1972 Convertible resto mod

[California 72]

I used shorties on my 71 only because I had long tube headers on my 73 Mach 1 and they scraped on speed bumps a lot.
It still performed well on dyno, (about 430 HP / 450 torque) although to be honest we never did do a comparison with long tube headers to see how much power they rob.

By the way, sharp looking motor! Love that Ford Blue. What silver is that you used? Was contemplating painting the tranny and had thought of just all Ford Blue but that's a sharp look. As I've been scrubbing, soaking, burning and blasting the layers off, I've found Black, blue and even a little red. There's an old knock-knock joke hiding in there, but I'll refrain.

I'll get a picture of it for you this weekend.

Chuck, Thanks!

I want to start out clarifying, I am not an expert, especially on Mustangs. It looks to me that your pipes head upwards to the manifolds like most exhaust front pipes. They appear to start to head up toward the manifold outlets right in front of the equalizer pipe. If you intend to use long tube headers you will want them to head straight forward to meet the header collector. If they are heading up, you may need to cut back to the H-pipe. IMO, if you are reusing the exhaust, I would cut as little as possible (or nothing at all) until you install the engine and trans with the headers and see how the angle is going to the collectors and cut what you have to cut then. Is the H pipe welded to the mufflers, or can you separate it from the mufflers and get it out from under the car so it's not in the way of the engine/trans install?

The goal is to keep things minimal in the cutting part since I would really like to avoid having it look like a crazed mechanic with a sawzall stepped in. I'm just crazed, my father was the mechanic. Which reminds me, that's what I forgot, sawzall blades. Dang it!

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Finally finished errands, needed more wire brushes and some Acetone plus some other supplies to start painting parts. If we can get the weather to co-operate a little, it would help but I believe I can keep the humidity down in the garage by keeping the door down. Need to work on conditioning things over the winter. Even with all the insulation, it does get into the high 40's to low 50's when outside is in the 30's.

Time to get to work. Just a little behind on the day. Later and thanks again gang.