Isn't my wife the greatest.  Not only does she buy all this stuff for me for Christmas, I set it up on her kitchen island for this great picture.  What's that honey?  Ohhhh no.....I better go clean up a little!
 

With Santa's (Heather's) help, project MORE POWER has begun.  This will be an extensive project to:

1.  Replace stock heads with Air Flow Research aluminum heads with Comp Roller Rockers.
2.  Replace stock cam with a moderate Comp Cams hydraulic cam.
3.  Replace remaining valve train including dual roller timing chain, lifters & hardened pushrods (all Comp).
4.  Detail the engine and the engine bay.
5.  Install headers and an H-Pipe.

Current Status - You can stick a fork in the More Power Project.  It was completed on Saturday, 4-28-01.

This is a picture of the engine as of April 23, 2001.

1-6-01

Work went fairly well on Saturday.   It finally warmed up above freezing.  First time since December 16th!

Kinda hard to see here, but it looks like 39 degrees F on the "Official" Ford Thermometer.  Inside the barn, it was a balmy 52 degrees thanks to my natural gas fired Salamander heater, a 1500 W electric heater, a roaring fire in the fire place (Yes, I have a fireplace in my barn), and the heat off the cutting torch slicing through the doughnut gasket studs.

Here I've disconnected everything up top.  I went ahead and pulled the fan spacer, the power steering pump and the alternator to give me some clearance to bring the engine forward when I pull it.  Right after this, I started trying to disassemble the exhaust at the doughnut gasket just aft of the exhaust manifolds.  I finally cut 3 of the 4 bolts with a torch.  This was the worst part of the job so far, because I had to lay under the car, while it was on jack stands and use the torch in really confined areas to get the bottom bolts.  I also melted the insulation off the starter cable.  Looks like that will need replaced.

1-7-01

I have waffled extensively about if I should pull the tranny with the engine.  I've decided NOT TO.   I've got a set of instructions from Bill S. on R.A.M.F.M on how to split the engine from the tranny in the car.

This shows my hoist set up.  That's a 1/2 ton chain hoist mounted to a Jet trolley, hooked to a 7" I-beam.  The trolley works left to right in this picture.  So the plan is to pick the engine up, then move the car backwards, as the engine comes out, to take the engine out over the radiator support.  You'll note I have a load leveler hooked to the chain hoist.  That is chained off to opposite corners of the engine.   I just took 2 of the exhaust manifold bolts out, then threaded them through the chain.  There's no way the chain link can slip off the washer or bolt.

I've gotten everything loose obviously here.  The hardest part is removing the 4 bolts that hold the torque converter to the flywheel.  You access these bolts under the car by removing the inspection cover at the bottom of the bell housing.  The first thing I did was round off one of the nuts.  Then I spent the next hour and a half getting it off, by heating it with a torch, working it with vise grips, and repeating.  I got it off, but I pretty much ruined that stud on the torque converter.

I accessed the remaining 3 bolts by turning the crank by hand (I had already removed the starter motor).  Then I heated the bolts up red hot with a 0-size welding tip.  Then I QUICKLY put a socket on them and VOILA they come off really easily.  It took me about 10 minutes to get the other 3 nuts off (undamaged).

By the way.  There is one little 7/16 stud on the driver's side that holds the flywheel shield to the transmission.  It's underneath the car on the bell housing.  YOU HAVE TO REMOVE IT.  I didn't at first and couldn't get the engine to separate from the transmission.  The starter bolts also have to be out, as they hold this shield to the transmission as well.

Upon further review, I had ruined the Torque Convertor, as there I couldn't figure anyway to fix it.  Thanks to Vintage Mustang Forum and a new buddy in Texas, I got a used replacement and that took care of that problem.

I drained the oil and removed the filter.  Then I disconnected the fuel hose and let that gas drain in with the waste oil.  I turned off my heaters before disconnecting the fuel line.  NEVER EVER EVER EVER have fuel on the ground with a gas appliance around.

I removed the 6 bolts in the bell housing.  2 are removed under the car.  4 can be removed from above.  You need to have a jack supporting the front of the transmission underneath while you do this.  I had to adjust the jack up as I lifted the engine out, because the car came up quite a bit when the engine's weight was lifted off the motor mounts.

I removed the 4-mounting bolts near the pan rail that hold the engine on the motor mounts.

After that, everything broke free very easily.   When I first started lifting the engine, I realized I wasn't going to be able to get it high enough to clear the radiator support, so I had to set it back down and take up slack in the end chains.  The other solution would have been to take off the oil pan.

TA DAAAA!!!

I looked through every bit of hardware I keep in my barn and couldn't come up with any bolts to mount the engine to the engine stand, so tomorrow I'll get those picked up at the hardware store.

So that's how I pulled MY VERY FIRST ENGINE.  Thanks a lot to Bill S. for emailing me complete instructions.  Bill says he can do this in 2 hours.  Bill you are DEFINITELY a better mechanic than I'll ever be.  It took me the entire weekend.  But it was fun and I learned a number of things.  I'm sure I could pull one in half the time next time.
 

1-13-01

Here I've got the engine on the engine stand, and am about halfway done with the teardown.   I'm taking the second head of here.  This picture was taken about two seconds before all 8 pushrods hit the floor.  Don't drop one of these suckers on your toe.  They are heavy!
 
 

The Intake (a dual plane highrise from Ford Motorsport) and Holley 4160 - 600 CFM carb sitting on my tablesaw.  These are going to be cleaned up really well before I put them back on the car.  I've got stainless bolts and a new thermostat housing coming as well.  I want the engine to look good and run great.

This replacement water pump has seen better days, so I ended up taking my old pump in as a core and ordering a replacement pump for a '65 - '67 K-code.  I cleaned up the flash on the replacement pump and clear coated it with some Eastwood crystal hi-temp clear.  Looks great!  Be aware that there are two different pumps for early 289's.  One has a backing plate and one doesn't.  They are not interchangeable.  1965s and all k-codes share the non-backing plate design.  Non hypo '66s and later got the backing plate.

I went ahead and bought a $13.00 Harmonic Balancer Puller at Autozone.  You have to pull the balancer off to get the front cover off.  You have to take the front cover off to get to the cam.  I have taken EVERYTHING off the engine at this point, including the front cover.

1-20-01

I started putting everything back together today.  First, I retorqued the main bolts and rod bolts to spec.  Then I installed the windage tray.  Next, I cleaned the lifter bores and cam bearings good with engine cleaner/protector and then I used 10 W 40 on them.  Then I slid the new Comp hydraulic cam in.

Here you can see I have the new timing chain set installed on the new cam.  I installed the crank sprocket straight up in the '0' position.  My other choices were 4-degrees advanced or 4-degrees retarded.  I put the old fuel pump eccentric on, then loctited the cam bolt and torqued it to 34 ft lb.  In this picture, you can see I've got the oil pan mocked on.  It's just there to protect the bottom end of the engine, during the cleaning and painting phase to come.

You can see I still have the front cover off.  I took it inside to do a really thorough cleaning.

Next up was cleaning and painting the engine.  I cleaned it very well with a water based degreaser and then used a wire brush on my drill to remove a few loose paint spots (such as on the freeze plugs).  Then I primed and painted the block with hi-temp engine paint in spray cans.  I painted it satin black which is correct for a 1965 289.  Of course my engine isn't stock, but the block is, so I wanted to go back to the original color.  The front cover and oil pan were cleaned to bare metal and then painted to match.
 
 

1-28-01 through 2-19-01
I found and solved a big problem with piston to valve interference.  Cost me 2 1/2 weeks and about $300.  Read on
 
 

This is a stock c-code piston.    The dish looks to be about .030 deep.  I later found these pistons DID NOT have any valve clearance with the new AFR heads with their larger valves.  At first I tried these Sealed Power pistons to replace them.

I've got Dykem on the piston here to check and make sure it isn't hitting the valves.  After installing the heads, a couple of home-made solid lifters, check springs, push rods and rockers, I turned the engine over twice gently.  Finding no interference, I  did the same thing a second time with .060 shim preloading the valve tip.  It still cleared.  This was done with no head gasket in.

Unfortunately, after calculating the compression ratio these pistons would produce with their large 14 cc chambers, I took them back.  The Compression Ratio drops to 7.9:1 with these pistons in a 289 with 58 cc combustion chambers.

So I had the machine shop order some Keith Black 116's.  They are a hypereutectic piston with a .200 pop up.

I installed this piston on 2-19-01 and found I had .215" clearance to the exhaust valve about .240" to the intake valve.  .100" clearance is considered bare minimum.  The stock c-code pistons had about .020 interference on the exhaust side and .040 clearance on the intake valve.  So the KB-116's cure that problem.  The compression ratio with a .035 compressed head gasket thickness is a respectable 10.0:1

I'll called the machine shop and told them to go and ahead and press the other 7 pistons on their respective rods, and install the rings for me.  If you have your pistons out for any reason, it is highly recommended that you press out your old rod bolts and replace them.  I replaced mine with ARP rod bolts.  I highly recommend them.  They come prepackaged with nuts and assembly lube.  One GOTCHA on this!  It is recommended that you resize your rods (have the big end machined) when ever you install new rod bolts.  The best thing to do would probably be to have the machine shop resize your rods, replace your bearings, and press in the new studs.

Week of 2-24-01

I really got busy assembling the engine this weekend.  I put in about 12 hours on Saturday and another 6 on Sunday.

The first step was to hone the cylinder block.  The cylinder walls were in great shape, but it is necessary to put a cross hatch pattern on the cylinders whenever you install new piston rings.  This allows the rings to seat properly.  The machine shop was kind enough to loan me this hone, which they called a "ball hone".  As you can see in the picture, I have a towel over the crank to keep most of the grime off of it.  The towel is soaked in a petroleum based degreaser to get the metal dust to stick to it.  The machine shop recommended gasoline, but that seemed a tad risky to me.  You only need to spend about 15 seconds in each bore.  Keep the hone moving in and out at all times.  To get an excellent cross hatch, you can reverse the drill and do a few more seconds.

After honing YOU MUST completely clean EVERYTHING out of the engine.  I got a bucket of hot soapy water, a hose, several brushes, rags, and dry towels.  I cleaned it and cleaned it and cleaned it.  Then I towelled it dry.  Then I used my air compressor to blow it dry, flipping then block over many times to get the water to drain from all the hidden areas.  Once the block was bone dry, I immediately used a clean rag covered in 10W40 Motor oil to wipe down everything that wasn't painted, especially the cylinder bores, lifter bores, machined surfaces, crank, and lifter valley.

Then it was time to install the pistons.  I love the guys at the machine shop.  They could tell right away I was an idiot, so they carefully marked every piston by number and put an arrow on the tops showing which way went forward.  If your shop isn't that kind, remember the witness mark goes forward (if your pistons have a witness mark), or in my case, the dome goes down.  The picture below shows the Summit ring compressor which is super easy to use.   Just coat the rings and outside of the piston with oil, slide it into the compressor, set the compressor on the deck face, then press the piston into the bore.  I'd recommend turning the crank shaft so the bearing throw is as far away from the rod end as possible.  That way you can press the rings into the cylinder bore, remove the compressor, flip the block over until the crank is up, THEN press the piston all the way to the bottom of the bore while you carefully guide the rod onto the crank.  That'll keep you from nicking the crank with a rod bolt.

The picture below is a joke.  You can tap the piston in with your palm, or you might tap it with a rubber mallet.  You don't want to hit it with a BFH!

Now it's time to get serious.  I put my cam degreeing wheel on and set up a dial indicator on the #1 intake valve keeper.  This allows you to check valve lift, but more importantly you can check the center line of the cam's intake lobe and compare it back to your cam card.  This was the first time I'd ever done this, so it took me about six tries to get it right.  I finally came out with the intake center line being at 106 degrees.  The cam card says 106 degrees.  If the cam were machined wrong, you had a bad tolerance stack, OR you screwed up and got your timing chain off a tooth, this is where you'd catch the problem.  It was quite a bit of work and about $100 for the tools to do it with.  I'm not sure I'd mess with it if I didn't have the degreeing kit.  This is part of the blueprinting process for those that are going that route.  The kit comes with complete (although somewhat confusing) instructions.

Here I've installed the lifters, the pushrods, and the Comp roller rockers.  I did not tighten up the nuts on the studs yet.  The lifters need to be coated with oil on the sides when they are installed and cam lube needs to be put on the end of the lifter that rides on the cam lobe.  I also put cam lube on the lifter-end of the push rods.

Here I've mocked up the intake to the carb and air cleaner and set it in place.  The distributor is sitting in the hole too.  That's just the stock original ford distributor with a Pertronix electronic ignition kit inside of it.  I've been using the Pertronix for a couple of years and have had good success with it.  This engine would probably benefit from a good aftermarket ignition system, but that isn't in the budget right now.  A new distributor cap, plugs and plug wires are on order.  They should be here any day.

Here I've got the oil pan on.  I've also pressed on the harmonic balancer and installed the crank pulley.  The oil pan, all the pulleys and really everything that would come off the engine were taken to bare metal, primed and then painted black.  You'll note that the black I've used is a more of a gloss than the original Ford Black in '65.  This was just my personal preference.  I just used Plasticoat high temperature primer and universal black in spray cans.  It looks good!

Time to get serious about installing the intake manifold for real.  First I took the carb and air cleaner off.  Then I got on the Vintage Mustang Forum and asked what people suggested.  Suggestion #1 shared by many is throw away the end-seals that come with the gasket set.

Another suggestion that is VERY helpful is to get three or four 5/16 fine thread studs (about 2" long) and install them in the corner holes on the heads.  You can just make out the 3 I used at each corner of the heads below.  You use these to guide the intake to the proper location on the heads as you set it down.  That keeps you from having to wiggle it back and forth to get the bolt holes to line up.

Blue RTV is layed on thick along where the end seals would be if they weren't in the trash can.  Pay attention to how thick the end seals were and make sure you use a bead that is thicker than they were at all spots.  It takes quite a bit of RTV.  I was a little unclear on were to use silicon on the side gaskets.  I ended up using a thin strip on both sides of the gaskets at the water passages and left the air passages alone.  I don't know if it leaks, I'll have to do it again, I guess.

Here the intake is set back down on the block.  I can't say enough about how much easier having the 3 studs to guide the thing into place helped.  This intake is a Ford Motorsport version of an Edelbrock intake.  It's a dual plane hi-rise intake I put on the 289 about 2 years ago.  I cleaned it up with wire brushes and coated it with Eastwood hi-temp Crystal Clear.  The Heads and water pump were treated the same.

Interestingly, AFR says they do not recommend using a torque wrench on the intake bolts.  I really couldn't figure out what it would hurt, so I went ahead and used mine.  You torque in 3 steps to get to the final torque of 14 to 16 ft lb.  You need to use the factory torquing sequence.  What you do is start at the center, work side to side and towards each end.

Week of 3-3-2001

I spent a lot of time jacking with the fuel line.  I needed a new line to run from the new holley fuel pump to the carb, and I wanted to eliminate clutter.  I also wanted to stay away from hose if possible.  I ended up buying a new fuel bowl fitting to come out of  carb with 5/16 inverted flare tubing, rather than using the old hose barb on a banjo fitting.  The tubing I got was double annealed stainless from Summit.  It is A PAIN to double flare, but I got it done.  Here's what the new fuel line looks like.

I also installed a new Ford Racing distributor cap and rotor.  This is the big one that converts you over to the new "plug" style terminals, and is bigger to help prevent crossfire between the terminals.  They come "bakelite grey" from the factor.  I painted mine with a thin coat of Eastwood "Underhood Black".  Since I had to paint it anyway, I almost sprayed it Victory Red to match the car, but sanity returned at the last second.  Here's what it looks like with a new Ford Racing plug wire set.  This is the 9 mm set they sell for 5.0 to 5.7 V8's.  I've got some more plug wire holders that mount to a valve cover bolt.  But since I don't have any valve cover bolts that will fit, I've held off on that.  I'll route these a little better when I get that taken care of.
 

Saturday, I got busy and took the driver's side fender off to begin making repairs to the inner fender.  Fender removal is a pain.  First you have to remove the headlight door and the front bumper.  The lower side trim is removed by taking off nuts at the front and back of the trim in the wheel wells, and then pulling it off the clips.  The fender itself is held on by bolts everywhere.  One of these is under the driver's side kick plate, so you even have to take some of the interior apart to get it off.

I got a tip that to avoid realignment problems, you can drill two small holes up on top of the fender near the ends.  Drill these all the way through the inner fender.  Then when you reinstall the fender, you can stick finishing nails in these holes to hold the fender exactly where it was when you took it off.  I did that.  Hope it helps.
 

Now it's time to look at the Good the Bad and the Ugly.

Here's the rust hole located at the front of the inner fender.  The round hole you see is the headlight wiring harness hole.  It actually looks pretty good.  A previous owner had just tack welded a piece of sheet metal on the inside and painted it black.  That just won't get it.

I cleaned off most of the undercoating with a propane torch to help locate the spot welds.  I have a new fender brace, but the inner fender is going to be patched rather than replaced.  I never said this was a show car!

The other area of repair is at the front of the inner fender.  I drilled out the spot welds on the rear fender brace and removed it.  Here's a picture of the damage, along with my new brace.

The same Previous owner and bondoed the big hole you see.  The little holes are where the spot welds were.  Note the flange that's just missing!  Note to self:  "Never use bondo to repair structural pieces."   As an engineering material, I would rate bondo right up there with silly putty.

The other part of the previous repair was it looked awful.  I don't think he even sanded the bondo.  He just painted it rough.  Oh well, if this was easy, everyone would do it.

3-10-01 to 3- 23-01

On the front of the inner fender, I removed the old fender bracket and ground out any suspect metal around the rust holes.  I ended up with 3 small holes to repair.  I made small patches to install on the wheel well side of the inner fender, riveted them into place, and then tack welded them from the back and welded the heads of the rivets over.  The first picture is the new front fender bracket and patches in place.  The second is the engine bay side after it has been filled an the first coat of primer put on.  The runs are from the previous paint job.  I'll sand those down before the next coat of primer.

Then I spot welded a new fender bracket and a new fender to cowl brace on.  My spot weld technique is as follows:

First, I drilled out the old spot welds with a spot weld cutter.  Word up.  The spot weld cutter to have is the "professional" one that Eastwood sells.  It's made out of HSS and looks about like a pointed router bit.  The ones NPD sells that have teeth are good for about 2 spot welds each before they become so dull they are unusable.  After the spot welds are cut, you can pry the parts apart with a stiff paint scraper.

Then I primed the mating surfaces. You might want to use weld through primer, even though you aren't going to weld through it.

Then I put the new bracket into place and drew a circle everywhere I wanted a spot weld. I also put a dot between the circles where I was going to put in temporary rivets to hold the bracket in place and firmly down.

I drilled 1/8" holes at all the dots and 1/4" holes at all the circles...just in the bracket, NOT through the inner fender or cowl. I also used the 1/4" drill to chamfer the 1/8" rivet holes.

I put the bracket in the correct position and drilled the rivet holes the rest of the way through...wallowing the bit a little to get the right diameter for an 1/8" rivet.

Using a swivel head rivet gun (Eastwood) and 1/8" rivets, I staked the bracket firmly into place. Then I used an 1/8 drill bit on my electric drill sort of like a grinder...moving it around the 1/4 holes to remove the primer underneath and expose nice clean shiny steel.

I cut a steel coat hanger into straight pieces to use as a welding rod. That's right coat hanger. It's thin, it's clean, and it flows very well. I tried it because it was recommended to me by a welder with 40 years experience. It worked 10 times better and easier than the welding rod I used prior to this.

Then I put water soaked towels all around the area to be welded on the car.

Using a 0 tip, 10 psi acetylene and 20 psi 02, I got a slightly carburizing flame (adjust O2 until inner blue cones line up, then cut 02 back a little to prevent oxydizing flame).  Best results were with a flame just loud enough to hiss...maybe 2" long.  (Note here:  A reliable source recommends trying 7 psi on the acetylene and 15 psi on the oxygen, instead of what I used).

Then I put the flame into the 1st quarter inch hole, heating the steel behind of it pink, then red, and as it went molten I started flicking the tip back up on the coat hanger to start a puddle in the 1/4" hole. I kept the tip moving to prevent burning through and get the edges of the hole molten. I kept adding wire until the hole was completely filled and even slightly over filled. Finally I took the rod away and used the tip to puddle the whole surface flat maybe 1/2" in diameter.

I paused between each weld to let the piece cool and prevent warpage...and moved from side to side on my welds working from the outside into the engine bay. After all the 1/4" holes were firmly welded, I turned the torch on the rivet heads and puddled them while adding just enough rod to fill the hole and bring it slightly above the level of the bracket.

The final step was to spend about 45 minutes with a die grinder taking everything back down flat.

Here's what the brace looked like after I got done.  Note that the 3 rivets that show will be under the fender, so I did not weld up those.

I also got busy with the new export brace.  After much consideration, I decided to cut the old fender brace stubs off the shock towers.  Each brace was held in with 5 welds.  3 spot welds and 2 lap welds.  The eastwood spot weld cutter made short work of the spot welds  I cut the lap welds off with a cut off wheel and my dremel.  The dremel really did a nice clean job.  Note the safety glasses.

This just wasn't that hard.  It took maybe 10 minutes per side to get them off.  The 3 holes to the right are where I cut out the spot welds.  You can also see them on the top of the shock tower.  I worked the weld bead off the shock towers with a cartridge roll on a pneumatic die grinder.  That took about 10 minutes per side too.  Then after some serious cleaning, I sprayed the area with self etching primer.  A little eastwood underhood black and I'll be ready to put the export brace in.  One thing I found on the export brace was sharp flash at all the holes.  I cleaned that up with the cartridge roll, wet sanded the export brace and repainted it with underhood black as well.

3-24 to 4-23

I replaced both splash shields on the drivers side and then put the fender back on.  One note, the rear reproduction splash shield took a little bending to make it fit.  The splash shields just mount on the car with sheet metal screws.  I used wide headed rivets to mount the rubber shields onto the sheet metal braces, rather than the supplied staples.  The front shield actually mounts to the fender rather than the inner fender.  Thanks to Steve from VMF for pounding that fact home to me.  He finally had to Fax me a picture to get it through my thick skull.  Normally I'm not quite so obtuse!

I put the fender on by myself.  This is a two man job.  Story of my life.

I ended up wet sanding and repainting the entire engine bay with Eastwood underhood black.  My original intention was to touch up paint here and there, but it just didn't match perfectly.

The first step was rolling the car out into the driveway.  Working from inside the engine bay with a hose and a bucket of soapy water I cleaned everything under the hood.  Then I switched over to engine degreaser which I sponged on.  One note, this stuff is extremely caustic, so use some rubber gloves.  After putting the degreaser on, I went over it with a stiff brush, then I hosed it off.  Next up was another round with the soap and water.  Then I used 400 grit sandpaper to wet sand everything.  More soap and water followed to clean the sanding slurry up.  Finally I rolled the car back inside and taped newspaper in to protect the sheet metal from over spray.  I used newspapers, plastic bags, and homemade cardboard shields in the engine bay itself to protect things like the battery, voltage regulator and brake booster from being painted.

Then I sprayed everything.  I used self etching primer where any bare metal showed.   I used a standard black primer over the top of that.  Then I used two coats of Eastwood underhood black.  It took about a can and a half for the whole bay.  If you've never used the Eastwood spray paint, you will be really impressed when you do.  It seems to have A LOT more in every can than standard spray paint.  The cans just go and go.  I've really been impressed with all the stuff I've gotten from them.

Here's a picture of that area with all the rust holes now.

I replaced all those little wire ties that plug into the inner fender as well.  I got those from National Parts Depot, along with a new gauge feed harness, stainless throttle rod, and the splash shields.

I used a can of victory red touch up paint to paint that rear fender bracket.  Here's what it looks like.

The paint's not exact, but it's very close.  I'm going to let it weather a little and see if it darkens up at all.  I bought a air brush from eastwood and I may use it to put some of the original paint (I have about a pint still in the can) on.  That project can wait a bit though.
If you've had the torque converter out (as you recall I DID) you should remove it again and pour 1 Quart of ATF in the torque convertor.  Then reinstall it in the transmission.  Keep working with it until you get it all the way in.  There are like 3 different places it will stop and feel like it is all the way in...BUT IT ISN'T.  Thanks to Pat from VMF for giving me the heads up on this.  It will be recessed in the bellhousing about an inch once it is in all the way.  Just keep fiddling with it and it will go.  Turn the T/C until the bolts are at 12:00, 3:00, 6:00 and 9:00.  Turn the crankshaft on the engine until the holes are in the same clock positions.

After that, it was time to put the engine in.  Thanks to my Father-in-law for coming down and helping me stabilize the engine while we lowered it in.

You can't really see it in this picture, but I wasted a bunch of time by trying to set the headers in the bay and drop the engine between them.  Don't bother.  There is plenty of room to bring them up from underneath later.  They kept getting in the way when we were setting the engine in so that was a mistake.

Here I've got the transmission tilted up in front about as far as I can get it.  The load leveler is used to tilt the engine about the same amount. Once you get everything close, you can start the bell housing bolts. Then you can get down and get the flywheel matched up to the torque convertor.  You can only see one bolt at a time.  Once you can get a nut started, turn the crankshaft 90 degrees until you can get the next one started.  This takes a little patience, but it wasn't as hard as I feared it might be.

Once all the bell housing bolts and t/c nuts are started, it might be a good time to mount the headers.  That's what I did.  That gave me a little more clearance, because the engine was still raised.  I messed up here by going ahead and tightening the bell housing and t/c bolts all the way BEFORE I had the motor mounts bolted up.  Maybe it was just my hoist set up, but I ended up with the engine sitting about 3/8" too far back and couldn't get the bolts in the motor mounts.  I would recommend starting the motor mount bolts, AND THEN finishing torquing everything on the tranny up.  You can finish by installing the access cover on the bottom of the tranny, that one stud I forgot about when I first tried to pull the engine, and the starter.  I used my regular starter with the headers.  Yeah it's tight...but it fits.  I put it on after the header was already on.  But in hindsight I would say put the starter on first.  At least with my headers they will come off/go on with the starter in.

After I got the engine in, it looked like this.

One detail I hadn't mentioned before was my COMPLETELY TRICK stainless steel vacuum advance line.  Did I mention that when you buy a roll of stainless steel tubing, you end up with about 20' more than you actually need to make a fuel line?

The black wire coming up next to the fuel line is part of the new gauge feed harness I got from NPD.  It includes all the pick up wires for your oil sender, distributor wire, and water temperature sender.  The insulation on my old one was in sorry shape.  The new one sure looks a lot better.  In fact seeing how good it looks makes me wish I had budgeted to replace all the wiring harness under the hood.  It really wouldn't be that much more work...but would add a few hundred to the price tag.

At this point I completed hooking up the radiator hoses, wiring, and installed the fan and fan belt.  I turned the crank the engine turned, but it wouldn't fire.  To make a long story a little shorter I had to do two things to get the engine to run.

1.  I bought a timing light and set the initial timing at 10 degrees before Top Dead Center (BTDC).  To do this, you hook up your timing light to the #1 spark plug wire, rotate the crank by had until it is between the 9 and the 12 timing mark (say about 10).  Then turn the distributor until the light flashes.  At that point, go ahead and tighten the distributor hold down.

2.  I had to pull off the valve covers and reset all 16 of the adjustable roller rockers.  Somehow I had overtightened all 16 to the point that the valves wouldn't close, and I was getting zero compression.  I suspect that the lifters pumped up and changed the preload.  Or perhaps I just really missed it that bad.  In any case this is something that is really important.   If I have had bare minimum piston to valve clearance I might have nicked one, because the preload was off 3 full turns on some of these.  That equates to about .090" over travel!  With a bigger cam or tighter clearances I could have completely tore everything up.  With only the starter motor to turn the engine, maybe it wouldn't have been too bad.  But if only one or two valves were adjusted wrong and the engine fired....Katy bar the door.  You're looking at a catastrophic result.  The next time I do this, I'm going to NOT preload the rockers until I've started the engine.  Then I'll turn it off, pull the valve covers and set the preload.

After I got the engine going, I mounted my new stainless steel monte carlo bar.  I finally found one of these at Tony Brandas Supply.  I understand that they've gone obsolete.  You'll note that it is an extremely tight fit to the air cleaner.  Evidently this is a function of my intake manifold.  Everyone else that has this set up has about 3/4" clearance.  Mine has about a tenth of an inch...MAYBE.

Next up was fixing a problem with header clearance on the passenger side.

The #3 primary is about .010 off the shock tower.  It might be possible to lever the engine over to the other side of the engine bay to help this...but the other side only has about 1/4" clearance, so that isn't an option.  So I marked the interference with welder's chalk and took the header back off.

The plan is to heat that spot up with a welding torch and ding it in to get a little clearance WITHOUT cracking the header or restricting the primary any more than is absolutely necessary.

I can't take pictures and use a torch at the same time.  Here's what it looked like after I headed it red hot and tapped it down with a hammer, and used some header paint on it.

Next up was taking the car to the local muffler shop to get the rest of the exhaust put in.  After discussing what I was looking for with the shop, we settled on 3 chamber delta flow flowmasters for mufflers.  When I got to the exhaust shop after work to pick up the car, they were just finishing up.  Here's that H-pipe.

I had bought a kit from Summit...but the guy at the exhaust shop just laughed at it and said he'd make one from scratch.  That's 2 1/4" exhaust pipe with a 2" crossover right in front to the convertible brace.

OK in this picture you see I need to clean up my rear end.  Also you see the 2" tail pipes coming off the flowmasters.   Mark at the exhaust shop tried several time to bend this in 2 1/4" pipe, but he couldn't get a tight enough bend to get around the gas tank and through the center of the valence hole.  This would not be a problem with a standard exhaust.  He used a bushing to reduce the 2" to 1.875 for the GT tips.  I wish he'd have left the GT tips sticking out a little farther, but I guess it'll do.

Next up was a little test driving.  I made the Kessel Run in 12 Parsecs.  In other words...IT's FAST!

The car exhibited surging at part throttle and a stall when accelerating on just the primaries.  Remembering back to when I bought the holley, at that time I rejetted the carb DOWN from size 66 main jets to 60's.  This was to eliminate a bog I was getting when the secondaries kicked in.  The stock heads and cam just couldn't use all the juice the 66's were squirting in.  Now I felt I probably had the opposite problem.

I went out and drove the car on the highway and then zipped back home.  I shut the car down as soon as I hit the driveway so that the idle circuits wouldn't have time to wash the plugs off.  I pulled the #1 plug and sure enough it was showing a tiny bit of white ash.  This is the official sign of a lean condition.  Rather than jack around with small changes, I decided to go ahead and put the stock jets back in the Holley.  So, I pulled the fuel bowl.

Note the towels around the carburetor base.  They call it the fuel bowl because it's full of fuel.  When you take the first bottom bolt out, gas will run out of it.  You could probably catch it in a small pan or something, but I just used this terry shop towel.  I'm pointing at the primary there.  You see the 2 brass orifices sticking out down there.  That's the primary jets on the 4160 Holley.  They just screw out and the new ones go in seconds.

This is me setting the idle mixture the next day.  Why the next day you ask?  Well the fuel bowl gasket, which I'd had off about 4 times finally ripped, so I had to wait for Autozone to open up Saturday morning to get a new gasket.  I also got new nylon bolt gaskets to replace the paper ones.  The nylon ones work great.  One thing you really have to watch on this job are the o-rings on the fuel transfer tube.  Thats the tube that runs from the front fuel bowl to the back fuel bowl.  When you pull it out of either end, the O-ring always stays in the hole.  BEFORE you reinsert the transfer tube, you have to dig the o-ring out of the hole and put it back on the transfer tube.  Then press the assembly into the holes in the respective fuel bowls with the o-rings properly seated on the transfer tube.  Otherwise you are going to have a huge fuel leak.  Note that I have the vacuum gauge hooked up wrong here.  I should have teed into the vacuum advance line, rather than unhooking it.  That way I could have monitored the vacuum with the advance kicked in.  Anyway, what you do here is monitor the vacuum at idle while you adjust the idle mixture screws.  You keep adjusting the screws out equally until the vacuum quits rising and starts to drop.  Your idle mixture screws are properly set when you have maximum vacuum at idle.  You may need to adjust your idle screw too.   My mixture screws were so far off that the engine picked up 500 rpm once they were reset, so I had to adjust the main idle screw to get me back in the 750 rpm range.

This is a picture of the '65's throttle linkage.  I've got return springs mounted in front.  That's a stainless throttle rod hooked to the holley's linkage.   You can see the bell crank assembly here too.  When that right angle on the throttle rod hits the bell crank, the crank rotates and pushes down on the lever going to the C4.  I didn't know Rube Goldberg had ever worked for Ford.  Here's proof positive that he did.  Anyway the one thing I've got to do yet is get some hardware to extend the shaft coming off the C4 to get the bell crank closer to the right angle on the throttle rod.  I guess this is another sign that the FMS intake manifold moves the carb forward, because there isn't enough engagement to kick the C4 down with my set up.  I have an awesome set of tools though...so I can fix it.

Well, fellow Fordophile, that's about it.  That's how I spent the winter of 2000-2001.  It was expensive.  It was time consuming.  But it was a blast.  A special thanks to all the great people at the Vintage Mustang Forum for their help and encouragement.  I've mentioned a few here, but really so many helped a lot.

The engine is unbelievably strong now.  It is extremely streetable too.  It has a bit of a lope in the  idle, but not too much.  The engine makes plenty of vacuum to run the power brakes, starts easily, and is docile around town, with just a little bit of rumble.  When the accelerator hits the floor though, it takes off like a rocket.  The car is definitely the fastest car I've ever owned.  Traction is a bit of an issue. F or a street car it is about all the engine I'll ever need.  I'd love to get it on a chassis dyno sometime and see how it does.  I'd guess its somewhere between 225 and 275 at the rear wheels.

I'm extremely pleased with how the project turned out.  Doing the work myself (other than the exhaust) gave me a lot of pride and satisfaction.  I'd encourage anyone who has an interest in doing this sort of thing to give it a try.  You'll have a ball!

Main Page