Motor Markings

If you go back a few blog posts, I posted pictures of the original markings on the back of the motor.  I recreated these markings on the back of the motor, once it was finally cleaned -whew!  It was very important to me that these markings be exactly the same as what was on there from the factory originally - even though they won't be visible once the flywheel and bellhousing are reinstalled. Again it's all about things being accurate whether visible or not.  I used a template that I made from a photo of the original makings.  This resulted in a very accurate recreation right down to the hand writing style.  I needed to do this before mounting the block back on the engine stand to finish the build-up.

You'll also notice that I reconditioned and reused the original oil gallery plugs.  They turned out great and are different that what is available to replace them.  Note how the square head rear plugs each have a little bump/raised dot on the top of each one.

 The side hex plugs are not made anymore either, so the originals were restored and reused as well.  Again, these are details that most people would not spend any time on, but this is all tied to my desire for this restoration to be as historically accurate as possible, so here we are again reusing the original parts.  To me, there is just something rare and remarkable about cars that someone spent the extra time and effort to get it absolutely right back to the way is was when the first owner fell in love with the car - and even better when you know that all of the original stuff (that can possibly be preserved) is still on the car, as it was when the first owner drove it.

Engine Assembly Begins

This cleaning has been WAY more work than I expected.  Because it sat in a junk yard for so long, there was a HUGE amount of gunk to be cleaned out of it.  I went through every oil passage, every nook and cranny of the block, front cover, intake, crank, you name it.  I cleaned everything 2, 3, and even more times until I felt comfortable that I got everything out of it.  I spent cleaning and re-cleaning each fresh oil passage in the engine to ensure that on first start-up clean oil wouldn't be contaminated by stuff that was left in the passages.  Just a huge amount of tedious work.

Anyways, soft water jacket plugs are in now, along with the oil filter adapter.

So the front oil gallery plugs are an interesting subject.  Every engine rebuild book, states that there are  three 1/2" diameter oil gallery plugs on the front of the engine....And there are BUT, there is also, on some of these early 289s, a 1/4" plug to the right of the front cam bearing.  Here's a picture of the original plug.  So glad I removed this and got in here and cleaned, there was a ton of black gunk in behind here.  That was another afternoon of re-cleaning all of the front oil galleries connected to this plug hole.

Just look at all the stuff left behind this plug...and to think some people don't remove this when they do a rebuild.  Makes me wonder about all those "rebuilt" engines on Ebay and such...

Every 289 soft plug kit I've seen fails to include this plug and they are not easy to find.

In fact, if you do a compatibility search on most auto parts websites, this 1/4" plug will not come up as a compatible part for ANY 289 engine.  There are a couple of suppliers that make 1/4"diameter plugs, and I was able to obtain a few of them, (extras just in case I messed a couple of them up during install, they are tiny and are easy to get in crooked and or dropped).  There is a later version of the cam thrust plate that covers this and guides oil to the front surface of the cam, but on early cars like this, the thrust plate doesn't cover the hole.

Here the front oil gallery plugs after installation

As I mentioned the crank was also a bear to get clean.   Pic here before polishing and final cleaning showing remnants of orange paint on the counter weights.  Usually expect to see the orange paint on the rear counter weights, but was only able to see paint on front few.

 I wanted the oil holes to be as shiny/clean inside as the journals.  I micropolished the journals on top of what the shop did - turned out great! This thing is as clean or cleaner than the day it went in the motor.

Front cover after cleaning.  This thing spent a long time is 160 degree degreaser, but it came out looking great.  Casting date is April 1964.   No oil fill hole, and no oil fill plug, this was the latest casting design for the front cover at the time.

Inside is nice and shiny, just like when new.

Bill's Story

Bill is the original owner of the car.  I mentioned in an earlier post that I would be providing more details about how Bill acquired the car.   His story is very interesting and provides some unique insite on how excited the public, and particularly "car people" were about the Mustang.  There was a tremendous about of excitement about the Mustang, but even more about the rumored High Performance version that was promised on Jun 1st, 1964.  The pictures below were taken in Jan1974 by Jay, shortly after he acquired the car.  As you can see in the transcript of my first conversation with Bill, and signed by Bill, he stated that he couldn't find any pictures of the car when he had it - I figured I post these instead.  Bill stated that the car originally had a black top, and Bobby the second owner, said that he was the one that put the white top on.

In out first conversation on June 16th 2012, Bill talked about how much fun the car was to drive and how he got the car.  He said that he had been reading about the new High Performance Mustang and had gone to his local dealer and friend to buy one, but was told they wouldn't be available until June.  He told his friend that when they got one he wanted it.  Bill's signed affidavit is below with more detail (this a copy, the original is in a safe deposit box along with the rest of the questionnaire.)

Finally the Engine

So much effort has gone into this engine.  It's finally time to do the final cleaning and get it assembled.  Here's the back of the engine with the original markings

Here the markings have been enhanced.

Here it is without the white "X", (which I am told is an inspection mark) to better show the yellow text.

Here's what it looks like just before final cleaning.

The intake had a couple of interesting markings, barely visible, but there is an orange check mark over the thermostat recess, and another to the right by the front corner bolt.

More Parts...

While I'm waiting on fasteners to get back from the plater I went through all the rest of the parts to determine what still needs to be plated in other finishes.  I've had door latches plated before but in this case these originals look really good after cleanup, so I'm going to reinstall them as is.  Sometimes you look at stuff on a car and you can just tell it's over-restored.  Again, my goal here is tor restore this car as it was from the factory, and these things would not have had perfect plating.  Plus, most of the experts on this stuff agree that the rivets where zinc plated while the latch covers were gold cad.

So the brake drums, wheel cylinders, and shoes are being rebuild and sleeved, but before sending them off, I removed the original small bleeders from the original wheel cylinders.  You can see that they were gold zinc, particularly in the one 3rd from the left.

After cleanup and plating these things look great!  These came out with a nice variation in the different refractive coloring from the zinc dichromate.

So I took a break from the suspension and brake parts, to finish restoring the heater box.  This was a combination of leaving original finishes and stamps and restoring plated and painted finishes.  Here's what the pieces look like after  restoration.  Paint on the fan housing is original.

Still has the original date stamped heater core.  It's been cleaned up and is ready to be reinstalled.

So I was able to same the original paint and stamping on the heater motor...so cool!

The heater fan is such a PITA to restore, but I think this turned out great and very true to the original finish.

 These two brackets are right nest to each other but the black on on the left was just cleaned up and left (its got a black oxide finish, not painted) and the one on the right is natural steel with a rust preventative.  Note how the rivets are lighter, super happy with the way all of these parts came out.

More Progress and Why all this Attention to Detail

Have gotten a bunch of parts reconditioned and ready to put back on the car.  Very rewarding in the end because this car will have nearly all of its original chassis fasteners reinstalled and looking like new, but it has been tedious at times. First goal has been to get the rear axle housing installed, so pieces relevant to getting that installed have taken precedence.  Plating the nuts that hold the differential housing to the axle housing and brake backing plates to the axle housing are finally about done.  Chose to plate those myself so that the rear axle can be installed while waiting for the other parts to be plated at the plating shop.

While doing this I noticed that the line assembly manual calls out cadmium plated nuts to hold the rear axle brake backing plates to the axle housing while those nuts that hold the front brake backing plates to the spindles are not specified about finish. So I pulled the original front and rear backing plate attaching nuts and noted that they DO look like they have different finishes.

The nuts on the left are from the rear axle, and clearly have residual cadmium plating, while the fronts (most of which were good enough to reuse as-is once cleaned) seem to be clear zinc plate.

Here's a picture of the newly plated differential housing nuts.

So after finishing up all of these nuts, I noticed that there are apparently 3 different versions of this 34445 nut.   One version has 6 raised dots (one on top of the nut at each shoulder designates grade 8, see nut at left), 3 dots( designates grade 5, middle), and a version without any dots(designates grade 2, right). The one without any dots was used on all 8 front spindle to backing plates.  I've seen these mixed on differential to axle housing attachment.  The no dot variety is also used on the rear axle housing to backing plates.

According to the parts catalog, this is also used to hold the rear axle rubber bumper to the bracket that attaches to the differential housing - it's specified as a 34445-S. 

 Interestingly, the assembly manual calls for a 34420-S8 or 55674-S8.  From Left to right below, 34445, 34420, and 55674.  Note that the 34420 (middle) came off of a 4F4 differential housing with 4F5 retainer and the 55764 came off of a  4E4 differential housing with 4D22 retainer.  So from sometime after May 4th 1964 (4E4) and sometime after June 5th, 1964 (4F5) two different nuts were used to attached the rubber bumper to the pinion snubber bracket.  The manual states that these two nuts were both an allowed fastener for this purpose.  All three of these are jamb nuts.

The nuts on the front spindles are identified simply as 34445 in the assembly manual, but as 34445-S in the January 1965 issue of the 1965 Ford Car Parts and Accessories Catalog.  The "-S" designation supposedly specifies the finish as "plain" but having pulled many of these off the car, it seems to mean either bare steel with cosmoline, dark phosphate and oil, clear zinc - so basically it seems that anything goes when comes to the finish.  It just seems that the assembly was done with the type of fastener that was in the bin at that stations on the line during that period of production.

So this may seem like an excessive amount of time spent on this, but the real reason for doing so is the value in being able to date and authenticate cars as this type of information is accumulated and documented. It's little things like the finish on certain nuts and bolts that can help to pinpoint time frames of when cars were assembled or whether they were built entirely, partially, or not built on the assembly line at all.  It's the accumulation of this and other data, and corroborating that evidence with a group of cars of the same time period coupled with hard documentation of other aspects (delivery time, purchase date, etc.) that allow us to piece the story together about a certain car or group of cars. 

So, why does it matter that some 34445 nuts are cadmium, other bare steel, others zinc.  Well it all has to do originally with the durability that Ford wanted (i.e. rust resistance).  Cadmium is used much less today and is a more costly process than say zinc chromates, but Ford may have decided that the rear axle nuts were going to see more splashing coming from the front tires that would be soaking these parts more than those on the front.  Maybe as production got more heated, they just started using whatever 34445 nuts that were on hand or maybe they simply had different parts in the bins for the front suspension assembly area on the line than those at the rear.  There is no way to be sure (yet!), but what we can be sure of is that this car had Cadmium plated 34445-S7 nuts used on the rear axle and zinc plated 34445 nuts used on the front.  So now, we can take that info and use it to compare and date other cars of the same period - and maybe a bigger story that we aren't even aware of yet will become clearer.

Details

 Made quite a bit of progress on parts over the last few weeks.  Including some before and after pictures.  Rear brake hose before,

Rear brake hose retainer to body bracket, note the"P", which is barely visible when installed.  

 Extension that attaches to the rear axle housing.  Note :"W" logo on the before pic.  Also, note how the original plating tended to be heavier around the edges, just like it came out after reconditioning and re-plating below.

This shows original paint daub on the rear brake hose...

On the other side there was a bunch of orange paint smeared along the length of the hose.  Never seen this before.

And here is the complete reconditioned hose assembly, no paint daubs added yet.

 Here is the backside of the brake hose to body bracket.  Looks like raw steel plate with cosmoline originally.

Here's where the bracket was attached behind the rear seat in the kick-up area in front of the axle...note that the underside of the car was painted black before this was installed.  Also, note how crudely the holes were drilled that attached the bracket to the body.  On every K code I've seen this bracket is welded in place, but on this car, the holes were drilled during the process of fitting the exhaust system on the car.  This bracket had to be located so that the brake hose would not interfere with the exhaust driver side pipe in the newly fabricated dual exhaust system.  In fact, you can see that the holes on the floor pan were drilled before the inner reinforcing plate was installed - you can see the reinforcing plate the enlarged holes in the floor pan.

Here is a view from the inside of the car showing the two bolts on the right that held the bracket in place.  To the left of those bolts are the two cadmium finished bolts that held the driver side exhaust bracket in place.  Later cars used a special bracket that had both bolts attached instead of two separate ones.  You can tell that there was never a bracket here.

These bolts will be reused as is, just cleaned up.  Again preserving as it was when the car was assembled the first time.

Here are the lower control arm to body bolts, lock washers, and nuts.  Also the original rear leaf spring forward attaching washers.

 Lower control arm fasteners after cleaning and re-plating.  Turned out awesome.  Note head markings, these are not reproduced.

Another cool part, these  are the before and after pictures of the front stabilizer to lower control arm extensions.  These are the sleeves with "FM" stamped into them, presumably for "Ford Motor" company.   Prevailing belief is that these sleeves were natural steel with phosphate/oil finish and that the bolts were also phosphate and oil with a blank head.  On this car, the bolts were marked "rockford" on the head, and the sleeves were clear/blues zinc.  The refinished parts turned out true to the original.

 Note how the original rubber insulators were marked with blue paint...have seen this on other early Hipo's.

Restored upper fender attaching bolts.

 Rear wheel cylinder with original paint daubs.  Both left and right rears were marked with orange and white...

...whereas the fronts were marked with black and orange.  This is totally different than the makings seen on other restored K codes.  These original markings will be preserved.

 Restored original motor mounts.  The finish turned out even better than i had hoped.  there was a blue spray painted spot on the drivers side mount that over sprayed on the lower cross-member that will be recreated at assembly time.

Rear shock to axle plate with original paint daub.

 After  restoration.

 Transverse muffler stamping.  Only 5-64 stamped dual exhaust transverse muffler I have ever seen.  Most NOS units are stamped 10-64.

Markings on front spindle.

 Orange paint daubs were used to locate the outer parking brake brackets.  There were many places on the car where orange paint was used for identification of parts specific to the K code.  Why these were marked is unclear since they are identical to non-hipo mustangs of the production period.  It may be that these too were fitted in place as part of the dual exhaust fitting process, as they determine the amount of parking brake cable held in place between the frame rails.

 Oddly, the inner parking brake cable brackets were painted black while the outers were natural steel.

 The original Ford assembly team scraped off the fresh under coating where the outer parking brake cable brackets would mount.  Note orange paint underneath.

Although you can't tell from the picture, some of this is rust dust that came out when the forward leaf spring bolts were removed.  The rest is orange paint.

These wires on the parking brake cables were a 64 1/2 Dearborn tool for keeping the cable out of the way during chassis assembly.

 Unbelievably, all of the original 64 1/2 dual exhaust brackets were still on the car.  The goofy spot weld on the upper left bracket was used on the installation of new resonators installed by the owner prior to me (I have the receipt).  These will all be refurbished and reused - possibly the first set of Mustang dual exhaust hangers, used during the hand-fitting of the new exhaust system to the car.