First Car - 71 Mach 1 rebuild

[4thesporty]

This is my 1971 Mach 1 (M code)
351C-4 speed

I bought this in 1995 at 15 years old and was my first car and daily driver through high school and a couple years of college.

I bought this from the original owner for $3500 and it was completely stock and as it came from the factory with about 70K miles. This is a very low optioned car. Originally yellow with black hood, chrome lower body molding so no side stripes. 14" wheels with dog dish and beauty rings and standard black interior with an AM radio. No A/C, but did have the fold down rear seat. This car even had the original space saver spare in the truck with the air up can unused.

As a 15 year old does, I quickly removed the wheels and bought some re-pop Magnum 500s and Cooper Cobras that were too big in the back, so then added air shocks to make them fit.

The carpet was getting nasty so I pulled all of it out to replace it and ended up being gifted some deluxe seat covers to replace the original ones. Then I put in a Custom Autosound AM/FM radio with tape deck in favor of the AM radio and upgraded the center dash speaker to one that fit there as well as add kicker panel 4" speakers and some 6x9s in boxes behind the fold down rear seat; then drove the wheels off of it.

I've got some old pictures of it from that time that I am still trying to locate and will add them here as I find them.

 

[4thesporty]

At the time, all of my friends had old cars or at least hopped up cars and we would spend the weekends tweaking and racing them just outside of town. To name a few, I had friends with a 71 Chevelle, 69 Mustang coupe, 67 Mustang convertible, 72 Mustang coupe, 55 Chevy post, a few foxbody mustangs and a few El Caminos, one a 70 he swapped in a 454.

My dad at that time was on the Muscle Car Nationals circuit racing and showing his 69 GTX 440, 71 Corvette 454 4speed, and 69 Mach 1 SCJ (my favorite car).

So during all this I regularly used the valve springs as my rev limiter and eventually broke a timing chain and destroyed the engine, so pulled it out and rebuilt it with a little hotter cam as well as some head work. Also got tired of the Autolite carb, so that went away in favor of an Edelbrock 650. Luckily I have the early squarebore intake and that was just as good if not better that the aftermarket intakes of the time.

Also, I finally installed some flowmasters, but kept the factory exhaust manifolds because I ran out of money for upgrades.


Flash forward a year or so later. I was leaving school and messing with another car on the road, ended up losing control around a long curve and and found my right rear quarter panel smashed against a metal fence post. Luckily the quarter took all the damage, but it needed to be replaced so I saved up what I could and got one of my dad's body shop friends to fix it up for me. I also opted to color swap away from the yellow in favor of black paint with Argent hood.

I did this color swap because on the way home from buying this car, we stopped at a gas station and they had a copy of Mustang Monthly magazine, where they featured a 71 Mach 1 with the license plate 1TUF71 that had this color scheme and I loved it ever since then. In hindsight, I wished my car was still the original yellow, but it would have been hard to color match the reproduction quarter I think.

 

[4thesporty]

In the early 2000's I joined the Navy and after a couple of deployments ended up in San Diego in dry dock for a scheduled 8 months so I flew home and drove my car out there to work on and drive. This is how it looked at that time.

I ended up finding some rust and holes on the passenger side floor pan from a long leaking heater core as well as some rust holes on the passenger side cowl, letting water in, so I pulled all the interior out to repair these two things. While the interior was out I decided now was a good time to quit chasing electrical gremlins so I pulled all the wiring out in favor of a universal wiring harness from Painless.

Right as I was completing that my ship's dry dock was cut short and we had to get ready to deploy again so I had to leave the car in this stripped down position while I was away. When I finally returned from deployment I was sent to Japan for a few months before I was set to separate from the Navy so was decided to get my car back to Texas, where I drove it into my dad's barn in 2008.

 

[4thesporty]

Once I returned back to Texas, I was now married and working in the oil field so travelling a lot. I had no time to work on the car any longer nor did I have a place to keep it where I was living. Then family life and kids took over and the car sat for 16 years until this past summer when I finally decided enough was enough and it was time to get it back on the road.

Here it is the day I pulled it out of the barn it had sat in for so long. Surprisingly, all but one of the Cooper Cobras from the mid-90s held air enough for it to roll. I towed it to my garage and got to work on getting it ready to start and run again.

 

[4thesporty]

Here it is in my garage, and a video of the first start. I took the time to go over the wiring before hooking up a battery. There were quite a few things the mice had chewed through, also them and the dirt dobbers had made a few homes in various spots and had to be evicted.

I pulled the spark plugs and used some MMO in the cylinders, let them soak for a few days, cleaned up the cap and rotor, drained all the fuel and replaced all the soft fuel lines after blowing out the hard lines. I ended up replacing the fuel tank as it was a mess inside, changed the oil and primed the system till I got oil on the valvetrain, then fired it off

 

[Sheriff41]

Great story about your Mustang! I've had mine a long time and they become like an old friend after a while.

 

[4thesporty]

Brakes
Now that I had a running car I was ready to drive it again but I could only get the right front corner to bleed. I ordered brake soft lines for the front and rear center. As much as I tried to avoid it I ended up snapping both front sides hard lines removing these.

I bought an entire new set of steel hard lines from Inline tube:

https://www.inlinetube.com/products/fmb7101?year=1971&make=Ford&model=Mustang

These took weeks to come it and a few curse words to get installed, but got it done finally. In the time it took for them to ship to me I found a guy on the vintage mustang forum that was selling adaptors so I could install 2014 Mustang GT disc brakes on the front of my car:

https://www.vintage-mustang.com/threads/big-brake-upgrade-for-granada-spindles.1168853/

So I bought and installed this adaptor as well as new rotors, calipers, hoses, etc for this upgrade. You have a few options on brake size that depend on your wheel size. I opted for the 13.2" GT brake rotors/calipers/pads. Attached pics here are not showing the big brakes yet, just the new lines

 

[4thesporty]

Rear Brakes

The rears were a little more difficult to figure out what I wanted to do. The wheel cylinders were garbage, the drums at least needed to be turned. I also hate drum brakes. My rear pinion seal had a terrible leak and I wanted to regear the rear end (3.25 open)

One night I came across a guy selling a Ford 8.8 from a '98 Grand Marquis for $50. This was quite a bit wider than the 9" in my car, but with the larger brakes up front, I had to get some new wheels anyway (my old 15" Magnum 500s seem beyond repair anyway) and I could go to a modern wheel size and offset so I decided to buy this 8.8, rebuild it, install new brake components on it and toss it under the car. Getting all the brackets off that axle without a torch was a pain, but finally got it done, welded on new spring perches, installed new bearings and seals and installed the axle. Then had my driveshaft shortened and balanced. The rear is 2.73 open for now. Once a few other things are done I'll pull this and update that.

I also found some 2022 Mustang GT wheels with brand new Pirelli's a guy had taken off his car in favor of something else so bought them cheap as they would mount and fit my car with this axle.

Since I had gone this far with the brakes, i decided to get a new master cylinder and eventually a new booster so the entire brake system is brand new and works great again.

 

[4thesporty]

Suspension

Everything rubber under the car was dried out and cracked, the coil springs had a terrible squeak in them, and I wanted something more modern.

For the front I opted for a Street or Track front coil over suspension (street valved coil overs), new Moog tie rods, and an open tracker roller idler bearing.

In the rear I used Street or Track 4.5 mid-eye leaf springs (supposed to be 1" lower than stock) mounted with a Global West Del-a-lum shackle/bushing kit and matching Bilstein shocks

The install on these parts went very smooth and straightforward if you've ever rebuilt a front suspension or changed leafs before. I played with the front ride height a bit and settled on a little more than 1" lower than the new rear ride height.

I took it in to a local race shop and had them do a quick alignment on it so i could drive it. I'll be going back in after a while and have them tune it for the most caster they can get out of it with the adjustable strut rods.

My factory manual steering box has some play in it and the rag joint needs some attention, so once I get those squared away I'l have them set up the car the way I want it for good, unless I decide to buy the alignment stuff and do it myself.

I also have some sub frame connectors from Tin Man fabrications I have yet to install, as seen in one of the pictures.

 

[4thesporty]

Engine projects

1. I noticed that my alternator was not charging and since I have some later plans to take advantage of all the circuits, I have available now in this car I decided to go ahead and swap it out for a 3G alternator and harness. I bought an alternator for a '94 Mustang GT as well as the Painless 3G harness:

https://painlessperformance.com/product/ford-3g-alternator-harness-part-no-30831/

Got it all wired in and set up and was still not getting a charge to the battery. After some troubleshooting I found that I had no ignition power to any of the circuits that should have it. I traced it back to the fuse block and found that I had wired up ignition power to a ground on the ignition switch. Fixed that and now it works as intended.

2. The ignition system in the car is very old and outdated and never really worked as intended. It was a cobbled together set of parts anyway, Old Mallory distributor with an original pertronix electronic ignition upgrade, mouse chewed spark plug wires, and a coil from a forklift. After some hemming and hawing over what I wanted to do, I decided on a Duraspark II system (blue strain relief). I almost bought a duraspark I (red strain relief) but decided that it is much easier to find replacement II boxes if I am ever stranded, also I like the timing retard function on start of the II system.

I bought a new Cardone distributor for a 78 truck 460, with matching ignition box and coil along with a painless harness:

https://painlessperformance.com/product/duraspark-ii-ignition-harness-part-no-30812/

Installed everything, set base timing to 12 degrees BTDC and it is almost perfect out of the box. I didn't take apart the distributor to see what plates on in it for the mechanical advance yet, but it gives me 38 degrees total, all in by 3000 and the car loves it. I can't believe how easy it starts now too.

3. Prior to my 1st start this past summer I rebuilt my Edelbrock 650 but it never really seemed to run right no matter how much I fiddled with it. I found a guy selling an Edelbrock 750 locally with a full tuning kit for $200 so I bought his and installed it along with a 1" carb spacer. The spacer was for added drivability as well as getting my air cleaner up off the new larger diameter Duraspark distributor. The car is now running very well and I'm happy enough with the engine performance so I can focus on other parts of the car.

 

[4thesporty]

That brings this thread to the car's current status.

Short term plans

• get the sub frame connectors welded in
• bolt in the dash to get it out of my way in the garage
• bolt in my seatbelts and install my rear view mirror for some safety
• make a decision on steering, either have my box rebuilt, or opt for power steering
• figure out a parking brake; i didn't install the drum in hat parking brake on the 8.8 I installed yet, but I have all the parts to do so

I'll continue on documenting my progress here, hope you enjoy!