Mustang Progress

When we left off last week, the suspension and brakes were all installed and next up was the motor & transmission, and all of the plumbing. The motor was delivered early in the week and the owner saved me a lot of time by stripping the entire motor down to bare, shining cast iron. I mean it was nice! I think they stripped it using paint stripper and a whole bunch of wire wheel shapes on a drill motor. However it was done it was very clean. All I had to do was a final metal prep and some masking work.

The motor was mated to the transmission (also rebuilt) with a new converter, and a whole slew of new parts including motor mounts, transmission mount, etc. With the motor and transmission slipped back into place I moved on to making all new brake lines. I got the front section done, here's the details.

The motor arrived pre-cleaned, and it was a great job. I went over it once more with fine steel wool and wiped it down with metal prep. I also masked off the brass freeze plugs and a few other things.

Here's another shot of the bare motor, it was nice.

After laying down a ton of Ford blue, the motor was mated to the rebuilt C4 automatic transmission and lowered into place.

Here it is all mounted up, there's a ton of attention to detail here and it shows.

An Edelbrock hi flow water pump was used. Also note that I painted the oil pan off the motor so when it went together the gaskets wouldn't be painted.

Check out the shine on the oil pan!

On to the brake lines. I started with the feeder line for the front brakes, down to a T that splits off left and right front brakes.

Next was the left front feeder.

Then came the right front feeder which I ran across the lower part of the firewall. You can also see the rear brake line feeding into an adjustable proportioning valve.

The right side front feeder is in two pieces and runs low across the firewall so it won't be seen when everything is installed.