Symphony in V

Starting my Mustang.

I had to see if it would work after yesterdays crap. It did :-)

Another day at the office

My new drip-plate has been under my Mustang for a week so I was curious to see how much it would've leaked. I was rather shocked by the amount of transmission oil that had come out. I might have to look into that. Crap!

I wanted to clean under the driver's side valve cover in preparation of the oil change.

It looked OK but there are a few issues.

In the red circle there is some sort of splash screen, I think oil squirts against it from the little hole in the push rod and then drips on to the rocker. In the second rocker that little splash screen is missing, it lies at the bottom... The 6th or 7th rocker is missing the splash screen as well.

This is the inside of the valve cover. I want to clean that before I put new oil in my engine.

Fixing the distributor

So... Apparently I was missing this little wire in my distributor. Someone pointed that out to me after seeing the picture of my wire-less dizzy. How was I supposed to know? Some former owner must have removed it. The wire is critical because it grounds the ignition module. Without proper grounding the ignition goes to shits. So I made my own cable.

I installed the wire in the distributor, checked everything a few times over and put everything back together.

Then I started my car and guess what? It fired the first time! See the clip below:

Installing a high torque mini starter

Yessah! Today I'm replacing my starter with one that will actually start when my car is hot. Hold on, my car always looks hot, I mean: when the engine is hot! ;-)

Here's some science for you to understand why the old starter sometimes doesn't crank well when the engine is hot: The original starter has a LOT of copper wire inside that make up the coils required to create a magnetic field. A lot of copper makes it a strong magnet when current flows through the copper but as the temperature of copper rises, its electric resistance increases. The increase can actually be so much that less current can flow through the copper and... less current = less power. And when there's not enough power to crank, the starter will tell you with a lovely whining noise.

So this new high torque mini starter (see previous blog post) uses a permanent magnet(instead of copper coils), that's the "PM" in "PMGR starter". "GR" stands for "gear reduction".

So here it goes!

A month ago I got myself these bad boys to lift my car up, freakin' awesome when you don't have a carlift or are limited in other ways. I had to first drive it up there because I don't have enough space to push all 1600 kilos up... Then I used the footpump to lift the car. Don't forget to put your car in neutral because while lifting it, it will also be pushed back a fair bit and if it can't move freely you get tension in your tranny and you don't want that.
When the car was up, I disconnected the battery.

So there it is, the old starter. It's a brick! I always thought it would be attached to the engine but it's actually attached to the tranny, a C6 in my case.

Back to the electronics. This is the fender solenoid. It's purpose is to switch the high current needed for a starter motor. The thick cable on the left is attached to the positive lead from the battery. The one on the right leads to the starter. Because the new starter has its own solenoid the thick cable from the right will be moved to the left and the other end will be input for the starter-solenoid.

This is the ignition cable that came with the starter.

The new thinner cable will be used to re-direct the ignition switch to the starter solenoid. The thick cable that was on the right is now on the left.

Lead the red cable down aside the thick cable that's already there.

I guess this starter isn't as original as I thought because I don't think they had ISO 9001 in 1973...  And this one was issued in 2002 by the looks of it. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Anyways, look, it's gone! One of my biggest concerns was how I'd actually get the starter out of there. Well, it fits through the gap in this red circle.

Voila, one brick starter.

Peekaboo! You can now see the teeth on the flywheel.

Here is a picture to see the differences in size.

From a slightly different angle as well ;-)

Bolting in the new starter is easy-peasy. The one I got from DB Electrical fits perfectly!

The hardest part was attaching the thick cable because I want to keep it away from the exhaust as much as possible but as you tighten the bolt it keeps rotating towards the exhaust.

And that's it!

When I tested it I had to get used to the new starting noise, it's quite different from what I'm used to. But it started well and powerful.

Mission accomplished!

The small ignition improvement

So this week I received a new distributor cap and new spark plug wires. Alltogether they don't cost too much and it's an easy way to check if this fixes the starting troubles I had last time.

I don't know how long the old wires have been in there but last time I found that the engine was running erratic and I think not all 8 cilinders were firing.

This is the inside of the old cap. Looks a bit worn out to me...

The new cap.

I should've also ordered a new rotor but I forgot. So I just fixed this one up a bit. (This is "before").

After replacing everything the engine fired up on the second attempt. Very happy wth that.

I took a quick testdrive to the airport where I also made some dusk-shots.

Nice :-)

More questions...

For some reason my Mustang ain't starting up very well. It takes about 5 times tryin' and when it starts running it runs rough. As the engine warms up it gets better. I keep smelling fuel in the exhaust though, too rich I think. But what do I know? I might get new plug cables and maybe even upgrade to electronic ignition...

Anyway, I also noticed something else today that has me a little worried.

The bit in the red circle is shaking a bit and I'm wondering if this is normal.

Here is a short movie that makes it a little clearer:

Removing the thermostat housing

Right. So after my last ride I noticed coolant leaking in 2 places. One was on the radiator where the overflow hose is and the other one is the top hose going to the heater, where it connects to the waterpump. I'm not sure what's causing this but I figure it wouldn't hurt if I replaced the thermostat before I investigate further. I wasn't aware of the little drama that was going to unfold ;-)

Hello engine.

The thermostat sits underneath the thermostat-housing on which also the rop radiator hose connects.
I took off the hose and discovered a great mess underneath.

Cleaned. Ready to be removed!

I managed to get it off. My new one is a lot shinier!

And there is the old thermostat!

Unfortunately both bolts snapped off and are stuck in the block. So there awaits my next challenge...
In order not to get any crap into the cooling system I left the old thermostat in for now.

Finishing LPG removal / fixing the PCV system

Tonight I fully finished removing the LPG kit that was in my car before. The only thing left was to connect the 2 PCV hoses. These photos show the result of this in a couple of pictures.

The little cap sitting on top of the air cleaner used to seal off the PCV port on my carb. I forgot to put it away before making the pictures ;-)

The valve cover I replaced and the 2 hoses I hooked up.

And then it was time to see if the engine would still run. It hadn't run for a few months so it didn't start right away but eventually... it did! :-)

See for yourself:

Removing and re-installing a valve cover

In my attempts to remove the tube (PCV to air-cleaner) sticking out at the back of the valve cover I was a bit rough and actually broke it. Since I wanted to take it out without hard bits of plastic falling in between the rockers etc. I decided to remove the whole cover so that I could replace it. Since I had never opened up an engine like this, the seemed a bit daunting. But hey, I gotta start some where :-)

The screws came out easy but the cover was quite stuck to the cork gasket. Eventually I managed to get it off but most of the gasket was still stuck to the engine. Great...

After screwing around with a stanley knife to scrape the cork off a friend told me about a special tool used to scrape off the remaining bits of the gasket. It's actually called a gasket remover. Wow...

So the next day I came back with the gasket remover and within 30 minutes I had cleaned all the remaining bits of gasket off the engine. I made very sure that no bits of cork fell in to the engine.

I also cleaned the valve cover and ripped out the old hose connector.

And replaced it with a new one.

Then I had to put in a new gasket and attach the cover again, too. Because everything was falling off (the gasket is really floppy) I put bits of metal wire in the screw holes to keep the gasket in place.

The wires also kept the cover in place. I then removed one piece of wire at a time, replacing it with a screw. Eventually I got the whole cover firmly attached again.

This was a nice little job and the first time I saw some of the inside of the engine. Nice!

Identifying parts

I have decided to ditch the LPG kit. I want to make the car run on fuel only again. It'll make the car lighter, cleaner and simpler. All good things if I want to be able to work the car myself. So tonight I went over to have a look and learn about how things are hooked up.

This is the scariest bit; the connections with the tank. The right side is where LPG comes in to the tank. The connector is a valve so I should be able to just unscrew that. On the left is where LPG comes out and goes to the engine. The tank is closed by an electronic valve. With power off, it should remain closed when disconnecting things. But I think I'll try and get the tank as empty as possible.

I also wanted to check out a few things about my engine. What type it is and what carburetor sits on top. Never looked before but it appears I have an Edelbrock intake manifold.

An Edelbrock Performer LB 351-2V to be exact. No idea if that's good but it's probably better than the standard manifold...

(Click on image above for a much bigger version)
The engine compartment is a mess because of all the LPG crap in it. I want that filter gone and the original blue cap back on there. Also, the airco pump used to be where the air filter is now.

Another thing I wanted to figure out is wether my car is fitted with a 351W (Windsor) or a 351C (Cleveland) engine. For some reason people seem to favour the 351C over the 351W but from what I've read they are both fine engines. Advantage of the 351C is that it's a bit stronger "out of the box" and can be improved by screwing around with its own parts. The 351W is not as strong but has a lot more "after market" parts available for it. I guess the 351C doesn't need that many after market parts...

I read that the early seventies models all were equipped with the 351C type (if it had a 351 that is...). Anyway, one way of telling the difference between a 351W and a 351C is by counting the bolts that hold the valve cover. The 351W has 6, the 351C has 8. On mine I counted 8. And the remains of the yellow sticker also still show a bit of "351C". I'm pleased.

It was fun to learn about my car. I learned stuff :-)