Flash's 66 Mustang

[Flash]

Two rolls of fresh 3/8" bundy tube arrived early last week, so I've been steadily plugging away at installing the new fuel return line.

I started off by creating a mock-up out of some discarded brake lines that I had in my scrap pile. Looked pretty good until I realised that I was creating a headache for myself further down the line. Sometime in the not-too-distant future I plan to install a set of sub frame connectors to stiffen up the chassis and by running the return line as I had planned, would have clashed with the right-hand connector. So, it was a case of going back to the drawing board.

For my second iteration I ended up mirroring the factory fuel line that runs down the left-hand side of the chassis and now have the return line running down the right.

I was determined to get the line completed in one solid length from front to back which turned out to be a mission and a half. Ended up having to remove the right-hand exhaust, drive shaft and half of the front suspension to get the pipe in. Then spent hours and hours fitting, checking, pulling it out, fine tuning the bends and refitting until I got what I was hoping for.

I ended up making a little "rough as guts" jig out of some wood scraps and fabricated a batch of holding brackets out of some stainless-steel plate that I had lying around. I suppose I could have bought some brackets, but where is the fun in that.

Anyway a few "in progress" pics of the various components including a candid shot of the newly bent return line just to whet your appetite:

 

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Chucked the fuel return line in for its final fitting and I'm happy with the overall result.

Not that easy to take decent photos of it running along the transmission tunnel, but here are a few of the portion that sits inside the front fender:

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Next step is to plumb the return line into the factory fuel tank.

Some guys fit a "T" piece into the fuel filler neck, but that would have entailed me routing the return line into the boot and I wasn't keen to do that.

The Fitech master installation kit comes with a little fitting that works on the same principle as a rivnut. Only downside is that it means having to drill a hole in the tank.

Now feel free to call me a bit of a big girl blouse but I've heard a few horror stories of sparks causing fuel tanks to blow up wreaking injury and carnage to those caught in the fray. I don't really fancy the sound of that, so haven't been looking forward to this step. But, yesterday arvo I pulled out the tank and first thing this morning I put on my big boy pants and cracked straight into it.

First up a few up close and personal photo of the rivnut type thingy for those interested:

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First step was to drain the loose tank of the last few cups of fuel. This included a bit of debris that I guess has been languishing at the bottom of the tank for a good few years.

Next step was to fill the tank to the brim with sky juice as no one is going to make a burnt offering out of me.

I then slowly drilled a 3mm pilot hole and worked my way in increments of 1mm until my step drill bit would fit the hole and took it the last few steps to 12.5mm.

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Final step was to clean the hole up a bit before pushing in the thingy.

Grabbed the outer with a spanner and steadily wound the bolt in to compress the rear of the rivnut. The rubber O ring on the outside is supposed to seal things up nice and tight.

Then out with the bolt and in with the ORB return fitting and hopefully that's it.

I'll leave the tank in the sun for the rest of the day to dry out any water left inside.

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Steadily plugging away at the EFI upgrade whenever I get a chance. It's time-consuming fiddly stuff, but hey I want it to be right first time.

Tank is back in and all fuel lines completed including high pressure line to throttle body. 

Space was so limited that I had to remove the RHS exhaust header to fit the o2 bung, but that's all welded in and the header is back on with a fresh gasket.

Moved the existing temp gauge sender unit to the thermostat housing as I wanted to have the EFI temp sensor located in the inlet manifold which meant draining the coolant and then bleeding the system once again after the swap.

Even the air cleaner thread was different on the throttle body, so had to do a town run to source some ss threaded rod and nuts to get that sorted.

Then I wasn't getting WOT so had to fiddle about with the accelerator linkage in order solve that issue.

EFI fuse box is mounted so all that is left to do is to poke a hole in the firewall for the battery and ignition feeds and the control wire for the handheld and I should then be ready for the big fire up.

 

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Okay, so some of you might have seen my plea for help on the general chat page as I was battling with a voltage related issue.

Let me explain.  The new EFI system came with its own fuse/ relay box which makes the external wiring really simple. All that is really required is two 12 volt feeds, one a direct battery feed and the other a switched ignition feed. The battery feed was pretty straight forward, but the switched feed had me scratching my head for a good few hours.

I'd like to thank those who responded to my "help needed" post with advice and suggestions. Shout out to @nominal who gave me a clue that sent me off into the world of google where I finally got my answer.

I don't want to bore you with a whole lot of useless detail, suffice to say that on the early Mustangs there is only one wire that has the potential to provide a full 12 volts on cranking and that is the coil wire on the ignition switch. But, there is a twist to this as right under the dash just before the wiring loom firewall connecter Ford have sneakily hidden an inline resistor that drops the voltage to the coil. So, the only way to get the full 12 volts is to tap into the coil wire before this resistor.

Had to pull out my instrument cluster and then the ignition switch to identify the correct wire. Cutting into my factory harness hurt like hell, but I basically had no choice.

And now my new EFI is one happy chappy.

Image of the factory ignition switch identifying the coil wire that I pinched from the web as a reference for anyone who may come across the same issue and a photo of the wire with my bodge for your viewing pleasure:

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I've spent the last couple of weeks driving the tits off the Mustang. The Fitech EFI has performed flawlessly so far and I'm consistently getting AFR readings in the mid 14s during cruising.

Pulled the spark plugs for a gander and some are a lovely "cooked chook" colour with some of the plugs showing up slightly leaner. It's still too early to tell what the fuel consumption is like, but judging by the condition of the plugs it's got to be way better than it was.

However, I'm still experiencing sporadic fumes inside the cabin which is annoying. 

So back to the drawing board to track down the cause. 

Thought I'd focus on the exhaust system, or at least the parts that I haven't touched thus far.

Started off by pulling the driver's side exhaust header. Some of the bolts were not that tight which got me excited. Looking at the gasket once I got it out showed definite signs of blow by, so I was pretty confident that I had maybe found the culprit. Chucked in a new gasket and tightened up the bolts properly. I did the other header gasket as part of the O2 sensor install so I knew that side was good. Replaced the flange gasket too.

Took the car out for a quick squirt and it's definitely a lot better than it was, but you can still get a good whiff of fumes now and again especially when she is up to operating temp. I've checked my PCV valve and hose and they are all good, so I'm a bit stumped at the moment.

Suggestions on the back of a sealed envelope will be gladly accepted.

Thanks for reading.

 

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Apart from the occasional bath, the poor old Mustang hasn't seen much loving since late Feb. We still use it heaps and every now and then I play around with some of the EFI settings mainly to see if I can improve things from an exhaust fumes perspective. Just before winter I disabled the settings that add extra fuel on startup and cold running and this has solved the excess fumes that we were experiencing on startup. It did result in some extra cranking needed on really cold mornings, but I reckon that is a small price to pay.

When the engine is warm we are still experiencing excess fumes at idle, so I thought I'd play around with the idle air controller. 

But before tackling that I thought I'd sort out some kind of mounting bracket for the little hand held controller.

The system is supplied with one of those long flexible holders with a suction cap for windscreen mounting, but it looked cheap and nasty and way out of place in the old Muzzy so I binned that a while ago. Since then the touch screen has been floating around the cabin and just generally making a nuisance of itself, so I eventually banished it to the glove box. 

After giving it some thought I figured I would mount the LCD to the front of the centre console which is missing its end plate anyway.

 

So first up I grabbed an aluminium plate offcut, gave it a little bend and trimmed it to size.

Cut a little slot to hold the cable, cleaned up the edges, spritzed it with some satin black and then test mounted it.

Chucked a bit of velcro on the mounting plate and the back of the handheld and it is now nice and secure.

Doesn't look too out of place.

 

Celebrated by giving it a quick bath.

 

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In terms of ongoing maintenance, the poor old Mustang has been taking a back seat to our Thames van for quite a while now, but the recent failure of its starter motor has finally pushed it to the front of the queue.

The old clapper style starter that these are blessed with has been slowly getting lazier and lazier, especially during hot starts. The main reason for this is the fact that it sits so close to the RHS exhaust header that it slowly gets cooked. A good 18 months back I bought one of those mini high torque jobbies as a replacement.

 These are supposed to be fully adjustable to provide extra header clearance but in this instance it actually ended up making things worse to the point where the header would no longer fit. So, I ended up wrapping the original in one of those thermal blankets and putting it back. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done and she didn't last too much longer.

I toyed with the idea of buying another high torque example marketed by Aeroflow, but after seeking advice from our local auto electrician I ended up going for another clapper style unit.

New and old together:

The newer unit is a slightly improved design with the main terminal located at the rear of the unit rather than on the side closest to the header.

I tweaked the header slightly with a BFH and ended up wrapping it in some of that thermal bandage. There is a good 15mm of clearance now so hopefully this will give the new starter a fighting chance.

While I was grovelling around under the old girl I noticed that the power steering pressure hose was looking a bit tatty. Here:

And here:

The hose moves back and forth as its attached to the main ram which in turn forms part of the steering centre link so it ends up with this kind of wear at both flex points.

Replacements are cheap as chips, so I added a fresh unit sourced from Rob at Sydney Mustang.

Another thing that looked well flogged was the dust boot and end rubbers on the power steering ram.

Ended up getting a fresh kit in the same parcel with the hose, so I chucked that in too.

I'll give the Mustang a bath sometime next week and hopefully then all will be forgiven.

Thanks for looking.

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I've been trying to track down the source of an intermittent steering "clunk" for a while now and yesterday I finally got a chance to chuck the Muzzy up on my mate's hoist for a good look see. It didn't take us long to identify the source as a worn ball joint on the power steering valve -this being the only ball joint that I haven't replaced thus far.

Using a photo off the web the offending ball joint looks like so:

 

So first thing this morning I pulled out the centre link that incorporates the power steering valve and ... yep... my ball joint is well knackered:

Ended up ordering a steering valve ball and stud rebuild kit from Sydney Mustang which is winging its way to me as we speak, but I thought I'd get a head start by stripping the nasty thing down.

Gave everything a good clean and now I just need the new bits to arrive.

 

 

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The rebuild kit for the power steering ram and a new set of sway bar bushes pitched up yesterday arvo.

So, this morning I cracked straight into it.

Nek minnit:

Yummy.

 

 

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First thing this morning I headed into town for a hot date with the wheel alignment boys.

AAA+++. Would trade again.

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Recently the a/c blower fan has been making an intermittent grinding sound which has been getting steadily worse. I figured it was a sign that the motor was on its last legs.

So, on my way back from the alignment shop I wheeled past the a/c place and Josh quickly dropped the gas for me.

Oh, by the way, that black beastie in the background is an LS3 powered 350Z that is in for some a/c work.

Anyway, back home I pulled the under-dash unit out and opened it up:

Chucked a battery on it and fired up the motor. Sure enough grinding sound started up almost straight away.

Turns out the hamster wheel on the left was just touching the inner rim of the casing. Yikes can it be that simple I thought.

Removed the small holding clamp and slid the wheel slightly outward till it cleared the casing a bit more before reinstalling the holding clamp.

Tested it again and it was running smooth as silk.

Unit is back together and reinstalled with fresh o rings on the a/c lines and a brand-new receiver/drier.

It's booked in for a re-gas first thing on Friday morning.

 

 

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First thing this morning Josh gassed up the a/c which is now back in perfect working order.

Hopefully that's the Mustang sorted for the next few months.