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.