Standard equipment on the 66 Mustang

Here is a list of the noteworthy standard equipment that came on the 66 Mustang.

1)  120hp 6 cylinder engine
2)  3 speed manual transmission with floor mounted shifter
3)  Super diamond luster enamel
4)  Alternator
5)  Long life Sta-Ful battery
6)  Automatic choke
7)  Self-adjusting brakes
8)  6000 mile or 6 month oil filter
9)  36,000 mile or 2 year coolant/antifreeze
10) Fully aluminized muffler
11) Galvanized main underbody members
12) Parallel action electric windshield wipers and washers
13) Dual padded sun visors and arm rests
14) Color keyed carpeting/front and rear
15) Color keyed steering wheel with sports horn bars
16) Cigarette lighter and front ash tray/rear ash trays on convertible only
17) Automatic courtesy lights and glove box light
18) Front bucket seats
19) Padded instrument panel
20) Rocker panel moldings
21) Full wheel covers
22) 5-ply convertible top, manually operated, vinyl coated in black, white, or tan
23) Turn signals
24) Outside rearview mirror
25) Back-up lights
26) Emergency flashers
27) Front and rear seat belts
28) Fresh air heater/defroster

Wow. An even more impressive array of standard equipment than that of the 65 Mustang. In 66 the back-up lights, outside rearview mirror, and emergency flashers were standard equipment, along with front AND rear seat belts.

Standard equipment on the 1965 Mustang

This subject seems to come up occasionally, so, here is a list of things that Ford felt were noteworthy as standard equipment on the 65 Mustang.
1)   120hp 6cyl engine
2)   3-speed manual transmission with floor mounted shifter
3)   Alternator
4)   Long life Sta-Ful battery
5)   Automatic choke
6)   Self-adjusting brakes
7)   6000 mile or 6 month oil filter
8)   36,000 mile or 2 year coolant/antifreeze
9)  Fully aluminized muffler
10) Galvanized main underbody members
11) Parallel action electric windshield wipers
12) Dual sun visors
13) Front arm rests (rear arm rests on convertibles)
14) Color keyed carpeting, front and rear
15) Color keyed steering wheel with sports horn bars
16) Cigarette lighter and front ash tray/rear ash trays on convertible only
17) Automatic courtesy lights and glove box light
18) Front bucket seats
19) Padded instrument panel
20) Full wheel covers
21) 5-ply convertible top, manually operated, vinyl coated in black white or tan.
22) Turn signals
23) Front seat belts
24) Fresh air heater/defroster

It is actually quite amazing just how far cars have come since then. Imagine a manufacturer today mentioning that their cars come with turn signals, a heater, front seat belts, and sun visors. None of that stuff was required in 1965. Parallel action electric windshield wipers? Awesome!! What will they think of next?

Happy Holiday wishes .

I just wanted to take a second and wish everybody a happy holiday season. I normally just say Merry Christmas, but, I realize that there are all sorts of different viewpoints in the world, and different people celebrate different holidays that seem to fall right around the winter solstice. Occasionally there is a big to do made of saying Happy Holidays, instead of Merry Christmas in the United States, but, this seems a little bit silly to me. Saying Happy Holidays isn't excluding anyone, it's just an attempt to include everyone, instead of merely one specific, admittedly large, group. I never have understood why some Christian folks would take offence at a person expressing good wishes to them, along with Jewish folks and the Muslim folks, the Buddhist folks, and everyone else, but, it seems to come up every now and then.  As for me, I would like for everyone to have a happy holiday season, along with a good, fulfilling life. So, Happy Holidays to all.

Voltage regulator adjustment 1965 1966 Mustang

Something which seems to be a bit of a lost art is the procedure for adjusting the voltage regulator. For a more modern electronic voltage regulator there isn't any adjustment, and alternators have all been internally regulated for quite a while, so, they don't even have an external voltage regulator. But, the 65/66 Mustangs did come with a voltage regulator that needs to be adjusted once in a while. And, who better to ask about that than the people that built the cars? This first picture is source material for one of the many training courses that Ford put their factory trained service personnel through. The second picture is the appropriate page for the regulator adjustment. If you are intending to adjust your regulator, you can click on that picture, print it, and have it conveniently nearby when you make these adjustments.

Square sockets for drain plugs

I have noticed that people frequently ask if there is a tool that works to remove drain or plugs on the 65/66 Mustangs, like in the gas tank, rear axle housing, or manual transmissions. And, I just realized that I have never gotten around to mentioning that I have finally found them. I used to use a short 3/8 drive extension on the gas tanks. You put the extension on backwards, as if the tank was the wrench, and turn it with a 12 pt. 11mm socket, but, obviously, this only works on 3/8 plugs. SK makes square sockets, both male and female, which are called pipe plug sockets, and they work great. These are also made by Sears and a few others. The problem that I always ran into looking for these things was sales personnel that would look at me like I was the one that was obviously quite confused since they had never heard of the thing that I was describing, and I didn't know what they were called. Once I found myself a sufficiently old person that remembered back when those were fairly common and knew what they were called, I started checking around and found myself a set very quickly. These things are truly, as the aforementioned old guy said, "Handier than a two-pocket shirt." It would be an awfully good idea for a person to pick up a couple of these in the appropriate sizes for the plugs on their car. I picked up the complete sets, both male and female, for 'just in case', but, that is probably (certainly) overkill, since I don't work on these cars for a living any more.

Scheduled production date for Dearborn 64 1/2 Mustangs

Below is a list of the door tag data that I have collected for the 64 1/2 Dearborn-built Mustangs. If you are wondering about the scheduled production date of your Dearborn-built 64 1/2 Mustang, just fit your VINs sequential number into the series and look at the scheduled production dates of the cars with VINs that are very close to yours, and this will give you a pretty good ballpark estimate of when your car was built. Obviously, this can't guarantee that your car was in fact built on that very day, but, it would have been close to that, certainly close enough for you to order parts, get a new door tag, etc..

Turn signal wiring and back-up lights for 64 1/2 Ford Mustang

The turn signal wiring for the 64 1/2 cars is a bit different from what you find in the 65/66 cars. It isn't very complicated, though. Power starts out at the ignition switch. From there a black wire with a green stripe goes to the fuse box, which has a fuse marked "14A Turn". From there, a black wire with a red stripe takes power out. That wire ends as a female bullet connector about 6 inches above the fuse box. This bullet connector has two wires coming into it, one being the black/red wire and the other is an orange wire with a yellow stripe. The orange/yellow wire is taking power from the black/red wire over to the turn signal flasher. From the flasher a blue wire goes to the turn signal switch, which distributes the flashing power to the appropriate lights when activated. There is a black/red wire plugged into the female bullet connector which goes to the neutral safety switch on a car with an automatic transmission, or, to the back-up light switch on a car with a manual transmission, and, from there, goes to the back-up lights. It should be noted that back-up lights were an option that cost an extra $10.40, so, an awful lot of the 64 1/2 and 65 Mustangs did not  come with back-up lights.

New Wiring Diagrams

Hi, everybody. I finally got around to shooting the lock off of my purse and buying some software so that I could make wiring diagrams that are a bit easier to follow than the Medusa-head drawings that Ford produced. Trying to distinguish the relevant from the irrelevant in the original drawings can be a challenge, and I got tired of just trying to erase the irrelevant from the original drawings. It is actually easier to just draw these simple systems from scratch, if you have some decent software for that. So, I hope this helps, and, any feedback on how I can do these drawings better is appreciated.

Instrument Cluster Voltage Regulator for 1965 1966 Mustang

As much as it grieves me to have to say this, the ICVRs available at auto parts stores and dealerships have become so shoddy, they are not worth wasting your time and money on. It is, from my experience, and the experience of others, far more likely that the unit will fail immediately than that it will function like it is supposed to, and, if it does actually work straight out of the box, that state will not continue for long. I'm hearing the same thing about the Motorcraft and the BWD, the Mustang-specific units made by whoever, which are sold by the vendors of vintage Mustang parts, do not fare any better as far as I can tell.

If a person were to take the time to read through my blog, they will notice something. First, there are no ads here, and there never will be. I do not want a nickel from anyone. I do this because I love the cars, and if I can help in some small way to keep these cars chugging down the road, I am happy to do that. You will also notice that I do not recommend manufacturers or retail outlets for parts, and, the reason for this is simple. I will not do anything that will, in any way, damage my credibility. But, the ICVR situation has become so bad, I have to say something. There is a nice man in Florida that makes electronic ICVRs. He contacted me a few years ago, offered to send me a couple for free to check out and possibly recommend, and I declined for the reasons that I have just stated. I now realize that this was a mistake on my part. I still haven't tried one personally, but, I have heard from several people that have used them, and this unit works. It is reliable, durable, and does exactly what it is supposed to. Here is a link to his ebay store.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/281691350846
If I needed an ICVR, this is what I would buy.


A quick update. A friend of mine bought  few of these regulators and tried to blow one up. He couldn't do it without running power straight from the battery with a 10 gauge wire and grounding both the ground and the  output terminal straight to the body of the car. He gave me one and I also tried to blow it up, and was unsuccessful. This is a remarkably durable component.

Horn wiring for 64 1/2 Ford Mustang

Here is how the horns are wired for the Mustangs that came from the factory with a generator instead of an alternator. To see the entire diagram, just left click the part that you can see and the little bit that is hidden will pop out. You have a black wire with a yellow stripe bringing power from the hot side of the starter solenoid over to 'B' terminal on the voltage regulator. From the 'B' terminal, there is a yellow wire that goes into the horn relay, and from there goes to the underdash area, turns blue with a yellow stripe, and goes to the horn button. The 64 1/2 turn signal switch only has one horn contact, instead of the two contacts that a 65/66 switch has. When you press the horn button that grounds the blue/yellow wire, activating the horn relay. From the horn relay there are a couple of yellow wires with green stripes that go to the horns themselves. When the relay is activated, power goes from the relay to the horns, which ground out on the strut rod brackets that they are mounted on, causing the horns to honk. Nothing to it.

PCV system on a Mustang 1965 1966

Lately, I've had several people ask me about this system, how it works, what is it's purpose, etc...so, here's how that works and why it's important. As the fuel is burned in the combustion chambers of an internal combustion engine, the motor does not burn 100% of the fuel. Most of that unburnt fuel goes out the exhaust, but, some goes past the piston rings down into the crankcase. Also, all of the exhaust gases don't go out the exhaust. Some of that also gets past the piston rings, and again, ends up in the crankcase. As one might imagine, having these combustible gases hanging around in the oil pan can't be a good thing. What they actually do is contaminate the oil, degrade the lubricating qualities of the oil, and cause your motor to wear out a lot quicker than it should. That is with a motor in which everything is as it should be. In a motor that is getting a little tired and has excessive ring clearance, this problem is multiplied and the gases can accumulate quickly enough to actually catch on fire in the crankcase. People have devised different ways of dealing with this problem over the years, but, we'll stick to Ford's solutions. In the Model B Fords, the first cars that had the flathead V8s in them, the solution was very simple. Ford put a hole in the front of the oil pan up near the top and welded a flap in front of it to keep rocks and stuff from bouncing into the oil pan. A very straight-forward idea, but, one that cried out for some modifications. They later developed what was called a road draft tube, which you can find on some of the 64 1/2 Mustangs. This was the same idea, basically a hole to let air in through, but, a hole that road crud couldn't really find it's way through. However, dusty crud could still get sucked in.Next was the positive crankcase ventilation, or, PCV, system. Vacuum is generated by the pistons, so, they put a hose from the base of the carb over to one of the valve covers. The gases that blew by the pistons and wandered into the crankcase get sucked back into the combustion chambers. To solve the problem of the massive vacuum build-up this creates, they put a vented oil filler cap on a hole in the other valve cover. This allows fresh air to circulate through the motor and prevents the build up of the blow-by gases. They put a one-way valve on the hose that goes to the carb to prevent air/fuel mixture from going the wrong way.

A good and useful system, and very easily maintained. All one has to do is clean out the filter in the oilfiller cap to keep it from getting clogged up, and clean the PCV valve occasionally to keep it from getting stuck.

Translating this blog

Good afternoon. I was wandering around cyberspace and I stumbled across this.
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=2&hl=de&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dautolite%2B4100%2Bchoke%2Badjustment%26biw%3D1364%26bih%3D931&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=en&u=http://thecareandfeedingofponies.blogspot.ch/2008/04/carburetor-common-repairs-and.html&usg=ALkJrhigv0N7tFUkWch9SXySCvkGs8HIlA

It appears that some industrious fellow in Switzerland has started translating this blog into German. I do get a fair amount of traffic from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, so, I think that this is a wonderful idea. I just wish that I was able to do that. So, just in case someone would like to maybe translate this blog into Finnish,  Italian, French, Russian or any other language spoken anywhere on earth, please feel free to do so, and you have my gratitude for doing for me what I would do for myself if I was able.

Pre-1964 Autolite 2100 Carburetor Rebuild

Here is a follow-up on the last post. These are the pages from the technical manual that Ford gave to people   learning to be factory-trained service personnel in 1963. This shows how Ford expected their people to go through a carb that was causing problems. If you do what this says to your Autolite 2100 it should function flawlessly. These pages look like they've had the right hand side chopped off, but, if you click on the first on, it will pop up and show the entire page. You can then go through them, save them to your computer, and print them, so that you can have this stuff sitting right beside the carburetor while you are working on it. 

Autolite 2100 Accelerator pump system for 1961-1963

This carburetor was never used on a Mustang by Ford, but, occasionally, one might find that this is what someone has put on their car at some time in the past, and it looks different enough to sort of throw somebody off for a moment. The first picture is a page out of the training manual that Ford gave to the people that were preparing to become factory trained service personnel.

 In this next picture, you will notice that there are what appears to be two holes in the front of the carb instead of the usual one hole for the pump inlet. This is actually a deception. The upper hole is not a hole at all, but is plugged up. The lower hole is the inlet hole. This hole does not get one of those rubbery flap thingies that people are accustomed to seeing.

 In this picture you see that hole drilled down into the top of the pump housing, and, if you look carefully, you will notice a check ball down in the bottom of the hole.

 In this picture, the screw has been placed in that hole with the check ball down inside it. You want to run that screw in far enough to prevent it from leaking, but, not so far that it prevents the check ball from being able to come up and let fuel into the pump housing. How this works is that when you step on the gas, and actuate the accelerator pump, the pressure pushes the inlet check ball down to prevent fuel from just being pumped back into the float bowl, giving it only one place to go, which would be through the cast channel, up into the banjo bolt, and out through the discharge in the booster venturis. This part of the system is the same as the system on the 2bbl carb that Mustang left the factory with.

Putting your 1965/66 Mustang on jackstands

A question that seems to come up occasionally is where are the best spots on the car to place jackstands so that the car will not A) fall on the owner and, B) not be damaged by it's own weight. The best location at the rear of the car is the rear axle housing. Lift the rear of the car by putting the jack under the middle part of the rear axle housing and then place two jackstands on the tube part of the axle housing on the inboard side of the shackle plates that hold the leaf springs onto the axles. 

The best location at the front of the car is not so obvious. The strongest spot for the jackstand is on the frame rail, right behind where the torque box is on a convertible. The coupes and fastbacks don't have the torque box on the 65/66 cars, but, the location for the jackstand is the there. Here is that area, boxed in red, on a convertible.

If you intend to lift the entire car up on jackstands, do the front first, one side at a time, and then do the back. If you raise the back of the car first, and then start lifting one side of the car on the front, this will also lift the car off of one of the jackstands in the back, causing the car to slide off the jackstands and land pretty much on it's side. Not such a good thing to have happen. When you are taking the car off of the jackstands, lower the back first, then do the front one side at a time.


Most folks have enough sense to figure out that they shouldn't try to put a car on jackstands in their yard, or  any other place that is dirt or grass. It is not immediately obvious that  you also shouldn't do this on asphalt. Do NOT place your car on jackstands on an asphalt surface, like the one you find on many parking lots and streets. The feet of the jackstand will pierce the asphalt, slowly sink in for a little bit, and then drop the car on you. Don't be 'That Guy' that people tell the story of.

Replacing valve cover gaskets

I just realized that I had never gotten around to mentioning something that can turn an annoying task into something very quick and simple with one little trick.   The first picture is a motor. Next, I have inserted 6 set screws, 1/4-20, into the holes for the valve cover bolts. You then drop the gasket on after applying whatever  you like for sealing purposes, apply said sealer to the top of the gasket, drop the valve cover on, then remove one set screw with an allen wrench, put the bolt in, remove another screw, insert another bolt, etc... then snug up the bolts to spec. The set screws keep the gasket from creeping around on you while you get the bolts started.