It's All Starting to Come Together

Except for one small glitch........the distributor was too big.  The first evidence of this was that the air cleaner Brian had bought would not clear the distributor unless it was installed so high the hood would not close.  These pictures show how the only way it would go on is if was installed sideways, which was not acceptable:

 

I found a air cleaner that looked like it would fit and sort of matched the scheme of the valve covers:

 

It still looked pretty tall, though, and before we could put the hood back on and find out for sure I discovered the deal breaker.  The return heater hose needed to connect to the intake manifold right at the distributor.  There was no way I could install the hose nipple without removing the distributor, and even then it looked like there would not be enough room for it:

 

Removing the distributor to (possibly) install the fitting would mean re-setting the ignition timing and since I had to do that we decided to just bite the bullet and get another distributor that would be smaller and lower profile.  The big distributor was an HEI unit with the coil built into it; that's one reason why it was so tall.  The new distributor would require a separate coil and mounting bracket, but still cost almost $100 less than the HEI. 

The new one cleared the heater hose fitting and the air cleaner, and looks like it will clear the hood, but it will be close:

 

 

Notice in the above two photos that both exhaust headers have been installed.  That had me worried because I had seen posts online from people who said they did not fit.  It was close, but they did fit. 

I also installed the clutch linkage, the sift lever, the speedometer cable, and the back-up light switch.  Brian was down over the past weekend and we put in a starter motor that I got him for Christmas as well as some chrome alternator brackets.  It was he and I working together that got the driver side exhaust header in.  We put the hood back on, but I haven't closed it on the new air cleaner set-up because I want to get some modeling clay or putty to set on top of the air cleaner and see what kind of clearance I have. 

There are only two parts from the original driveline that we have reused; the differential and axle, and the driveshaft.  The driveshaft had to have a lot of rust and grease scraped and sanded off:

 

And then primed:

And painted:

 

 New U-joints fitted:

 

 

 

And the drive shaft installed in the car:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Still lots to do, but I am entering into more familiar territory.  I have done a lot of the type of work coming up, and some of it on this very car. 

 



 

Mustang Has a Motor!

I took the donor motor to a local engine builder and after a couple of weeks he had it ready.  The big day was scheduled for it to be run on a chassis dyno so that we could see the power output and be assured it was tuned and running well.  Brian came down for the occasion.  Here is the motor mounted in an old race car chassis and hooked up to a Dynojet dynamometer:

 

The builder started it up and ran it for awhile at moderate speeds to warm it up. It sounded great and ran super smooth. Then he started some max power runs:

 

He had it tuned to run with mufflers, which is the way we will have to run it on the street, but just for grins he removed the mufflers and ran it with just the exhaust headers.......we all had to wear hearing protection, but it sounded awesome!  There is nothing like an American push-rod V8 at full song.

 

 

Brian taking a sound effects video

 

Here are the stats of the dyno run taken without the mufflers.  The bottom graph shows it is running a little lean without the mufflers (the dotted red line is the optimum air/fuel ratio), but the rear-wheel horsepower is about the same......slightly over 200.  The builder said the horsepower at the crank, which is the way most engine horsepower is advertised, would be about 262.  Notice the nice flat torque curve also.  The engine is basically a stock blueprinted engine but makes some additional power with the addition on an Edelbrock intake manifold and carburetor, plus higher flow exhaust headers.  It should be able to run on mid-grade gas. 

 



 

We loaded it up in my truck and brought it home:

 

 

Then brought the hoist down, hauled it out of the truck and installed the  motor mounts, clutch and bell housing.  It sure is pretty, isn't it:

 

 

Before we could push the car over to the shed to receive the engine, we had to remove the hood.  I couldn't think of a safe place to store it but then Carolyn suggested we put it in the hallway.  What a wife, eh?

 So while Carolyn steered, Brian and I pushed the car over to the shed, then lowered the engine in and bolted up the motor mounts.  It's quick to write that process, but it took us several hours because all the holes in the motor mounts didn't quite line up:

 

 

 

 

After we got the motor in we pushed the car back to the shop and jacked it up for the transmission install.  This went smoother than I expected and somewhat made up for the difficulty in getting the engine in:

 

 

Still much to do, but these were big jobs, and from now on I should be able to work at my leisure. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





Getting Ready For The Mustang

Another winter for working on the Mustang.  This is a big one and hopefully the last, as we will be working on the engine and driveline.  First, some prep has to be done.  I had saved the bell housing from the old engine and it was a greasy mess:

Using a gasket scraper, I got the majority of the baked-on oil off......not easy to do because of the various contours of the surface:

I got the rest off by soaking it in three gallons of gasoline in a trash can and then brushing with a parts dip brush.  It came out pretty clean inside and out:

 

Notice the broken flange in the ten o'clock position in the bell housing.  This had me worried, but it is just for a locator pin and shouldn't cause any problems. 

The flywheel was also saved and only needs to be cleaned and re-surfaced.  The teeth for the starter motor are in good shape. 

The flex plate, that goes between the engine and the bell housing was cleaned and painted:

 

We also bought a rebuilt four-speed transmission with the shift linkage and lever:

And finally, after one false start and much research, we decided on an engine builder.  Our false start was a "turn-key" engine, which was to be complete with everything except headers, starter and flywheel.  We ordered the engine from a website in Phoenix and paid half the cost to get work started on building the engine.  It was supposed to be a 12-week build job, and about half way through the twelve weeks I decided to call the shop and see how progress was going and ask a couple of questions.  Nobody answered my calls or emails and after doing a google search on the site I discovered they had apparently gone out of business.  This was one example of where paying with a credit card saved the day, as I got all my money back from Bank of America Visa. 

After that experience I decided to look around at local shops.  We narrowed it down to a couple of places and decided on one which gave me a printed, itemized cost estimate for all the parts they needed and labor they planned.  It was pretty expensive and a large part of the expense was because we did not have an engine for them to rebuild.  The original block was shot, and after I thought we were getting a complete engine from the Phoenix shop, I had thrown away other usable parts like the crank, heads, rods, valve covers, and all the bolts.  For the local shop to source these parts cost a lot, so I found a complete engine from my local Mustang parts supplier and bought it for the same price the shop would have had to pay for the block alone.  Here is the doner engine after I got it home:

 

 

This is a 1969 Ford 302 that looks like it has never been opened up.  Hopefully it is rebuildable, but if not I am assured I can return it and get my money back.  I did check to see that it can be turned over and is not frozen.  In the picture above you can see the flywheel and the fan pulley that I plan to give to the engine builder.  Unfortunately, I threw away the crank pulley and the alternator bracket that I am going to need for the rebuilt engine, since the Phoenix shop engine was to include an alternator, pulleys, and fan belt. 

Tomorrow I take the doner engine into the shop.  While they are doing the rebuild, we will be buying motor mounts, a clutch, and different valve covers, and getting the car ready for the engine. 

The Rest of the Ride

Well, my blog on this ride sure has been a bust, hasn't it?  I didn't keep my daily updates mostly because while I was visiting people I didn't want to take the time out to do the blog.  It actually takes a bit of time to deal with the photos, especially if I have taken them with my phone.  I am also using an iPad tablet instead of a PC, and I'm having problems dealing with the change from a Windows system to Mac. 

I did take a few pictures and will try to describe the rest of the ride as I remember it. 

Jenny and I planned to ride down highway 1 to San Luis Obispo, so Saturday morning we suited up and took off.  Here is Jen ready to ride.

 

 The first section of the ride was over Skyline Drive past Alice's Restaurant and then down to Santa Cruz to catch highway 1.  We stopped at one of the iconic bridges that often appears in articles and videos about the coast highway.

 

And got another tourist to snap our pic:

  

 

But everybody takes a selfie nowadays, so we did too:

 

 

Here is a view a little more pleasant to look at.   

 

 

Jenny is developing more and more as a rider.  She is obviously more comfortable in the curves and picking up speed there.  Highway 1 sure has the curves, too, but being it was a weekend, there was so much traffic we didn't get to enjoy them much.  It's a beautiful ride, though, so we just sort of kicked back and enjoyed the scenery. 

 

After an overnight in San Luis Obispo, we headed back to San Francisco on some roads that lie between the coast highway and 101.  When I lived in Riverside we used to ride these roads when heading up to Laguna Seca for the National road races there.  There was one very interesting looking road (on the map, anyway) that we didn't ride back then because it was not paved, but now it looked like it was paved according to the map legend.  It goes through fort Hunter Ligget, which I thought was closed, but there was actually quite a bit of activity going on there.  However, the road got narrower and narrower until it looked like this:

 

 

Then we came to a sign that said the road was not through, even though it showed a through road on the map.  We turned around and went back through an area where there was a smoldering wild fire.  It was strange that as dry as California is, they were letting the fire burn.  We even came upon some live flames:

 

 

A close-up of that branch:

 

 

We eventually got back on the right road (Carmel Valley) which headed back to highway 1 at Monterrey.  From there we stayed on the coast highway back to Jen's house where we celebrated the ride in the traditional way with cold PBRs:

 

 

The next day (Monday), Jen went to work and I headed back south, only this time I took hwy 101.  Just south of  Atascadero I took hwy 58 over toward Bakersfield to get to my friend Jim's house in Tehachapi.  I remembered hwy 58 as having some great curves and which passed through ranch country that in the spring had beautiful grassy hills and fields.  Now, with the drought, the grass is not just brown, but is not even there......just bare earth:

 

 

Many of the ranches are up for sale......pretty hard to raise cattle with no grass.

 

Jim and I go way back to when we both worked at the same place and lived in Corona, CA.  Around 1970, we both rode our first enduro together (Jim said it was my idea), and got hooked on riding them.  Pretty much a whole day was wasted at work on the Monday after an enduro, due to our bench racing every mile of the event.  We rode many enduros together, as well as a lot of play riding.  After a few years, we even got street bikes and did some touring, including a ride from Southern California up to Canada with several other guys from the club, including Mike who rode the WBDR with me in August. 

 

During the summer, Jim and his wife Laura live in the mountains above Tehachapi at an altitude of over 5,000 feet.  They have some huge Ponderosa Pines on their property, but they have also lost several of them to Bark Beetles.  Here is Jim on the deck of their house:







 

And here are some of the views from that deck:

 

 

 

 

 

Jim says they have California Condors that perch in their trees, and also bears, bobcats and deer.  During the winter they move to a condo they own on the coast near Camarillo, I think. 

 

Jim was always a better rider than me, and eventually got into grand prix and best-in-the-desert competition where he did real well in his age group.  However, we played racquetball during my visit and I beat him, so there.  In fairness, he has had back surgery and is doing well just to be on two feet. 

 

We had a great visit and probably bored Laura to death with our stories of the "old days".  After a couple of days, though, I had to leave to meet Carolyn, who flew down to Orange County where our daughter Carol Anne and I picked her up.  It was a nice visit to Riverside and the places we used to live, dine out, and play.  Carol Anne has a nice apartment on the north edge of Riverside and we spent a lot of time around the pool, because it was hot!  Temps were in the high 90's. 

 

 

We also met daughter Karen and she and John treated us to a great dinner at a Korean BBQ down in Westwood. 

 

My impressions of Southern California after almost 20 years away are mixed.  On the positive side, I was impressed with the air quality.  Apparently all the smog control measures are having an effect.  The air was crystal clear the whole time we were there, and Carol Anne says there are seldom smog alerts anymore.  On the other hand, there are even many more people living there and the freeways are now often six lanes wide.  When I left Monday morning the traffic was almost dead stop from the bottom of Cajon pass to the turnoff for hwy 395, fortunately on the inbound side, not on my side. 

 

So now I was making time homeward bound.  I went north on hwy 395 past our old desert competition areas until I got to hwy 89 towards Lake Tahoe.  On the way I stopped at the Eastern Sierra visitor's center where I took this picture of the mountains that include Mt Whitney.  Carolyn and I climbed that once, I think about 1994. 

 

 

I also stopped at a rest stop at Mono Lake and got a bike picture:

 

 

Heading up 89 towards Tahoe, I took this picture of the area east of the Sierras.....pretty desolate and quite a contrast to the crowded cities of California:

 

 

I rode around the west side of Lake Tahoe and took this picture of Emerald Bay:

 

 

I spent the night in Tahoe City, and the next morning started out in the coldest temps of the trip; 44 degrees.  It didn't stay cold long, though, and it was nice to have cooler temps after the heat of Southern California. 

 

Hwy 89 crossed my southbound route at hwy 70, and then I headed toward the coast on hwy 36, cutting north on hwy 3 to 299 and Weaverville.  These last three roads are famous motorcycle roads and I can't get enough of them.  I had planned to spend the night in Weaverville, but it was early, hot, and windy, so I kept on to the little burg of Willow Creek on hwy 299.  My impression of Willow Creek is that it is the last hangout for 60's era hippies.  I would have loved to take some pictures of the locals, but didn't think it would have been received well. 

 

Wednesday I got to hwy 101 just north of Eureka and then rode 101 to Lincoln City where I spent the night at this place:

 

 

It was actually a nice motel at one of the best rates I had on the trip. 

 

Thursday I had a relatively short ride home over familiar roads, arriving around 1 pm.

Total miles for the trip was 3830.  I was gone for 16 days and was riding on 12 of those days.  The bike ran flawlessly.  I didn't have to add oil or even adjust the chain.  Total miles on the bike is now almost 111,000. 

 

Another good ride on Good Roads.