Mint Condition

Well a lot has happened over the past month or so with my car, and yet at the same time, not very much has happened at all. It’s been a bit frustrating though.

First, after my backfire adventure, I bought a PerTronix Ignitor III and Flame-Thrower III coil from JEGS online. I was very excited when they arrived and I installed them carefully as per the instructions. I had to bypass the resistor wire to provide the full 12V to the coil and Ignitor. However, after installation, my car started wanting to stall when I came to a stop… sometimes. I took a video of what my tach showed when this happened:

So after running some tests from PerTronix, I decided the Ignitor III (or possibly the coil) was defective. I switched back to traditional points, and the stalling problem went away, confirming my diagnosis. Thankfully JEGS has great customer service and they let me send both PerTronix units back for replacement. In the meantime, I put in new points and the car ran just fine.

Unfortunately the coil was—and still is—backordered, but I received the replacement Ignitor III and installed it using my stock coil. I started having the same stalling issue, only less frequently: once, maybe twice, per trip. So I knew it wasn’t the PerTronix coil, but what are the odds of getting two defective units in a row?!

So I bought some nicer points and switched back to those, but then my car started acting up, running rough, and having poor acceleration. This was rather discouraging, especially after a tune-up revealed no obvious problems. However, today, I went into the garage to work on my car and see if I could track down the problem, and I found my #8 spark plug wire dangling free, pulled out of the spark plug boot! That’s not good at all. Thus, I went down to the auto parts store and got a cheap set of new plug wires.

The guy said they should last about 2 years, and next time I replace them, I’ll get a much nicer set. All this to say, after new plug wires, new points, and a thorough tune-up, the car is running great right now!

In other news, I dropped my transmission pan and replaced the filter and gasket, in hopes of stopping my tranny leak. Well, after torquing the pan bolts down slowly and carefully, I managed to squeeze them out pretty far and even break part of it. But I used some gasket sealer, and so far, it appears the leak has stopped, or at least slowed. I think the leak may have actually been caused, or contributed to, by the tranny being overfilled; it’s at the correct level now.

Also, the other day, I got cut off by someone and I gave my horn a nice slam with my palm. Well he slipped in front of me and flipped me off, but what’s this? My horn’s still going off! Yup, it got stuck. I had to drive while trying to hold my horn back so it wouldn’t go off, intermittently honking at everyone all the way across town. So embarrassing! When I parked, I threw open the hood and yanked the wires out of my horns. Today, I pulled the horn trigger off, cleaned all the contacts, and made sure it was only going off when I hit it, and all seems to be in working order now. Phew!

I was driving into Bellevue today, but I never made it. I had a bit of an adventure instead. Early on, my car started backfiring. It was serious backfiring out the exhaust, not at the carb, and it’s only ever done that once or twice, a long time ago, so I was concerned and pulled over. I couldn’t find anything wrong, so I went a bit further down the road, and it backfired again, so I pulled over again and checked some things but still didn’t know what was causing it. I managed to drive a good deal further after that, although it felt like the engine was about to cut out, and accelerating was “chokey.” Then, as I was driving down Avondale, it backfired again and the engine died, so I put it in neutral and coasted off the main drag into a neighborhood.

Right before it cut out, I passed a guy who waved at me. When it backfired, he must’ve merged in behind me, and he pulled up next to me when I pulled off and stopped. It turns out he owns a ’67 Mustang, and he got out and we took a look at my car. Since I hadn’t done anything electrical recently, he guessed it was the fuel/air mixture on the carb. He gave me an address and phone number for a carb shop nearby that gives free carburetor checks, and I thanked him and went to the carb place.

The car didn’t seem to have any problems after that, but I took it easy just in case. At the shop, they checked my carb and points for free, which was really nice. They said the carb sounded great and the fuel/air mixture was good, but my points were getting pretty worn. So I’m hoping that was the issue, and I’m going to buy a Pertronix Ignitor III electronic ignition and Flame-Thrower III coil tonight. Until that arrives, I do have some spare points I can put it.

The other problem I suspect is my mess of wires under the dash. If something was shorting, it could cause the engine to backfire and cut out like that. I have wires for the tach and thermostat that aren’t terribly secured or protected, so I need to go over those and make sure no bare wires are exposed.

I am a bit concerned that after my car died, the tach and turn signals stopped working. I’m hoping it’s a fuse, but I guess it could be a short somewhere. The emergency flashers still work, and the light on the tach still comes on, so I’m not sure what to think about that. Time for some electrical diagnosis I guess!

Well, what I expected to be a one, maybe two day ordeal turned into four days of frustration, stress, and general greasiness. On Tuesday, I decided to take advantage of the nice weather and my spring break to change the oil pan on my car. The reason for this was because the drain plug was already an oversize bolt, it wouldn’t tighten, and I had a slow oil leak. Also, my oil pan had a dent in it, which gave me more of an excuse to buy a new one.

Removing the old oil pan ended up being more involved than I anticipated, and I spent all day Tuesday and part of Wednesday getting it out. I had to remove the crossmember, the starter, and drop the steering linkage center link in order to get enough clearance to drop the pan.

Getting the steering linkage out of the way caused a particular problem. To get enough room, I had to remove the idler arm from the frame, and remove the idler arm and both tie rods from the center link. The passenger side tie rod was very stubborn, and I could not for the life of me get it free. I ended up having to purchase a pickle fork in order to separate the tie rod from the center link.

On Wednesday, I finally got everything out of the way and was able to drop the pan.

Using some gasket sealer, I put on the new gasket, fit the new pan in place, and threading the bolts back in. Now wait, didn’t I say this took four days? Yes. Things got kind of bad.

Thanks to my stupid torque wrench, which decided not to click, I overtightened one of the bolts and snapped the head off. Okay, not a huge set back. I drilled into the broken stud and used an easy out to extract it. But at this point, it was too late to buy a new bolt, so I had to wait until the next day. That’s not all, though: I also managed to put in one of the bolts ever so slightly crooked, and now it wouldn’t tighten down. Well, there was nothing I could do at that point. The weather was supposed to turn that night, so I put a tarp over my car and turned in.

Thursday, I picked up a new bolt to replace the broken one and got that put in easily enough. As for the crooked bolt, I bought a helicoil kit. I’d never tapped a hole before, so I was really hoping this would be successful, since I was dealing with the engine block and did not want to ruin it! Well, the kit called for a 17/64″ bit to drill out the hole as the first step, and then things got frustrating.

Because I didn’t want to undo everything and drop the pan all over again (what a pain that was), I needed one of the following:

1. a long drill bit to reach past the oil pan
2. a regular drill bit with an extension
3. a hex drill bit with an extension

My first try was the local True Value hardware store in town. They had the right size bit, but not as a long bit, and they didn’t have an extension for me. Darn.

Next, I drove up to Lowe’s. Being a bigger store, I figured they’d have it. But they didn’t have anything that would work. No extensions, no long bits in that size, and no hex bits bigger than 1/4″.

So I drove over to Home Depot. They had an extension! I showed the guy at Home Depot the bit I wanted to use and he said it would work. Well, lo and behold, I got home and found out the bit didn’t fit in the extension. Great! Well, it was late, so I had to wait another day to sort this out.

Friday, I returned the extension to Home Depot and made sure they didn’t have anything that would work for me, then I went to the nearby McLendon’s in a desperate last attempt to find a solution. Well, McLendon’s had it! They had a very, very similar extension, but this one actually worked. The employee was kind of enough to try it out for me on the spot, and unfortunately the bit I had already bought was a bit loose actually, so I bought a new drill bit that fit the extension much better, along with the extension itself.

Finally, I had what I needed to tap the hole and fix my mistake! Well, after a quick prayer, I drilled out the hole successfully. Next, to tap it. I thought my neighbor had the right socket adapter that I needed for that, but it turns out he didn’t, so I drove downtown to True Value to buy the adapter and return the first drill bit I had bought. With the socket adapter, I tapped the hole, also successfully. Phew!

Last step was to insert the helicoil and then thread the bolt back in, which was pretty straightforward. I put the bolt in and tightened it down, paying very close attention to my torque wrench and stopping when it “clicked”—it’s more like a subtle bump that you have to feel for carefully at low torque settings.

Look at that beautiful Ford Blue!

So this project took much more time and bit more money than I intended to spend, but in the end, it all worked out. I filled up the car with oil, ran it for a while and checked for leaks, and praise God, none were found!

Last Wednesday, being the last day of school, I took the opportunity to go by our old landlord’s place. He sold me the Mustang originally several years ago, and he has an old decrepit Mustang of the same year sitting in his yard that he had used for parts. He’s getting ready to scrap it, so I stopped by to see if there was anything I could salvage from it. Here are some pictures of the poor car.

I took the shoulder belts, the turn signal knob, the radio, and the instrument panel. The radio probably won’t be of much use, and it appears to be aftermarket anyway, but I was able to take the bezel off the radio and put it in my car to temporarily spruce up the look a little bit. The turn signal knob is just as a backup.

Also, my landlord said he’d save for me the brake and reverse lights when he chops it up. Other than that, there’s not much left on the old car, and not much of that is worth taking. But it was fun to poke around it.

Giving the Half Tank Rule a shot, I filled up last night when I was just under half a talk, sticking with Shell regular. By the way, what’s the deal with gas prices? They’re going up again! I just paid $2.93 per gallon, where a month ago I was paying $2.59! Anyway I did the math, and I’ve got my mileage up to nearly 13.3mpg now. Great news! I shall keep employing my tactics and continue to add new ones.

On a related note, I’m going to look into getting an electric choke for my carburetor to replace the heat choke that is not operating as it should. I did a little bit of research, and it looks like that will probably cost me about $50 to do. In the long run, I’m still looking to upgrade to a 4bbl carb, probably an Edelbrock, with a new intake manifold.

So last week I filled up with Shell regular gas after getting 12mpg with ARCO premium. When I filled up today with Shell again, I discovered that my mileage had gone up to nearly 12.5mpg. I’m making progress in the right direction, at least! I’m hoping I can get it up to 13mpg in the short run, and even higher down the road.

Going forward, I think I’m going to try keeping the fuel above half a tank to see if that improves things any. I’m pretty sure my carb needs some tweaking too, which would help mileage, but I kind of just want to upgrade to a 4bbl Edelbrock or something rather than mess with mine. Anyway, that’s a bit far off at this point. Wish me luck!

So after using premium fuel at ARCO, I saw my mileage bump up to 12mpg. I should also note that I’ve been trying to drive more conservatively the past few weeks, which also plays into the mileage. This week I’m trying regular gas at Shell to see if it’s any better than ARCO regular (with which I was getting about 11.6mpg earlier). I’ll continue to update with my findings.

As a side note, I’m looking to buy a car in the next few months that will get me much better mileage (I’m hoping around 35mpg), such as a Honda Civic or some such. That way I’ll have a commuter car that will cost me less in the long run and allow me to spend more time working on the Mustang.

Right now, the two ARCO gas stations in Woodinville have such low prices that premium fuel is less than regular fuel at most other stations—only $2.79 per gallon. So I decided yesterday to try premium fuel (albeit ARCO fuel) and see if it helps improve my mileage any. I’ve been consistently getting around 11.7 mpg lately, so an improvement would be nice. When I fill up again next week, I’ll be sure to post my results. It might just be worth the extra money if it improves my mileage significantly enough.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any work on my car, mostly due to school and the poor weather. I was in the mood yesterday, though, and I managed to finally get my headlamps aligned. The driver’s headlamp was way off, making it hard to drive at night. It turns out that headlamp bucket is actually missing a few pieces, so I jury-rigged it using a zip tie, some scrap metal, a couple screws, and a plastic sheet metal nut (or whatever those things are called). It’s still a little loose, but cooperative enough to align correctly and stay in place. At some point I’m going to replace the whole headlamp bucket, since it’s cracked, and apparently missing some parts, but until then, it’s in working order.

The other big news: today my dad got his 1970 Camaro running again! It’s been sitting in a tent for the past few years, and sitting around undriven for years before that, simply because my dad hasn’t had the time to work on it. Today, after replacing the fuel pump and jump starting it three times, my dad was able to pull it up to the driveway and give it a wash. Then we took it for a drive, and he let me drive it back home. It’s lower than the Mustang, and it has power steering, which is nice. It handles pretty well too. It needs a new battery, though, which was evident since it died right before he could pull it into the garage, even after letting it run for a while and taking it for a drive. But it lives! So now there are two forty-year-old cars sitting in our garage.

Yesterday I replaced all eight spark plugs on my engine. I don’t know how old they were, but I bought some brand new good quality ones, gapped them, and installed them. Removal and installation went pretty smoothly, though it was a bit more difficult on the passenger side for lack of room. The old ones weren’t in terrible condition, but were definitely worn. And after replacing them, she seemed to drive a bit smoother, too!

I also picked up a vacuum gauge and ran a test with that. The reading held pretty steady at about 18″, so I’m good for now, though I may tweak the timing a bit in the future. No major problems, so that’s good!