[Touring919]

$h!t. What you see below is a pick of my partially assembled front suspension. Observent folks will note the lower ball joint is about an inch behind the upper. Not good.

So I saw before that the passenger side frame "horn" ahead of the engine cross member was not perfect. But best I could tell everything was plenty straight enough. Core support mount off location by 1/16 or so. No biggie. I was wrong.
Looking with a more critical eye it became obvious the core support cross member should be straight. Mine was not.

The driver side was more or less in tact. Ball joint locations looked good and one can see in the pic that the appex is the bend it right at the pass side strut mount. No other impact damage visible so seems like the wheel hit a curb. Or ditch an took all the impact.
Good thing a week earlier I decided there was no parts left I could possibly need from my donor car and took it to scrap. Famous last words. I keep telling myself that cars xmember was likely too rusty to use.

 

[Touring919]

Time for some shade tree frame straightening. I'm not happy about using this method but it worked and it is sturdy. If I come across a straight x member I'll likely replace. But this method did work. Ball joint are in there proper locations. Strut rod was no longer reloading the lower arm back towards the trunk.

All I needed was some force.

And a pie slice to ensure it straightened back out where I wanted it too.

I simply extended the bottle jack until the slice closed and then welded it solid.

 

[Marauderjack]

AMAZING work on a true "RUST BUCKET"......GOOD LUCK finishing it!!

BTW....how long do you think it will take to complete it??

 

[Touring919]

To give an idea of this under taking. To this point represents 330 man hours. Those hours are spread across 10 months.

I still have a body with rust and no primer. A frame in pieces. And an engine with rusty pistons still in it. No one item has been completed yet. Though the frame is close.

At this point the updates are more scattered since I'm basically cought up. Updates will start to come in real time. In other words slower. And likely more scatter brained as I work on one thing while waiting on parts for others.

Up next is rear axle rebuild.

 

[Touring919]

Marauderjack. I had that written that last night but never hit send. Funny you asked what I partially answered.

I'm guessing it will be 1000 hours total. I'm tracking costs too. Once I get to the end I'll post those details as well. I'm tracking everything. Even the cost of 3" cut off wheels.
So far I've spend 5300 dollars in parts and consumables.

 

[Marauderjack]

That's a BIG project with lotsa hours into it and LOTSA HOURS still to go.......I admire your ambition and look forward to your updates!!
Keep updates coming and GOOD LUCK!!

 

[rickyracer1983]

To give an idea of this under taking. To this point represents 330 man hours. Those hours are spread across 10 months.
I still have a body with rust and no primer. A frame in pieces. And an engine with rusty pistons still in it. No one item has been completed yet. Though the frame is close.

Just think at $75 an hr our much that would be. That should give these people that think restroing a car is cheap.

 

[Touring919]

Oh yea. I have thought about it. I did some searching and came up with the following. For a driver. Expect 10k for a paint job. For a car one would drive to shows and legit show it 20k or more. For a trailer queen. Sky is the limit.
I restored a 65 mustang for a friend. It was an experiment to see what it was like to do a job for a paying customer. It was free of rust so it went quick. And he handled the drive train. It took 500 hours. Which is crazy since I may have that into my car before I even spay primer! Point is it would have been 75k to do the car at a pro shop.

 

[rickyracer1983]

I sandblasted mine before delivery. Inside and out. $12K and 13 months. I even removed everything except the suspension to be able to roll it around, but that was ready to come off.

 

[Touring919]

I really like those early cougar. Especially 67/68. Looks great.

 

[Touring919]

Front sus is all together. Not many pics since that is basic bolt on and go.

Right now working on rear axle refurbishment. There was plenty of bugs and other nasties in that oil too since the diff breather was missing. Step one. Tear it all down. Then scrape. Wire wheel and scrub.

Ready for paint. Every last nut and bolt. So time consuming!

How do you like the repurposing of u joint straps.

 

[Touring919]

Putting the housing in empty was a good call. Much lighter means much easier to man handle to get all the arms aligned.

This is with the mustang bar mounted too as I was checking to be sure it fit.
Close up of the mounting structure.

 

[DesertXL]

Putting the housing in empty was a good call. Much lighter means much easier to man handle to get all the arms aligned.
View attachment 172582
This is with the mustang bar mounted too as I was checking to be sure it fit.
Close up of the mounting structure.
View attachment 172583

Hello Touring919,

I do like how you mounted the rear sway bar, well done. You mentioned previously the rear sway bar was for a Fox Mustang, is there a particular year or range of years within the Fox body platform for that bar?

Cheers

 

[Touring919]

79 to 04. All the bars can swap around fox and SN platforms.
This one is an aftermarket one I happened upon at a swap meet. 1" If the car is a little too tail happy I can swap to a smaller oem bar though I doubt I'll have an issue with that.

 

[Touring919]

Finished rear axle. I put on a limited slip. Just an OEM clutch type. 170 bucks from an old school fellow who rebuilds them by the truck load.
Love 9" and 8" Ford's. So easy to set up. I reused my original gears so that made it extra easy. Set up is shown a million other web sites and shop manual is best so I'll just toss up some pics of my deviations.
My preferred method to remove old bearings. Cut a groove as deep and long as possible without going thru. Then with a hammer and chisel wedge the chisel into the groove with a few good wacks. It will crack the race and it slides right off. The left is a carrier race and the right is an axle race.

 

[Touring919]

Next is a quick home made tool for the carrier bearing nuts. I've used a chisel and lite taps in the past but that method is bad since one has no feel for when the bearing slack it taken up.
Just a random peice of pipe and two small pieces a of all thread.

Here is my layout for torquing everything. To get the bearing caps torqued I slid one axle in to give me a lever to keep the pumpkin from rotating while applying toque. Bear hugging the pumpkin was not working.
I also used the plate with a breaker bar bolted to the pinion to hold the gears from rotating while torquing the ring bolts. After everything is fully torqued I did one last check of backlash. .007 to .008. Right where it was before I took it apart.

 

[Touring919]

I will throw in this rid bit from the shop manual. When setting the ring gear depth.
Tighten ring side nut until zero back lash is achieved. Then tighten right side nut until it just bottoms out on the race. Turn 2.5 to 3 notches more to set preload. And this will also nail your backlash spec.

Don't see that too often online but it makes life super easy to hit your target on the first try.

It does say to do this with 25 ft-lbs on the caps. And to rotate the gears several times before loosening and then resetting preload again. Then fully torque caps. And recheck backlash.

 

[Touring919]

Put the carrier back into the case and then reinstall axles with new bearings and seals.
My little helper came out to tighten some nuts. Don't forget. The new axle bearings are pressed onto the axles. Don't ask why I'm reminding all of you that.

 

[Touring919]

I'm proud of this one. Before installing the gear set I needed a new breather. Didn't realize that it should have been a simple slip in one as there are no threads on the 65 galaxie breather hole. I ordered a nice stainless breather nipple with 7/16-20 threads.
Hmmm. How to drill and tap without making a mess.
Obviously a cream soda bottle with a little grease around the mouth.

Not a spec inside of the diff. Perfect.
While searching to be sure I did find a wire wheel strand so happy I stumbled on that. It would have wreaked havoc on the gears.

New breather.

 

[rickyracer1983]

KISS method is some nicer as is most home made tools.