 sensor bung to the exhaust pipe. The O2 sensor bung, rubber gasket, and clamps just leaked too much. I had a friend put some sort of small smoke bomb in his tailpipe and hooked up his ShopVac to the tailpipe to force air and smoke into the pipe and blow smoke out any exhaust leak holes. Higher RPMs usually will not cause this issue as the exhaust volume will force itself out of any leaks. Second thing to check... The voltage reading on your hand held. The number should be fairly steady at 14+ amps, if not your alternator is not able to keep up with the your cars electrical demand, and/or your wiring from the alternator to the battery is large enough to carry enough current to and thru the battery, and make sure the wire to the ECU is not too thin or is damaged. Holley Sniper says 12 AWG minimum direct from the battery (and has a 15 amp fuse inline). Fluctuating and/or Low voltage will cause the ECU to shutdown if the voltage gets below 12v to protect itself and it may eventually cause the sniper ECU to electronically fail. Check you fuel pressure at the sniper inlet. If I recall correctly, Holley Sniper says 60lbs. The PDF I have attached is a Motor Trend article about the effects of exhaust leaks on the O2 sensor and Air Fuel Ratio on a EFI System. I found it to be an eye opener. Ask me how I know this... Good Luck! How an Exhaust Leak Affects Wideband-O2 Sensor Readings.pdf

Twenty years ago I entered my 69 Cobrajet I to the MCA Nationals trialer concours class in New England. My car was not a normally trailer queen, but I open trailered a distance for this event. Anyway, there were many beautiful cars rolled off enclosed trailers at the show. If you are not familiar with MCA judging, ots a point deduction process based on the MCA rulebook and the judges assessment. To my surprise I won a silver. The car had few deductions, but engine paint was not one of them. I used a lighter ford blue on the 428CJ than I use on my small blocks. The best corporate blue. In my opinion was the discontinues PlastiKote, but saw that NPD has a exact match replacement the the PlastiKote Ford Blue.

Just adding my two cents to this thread... I found that modern tire design and brands, such Nitto do not make many, if any performance tires below 17 inch diameter. On my 70 Mach 1 M-code, I went with 17 US Mags Bandit rims and Nitto NT555 G2s. I have factory height big block constant 640 lbs rated coil springs up front with Global West suspension and a 1" Shelby drop (upper Arm Control). Global West Plus 3 upper arms have 3 degrees of positive caster built into them. This will eliminate the need to pull the lower arm so far forward in order to get the optimal alignment. In the rear I have stock height 138 lbs rated/Competition Handling Eaton rear springs and an aftermarket 1" rear sway bar. The US Mags Bandit front 17x 8 with a 1 Offset and 4.54 backspace with Nitto NT555 G2 245 x 45 tires. The rear US Mags Bandit front 17x 9 with a 8 Offset and 5.31 backspace with a big Nitto NT555 G2 275 x 50 tires. I prefer the look of a larger width and height rear tire. I did have to roll my rear fender lips. I also lightly rolled the front fender lips too, but I don't think I needed to.

I have the Holley Sniper installed on my 408 stroked Cleveland M- code. I also installed Holley's Hyperspark Coil, Distributor, and Ignition box. The fuel pump is also a Holley in tank 69-70 retro fit return-less pump with fuel sender. I have no complaints, with the Hyperspark the initial turning done by selecting Hyperspark when first configuring the ECU. You can refine it from there. The return-less in tank pump you just use you exiting fuel line and modify both ends to connect to the pump and the sniper. Most important is to run adequate size wire gauge and connect the power to a clean dedicated right off the battery, Tao into the ignition wire as sloe to the ignition switch as possible to avoid issue with factory resistance wires. Make sure you have no vacuum leaks or exhaust leaks before or right after the O2 Sensor. Exhaust leaks before or close to the O2 sensor wreak havoc on the Sniper closed loop system causing constant fluctuation between rich and lean fuel conditions as the Sniper ECU tries to maintain the target air/fuel ratio. If you have an original (unconverted Ohm driven) factory Tach, you will need to have Rocketman convert it to a voltage driven tach, or buy a product called Tach Adapter from MSD. The Tach Adapter converts the Sniper voltage tach signal to a Ohm driven signal. Essentially mimicking the factory coil output to the factory tach. Finally, I have found Holley's Tech support to be outstanding. Available Monday thru Saturday from 8am to 8pm Eastern time and usually only a 10-15 min wait time.

Yes it does. :-)

I have a 70 Mach with a 408 Cleveland with a Tremec TKO 600. I am happy with my 3.70 gears in a Yukon case and the Tremec with a .64 overdrive and a 27.83" tire diameter gives me about 1,850 RPMs at 65 Mph. Although from a stop first gear does not get me very far, before I am shifting into 2nd gear. I have an Eaton TrueTrac and I love it. As Mach1 Driver said, the helical gears behaves much like an open rear until you get on it and then it locks without delay. No noise.

I have granda front disc with global west suspension. I lowered my upper control arms 1" (called the Shelby drop) for better handling. I have 17x 8 US Mags - Bandit rims with 4.54 backspacing up front with Nitto NT555 G2 225 x 45. I have no rubbing at all.

Thanks for the head-up. I hope you catch that SOB! Scammers like him should be drawn and quartered!

I found it important to be able to adjust the MeterMatch while what the fuel gauge. The fuel gauge and the adjustments to MeterMatch do not react instantly. Having actually installed and adjusted it, the trunk would make fine tuning the settings difficult to do.

I put mine on double stick tape and stuck up behind the gauge cluster on the underside of the cowl between the column and the kick panel with enough wire that I can pull down to the floor where it's easy to see and adjust. It is also right next to the wire harness with the fuel sender wire. A good spot to splice the metermatch in.

I used my original 70 center console and repurposed the front and rear ashtrays. The rear now has usb charging ports and the front now houses my own custom warning and diagnostic lights, which I can close the old ashtray lid and hide them. The console is where I mounted the duel power window switch so it is accessible to both front passengers and the power side view mirror control.

I used RetroSound RPOD4 Surface-mount pods for 4" or 4"x6" speakers. I place them as low and forward as I could, especially on the driverside to clear the parking brake pedal. I also brought my whole parking brake pedal mechanism out another 1/2" from the kick panel. The P.O. cut speaker holes in the interior quarter panels, so i was stuck with those holes or replace the panels. I found flush mounting speaker grills panted them to match thw panels. I mount a pair of kickers in an aftermarket rear panel. Made brcket from 2" box steel to mount the amp in the trunk drop area behi d the spare tire. No speaker grills and no window cranks makes for a nice clean door panel.

Hey Vic, Looking fantastic! I like the Dakota dash gauges. Those door handles look like they were a challenge to retrofit. How did you make the rods for the lock and door levers work? Let me know if you decide to go to Carlisle in June. I go every year. Rich

I go every year. Lots to do over the 3 day event. Every year the Carlisle All Fords event has a theme and features certain Fords with a large indoor representation of those cars in building T. This year the Carlisle is recognizing the 60 year anniversary of the Shelby Mustang. In 2021, Carlisle recognized the 50th year anniversary of the 1971-1973 Mustang body style. I was invited to bring my 1973 convertible and join the many other 71-73 Mustangs on display and featured in the 50th year anniversary of the 1971-1973 Mustang event. Besides the massive swap meet area, and cars for sale, there are lots of vendors. On Saturday and Sunday there is a huge car show. I am member of the First State Mustang and Fords, a local club here in Delaware. We rent a spot, as do many other clubs, and step up a large tent where club members and guests can eat and relax. Let me know if you decide to go this year.

Randy, The electrons still flow - to +. From what I see in the '70 Cougar convenience group wiring diagram, The the Door Ajar circuit gets 12v from the yellow plug attached to the accessory terminal, which as you know has power when the key is in run and accessory positions. This 12v circuit supplies 12v to the low fuel warning light relay and to the door ajar warning light The circuit is completed when the door ajar switch is grounded by the door being opened or partially opened. This is a separate switch from the common door jamb switch that turns on the interior lights and trips the key reminder buzzer. That's how I looks to me in the diagram.

That's a keeper. Thanks for sharing

Thanks All! Once I get the Sanden system charged on the 70 Mach this spring and start to use it, I'll keep an eye on the belt behavior. I may never use the stock Yorke compressor setup on my 73 Vert, but I guess I should install the second pulley anyway as that is how it came from the factory.