Vintage air system install. I keep complaining about it just in case you haven't figured out you should never buy this system.
Question: how helpful are the instructions from FFR and
Vintage for actually installing a working system in your Type 65:
Answer:... Nothing heard, Out.
I have finally made all of the connections for this air
system. As I have frequently griped for
months it is severely lacking in actual application to the overall car. Nothing fits.
I took a couple of quarters of Russian in college. My TA was Korean who learned to speak
Russian, then English. The instructions
for the Vintage air kit read like someone who took a couple of wildly different
languages from English and then tried to write instructions for a system they
have never seen to be installed in a car they have never heard about. With the vacuum connection to the intake
manifold I installed the final piece. Of
course whether or not it all works won't be seen for a few more months. The pictures are of the dehydrator and trinary
switch and you can see how I routed the heater hoses through the original
Mustang wiring harness computer connection in the top of the passenger footbox,
as well as the AC hoses themselves. I
also finally found a local A/C shop that will do custom hoses. It is a rare skillset few places want to do
anymore because it is not cheap when the crimping dies break. I paid $12 per fitting, and considered it a
bargain after the time it took to find anyone to do it. I also forgot that I had moved the evaporator about two inches to the passenger side after fitting the revised dash ducts and hoses. I did this to allow the heater and coolant supply lines to fit in the top of the footbox. Thankfully I was able to just push it all back where it was originally but I need to redo the supply lines inside the footbox to the heater itself. A minor thing after all the other struggles. I also had to get a new drain hose as the one with the kit is about 18 inches too short to actually drain outside the passenger footbox. One of those kind-of-important things.
Emergency brake: another thing that comes with dubious
instructions on how to install. The most
important point is you must re-drill the mounting holes on the horizintal bracket piece with the ratcheting teeth at 5 and 11/16 inches
on center to actually fit in the Type 65.
I also had to cut a separate length of 1/4 - 28 twist bolt to make the
eyebolts work for it as the length is just a little too short to make it
work. Finally I had to widen the hole in
the passenger floor pan so the whole thing would move without
interference. I also glued some Teflon
sliders to the main frame tube underneath the car to make sure the cables moved
freely without cutting grooves in the powder coat. The picture is of the modified bolt
and the final install of the brake handle from underneath the car.
Electrical: after much work and rework all of the
electrical cables and connections are where they are supposed to be, with the
exception of the fan thermo switch. I
may end up swapping that out with the heater hose supply line from the
manifold. I routed the heater hose to
the back of the gooseneck for the thermostat which is typically where it runs
for normal Ford 351W installs on production vehicles. The "instructions" from Vintage Air
were surprisingly less than helpful.
Clutch pedal: I found out the hard way that not only was
the steering wheel mount installed a little off on my frame, FFR also didn't
account for the new Wilwood pedal width and the old frame trusses from the
front end to the dash. My clutch pedal
had about 1.5 inches of travel before it hit the 1" truss from the dash to
the frame. After considering lots of
options (cutting and welding in a bend in the 1" tube, or shaving the
pedal bracket down and hoping it didn't fail) my brother in law looked at it
and said why don't you simply have a new pedal arm made with essentially an S
curve in it. I fab'd up a plywood piece
to test the theory. I found a local
metal fabrication guy and he forged one for me (vice just cutting it out) from
1/2" high strength steel. He made
it perfectly and for 100 bucks I now have a very nice, custom pedal arm that
still works with the adjustable pedals the Wilwood kit came with. I had to use Teflon washers to get it
centered in the original Wilwood pedal assy bracket but it swings freely and I
have plenty of clutch now. I shot it
with a coat of appliance epoxy and installed it. The picture shows it from the outside of the
driver's pedal box where it fits perfectly and looks pretty good. It will be hidden anyway so it really doesn't
matter. More importantly I found a
fantastic metal fab guy here in Jacksonville, who can also make house
calls. Wish I had met him when I needed
to fix the steering wheel alignment.
Sounds like my pedal and steering wheel problems only affected a few
frames, but they are significant if ignored.
Aluminum panel install: After several months of
procrastinating I finally started to install the interior AL panels. It looks much more like a car now. The main floor/transmission tunnel pieces
needed some trimming for the top trans tunnel piece to fit properly. I also modified the trans tunnel to accept a
cable for the electronic clock I am installing in the center dash console,
which requires a constant battery power source.
It bypasses the battery cutoff switch.
I originally painted all of the exterior of the AL panels with spray can
undercoat. For the trans tunnel top
piece I did the same thing, then covered it with white exterior high gloss
spray paint to provide some reflective light in case I need to solve some other
problems from underneath the car.
Staring at a dark trans tunnel laying on the floor is hard enough so the
white paint helps light things up. For
the trans itself because I am using the RF wiring kit, I did not need the
mechanical speedo plug. The Tremec
instructions say to order the mech speedo block off plug from any authorized
Tremec dealer, of which I found none when looking online. I
thought about using the Mike Forte one, which looks pretty and works very
well. It was also ten times the cost of
a rubber/bolt compression block off plug from Napa. I will be back to Mike's site though as he
has lots of very nicely done add ons for these kits.
Next step is final dash install work. From there I will have all gauges done (wired
those harnesses almost a year ago now) and can start it and drive the
gokart. Although I haven't posted in a
while I have spent some time solving the problems. I have to be done by next May as the Navy
will probably send me somewhere else.
Times a tickin'.
