Thanks to everyone who wished me a safe journey for my trip to Vegas last week! As you can see, the Soul Survivor has returned to her home turf, and performed with distinction throughout the weekend. Thanks to our new overdrive transmission, I saw an initial fuel economy improvement of 20% (from 18 MPG to 22 MPG), and I hope to kick that up even further as I dial in the fuel injection. Other than a few hiccups here and there, the trip went without a hitch, and I’m looking forward to our next road trip.
That trip will be in June (to the Rocky Mountain Mustang Roundup), and is about 2,000 miles round trip. Before departure, I’ll need to follow up on some issues I identified this week. Nothing major, but since my ’74 is forty years old, the list is extensive:
1) Mount a radiator overflow bottle (The ’74 never mounted one)
2) Mount a windshield washer reservoir (Removed to allow clearance for the air cleaner assembly)
3) Change the speedometer cable end (the T-5 speedometer output connection does not match the Ford cable).
4) Route power to the passenger’s power seat (I used the existing seat power for fuel pump and PCM power).
5) Check for DTCs in the PCM (No MIL, but one never knows..).
6) Check sensor input values to the PCM (I’m happy with overall drivability, but the idle is hanging at 1,400 RPM).
7) Check for intake air leaks (I can skip this if it turns out a bad sensor input is driving up the idle).
8) Adjust the passenger’s door (it’s started to bang on the striker when closing. Just getting old).
9) Four wheel brake job (I’m headed to the Colorado High Country, so I need all the braking the car came with).
10) Mount a Cruise Control system (Maybe–I need to scavenge some junkyard parts and design a switch system that works with my three spoke sport steering wheel. I could mount a stalk behind the wheel, or use switches mounted on the center console).
There’s not enough there to justify any further write-ups, but I’ll post anything interesting I see in Steamboat Springs. Also, if my time on the road turns into an automotive adventure, I’ll follow up with a report on that as well. That’s all for today, I’ll see you on the roads of LA!
-D/S
Sorry I missed you and the gathering. There were tons of cool Mustangs running all over town and in the lot of the hotel I work at. Fun to see!
Where was this picture taken? Does not look like Vegas!
LA. Likely Palos Verde, where Dave lives. I think it’s to provide proof that he made it home 🙂
Yep, It’s Lunada Bay on the Palos Verdes Peninsula (As noted by Don W in the posting below).
I’ve lived here for ten years, and it’s still a bit of a culture shock to return home after a few days away. PV is a unique place, and very different from the LA folks see on TV. Rolling in after five days in Las Vegas only intensifies the shock.
Couldn’t help but notice, isn’t the setting for your photo the Lunada Bay Plaza in Palos Verdes? My parents used to drag us kids down to P.V. in the late 50’s, they were forever looking at houses down there (what a mistake that they never bought one!). We often had lunch there in the Plaza. Haven’t been there for years, but I instantly recognized the fountain.
Love your Mustang II, I used to go bike riding in the mid-’80s with a friend at San Onofre State Beach, we would load up our 10-speeds in the back of his fastback, it easily held the two bikes. It was red, and a bit of a beater by then, but I remember it being a fairly competent little car. Good luck on your Roundup trek.
Great Lunada Bay Plaza scene begins at 6:17 in this classic, Skater Dater.
Yeah do the brakes, first rule of hotrodding/engine swaps if it goes its gotta stop.
It stops, and no parts are completely worn out, but one look at the forty year old brake hoses tells me I’m currently driving on borrowed time.
Do it. I did the Hot Rod power tour last year from Dallas to Charlotte in my 77 Chevelle. My buddies and I went over the car with a critical eye for failures. We wound up replacing all the brake hoses, wheel cylinders, both calipers, and just for good measure the master cylinder since we had the system completely down. I had installed a new booster a few years ago and had relined the brakes a few months prior, but the rest wasn’t addressed.
Stops like a new Chevelle again, still has the typical soggy feeling GM disc/drum pedal feel, but it will stop very well, and with only a bit of tail wag from rear lockup.
Only thing on that 4,000 mile trip to fail was the starter in Biloxi MS, on the way back, a good family from Indiana stopped to give me a ride to the store to get a new starter for it. It did drink a quart of oil every 700 miles though, its getting time for a rebuild of that hoary 305 due to bad intake valve stem seals, engine internally is spotless and compression is good, just has 38 year old gaskets on the heads and intake.
yeah, it looks like the 2.9 was a speed-density system (MAP sensor, no MAF) so a small vacuum leak would be my first suspicion for a high idle.
I’d start with the vacuum leak, but I just put the intake manifold together, and don’t see an obvious leak. It was also idling slower right after initial assembly, so I think something electrical may have glitched on me-
During construction, I kept the harness as splice free as possible, but I added a few, and simply moving it from one car to another opens up the possibility of a problem.
Frankly, I’d find a short write up on each of your ten tasks to be quite interesting. You are looking at various issues and upgrades and finding solutions. Having done a few less ambitious projects, I appreciate what it takes to do these kinds of things.
Especially the cruise control project. A CC CC!
While I encourage topic suggestions, I’d prefer to stick to the posts on far more ambitious projects, such as that transmission swap I posted last week.
That list is just basic maintenance stuff, and won’t require much creative thought. In fact, the only unknows on the list are the shape and location of the washer bottle/radiator overflow. The rest is just busy work.
I might post on mounting the Cruise Control, but only because it is way simpler to install a GOOD system than most Do It Yourselfers realize. I’ve add cruise to three or four cars, and they never took more than a couple hours. Ooops- The one exception is cars with Drive by Wire throttle, but most of those cars come with cruise from the factory nowadays, so that also isn’t much of an issue.
It kind of sucks when ordering any 70’s Ford that you can have either the awesome steering wheel OR cruise control….but not both. That’d be a tough call for me.
Frankly, I don’t view wheel mounted switches as a critical need, since I typically set it and forget it. I’ll either mount them on the TS Stalk, or in a panel on the center console by my hip.
That’s a beautiful photo Dave. I applaud you for going with such a classic exterior color. You must turn a lot of heads.
This has been an enjoyable story from start to finish. Good work.
Good to hear the trip went well Dave, more coverage of the event would be appreciated.
Interesting you mention an intake leak, I had a problem on my way home, dropping onto 2-3 cylinders and when you only have little cylinders (219cc) you need all of them! After checking the obvious we started to remove a carb only to discover the intake manifold was loose! It appears 3 studs are not present so it is only held by one at each end but they were enough to get home. It had taken many thousands of miles for this to arise after all.