Another Milestone...

Installed the driver's kick panel, door panel with handles, sill trim, and recently installed the rear quarter panel on that side. I didn't use the stock watershields, but instead went with a layer of Dynamat Extreme. There are some small bumps on the top where the clips are sticking out a very little bit on the door panel. Probably not worth mentioning, but it's kinda bugging me. Hmmm... I do like the Medium Blue Metallic metal panels, original 66 Blue seats/dash pad/door panel, with the Ford Blue carpet. (For reference, the flash lightened every piece one shade.)


For my b-day tomorrow, Rachael made me a cake. Amazingly, as old as I feel, my car is a couple years older than I am!

Quarter Horse

I installed the interior quarter panel today on the passenger side. I had already stripped and painted the metal panel and it really came out great. I also installed the fresh fuzzy window trim with rivets.


On the car, I painted the clean metal with POR-15 and then covered with Dynamat Extreme and aluminum tape on the edges instead of using the flimsy watershield.


Then I put in the quarter panels with fresh screws and a new window crank.





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Good Guys: Southeastern Nationals 2008

I went to the Good Guys Southeastern Nationals today at Lowe's Motorspeedway in Charlotte, NC and took about 175 pix. I tried to get a little of everything, but found myself mainly interested in the engines. Some of them were pretty amazing. Check out my photo album (176 pix).

Carb Crazy!

My Holley Street Avenger (Holley 0-80670 Street Avenger 670 CFM Square Bore 4-Barrel Vacuum Secondary Electric Choke Carburetor) took a dump on me the other day... One day it just flooded out, and the car would barely run. I took the carb apart, but didn't see anything obvious. It was a 670cfm unit, which was good, but it had a vacuum secondary, which wasn't ideal in such a light car with a decent motor and low gears. I couldn't rebuild it myself with any degree of competence, and local places wanted $200-$300. I could buy a new one for under $400 so that seemed silly. So I bought a 650cfm unit with mechanical secondaries from Quick Fuel Technology. I also had the choke horn milled off since I prefer no choke.





I've only started it up to check for leaks and set the fuel float levels. It sure looks like a million bucks. (It was $513.) Hopefuly, it runs as good as it looks!


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Spaced Out

I bought a phenolic carb spacer to keep the carb cooler. I had noticed that the car was a little difficult to start after driving for more than 15 minutes. This piece is only 3/8" tall, which is great because I have no room under the hood to raise the carb much more than that. As you can see from the photo, the spacer was more of a restrictor plate as it arrived, a little too small. So about 15 minutes later with a Dremel and a coarse grinder bit and fine grinder bit and I was in gasket-matched business. (In the photo, the brown spacer is peeking out from between the grey carb gaskets. Sorry, no "after" photo...)




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Bad Gas

In preparation for installing my new carb from Quick Fuel Technology (more on that later) I bought a new dual feed fuel line from them.

Now, the carb I bought from QFT seems awesome, sure looks amazing. I called back to get the line and they suggested this one. It was $60 and nickel plated and looked great when it arrived in the package. I would have been happy to spend more and figured whatever they had would have been about $100.

Unfortunately, there were some issues with this thing. In no particular order, the line was -6 instead of the -8, which was already on my car (not a huge problem); the threads on the extensions that go into the fuel bowls on the carb had some small nicks, which made hand-threading difficult (not a huge problem); and one of the flanges had some sort of dent in it which can't be good for a fuel-tight seal (getting worse). Oh, did I mention the load of metal shavings loose in the line from where the gauge hole was drilled and tapped? (Good grief.)












Fortunately, I looked this stuff over before instantly ruining my new carb on start-up. I sent the line back to them tonight and will re-use my old one.

Free Car Parts! Well, Not Quite...

Ok, so they aren't free. But they are car parts. Lots of them. I opened the Official "Performance & Style for Your Pony" store today. Woo hoo! I've bought a number of things for my car from Amazon. They have great deals on Dynamat, and even Holley carbs, and usually free shipping and no tax to boot. No kidding! Check it out.

Is This What They Had in Mind?

The stock dash lights on these old Mustangs appear dim and green. What's odd is that there are 4 of them in the cluster and they are pretty bright on their own, but they don't light up the gauges too well. There's also a blue plastic "diffuser" that each bulb fits under, but still they appear green--even with all new stuff. I think it's because a yellow incandescent bulb and a blue diffuser equals a green light.

Enter the LED... I bought a kit of blue LEDs (and a couple clear ones) for replacing the dashlight bulbs for about $25. I used this opportunity to grease the speedo cable behind the dash too. (Sorry for the poor pic though.)

The clear turn signal bulb sockets were kinda loose and the bulbs were springing out, so I took some pliers and gently squeezed the sockets where they were grooved for the bulbs. This caused the stops on the sides of the bulbs to catch and hold the sockets better...