My new fender gripper

My girlfriend got me a proper fender gripper for my birthday and I love it! :-)

The sports wheel covers

So my Mustang would have originally looked like this apart from the colours and the chrome side strip.

Amongst a few other things, my car doesn't have the original hub caps anymore. This specific model is a so-called "Sports Wheel Cover" and they are not reproduced. So you can imagine that trying to find a decent set of 4 is not easy and when you do find some they will cost you an arm and a leg.

So...

I found 2 sets! None from 1973 because in that year the heart was chromed and only the edge around the holes is black.

The reason I bought 2 sets is that in each set, there are 2 screwed up caps... You see, these things looked so much like a real rim (the caps are made of cast metal) that people tried to take the nuts off. The nuts that are part of the cast and cannot move, yes. So this results in nuts that are partially broken off... But since I do also have 4 good ones, I can make one good set. The best part is I paid not even $200 for all of them :-)

So now I'm combining the good ones.

For now I'm just cleaning them up a bit. I'll have to find a way to re-paint and re-chrome the parts to give them the correct 1973 appearance.

The first thing I did was to de-rust some screws in vinegar. I had never done this before but man does that work like a charm! All the washers came loose, nice!

Re-setting the idle mixture

Lately I found that the engine was holding back a bit when giving a lot of throttle. I thought maybe the idle mixture would make a difference. Because I had never done this before I thought I'd try and set the idle mixture on my carb myself by using a vacuum meter. The idea is to set the idle mixture so that the highest possible vacuum is achieved. So I hooked up and vacuum meter and started turning the 2 idle mixture screws. I did get a better idle mixture but it did not improve the holding back of the engine. I guess it has to do with the engine being cold coz with a warmed up engine it picks right up when pushing the pedal down...