Giantpune's 73 mach 1 project thread

[giantpune]

WOW, nice job! That’s a bunch of work, interested in finding out what the alignment guy says when he gets it on the rack.
Btw, what brand are your rims?

The alignment guy was very impressed with the whole kit. Everything was very easy to adjust and get dialed in.

And my Initial driveway alignment wasn't too bad. I had the camber on both wheels in the green. Using the strut rod lengths from the instructions, my left side caster was also in the green. My car has been wrecked and banged up on the right front corner, so the caster on the right was out. He had to lengthen the strut rod by about 0.25"

The toe, I had just eyeballed both wheels in.

My current wheels are part number LW50-60854A. I believe thats scott drake. The wheels in the first pictures at the top of this thread are from AFS. 17x9 up front and 17x10.5 in the back. They needed spacers to fit.

 

[Billw69]

Thanks and again, nice job!

 

[Steve McMahan]

I’m pulling my worn pitman arm, and the sucker is stuck on the splines. I’m using a 1/2 18” long breaker bar and it’s so tight I cannot tighten it anymore. I don’t have a torch but do have a small butane torch. I’ve done all the rust zappers and penetration products with no luck. Any ideas?

 

[Steve McMahan]

I don’t see anything wrong with the setup, but who knows.

 

[giantpune]

View attachment 62611
I don’t see anything wrong with the setup, but who knows.

I used an impact gun on mine. Grease up the threads on the pitman arm puller and zap it with the tooth rattler. I'm sure somewhere in the safety instructions they say not to do that, but I didn't read the instructions.

I suppose you could try a fork on an air hammer but that would be prying against the body of your steering gear which could damage it.

I have heard of guys cutting them off, too. Use a cutoff wheel on a die grinder to cut most of the way through the ring on the pitman arm, but not so deep you start cutting the shaft of the steering gear. The more you cut the pitman arm, the weaker it gets till it falls off.

 

[Steve McMahan]

Got it, the impact did the job. Thank you for the help.

 

[mrgmhale]

Giantpune beat me to the punch re: using an impact wrench. Sometimes instructions just need to be ignored, heh heh. He shows a nice set of electric impact wrenches. We have a 1/2" drive Milwaukee electric impact wrench also. There is not anything I have been unable to loosen with it yet. One of the best power tools I have ever had, and "back in the day" (late 60s through early 80s) I have had a lot of nice power tools. A bit pricy, but well worth it.

 

[giantpune]

Sometime within the past month I blew out the exhaust gasket. There was a tick tick tick sound under the hood. When I put my hand around the back of the header, I could feel hot air blasting out.

I finally got around to ordering a new set of bolts and gaskets. I replaced the passenger side. Driver's side is still good, so I didn't even bother to mess with it. That ticking sound is gone and it only cost me a few bucks and an hour or so of time.

 

[giantpune]

I had one of those "welp, crap" moments the other day. I cranked the motor up and was letting it warm up a bit and revving it in the driveway to keep the neighbors on their toes. Then clunk, rattle rattle, thud. I shut it off and started looking under the hood to see what broke.

I found the balancer and crank pulley just laying there down on the sway bar. The balancer bolt is still in the crank where it belongs. As far as I can tell, the idiot who installed it back around 2005 (me) put the bolt on, but not the washer. Its just been holding on by friction since then. Oops. Either that, or the center of the balancer broke out. Either way, its 20yr old and getting replaced.

I've been window shopping for parts lately for this car. Starting to plan the next big sprint for working on it. My body guy should be free in a few months so there could be a bunch of sheet metal and paint getting ordered. And I'm starting to think about how I want to upgrade this drivetrain. Nothing is set in stone yet, besides I'b about to order up my new balancer, bolt, and this time make sure it has a washer.

 

[tony-muscle]

I had one of those "welp, crap" moments the other day. I cranked the motor up and was letting it warm up a bit and revving it in the driveway to keep the neighbors on their toes. Then clunk, rattle rattle, thud. I shut it off and started looking under the hood to see what broke.

I found the balancer and crank pulley just laying there down on the sway bar. The balancer bolt is still in the crank where it belongs. As far as I can tell, the idiot who installed it back around 2005 (me) put the bolt on, but not the washer. Its just been holding on by friction since then. Oops. Either that, or the center of the balancer broke out. Either way, its 20yr old and getting replaced.

I've been window shopping for parts lately for this car. Starting to plan the next big sprint for working on it. My body guy should be free in a few months so there could be a bunch of sheet metal and paint getting ordered. And I'm starting to think about how I want to upgrade this drivetrain. Nothing is set in stone yet, besides I'b about to order up my new balancer, bolt, and this time make sure it has a washer.

Luckily nothing worst happened. My bolts came loose after I installed mine but I caught it before it came apart. At one of the AutoX events one of the guys told me he could hear a tak-tak from the front of the car. When I checked I saw the bolts had started to loosen up and it was just a matter of time. I retightened and I was good. I added threadlocker afterwards.

 

[giantpune]

I guess the next little sprint is officially under way. I have plans to swap the transmission from a C4 to a 4R70W and convert the engine to an EFI system and beef it up a tad. I haven't nailed down a solid game plan yet, but I'm not one to let that stop me from proceeding.

A couple weeks back, I got a 4R70W transmission out of a 1998 E150 with the 4.2 motor. The van dipstick is comically long, so I got one out of a 90s 4.6 crown vic that looks like it'll work for our cars a little better. We'll see when I got to put it in.

As part of the planning phase, I spent a lot of time with my cars up in the air measuring and taking pictures. I pulled the spark plugs out and peeked down in the holes to see what was up in there. The short version of the story is this motor is already 0.060 over. Cylinder walls look good. So I will probably leave the bottom end alone. I think the end goal for the motor is a set of heads, a little bit of a cam, and a port injection setup on the intake. I'll use a holley terminator to control both the engine and the transmission. The transmission, I will have the 4R70W rebuilt and beefed up a bit. I'm eyeballing the lokar shifters. They have one of them that lets you do "sport mode" and bump through the gears manually. That seems like it may be fun. And they have a bunch of different shifter levers and knobs so there should be one that fits pretty decent in our cars. I'm leaning towards the aeromotive efi tank setup.

Next stop on my road map was going to be to pull the C4 out and check out the flexplate and maybe test fit the new transmission in it. Apparently there are like 5 different torque converter bolt circles. I need to make whatever converter I use and my flexplate are compatible. But before I pull the transmission, I figured I should probably replace the motor mounts. I hossed around 1 or 2 more times than these were rated for. The only thing holding the motor in the car is the transmission.

Replacing the motor mounts turned into its own little ordeal. Somehow or another the hood is now off the car. And I snapped a grade 8 bolt off in the head and had to weld a nut onto it to get it out. The hood's off, though. the ride has started. No turning back now.

 

[Steve McMahan]

Those look like 71/72 motor mounts. 73 used the captive style. Just being a know-it-all

 

[giantpune]

Those look like 71/72 motor mounts. 73 used the captive style. Just being a know-it-all

Its worse. They're auto-zone motor mounts.

This car was a stripped roller when I got it. I'm running a 351w with 302 motor mounts and headers. I just used whatever motor mounts autozone said for a 302 in a 73 mustang. We see how that ended up. The ones I put in it today are the Prothane captured ones. I bought them 4yr ago and finally got around to putting them in.