Wheels, Tyres and paint prep - interim post

Hi there.

Under a bit of pressure to give an update..... So here are some photos of the newly acquired rims and a summary of recent progress. I will expand this post when time permits......

Recent highlights:

• The Bonspeed "Big Block" rims arrived from the USA (18" x 8" up front and 18" x 9" rear).
• Hancook directional tread tyres (235/40 up front and 275/40 rear).
• Had to get the RRS front rotors machined to fit the hubs (Done free by RRS - thanks!).
• Had to refit the engine block, trans, rear-axle, etc to get the car as close to "ride height" as possible to fit the rims/tyre combo and check for guard clearance. All ok.
• Found that there is heaps of room that exists to clear the front tyres & guards during lock-to-lock turning.
• Just purchased a full DeBeers "two-stage clear over color paint system. Color is "Toyota Black 212".
• Just finished the rear valence last weekend (for a prefect fit at the outer edges).

Still to do (in preparation for paint):

• Finish the upper cowl panel (and holes for the new wipers to suit the RHD conversion).
• Mount the wiper motor in the cowl cavity but with actuator arm mounted (in a leak-proof way) in the cabin.
• Adjust the existing firewall slightly to clear some engine/bell-housing bolts adequately.
• "Reset" the Aussie passenger side "sill panel to door" gap so the bottom run of the door rubber has enough room (there is a slight bow in the upper sill rail that would pinch the door rubber somewhat).
• Weld in the lower interior trim mounting points (as these got removed when the new floor was installed).
• Once all welding is done then strip off protective undercoat and spray the primer.

Apart from all the above, I will be lowering the front suspension a bit more I expect. There is still a fair it of weight to add as the block was empty of all spinning parts and there were no fluids of course. It is all adjustable thankfully so I see no problems with this. Of course once painting is done then it's interior trim to do and build/dyno the motor.

Anyway - here are the pictures...........

 

And here the tail is being worked on (again).
Valence needed adjusting and the bumber is being clipped. Left side looks good now, right side needs more work.....

Radiator & Cowl

Progress has been slow recently - due to very long hours being required at work as well as plenty of "kiddy" activity required when I am at home.

Plus I am doing some rather fiddly custom fabrication work throughout the engine bay - specifically the radiator support panel and the upper cowl. One nice addition since my last post has been that I have a "donor car" now from which to poach various parts for this project (thanks Fab!). For the cost of providing dinner Fab drove his old 1991 Falcon over - and just left it there. From this car I will pinch the wipers, bonnet (hood) hinges and gas-struts, radiator, power steering pump, fan/heater/air-con unit, etc, etc. All these bits are decidedly dodgy on original Mustangs and these bits are 25 years newer! But I digress.....

 

As anyone who has transplanted an engine onto a Ford knows, you need to lift your engine very high - up over the top of the flimsy radiator support panel before angling the transmission steeply down and sliding the engine in place. Many a time I've thought of cutting the top of this panel out and bolting it back in place later, but I've never actually bothered in the end. Well this time i have done it. But my motivation was two-fold:

• I definitely needed to increase the size of the radiator air entry inlet for the big-block (so needed to make changes here anyway).
• I wanted to make the installation/removal of the engine as easy and safe as possible.

Also, as I now have a full chassis, I'm much less likely to have the outer sections (after chopping) moving apart and making it hard to re-install the removable section.

Firstly, here is a photo of the still standard 66 Mustang radiator support panel.

The air inlet for the radiator is puny (compared to what I need)!



And below is a photo of the donor car. A dime a dozen locally made 1991 Falcon.

What I did was use the radiator dimensions from the '91 Falcon (700mm for the core) and cut the Mustang radiator support panel to this size. As you can see in the photos below, this leaves a relatively small amount of metal at the top corners on both sides - and so the original panel was made even more flimsy. The answer of course is the "box" this panel.

As you can see above, the entry now for the radiator is (relatively) enormous when compared to original. But whenever you do custom work like this on a car - things just seem to take forever. Boxing the edges of the new opening as well as the new "removable" top was rather painful. The reason being that there are hardly any straight edges to work work with. Everything is hand formed, fabricated, installed and finished.......

While the above photo shows the work almost complete when looking from the front, the real work can be seen below when looking from the inside. 

Keen eyes will see the boxing work done on the various curved surfaces and the inclusion of threaded nuts in the various locations that the boxing work would have otherwise sealed off from access. Plus some trial fitting of some original pieces. And yes, I will be cleaning up the engine bay and straightening everything I can before paint. The interior of the bay has a coating of body deadener over most of it - hard to remove quickly, but the panels underneath seem pretty good.

A huge bonus for me was finding out that the '91 Falcon radiator was an absolutely perfect fit in the '66 Mustang. Check out just how neatly and flush this unit fit is, in the above and below photos.

As a result i drilled out the welds for the various radiator mounts in the donor car and welded these into the Mustang too. Looks like a factory fit now.....

Of course I know I will probably need more cores in any final radiator I use, but for now this sets things up initially and will get me going.

Just as an aside, I do have a 4-core "Aussie Desert Cooler" radiator from my previous 1972 351C Falcon that I intended to use - but this earlier model (earlier than the '91 donor Falcon) radiator is at least 2 inches too high. I would never have been able to shut the bonnet with the radiator sitting straight up, or, I would have had to angle it very steeply to fit. Angling a radiator can improve it's efficiency - but the angle I required to make things fit would have looked ridiculous!

OK - that's about it for the radiator, now for the bonnet hinges, gas-struts and cowl area.

The standard Ford/Falcon spring operated scissor hinges are plainly and simply a crappy old design (just my opinion). For my project in particular, they rob me of engine-bay room I don't have. So I've grafted in the '91 Falcon versions from the donor car. Hey-presto - a modern and stable design......

Now there is absolutely no sideways movement when lifting the bonnet, and, the panel fit is much more certain (that is, the gap between the front guards and the bonnet). Not only that but the bonnet lifts higher and I can more easily adjust this height depending on the struts I use.

By doing away with the original hinges, I can now fit my clutch and brake reservoirs flush inside the gap made by the rear inner fender apron and my shock tower supports. So a nice neat finish. Ah - and before I forget, I've made these new bonnet hinges adjustable (by adding or removing shims).

Lastly, my upper cowl panel has proven very tricky. I have elected to create a "removable upper cowl" - which in fact was a feature of the 1970's local Falcons here. Very good to get access to windscreen wipers and also to apply rust proofing in between the upper and lower cowl panels.

You can see in the above photo the temporary extension I've spot welded in place on the front-lower edge of the upper cowl. This is just a temporary piece as I will create the final smooth piece next.

Rear Suspension - 3-Link Installation

As mentioned in the last entry, I've installed the rear suspension so that I can check for how the tyres will fit inside the guards. While I believed I measured things up ok (re-measured several times!), you never really know until everything is actually put in place.

Things like including the thickness of the disk brakes are a trap if you forget. And it all gets worse if you are running tight clearances to begin with.

So here are some shots of the RRS "3-Link" rear suspension after it has been put in place.

First a photo looking to the rear, showing the torque-arm as it's installed. This arm pivots from under the gearbox and doesn't let the diff' twist upwards/downwards (at all) as it would normally do when using the old leaf-springs.

And now you can see the location of the axle reasonably clearly, this time including the watts linkage. The long torque-arm doesn't bolt up to the diff housing directly, it bolts up to the face of the pinion support, and then has those "extender" bolts that bolt up to the flange of the diff casing. I used vernier calipers to accurately measure the "pinion face to diff case flange face" to make sure I set the "extenders to the correct distance. I also use spacers against the axle housing to mimic the thickness of the diff casing (flange thickness).

The photo below shows how tight things are with the 9" wide wheel rims (that have wider tyres as well). However, nothing touches thru the full suspension travel, or when one wheel lifts as the other drops (so the axle pivots).

The following photo is a bit ordinary but gives some idea as to how the car will look from behind with it's bigger rubber. In reality, it looks great!

And this photo shows the nice fit of the tyres in the wheel wells when the car is the right way up. Notice that the coil springs don't droop anywhere near as much as the old leaf springs.....

So that's it for the rear suspension. All I needed to do was get it "dummied up" and completed. Thankfully, only some very minor work was needed on the body. Being a long-weekend I just had enough time to remove the 9" housing, store all the 3-Link suspension pieces away and assemble the diff itself.

These next two photos show the Currie "9+" carrier installed in the housing.

What you can't see of course is the 35 spline Detroit Locker and big 35 spline axles.

As for weight, bloody-hell, this diff will drop about 2 tenth from an E.T. I would imagine. It isn't a feather weight! I will weigh it and put that weight in this blog entry. I just need a buddy to help me move it around!

So that's it for the rear suspension - it all seemed to bolt in ok. I had to make a few tweaks of course because my chassis wasn't perfectly original. But the result is extremely robust and should be fun to play with when tuning it to get the best performance out of it.

Next steps will be to work forwards from the doors on the shell to get it ready for paint.

Progress - despite a lack of posts.....

I had a look the other day and it's been 3 and a half years since i started on this rebuild - can it be that long????

As usual there are just too many distraction lately that allow me time to progress things. There has been no break from work over xmas and i'm about to travel for a month.

However, I can announce some recent progress so here are the latest updates (and it's all to do with finishing the Fastback body)....... sort of......

Anyway, to get the rear wheel wells completed along with the rear guards, I have to have the diff completed to ensure it all fits under the body skin. So I shoved the 16 x 9 inch rims (with fat Goodyear eagles on) under the guards and measured up the wheel bolt up (face to face) distance.

The complicating factor is that my vehicle engineer has demanded that the diff runs floating hubs and axles so I had to get new 3 inch o.d. axle tubes welded in as well (to carry the hubs).

And here is the completed diff housing, hubs and brake assembly photos.

First the bare housing with the 3 inch housing extensions plus the floating hub bearing tubes.

The bare metal bearing tubes you see on each end of the housing also have the "floating axles" pass right thru them and protude another inch or more.

The close-up below shoes the brake caliper mount (painted black), then the first step on the bare metal tube is the polished surface that runs against the axle seal (the seal is pressed into the inside edge of the hub body), then the next step on the bare tube carries the 2 conical roller bearings, then the threaded section and machined slot carries the lock washer and lock nut.

The photo below shows the various hub components. You can see that the splined drive-hub slips over the wheel studs and this is what drives the whole hub assembly. I'm running 35 spline axles - as that's what the good folk at Currie Enterprises suggestd (based on my driveline combo).

The cobbled together weird looking piece of water pipe & welded on bolts is the special tool I had to make so I could tighten/un-tighten the floating hub lock nuts.

And below you can see the nice clean final fit for the hubs. In essence, it's just like the hubs you have on any trailer, but the stub axle itself is hollow - so the drive axle from the diff pass thru and drive the while thing. 

Just to complete things, the phot below shows the disks and calipers mocked up and installed. A keen eye will notice that i've installed them on the wrong axles (they are bakwards and up-side down) - but I only needed the get the overall width measured here. Still - it's a nice looking and reliable combination.

And while we are on the subject of "reliable" (for this car), here are a couple of photos of the diff center that just arrived too - thanks to the strong Aussie $ right now! It's a Currie brand "9+" nodular iron case with the big bearing saddles. I nearly went the alloy case to save weight - but my car will do some miles and I want longevity for the driveline components. This center weighs about 40Kg's - heavy!!!

And to complete the package, i've gone with the reliable Detroit Locker center (35 spline to complement the hubs). I had a locker in my ute for years - love them!  



That's all for now. I'm just waiting on the rear suspension components to arrive from RRS. Their system can indeed work with this modified housing. How you may ask with just a bare tube and no spring-pads?

That will be shown in the next post.