Christopher Hitchens passes away

I know that this has absolutely nothing to do with an old Mustang, but, a truly great man has passed away, and I must acknowledge that. On thursday, December 15, Christopher Hitchens passed away at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX.  He died of complications resulting from esophageal cancer.The bare-bones version of who he was is that he was an author and journalist. He was a frequent guest commentator on literary and news programs that went all the way across the ideological spectrum. The reason for this was very simple. He was that rare combination of being both blindingly brilliant and supremely clever. He is the only man that I have ever seen that could make you laugh while he was destroying your long cherished ideas. He was also a frequent participant in public formal debates. To be on the other side of the issue from him would be a brutal experience. A frequent tactic in that type of debate is to quote sources or reference incidents that are so obscure, you are confident that your opponents have never even heard of them. I never saw Mr. Hitchens get caught by that. People tried it, of course, but, it always turned out that he was thoroughly familiar with the incident, knew the history of it, all of the principle players in it,  and might even have previously written something about it. He had no patience for the hypocrite or the ignoramus, and had no problem at all with having a good deal of fun at their expense. He drank heavily, and he was a smoker. He did quit smoking, but, he quit too late. The cigaretes ultimately killed him. He was who he was, and he offered no apologies for that. He was a columnist and literary critic at Vanity Fair, Slate, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, along with several other media outlets. He was named one of the world's "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Britain's Prospect. He will be sorely missed by many, myself included.

1965 Mustang Interior Codes

It appears that Blogger has reformatted the way that pictures are viewed, and now, the pages with interior codes are no longer legible. I guess I'll have to redo this stuff.

Привет России

Я заметил, русские здесь. Я хочу сказать привет  и я рад, что вы нашли это место. Мой говорит о вашем языке не есть хорошо. Очень не хорошо. Я должен сказать, что я вижу вас, и я счастлив, что вы находитесь здесь.

Making things more search friendly

Hi, everybody. I was just looking at what people type into their search engines when they are looking for stuff about how to fix their car, and it occurred to me that I could make this stuff a lot more search engine friendly by modifying the post titles, and maybe duplicate the same post  on, for example the charging system, and call one 1965 Mustang alternator wiring and the other 1966 mustang alternator wiring, since they aren't exactly the same. That might help people out. Or, maybe not. (insert smiley face here. )

Mustang Fuse Box 1965 1966

Many questions seem to arise concerning this seemingly simple component, such as "Where is the main power feed?' or "How do I replace this with the more modern blade type fuses?"  First, there is no 'main power feed'. Here is how the wiring is on the 65/66 Mustang fuse box.

In the bottom left corner of the picture there is a contact with a black wire with a yellow stripe attached to it. There is a black/yellow wire coming from the hot side of the starter solenoid, the same terminal that the positive battery cable is attached to, which comes through the firewall, splits into three wires, one black/yellow, one black/orange and one yellow. The black/yellow wire on the fuse box is the black/yellow wire coming from the starter solenoid. This is constant power, whether the key is on, off or in the accessory position. The power is always on, thus, the term, 'Constant Power'. (insert smiley face.) You will notice that this contact has two round thingies on it. If you flip the fuse box over, you will see that one of those round thingies is the hot side of the fuse for the cigarette lighter/emergency flasher circuit, and the other is the hot side of a circuit called 'Dome'. A 65/66 Mustang does not have a dome light. This is the interior courtesy lighting which comes on when you open either door. On the other end of the Dome fuse is a green/yellow wire. This green/yellow wire goes out to the driver's side door jamb switch.  On the other end of the cigarette lighter circuit is a blue/white wire. This goes out to the lighter, and splits off before it gets to the lighter and also goes to the emergency flashers, if your car has the emergency flashers. Not all 65 model Mustangs had emergency flashers.

On the middle fuse you will have two blue/red wires. One of them brings power directly from the headlight switch and the other goes to the instrument cluster back-lights. Those are the ones that come on when the headlights come on, not an alternator/generator warning light, or the oil pressure warning light.

In the top right corner, there is a black/green wire. This brings power from the ignition switch when the key is in the on or accessory position. Again, the wire is attached to a contact plate with the two round thingies. The one on the top is the hot side of the accessory fuse. There should be a wire hanging out of the front of the fuse box on that circuit which supplies keyed power to whatever accessories are plugged into that wire on the other end. The other round thingy, marked by the brown/green arrow, is the hot side of the heater fuse. There is a brown wire coming out of the other end of this fuse. If you have three speed heater fan, this wire goes out to the fan motor. If you have a two-speed, center-position/off heater fan, this wire goes to the fan switch. The fuse box of a 64 1/2 is a little different in a couple of ways. I'll address that one in another post.

So, as you see, power goes to the fuse box from three different places, the starter solenoid, the ignition switch, and, the headlight switch, and the systems that get power from one are pretty much completely isolated from all of the others. There is a little more involved in replacing this with a blade type fuse box than just removing this fuse box and sticking the new one in. The new one needs to either have a provision for isolated independent power feeds for different circuits, or, it needs to be more than one fuse box. 

Ciao, Italia

Ciao a tutti da Italia. Se c'è qualcosa che ti interessa qui, ma l'inglese non è ben capito, si prega di chiedere, e cercherò di tradurlo.



 

Moi Suomessa.

Tervetuloa, Suomessa.
Kaaviot johdot ja johtojen ongelmat ovat enimmakseen 2008. Kommentoikaa. Auta minua sanoa tata oikein.

1965 Mustang build date

Here is the list of VIN data that I've been collecting for a while. This is just for the 64 1/2 Dearborn cars, but, I'll be posting the rest of the 65/66 stuff that I have as I type it up. If you want to estimate the scheduled production date of your car, just click on this http://www.allfordmustangs.com/forums/classic-tech/278593-64-1-2-vin-data.html#post2408151 then click on the PDF link and scroll down the list until you find cars with sequential numbers ( the last six digits of the VIN) that are close to yours, and that will get you very close to what your's probably was. Ford destroyed the records for the 65/66 cars, so, there is no way to know for certain what the scheduled production date for a car would have been, but, this will allow you to come up with the absolute best estimate possible from any source.

I have just added the 64 1/2 San Jose cars. The pdf for that is in post #4. I've already started organizing the 65 Dearborn cars, and, will be posting that soon.

Recreating your Mustang door tag 1965 and 1966

Many of the cars, after nearly half a century, have either lost their warranty plate (door tag) or, it has become too ratty-looking to read and looks just awful. Brand new replacement tags are available from http://www.martiauto.com/ but, you have to tell them what it's supposed to say. The warranty plate will have the VIN of your car on it, along with some codes that gave the dealerships that would be working on the cars some basic information about this particular car. The first code is body style. For a 65/66 Mustang, how that goes is

Coupe............65
Fastback........63
Convertible...76
with a letter after it. Standard interior would be an A, deluxe (pony) interior would be a B, and standard interior with a front bench seat, instead of front buckets, would be a C. So, if you have a standard interior coupe, that would be 65A, a pony interior convertible would be 76B, etc..

Next would be the exterior color. I have a list of the color codes here. http://thecareandfeedingofponies.blogspot.com/2008/04/paint-codes.html What would be on your door tag would be the single-digit designation above the name of each color.

Next would be the interior trim of the car. Again, I have all of the possible interiors for these cars here.  http://thecareandfeedingofponies.blogspot.com/2008/05/65-interior-samples-and-codes.html and here http://thecareandfeedingofponies.blogspot.com/2008/05/66-interior-samples-and-codes.html In the first column there is a two or three digit designation under 'Code'. That's what would be on the door tag.

Next is the scheduled production date of your car. Ford destroyed the records for the 65/66 model cars, so, there is no way to say for certain when your car was built. However, I have amassed a pretty good data base of cars that the scheduled production date was still known from the original door tag, and, if you go here http://www.allfordmustangs.com/ go to the classics forums and ask about your cars birthday, I can ballpark it within a day or two. This is assuming that nothing goofy happened during production of your car, and it rolled off the line pretty much in sequence with other cars. It would be a good workable date for buying parts for your car, and it's a date that would make sense.

It is not possible to deduce what the D.S.O. ( District Sales Office) code for a car was if the original door tag is gone, because, as I mentioned, Ford destroyed the records, and, basically, the car could have been ordered by anyone, anywhere in the world. If you still have the tag, and are wondering what that code means, then the number designates the city or region that your car went to to be sold originally.
11_Boston
12_Buffalo
13_New York
14_Pittsburg
15_Newark
16_Philadelphia
17_Washington D.C. After 1/1/66
21_Atlanta
22_Charlotte N.C
23_Philadelphia
24_Jacksonville FL
25_Richmond VA
26_Washington DC
27_Cinncinati  After 1/1/66
28_Louisville KY  After 1/1/66
31_Cinncinati
32_Cleveland
33_Detroit
34_Indianapolis
35_Lansing MI
36_Louisville KY
37_Buffalo  After 1/1/66
38_Pittsburg After 1/1/66
41_Chicago
42_Fargo ND
43_Rockford IL
44_Twin Cities( Minneapolis/St. Paul)
45_Davenport Iowa
51_Denver
52_DesMoines Iowa
53_Kansas City
54_Omaha
55_ St. Louis
61_Dallas
62_Houston
63_Memphis
64_New Orleans
65_Oklahoma City
71_Los Angeles
72_San Jose
73_Salt Lake City
74_Seattle
75_Phoenix
81_Ford of Canada
83_Government
84_Home Office Reserve
85 American Red Cross
89_Transportation Services
90-99_Export

Next will be the axle code, which tells you what the rear axle gear ratio is. The 9 inch rear end was not the only rear end that had an optional limited slip gear set-up. This was also available on the 8 inch rear end used in the A code and C code cars, as well as with the integral carrier used on the 6 cylinder cars. This was extremely rare on cars destined to be sold in the United States, though. One would be safe in assuming that this is not what their car came with unless the car was originally sold in Canada or Europe, and then made it's way back to America. Here are the codes for the door tag. This will be in the form of 'if the motor that your car came with was a_____ then the axle code on the door was _____
Before 9/01/64
170____________ 5
260____________1
289____________1
289HP (K code)__8 (3.89) or 9 (4.11)

After 9/01/64

200/auto__________2
200/manual________3
289/2bbl__________6
289/4bbl__________1`
289/4bbl/HP_______5(3.50), 8 (3.89), 9 (4.11)

And, finally, the transmission code. This is just for the 64 1/2-66 cars. There were some minor changes in the codes and options at the beginning of the 67 model year.

Automatic transmission___________6
6 cyl/three speed manual__________1
V8/three speed manual___________3
V8/four speed manual____________5

After determining what your car actually came with, this should provide you with all of the information that you need to recreate your door tag.

Mustang heater blower motor 1965 and 1966

Here is how the heater blower motor works on the 65/66 Mustangs. If you click on the diagrams, they will pop out so that you can see the entire diagram. I made them as big as I could so that they would be easier to see.

  If your car is an early 65, as in 64 1/2 with a generator, and has the center position off switch, the second drawing is how that is wired. Power comes from the fuse box to the switch, and, goes from the switch to the blower motor. If you look at the blower motor itself from under the hood, you will see three wires sticking out of it. One is red, one is orange, and the other is black. The black wire is the ground wire, and should be attached to the firewall. The other two bring power to the motor from the switch.

If your car has the off position on the switch all the way over to the driver's side, the first drawing is how your car is wired. This is a system that can be a little confusing until one realizes that it is wired backwards from the way most of the stuff in this car is wired. Most systems have power coming from the switch to the component. The heater blower motor has power coming from the component to the switch. Power comes from the fuse box and goes straight to the blower motor on the brown wire. It leaves the blower motor through the yellow wire, which plugs into the resistor on the front of the heater box. There will also be a three wire harness that plugs into the resistor which goes to the switch. You will notice that there is no ground wire in this system. The switch feeds power from one of the three wires coming into it, depending on which position the switch is in, straight into the metal of the dash. It is important that the switch be making good contact with the unpainted metal of the dash on the back side, or, the system won't work, so, if you decide to paint your dash, make sure that the switch housing is still making good contact when you reinstall it.

There was also a center position/off two speed blower available in the later 65 model cars, which, at a glance, appears to be like the 64 1/2 from inside the car. It does not have the resistor on the heater box. however, these worked like the three speed blowers. Power comes from the fuse box to the blower motor and then goes to switch, which grounds on the dash. The resistor is an integral part of the switch.