Exhaust Manifolds

To keep a stock look in the engine bay, I decided to use the original exhaust manifolds. They were restrictive as hell but would suffice for now. At least I had an easy part to upgrade later. Unfortunately the manifolds were really rusty and ugly.

To clean the rust I decided to dip them in acid. But not the strong stuff, just citric acid. I bough some in crystallised form and mixed it with water in about 100g of acid per litre of water. Then I left the manifolds to soak for 24 hours. Almost all of the rust had disappeared and the rest I wire brushed off.

To really make them shine I also decided to paint them. I bough some Tikkurila Termal paint and brushed it on. It was almost like water and small droplets flied everywhere. If using it, protect all surfaces carefully. The results were pretty nice at least.

The paint would only cure completely when heated to about 200 degrees celsius (390 fahrenheit) but running the engine should take care of that. The old bolts were also pretty rusty so I bought new ones. Attaching the manifolds to the engine was pretty simple but I had to shorten one bolt. The shock tower was so close to the passenger side manifold that the long bolt just would not fit.

As I had suspected the transmission support caused problems when attaching the exhaust pipe to the manifold. The pipe contacted the support and would not align with the manifold. In the end I had to create a dent to the pipe to attach them together. I'll probably have to replace the front section of the pipe later so they wont rub against each other.

Transmission Support

With the engine and transmission dropped in the car it was time to support them properly. As usual, any time there are changes, you usually get some annoying surprises. To install the transmission support, I started jacking the T-5 up. Unfortunately the shifter did not clear the hole in the tunnel. The shifter was about an inch or two too forward.

I did not want to cut the floor so I tried moving the engine backward. I loosened the motor mounts, jacked the engine up a bit and pushed. I did manage to move the engine about half an inch so I went back to the tranny. The shifter still would not clear so in the end I had no choice but to cut a small notch to the floor but then I got it to fit.

Now I could finally install the transmission support. But naturally it wasn't just a bolt in job. The T-5 support was shaped a bit differently compared to the original and ended up contacting the driver side exhaust pipe. It would probably cause problems when installing the exhaust manifolds but for now at least the engine and transmission were connected to the car.

Engine Assembly: Installation

Finally both the car and the engine were ready to be joined together again. Luckily a friend agreed to help me with it so I would not have to install the engine to the car alone. He brought along an engine hoist so we set it up, bolted some chains to the heads and attached them to the hook. I could not access the rear of the engine while it was attached to the stand so we first lowered it to the ground to install some parts.

I placed the separator plate on the dovel pins, dug out my flywheel and cleaned it of protective oil I had sprayed on it. Next I placed it on the crankshaft flange and we rotated it until all bolt holes lined up. You can only install it in one way so the balance weight is in the correct place. The holes in the crankshaft go straight through to the oil pan area so thread sealant must be used. I applied some on them and threaded the bolts in. To tighten them to the needed 80 ft-lbs. my friend had a long socket wrench that he used to prevent the crank from rotating while I used the torque wrench.

Next I had to swap in a new pilot bearing. I didn't have a suitable puller so I decided to use the "wet paper and a bolt" method shown in this video.

I just teared some paper in pieces, placed them in a bucket of water and started hammering the mush in the bushing. I used a bolt that filled the bore as tightly as possible and after a few minutes the old bushing dropped out. I've also seen grease and even bread used instead of paper but I think this method leaves the least mess. After getting the bushing out you just remove the paper and wipe the water off.

My new ACDelco 381009 clutch kit contained a new bushing and bearing. T-5 installation guide mentions that you should use a bearing so that is what I planned to install. Unfortunately when I tested it, it was so loose it slid right in the crank. There was no interference at all so it slid out just as easily. Clearly it could not be used. The new bushing on the other hand was correct so I had no choice but to use it as there was no time to get a new bearing. What I could find from net discussions it should work just as well.

After tapping in the bushing, it was time to install the clutch. I placed the centering tool and disk on the flywheel and then covered them with the pressure plate. I had bough new ARP bolts so I used them to pull it in. I tightened each bolt only about one turn in time to prevent bending the disk. Finally I torqued the bolts to 35 ft-lbs and pulled the installation tool out.

Then came the bellhousing, clutch lever and bearing. Bellhousing was simple to bolt in but the clutch lever and bearing were pretty tight. It took a few tries to get the bearing to stay in place while hooking the lever to its pivot but finally it went in.

I was ready to lift the engine to the car now but my friend suggested that we should bolt the transmission to the bellhousing and install the whole package at the same time. This would make my project much easier so I agreed. First I installed the T-5 adapter plate to the bellhousing. You need to drill two holes to it for the bolts but I had already done that earlier. Two of the bolts are threaded in from the inside but luckily we were able to tighten them without removing the bellhousing.

Next we lifted the T-5 transmission in place and fiddled it until the bolts started threading in. It took some twisting and showing but pretty soon all bolts were in and the engine was ready to be installed.

We would need to change the angle of the engine while lifting it. Unfortunately we did not have a tilting fixture so we had to improvise. After digging out a ratchet tie-down strap we attached it under the damper. It worked well enough for our needs so it was time to pump the engine up and manhandle it over the car.

Lowering the engine in the car was the most difficult part. Little by little we inched it down, forward and backward until the transmission passed the firewall. We had to be really careful not to scratch the paint or hit anything on the way down but we did get the engine in.

When the end of the transmission started touching the floor, we had to lift it somehow. First we released the strap and inched a jack under the transmission. With it we got the back end up while lowering the front. Some positioning and showing later we got the first engine mounting bolt in. After that getting the last three in was pretty simple. Then we could release the chains and the engine was installed!

Getting to this point took the whole night so I left a jack stand under the transmission and went home to rest.

Preparing The Engine Bay

Everything started to be about ready for installing the engine but I still had a few small details to finish. I removed a bunch of bolted parts from the engine bay to be cleaned. Out came the engine mounts, export brace, shock mounts and hood lock. They looked a bit scruffy so I delivered them to be bead blasted and powder coated. After getting them back, they looked like new.

When I started to put the pieces back to the car, I realised a small mistake. I had left the bolts on the parts and they had been powder coated too. So now all the threads were full of paint that had to be cleaned. It took some time to wire brush the bolts clean again but after that I had some nice looking addition in the engine bay.

Fixing The Brakes

The right front brake had been dragging after I swapped in new pads. This would have to be fixed before driving the car again so I got to work. I unbolted the caliper and took the hose off. With the parts on the table I disassembled the caliper to see what was wrong. This became apparent when pulling out the pistons. Two of them came out quite easily but two were badly stuck. I could not get them out myself but my friend welded a pipe to them and used it to twist them out.

Someone had used force to get them out before and there were large dents in the pistons. I decided to replace all four and naturally install new seals too. When the parts arrived, I also cleaned and painted the caliper.

I placed the new lip seals in the caliper bores and pushed the pistons in. I lubricated them a bit but still one of them was pretty tight. I could not find anything wrong so I pushed a bit harder. I really hope it will not be stuck again when using the brakes later... With the caliper assembled, I installed it back to the car.

I hope I'll be driving my Mustang quite a lot during summers so I also decided to upgrade the master cylinder to dual bowl model. With the original single bowl, if one of the hoses fails or one seal starts to leak, I could lose all brakes from the car. The dual bowl cylinder has separate fluid reservoirs for the front and rear so at least one should always work.

This is a really common upgrade so I could just order a new ready made pipe kit and cylinder for my car. Auto Resto Mod has also made a good video of the swap so I followed their instructions.

Installing the cylinder was simple but the pipes weren't even close. I guess they might have installed the parts in different places at the factory so I just bent the pipes until the ends were correct. Then I screwed everything in and hopefully I will have good brakes in the future. I still have to bleed them later though...

Painting The Engine Bay

With the engine pretty much ready to be installed in the car, it was time to prepare the engine bay. In the beginning it was a pretty sorry looking thing. Dirty:

The lip below the windscreen had some small rust holes and was ugly:

And there were some welds in the corners that I wanted to remove:

After cleaning the surface rust away with wire brush I grinded the welds a bit.

Couldn't really get them perfect but at least they weren't so eye catching as before. The small pinholes in the center were a bit more problematic. As welding wasn't really an option, I decided to fill the holes with lead. I bought a bar of it, paste and a wooden paddle and got to work. This was my first time working with lead but it proved surprisingly easy.

I cleaned the metal as good as I could and spread the paste on it. Next I used a torch to heat the area until the paste turned bright. I cleaned everything again and dug out the lead. It melted easily with the torch and I dropped a few pieces on the holes. While keeping it soft with heat, I spread it around with the paddle. After repeating a couple of times, the holes were filled.

I filed the lead smooth until it was good enough for me. Then it was time to prevent the rust from spreading any more. I applied some rust stopped to the lip.

Hopefully it was enough so the paint wont start bubbling later. Finally I applied some filler to the worst places to smooth them out more. Then it was time to attack the dirt. The engine bay had had almost 50 years to gather grime, oil, grease and other nasty stuff and I had to get all of it out before paint. Power washer wasn't an option in my garage or yard so manual cleaning was the only way to go.

I ended up spending many nights scraping, brushing and wiping every nook and cranny in the engine bay but finally it was spotless. That of course was not enough preparation for paint and I dug out my sanding paper and went through all surfaces with a few different grids. Some aching fingers later it was finally time to start spraying so I masked all surfaces I didn't want to paint.

I also cleaned the surroundings in the garage to minimize the amount of dust in the air. Naturally my area was not suitable for any kind of serious painting but was enough for the engine bay. The air would be filled with paint so I wore a protective suit.

The paint I chose as primer was grey Color Matic 1K Epoxy.

First layer that I sprayed was really light just to bring out any uneven surfaces and to see how the paint reacted with the old layers. The light gray color was perfect for seeing the places I needed to sand further.

Most of the paint spread out evenly but there were some places where the new primer reacted with the old pain.

Getting rid of all the wrinkles proved pretty difficult. I tried sanding the areas back to bare metal, let the paint dry for a week between layers, cleaned everything many times, put up light and heavy layers but always some wrinkles would pop up. Finally I had had enough and decided to try Motox paint from Motonet that had worked really well before. I used matte black this time as they grey color had already done its job.

The new, cheap paint went on perfectly without any reactions with the old layers. I guess I should have used the old and tested materials immediately instead of fighting with the new, more expensive paint for weeks. After a few layers of primer, I was finally ready for the actual top coat. For that I used VHT satin black. It went on perfectly and after three layers I had a really nice looking engine bay.