Finally getting my 71!

[jowens1126]

My car is finally on the transport heading my way. Should be here monfay or tuesday. I cant wait.

 

[jowens1126]

The mustang Finally arrived today!

It started pouring down rain about 5 minutes after we picked it up so I only got a chance to get a couple of pictures.

First Drive for me, well its just plain awesome!  The only negative are the brakes.  Or lack of brakes.  The 4 wheel drum brakes are about as effective as sticking your feet thru the floor and dragging them.   Going about 30 mph, I slam the pedal as hard as I can all the way as far as I can and it eases to a slow stop.  It never even gets close to locking up.  So as this is the first 4 wheel drum car I have ever driven, I have no idea if this is normal, or not.  I would say my instincts as a shade tree mechanic tell me that the overall mushiness of the pedal means that I should dump all the fluid out of the system, replace all the wheel cylinders, flush the lines out, and then refill with fresh fluid and bleed the ******* out of it.  Then check adjustment on all the shoes and make sure theres nothing going on there.

I plan on doing a front disc upgrade soon, but not real soon.  So I need to try and get some better braking ability for the mean time.

 

[Vanhook99]

I am putting the final pieces of the paperwork together to get my first ever Mustang.  It should ship down to me next week sometime.  I cant wait to get it. 

Its nothing fancy by any measure, but its a pretty original car in really nice condition.  Its a 71 Sports roof, that someone did a hodge podge attempt at making it look like a mach 1.  Only  they didnt get any of it right.  But I will have fun fixing it all.  I will slowly but surely turn it into an actual 71 mach 1 in time.  Its excellent starting material though.  It has  a recently rebuilt 302, with a FMX.  Only 40k documented original miles, with paperwork to prove it . No rust anywhere.  All the interior is in perfect shape more or less.  Im really happy with how it looks overall.  The color is not my favorite but it will do for now.  One day I will paint it. 

 

[Vanhook99]

Very nice interior too!

 

[jowens1126]

Thanks.  The whole car is in really nice shape.  I put it up on a lift and checked the underside and it all looks to be in very good condition with no obvious rust.  I even hammered around a bit and couldnt find any weak or soft spots that might have been covered with undercoating so thats a good thing.  All of the torque box areas look solid as a rock too.  Overall I am very happy with the condition of the car.  Its not perfect by any means, but its in very good condition.  There are several issues that do need attention though and I am working my way thru them.  The master cylinder was shot, I replaced that the first weekend.  That improved the brakes dramatically.  Then My son drove with the E brake on and I think he stripped the pad off the rear shoes.  You can head some grinding back there when you hit the brakes.  Theres also now some sound from the right front that sounds like a locked up wheel cylinder.  So I odered up a complete 4 wheel drum rebuild kit from CJP.  It came in today and I am taking it to the mechanic in the morning to drop it off.  I hate doing drum brakes or I would have done it myself.  So I will let them screw with it instead.  



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I also ordered a set of 3 point seat belts to replace the lap belts.  Im going to put those in this weekend.  I will probably do a write up and review once its all done too since there seems to be almost no threads on that here.



The car has the base model 2 spoke steering wheel and the horn button is completely broken and will just randomly fall off.  There are no replacement parts made, and originals are way too expensive to warrant buying one so I am going to go with an aftermarket shelby style wheel.  At least the horn should work then.  Hopefully the contacts in the column arent shot too.  I wont find that out till I pull the old wheel.  Connecting the 2 wires does not honk the horn so im not very optimistic.



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Another bummer is the Outboard Front Front Drivers seat bolt is stripped out of the threads.  I tried new bolts for it, chasing the threads with a tap, nothing helped.  It still will pop out if you hit the brakes or jam the gas.  So my only option left is to drill it out and tap it to a size larger.  More weekend work for this weekend.

The passenger seat looked like it was going to do the same thing, but it wasnt quite as bad.  All it needed was to have the thread bore chased and the bolt replaced and it was fantastic.

After that, I need to address the Air Conditioning.  Im not quite sure what is going on but I have my suspicions.  Upon inspecting the compressor, it looks like someone attached an R134a Fitting on the charge port.  The weird thing is theres not one on the other port, which leads me to think bad things.  My theory is that someone wanted the A/C to work when they sold it to the dealer I bought it from.  They couldnt find any R-12 or didnt want to spend the money to find any and just threw a fitting on there and charged it with 134a.  Its a fairly standard dirty used car lot trick and could actually destroy the entire system.  So I am having the mechanic check it out tomorrow and if he agrees with my theory then he will evacuate the system till I can get the parts I need to do the conversion correctly.  In the mean time I want the system flushed and evacuated so the 134a and mineral oil dont react causing corrosion damage.



The next job will be to clean the engine.  It looks like at some point the power steering was leaking and got fluid all over the front and bottom of the engine and accumulated alot of road dirt mess.  So I need to clean all that up and make sure nothing is still leaking.  I dont see any leaks and theres nothing on the garage floor so Im fairly sure that its all old and the problem has been fixed, they just never cleaned the mess up.

I also found that the negative battery cable is completely shot.  There isnt more than 1 square inch or insulation left on the ground cable.  So I will need to replace that sooner than later.



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There is also some issues with the dash illumination.  The gauge cluster lights up fine but nothing in the center section lights up at all.  So I will need to figure that one out.

Thats pretty much the extent of the surprises.  If thats all there is I consider it a huge win on my part.

 

[mweeps]

Welcome from West Virginia!