Another person's blog

Hi, everybody. This has nothing to do with an old Mustang, but, a guy that I know that also follows this blog has started a blog. He hasn't posted much yet, but, it does look interesting so far. Here it is. You might or might not agree with him, but, it is at least worth thinking about. Here it is.
http://indefenseofcommonsense.blogspot.com/
The least I can do is put in a cheap plug for him. (insert smiley face here. )

Bleeding the brakes 1965 1966 Mustang

 

Bleeding the brakes on a 65/66 Mustang can prove to be a very annoying task. It is typically done in one of a few ways by the the average hobbyist, none of which go anything close to as well as said hobbyist hopes. Either using a partner to press the pedal down while you are operating the bleeder valve, or, if it's just you, using one of the many hand-powered vacuum pumps which don't work very well at all, or, even better, open the bleeder valve, jamb the brake pedal down with a telescoping hood prop, go back under the car, close the bleeder valve, go pull the hood prop out, open the valve, etc.... and then you run into the problem of aerated brake fluid, that one annoying air bubble that just won't go away, all sorts of little issues that make for a very unpleasant afternoon.

 

I became very frustrated with all of the above methods, having to threaten one of my children with all sorts of sanctions if they didn't help me, and trying new devices that I was assured would make my life easier, and never did. So, I gave it a little thought and this is what I came up with. I figured that it would work pretty well, but, I was actually amazed by just how well this thing actually did work. I screw this thing onto the master cylinder, which is full of fluid, attach a piece of vinyl tubing to the bleeder valve on the wheel cylinder, open the bleeder valve, open the valve on my contraption, and in an instant I have good clean brake fluid coming out of the bleeder valve. I was amazed at how easy this made a chore that had been extremely annoying in the past. Here is how I made it.

 

I took an old master cylinder cap, drilled a hole in it, cut that same hole in the M/C cap gasket and installed a quick release fitting for an air hose. I then put a pressure regulator for a paint gun on a short run of air hose with the other quick release fitting. I used those particular parts because I had all of that junk sitting around, but, one could go to a paint supply house, a hardware store, or a home improvement store, and get a lever type valve. What you see in the picture is all that there is. An old master cylinder cap, way less than 10 dollars worth of fittings, a washer on each side of the master cylinder gasket, some gasket sealer on the outside of the master cylinder cap, a screw in the vent hole of the cap, and a valve.

 

This is a very easy assembly to make, using parts that are both readily available and very cheap. All that is required is an air compressor, and the smallest cheapest air compressor in the galaxy would work just fine. Don't crack the valve open all the way on the first usage. Take it easy until you see how quickly the fluid is coming out of the bleeder valve with the compressor that you have. Just screw the cap part onto your master cylinder, attach a normal air hose to that, attach the rest of this thing to other end of the air hose, so that you have the valve with you at the wheel, attach your air supply hose to the other end of your new bleeder thingy, and have at it. 

1965 1966 Mustang Turn signal switch wiring

Once in a very great while it becomes necessary to replace the turn signal switch on a 65/66 Mustang. Once it has been determined that the switch needs to be replaced, you will discover that you have to reuse the old connectors. One is a two-wire connection that will only plug together one way. That connector is for the rear turn signals at the tail lights. If those two new wires are placed into the old connector backwards, what will happen is the right rear turn signal will start flashing when you signal a left turn. Not that big of a deal, and all that you have to do is switch those two wires around and you're all set.

The six-wire connector is sort of a different story, though. The two connectors will only plug into each other one way, but, there are all sorts of wrong ways to place the new wires into the old connector, and, if done wrong, all sorts of disasterous consequences will follow involving smoke, melting wires, etc...

Here is how those six wires are supposed to be installed in the old connector. If you look at the connector from the orientation shown in the picture, you will notice a slot in the cross piece in the center of the connector. Holding the connector so that this cross piece is pointing up and down, and with the slot closer to the top, the wires go as follows, going clock-wise beginning at the top left corner.

1)The top left corner has a yellow wire, which brings power from the headkight switch to the horns.

2)The top right corner has a white wire with a blue stripe, which goes to the front right turn signal indicator.

3)The right-side middle wire is a green/white wire which goes to the front left turn signal indicator.

4)The bottom right wire is blue/yellow, which takes power to the horns.

5)The bottom left is a blue wire, which brings power from the turn signal flasher.

6) The middle left wire is green, which brings power from the brake light switch, so that the brake 

lights are flashing on the appropriate side while the turn signals are flashing.

In the wiring diagram, you will notice what appears to be some extra wires. I drew it like this, oddly enough, for the sake of clarity, so that one can clearly see what each wire is doing. Wires 1 and 8 are both white with a blue stripe. There is actually only one white wire with a blue stripe coming out of the turn signal switch, with the same thing happening with wires 2 and 7, which are green with a white stripe. There is only one green wire with a white stripe coming out of the turn signal switch. If you look at the 6-wire connector that the turn signal switch plugs into, you will see two white/blue wires coming out of the place where the one white/blue wire goes in, with the same thing happening at the place the one green/white wire goes in. Two come out. What the switch itself has is one yellow wire bringing power in for the horns, one green wire bringing power in from the brake light switch, one blue wire bringing power in from the flasher, one blue/yellow wire taking power out to the horns, one white/blue wire taking power out to the right front turn signal and right dash indicator, one green/white wire taking power out to the left front turn signal and left dash indicator, one orange/blue wire taking power to the right rear turn signal and brake light, and one green/orange wire taking power to the left rear turn signal and brake light, with the last two being that two-wire connector. There are some aftermarket turn signal switches with wires that don't really match the colors of the Ford switches. I don't know why anyone would do such a thing unless it had something to do with cheap, but, that was what they did. If you have such a switch, the last two pictures will show you the locations of the wires on a Ford switch. 

Axle code on the door tag of a Mustang 1965 / 1966

People sometimes ask about how to determine which rear end their came with, and the list of options on that one is surprisingly limited. Here is that list of axle codes with their gear ratios correlated with engine code. There was a limited slip version of all of these rear ends, which had a different code, but, those were extremely rare in all but the 9 inch rear end used exclusively in the K codes.


U/3.50/5
F/3.00/1
D/3.00/1
K( on 64 1/2s) 3.89/8 or 4.11/9
T(with manual tranny) 3.20/3
T (with automatic tranny) 2.83/2
C/2.80/6
A/3.00/1
K  (on 65s)3.50/5, 3.89/ 8 or 4.11/9
K(on 66s) same as 65, except the limited slip 3.50 gear had a code of E, and the 4.11 was no longer available.
             

Dash repair for radio holes

It is not uncommon to see one of these cars with the hole in the dash all hacked up. People used to do that to install a variety of size huge tape players 'back in the day'. The optimum solution is to cut the area out and weld in a piece that has the correct holes. This 'piece' can be cut out of a basket case donor car, or, new replacement panels can be purchased from most vendors of vintage Mustang parts. If your budget doesn't really allow for that, here is a good alternative. It would not pass muster at an MCA car show, but, the piece actually looks pretty nice, and doesn't call for any cutting, welding, etc.. It would be something well worth considering.
http://www.mustangdreams.com/repair%20plate.htm