Firewall & Engine fit.

After dummy fitting the engine for the first time, i've had to modify the sump to clear the rack & pinion and existing front cross-member.

You can see below how I scalloped it and radiused the edges. I've also allowed enough room to shift the block forward or back a few inches from my initial "default" location.

There is still a good half inch or more room between the spinning crank & rods and the bottom of the sump at the new scalloped section.
Now you can see the block being "enticed" into position......

All ancillaries that need to be catered for (for firewall and extractor construction) are bolted on so I don't get surprises when doing the final installation.
Now you can see the Tremec bolted up and i've raised the tran's tunnel 2 inches to give me just enough "wiggle-room" to make future driveline installations easy enough as well as include the cross-member that welds in between the frame extensions at this point. Thankfully, the standard rear engine mount from an Australian '72 to '79 Falcon bolts right onto the Tremec with no mod's and fits perfectly between the frame extensions. I have however had to modify Mustang floor pans to clear the rear cross-member "humps" (that allow for the twin exhausts to pass thru).

Below you can see the block now sits nicely in the engine bay and the transmission is perfectly centered.

And below you can see (if you enlarge the photo) the room I have available to construct my custom headers....

I had a single sheet of steel for the firewall, but had to split it in the middle to make it easiest to handle and "custom fit". You can see from the photo below that it's initially a nice snug fit around the driveline. But this is an illusion - I will be cutting and bending the firewall to make more clearance room. Otherwise the fit would be so tight that I couldn't install the engine/transmission in a single unit, and, i'd struggle to swap to an auto in the future.

Notice the marker pen scribble on the sheet-metal.... this is where I am "indenting" the firewall to provide adequate clearance around the motor.

And below you can see the tight fit with the final positioning. But the important thing is that it does fit!

And finally below you can see my "helpers" having a bit of fun!

When I get back from my travels it's out with all the driveline & suspension, then the shell goes back up on the spinner so I can cleanly weld in the firwall & floor to finish the shell.

Firewall - interim update

Just so I can keep from being accused of neglecting this blog, here are some shots of what's been happening recently.......

As can be seen, I've dropped the shell off the rotisserie as I need to dummy fit the engine and can't do that while it's up on the spinner.

But in order to test fit the driveline (to complete the firewall), I had to finally receive my......

• Tremec TKO 600
• Quicktime bell housing
• Flywheel (lightened)
• Clutch (11 inch, plus hydraulic throw-out bearing)
• Reduction starter
• Rocker covers
• plus various miscellaneous parts

As can be seen above, these allow me to "button up" the block enough to keep it sealed from dirt & humidity yet have the outside dimensions in place to form the firewall and trans-tunnel.

Pictures of first attempted "engine fit" are shown below. There is just under an inch of clearance from the top of the shock towers to the rocker covers.

I can drop the engine down anther inch or two and still have the bell housing sit high enough from the ground - after I cut out some of the dry-sump where it contacts the rack & pinion setup. As I'm having a front and rear sump scavenge system, scalloping the centre section slightly is no problem.

The tall rocker covers fit over the stud girdle. It's a tight fit in terms of engine bay width - but it fits non-the-less. The shot above shows how far back I can set the block for better weight distribution.

However, I am seriously considering fabricating some "sliding" engine mounts to push it back a further 2 inches (once I drop it an extra inch after the sump mod's). The motor would then slip back in under the lower cowl panel nicely. Sliding mounts would then let me slide the engine forward quickly when I need to lift the rocker covers.

Anyway, lot's to do now in terms of "Metalwork 101" to get the firewall sheetmetal right.

Regards, Spiderman.

Installing the RRS steering rack

I thought this would be worth a small post while I wait for the under-dash pedal box.....
Here is the RRS rack I just received & unpacked. It comes complete with the universal-joints, telescopic steering shaft, bearings and all the goodies to modify the steering column as well.

And here it is an hour or so later after it bolted right in with no dramas at all.

As per the instructions, all I needed to do was drill 4 holes (2 each side) in the lip of the chassis rail and in it all went.

One thing I have noticed is that the rack bolts in right where the chassis lip is recessed (cut back) to give clearance for the inner rear edge of the tyre at full steering lock. We will see if there is any interference later I guess when I put on my chosen rim/tyre combo. At least the steering bump-stops are adjustable on the rack so I can ensure I can stop the tyre hitting if there is a problem. But of course I'd rather get as much steering lock as possible so hopefully this wont be an issue.

The rack & struts are just dummied in place so I can get the shell rolling to do the firewall. I need it rolling so I can put the motor in - and I can't do that on the rotisserie!

Shock-Tower Bracing

As mentioned (in the last temporary post), I've been doing a lot of work bracing up the front of the cowls in preparation for trial-fitting the RRS front suspension pieces.

This is all being done in order to have everything complete so I can finally build my custom firewall. It is turning out that the firewall will be the last thing done to complete the shell - when I initially thought I could have completed it much sooner.

However - I've made some useful progress recently as evidenced by the following photos....


What you'll see above (once you look past the very nice RRS strut) is the reasonable degree of "triangulation" happening that stops the top of the shock-tower deflecting inwards (wanting to at least) when the suspension loads up. This custom system does away with the normal Mustang "Export Brace" that would otherwise take room away from big-block induction system in the engine bay.

The RRS gear is sensational quality and bolted right in. I have no hesitation in recommending their products in terms of "fit" as well as great service. I'm confident the performance will match the early impressions - and in case you are wondering, I'm not being sponsored by anyone! Just my actual observations so far!


I done away with the export brace not just to make more room, but also as the export brace is just a pressed piece of thin steel plate that can flex under compression. My system (when under suspension load) comes under tension along the external brace and compression only along the short inner (25mm X 50mm box-tube) brace.


My theory (just my opinion) is that my short inner brace will not flex under compression and my external brace will not stretch. Hence the need to have that solid box-tube section welded in place right across the firewall (see my previous post). I have gone down this path to ensure I have a solid foundation to handle the big-block torque output in combination with the advanced suspension setup.


Lastly, my vehicle engineer suggested I do not weld all this bracing to the shock-tower in place but bolt it in where possible. This allows for some flex to make sure welds aren't prone to cracking over time. And it can all be removed if required.

Here are some shots of how I got to this point.....

This (above) may look simple, but it wasn't. The outcome is that I've braced the firewall support box-tube that you can "end on" at upper left. The painful part is that I had to perform significant rust repair at the window pillar and along the lower edge of the outer cowl to make things solid, as well as build in a drain for the lower cowl. You can see the drain slot (a drain "tube" actually) cut into the upper brace.

The shot above shows the mounting points for the custom bracing being done as well as the "load spreader" plate bolted on top of the shock-tower. Note to young players - install the rear engine bay aprons after doing such work - you'll have much more room. D'oh! Thankfully I had only done one side by this stage.

Above is a shot of the custom bracing that is completely removable. Things to note are that the mounting bolt holes that run through the bottom of each piece of bracing (when looking at the photo above) are sleeved with 1/2"o.d. tube - so that 3/8" high tensile bolts slide nice and snugly through them. Also, the load spreader plates are made from 6mm steel plate & have their tabs bent to face as directly as possible along their lines of "load". Lastly, the three holes drilled into the load spreaders plates match the template created by the RRS strut mounting plates.

The above photo shows the bracing partially complete and gives you an idea of the degree of "triangulation" I was able to get. Quite a bit as you can see. Not much will get in the way of the big-block now!

I have a few more things to do with the front suspension like run the brake lines and tidy up unused holes in the engine bay, while I wait for the RRS under-dash pedal assembly to arrive. It is only then that I can "dummy up" the motor & transmission as well as the pedal box & steering column to fabricate the firewall correctly.
Just so you know, I've decided not to install a firewall from a modern Falcon as I'd need to chop it to pieces anyway (plus it has a resin sound deadening layer sandwiched within it that would catch fire when welding to make welding a real pain). So I'm making the firewall from 1.5mm zinc coated steel sheet and will shift the big-block back as far as possible in the engine bay. This should make the custom firewall quite a contorted piece - but all the recesses & bends that it will need to have will also make it very strong (as it will attain a kind of "3D" shape). So it wont be just a simple shallow "cone" pressed in a flat steel sheet as is done for a normal firewall.

Of course all that will be detailed in upcoming posts.....

Cowl Repair and Front Suspension Brace

Hi again.
This will be an evolving post as I don't really know how long this particular stage will last.

As you can see from the photo below, my cowl had plenty of rust in the usual places once i'd removed all the guard support flanges (and removed layers of silicon filler!).

My approach for this stage is as follows.....

• Cut away the upper cowl in a way that it can then be "removable" - as per Australian Falcons of the early 1970's (and no cuts/joins will be visible). A trap with Mustangs is that as the upper & lower cowl panels are installed as a welded unit, you can never get adequate access to properly rust-proof them at the welded joins (or at least not without great difficulty!). By making the upper cowl removable (attached with just a few screws), I can apply a very effective rust treatment and always have access to this area when required (like removing leaves from vents & fan blades).
• Fix any rusted areas & "rust proof" the cowl as described above.
• Install a full-length section of box-tube steel across the rear of the engine bay to provide a solid foundation for the lower (and removable upper) cowl, firewall & new front suspension bracing.
• Install the new rear engine-bay aprons.
• Install the new cowl "kick panels" (the side panels that run from the door-hinge frame forward to the firewall).
• Install a new firewall - although this will be only partially completed as I need to test fit the engine (sitting as far back as practical) in order to fabricate the final piece.

Anyway, below is a photo of the original metal after the upper cowl was removed.

Notice the rust holes in and around the vents. This car must have leaked like a sieve when it ran in the wet!

And below you can see the metal I had to remove to get back to a reasonable foundation.

You can also partially see (at the bottom of the photo) the custom box-tube section I had to fabricate that will fit the contour of the lower cowl. It's sitting there after countless trial-and-error "test-fits".

And below you can see that new "cross member" a little better but with the cowl repair well underway. I'm using 1.5mm zinc coated steel sheet for these patches.

And now you can see the cowl vent "stacks" have been fabricated and the new cross-member is also in place. I've also started to trial-fit the rear aprons as they finally have some metal to attach to at their rear ends.

And for those that are interested, that custom cross-member was a very tricky piece to make and to "get right". It needed to curve in 3 dimensions, be symmetrical and fit the cowl such that there were no gaps too wide to be welded.

This video may provide some idea of what is involved in the part of the repair (plus show just how nice a rotisserie is for making this project a little easier!).

One thing i've realised now that i've got this far...... I think i've finally reached a point where I no longer need to repair major rust problems. It's all "finishing off" work from here - hooray!
I'll modify & add to this post as I proceed.....

Front Frame & Rotisserie Support

Readers of earlier posts will know that I had some serious rust damage in the front frame directly beneath where the battery used to sit. I had been avoiding this fix as it was always going to be awkward unpicking the various spot welds that the standard Mustang has in this area (with so many suspension brackets), not to mention the custom metal-work needed for fit a new repair piece.

However, I eventually received my repair panels, so I cut out the old rusted section until I had a solid foundation and then trimmed the repair pieces back to match the "gap". As can be seen here - it's all fixed now! The lower edge of the fender apron is yet to welded back on when this photo was taken.

The shot above is a much better sight than the equivalent photo in an earlier post (taken when I was dismantling the car).

The photo's above and below show how the repair pieces are a superb fit (once you trim them back to match your requirement).

One nice surprise was that the rust caused by the battery leaks over the years only affected the area under the battery. I found "full thickness metal" in the old frame from just beyond the sway-bar mount. I made sure the patch grafted to the old frame at a diagonal angle for a strong bond. Needless to say, the old and new frame were "rust converted" and "rust protected" inside and out.

I needed to repair the front frame (specifically the mounting points for the front bumper-bar) so that I could remove the remaining section of the space-frame and re-mount the rotisserie to these bumper mounting points.

The space-frame needed to go so I can complete the fixes needed to be done to the cowl & firewall, plus clear room for new front suspension bracing I will be fabricating. So..... the front of the car went back up on blocks, the front space-frame was cut out, new mounts were created on the rotisserie, and then bolted to where the front bumper normally mounts.

You can see the setup in the shots below.


Note the huge "air gap" above the front rails with the firewall, rear fender aprons & outer cowl/kick-panels removed. I've put in the temporary upper piece of box-tube just so this gap doesn't shift as the body is rotated during work.

And here you can start to see the rust in the area where the cowl, dash & firewall all join along a spot welded seam that runs right across the engine bay. This seam will be cut out and replaced with a curved length of box-tube. Once the seam is cut out I can fix any rust problems as well as using the box-tube as a more solid foundation for the firewall & (under) dash panels as well as a platform for stabilising the front shock-towers.

But that will be shown in the next post!

Fitting the Front Guards

Circumstances over summer here have meant I've had a shuffle of the sequencing for this project - so rather than the firewall being done next, I've just finished fitting the front guards.
And what a summer it's ended up being! For international readers, record temp's here (50+ degrees C in Melbourne suburbs and hundreds killed in recent bushfire's - absolutely tragic).

But back to the car. As expected, getting the final panel fit right for the new guards has been the biggest pain. But overall it wasn't too much trauma when compared to prior phases in this rebuild.


But in a similar scenario to the doors, when I went to get my patch panels to fix the rusty lower rear sections of the front guards, it turned out much easier to just get new guards. The quality of the new guards is excellent so this has again saved me many weeks (elapsed time, not hands-on time) of work fiddling around trying to match panel contours and beating out ripples caused when patches are welded in place. Whoever previously owned this car had again cut corners in the past by simply riveting on patch panels directly on top of the original panel. As you'd expect, this created a "metal sandwich" that held moisture which rusted both the new patch and the area of the original panel that it covered - not to mention the huge amount of filler used. Check out the old decals I found under a patch panel......

Surprisingly, the cost of the whole new guard was not hugely greater than the patch, and a whole new panel gives me a running start at fine-tuning proper fitment. For my project, I've had to modify the mounting point on both guards that attach it to the sills, because my custom chassis rail occupies this area now. I've had to trim the sill mount back on the guards so the guards themselves would sit properly at the sill area. I then welded a nut in place on the chassis rail to be the new (very solid) mount. You can see what was done from the photo's below. I will rust-proof his whole area thoroughly as its a prime spot for the front wheels to drench in water on a wet road.

Here you can see the custom sill mount for the guard (just a nut welded in place on the chassis).

And here you can see the guard in place with the door gap approximately correct - but the gap is expanding as you go up the door!

Something obvious here is that the sill panel surface (the surface exposed before it necks-down and tucks under the guard) finishes just short of the leading edge of the door. This was my mistake in an earlier phase and will be a pain to fix no doubt!

Once the guards sat on the body shell OK I bolted the guards down only at the point on the sill shown above so that the panel gap between the lower front edge of the doors was correct with respect to the same point on the guards, I could then insert the bolt that secures the top of the guards. This bolt is accessible only when the doors are open and it "pulls" the top of the guards back towards the doors. See below.

So depending on how far you tighten this bolt (once the guard is locked in place at the sill), you draw the guard back as far as required to get the entire leading edge of the "door to guard" panel gap correctly done. There are other bolts that assist in lining things up but for me these two do a majority of the work. Once satisfied with the fit, I then shimmed any remaining gap the bolt still had so that everything bolts up tight and solid from now on.

While this may seem simple enough, there was plenty of "massage work" required on the new guards and body shell to get the overall fit right. For instance, where the new guards fit up against the upper cowell and lower windscreen, I had to trim the new guards back to fit around the windscreen pillars and gently bend the hidden lower flange of the guards (had to bend this flange further up & under the top surface of the guard) where they interfered with the cowell on each side.
The photo below looks like nothing special (appears to be just an "upside-down" guard sitting on an old couch), but that bottom edge closest to the camera was originally much higher along its length (the left half of it) and only bent over just a little more than 90 degrees with respect to the upper panel surface. But it's trimmed back as needed and the right half bent back as far as it would go! I had the guard on and off the car many times to get things right!
I also had to make several cuts into the "cowell/windscreen" area so that I could repair some prior fixes that had warped this area such that the new guards could not be drawn back far enough to get a proper door gap. Basically, an old repair (using bronze and an Oxy/Acetylene torch) had deformed the contour that the new guard (on the American passenger side) needed to fit into. Once I made the grinder cuts, I could tap this area back with a dolly to the correct shape and then MIG weld the cuts & replace the old brazing work to finish the job. You can see the grinder cuts and neat panel fit in the photo below. Most of this gets covered by the polished stainless window trim though....

Now that all the major hanging panels are in place with correct gaps - its starting to look like a car again! The doors close beautifully and cleanly and it feels rock solid. I'm just about to get a complete "weatherstrip kit" so I can re-test panel gaps with the door rubbers in place. This will no doubt change things again but I have room to move to adjust as required.
Here are some shots of how it's looking......

Floor, firewall & sub-frame connectors are next on the agenda.

Hanging new doors and fixing previous mistakes

For anyone who's been watching this blog you'll know it's been a while since the last update. That doesn't mean I haven't been progressing, but I did have a very busy patch (a 4 month patch!) with work and related travel that slowed things down.

I've also just completed a rather tedious stage in the area of fitting new doors. This isn't hard in itself, but to complete it in such a way that all the panel gaps look good is another thing entirely (as at least one other reader of this blog can testify with their own project car)!

While I was cleaning up the old doors and finding more and more problems with them, a wise friend said I should simply purchase new door shells to save myself weeks of work. I could then also flog the old door shells online to recoup some money.

The new doors arrived recently after a two month wait but when I went to do the initial trial-fitting - I found the left door had a (huge) half-inch-plus panel gap from the sill panel to rear lower corner of the door. The gap between the rear door edge and the rear quarter panel was fine, the top edge of the door lined up the the top edge of the rear-quarter fine, just the rear lower door edge seemed to "run out" from the front (which was OK) to this huge gap at the rear. Checkout the following photo to see what I mean. This shows the new left hand door fitted but with the body-shell swung upside-down on the rotisserie....

To cut a long story short........ when you replace a rear-quarter panel - do so with the original doors still in place. I could smack myself for not thinking of this earlier, but this way you will notice if your new rear quarter panel has its lower lip folded over (the fold that meets the sill panel) half an inch longer (thus lower) on one side when compared to the other!!! There is simply no easy way out of this predicament. I even thought about extending the lower edge of the door to match the gap, but in the end sanity prevailed and I tediously unpicked and/or cut-through various welds to remove my new "sill & chassis-rail combo". This then gave me the room required to "re fold" the lower edge of the rear-quarter panel. Once done I then re-fitted the sill-chassis combo in the correct position.

The photo below shows the "sill & chassis-rail combo" removed (after a stack of effort) with the new door still in place.

This shot shows my "cut to size" jig in place that I used as the mould to reform the fold in the lower edge of the rear-quarter. I simply tapped the fold over with a few gentle taps from a hammer.

By the way, when your car is on a rotisserie its not as simple as just removing the old sill (and chassis-rail), I had to re-enforce the whole body structure again while doing this work!

Thankfully now though, the results look pretty good. I have nice clean gaps for both doors and a good foundation from which to complete things. And here is some extra advice for anyone fitting new doors (or sills and/or rear-quarters for that matter), just so you don't have unrealistic expectations....... You will be very lucky if you don't have to do some panel massaging of some kind to get the gaps right. All these panels I've bought new so far have had variances in them in terms of critical dimensions. Luckily for me, my "out of the box" right-hand door needs only minor work to fix a tight panel gap at the top rear door edge (I will adjust the rear quarter - not the new door), but the left-hand door still needs some panel-gap work half-way down the rear edge as the rear-quarter (front edge) is not perfectly straight (has a bulge in it).

One thing is certain even before doing these final cosmetic fixes - the new doors look fantastic so I don't regret using them (as opposed to fixing the old ones).

Here are a couple of shots of the door gaps. Sorry for the crappy photos - I'll upload better ones when I get the time and the lighting is better. But you can get an idea of the results regardless. This is the lower rear corner of the right hand door (I will sqeeze up these gaps later to match the left hand door).....

And now the new "fixed" left hand door.....

My next task will be to locate a late model donor car to find a suitable firewall, wipers, electric switches, etc, etc. This will take a while as I will need to organise a trailer, find a car, make room at home, and so on. So don't be surprised if it's a while before the next post - as I have to do all this and then install the new donor bits before uploading the next post.

As always, and comments or emails are most welcome.

Modifying Rotisserie & "Space Frame"

This is just a short post to show the mod's made to the rotisserie that will allow me to complete the chassis & body shell fixes.

Having all the box-tube passing thru to the interior of the car was certainly required when the old chassis (the rusty rails & floor) was cut out, but now that the basic chassis is complete , it can support itself nicely as a single unit. So now I should only need to bolt the rotisserie to the rear bumper mounting bolt holes.

The first thing to do was to put the shell up on blocks (again!!) to take wight off the space-frame as seen below.

From there is was just a matter of cutting the box-tube away and making an inverted A-frame on the rear rotisserie to support the jig that's bolted to the rear bumper mount holes. I used 2mm wall thickness box-tube for these new pieces as the lengths are quite short.


Now I have an uncluttered interior again that will let me install the sub-frame connectors, floor, seat foundations, firewall, etc.

Something to note is that as the front frame-rail (the area under the original battery) is still yet to have its rust hole repaired, I can't bolt a jig up to it and so the space-frame remains at the front of the car. But what does remain is not in my way for making repairs and in fact will be used as a solid base to form a jig that correctly locates the front shock-towers for - when I put in my hidden shock-tower supports. I need to create a custom shock-tower brace as the OEM bracet will very likely get in the way of the big-block's induction setup.

So now its a matter of completing the shell in preparation for installing all the "bolt-on bits". Those bits being the suspension, fuel tank & lines, brakes, wiring, seats, etc.
Completion of the shell will be my next blogg entry as there is significant work to do. But thankfully (in this updated post) "day light saving" has started so i'll have more time to spend on this project over summer.