1982 Mustang #50

[Basement Paul]

I couldn't agree more!

-BP

[Basement Paul]

This weekend produced only an installed mini-starter and some starter re-wiring. I was going to work on it more Sunday afternoon but my back told me otherwise. I'll be ready by next weekend for more undercar mayhem.

-BP

[Maverick]

BP, was the '82 starter already wired with the hot battery cable and built-in electrical solenoid? If not, how did you wire it? I went thru some options on the Maverick when the hi-torque starter was installed.

The small starters fit nicely with headers, don't they.

[Basement Paul]

Good thing it was a small starter, or I would have been pulling the header back off! I never thought to check before I put the passenger's header on. Barely fits through the opening under the car, but then there's tons of room to attach the wires. Having the adjustable mounting flange is sweet too.

This starter was on my friends '87 which is set up originally like mine with the remote solenoid on the inner fender. My understanding was to take the relay wire that used to activate the solenoid and attach it to the solenoid on the starter. Then just run direct power to the starter. The logic made sense, but I haven't tried it yet. I'll just leave the factory solenoid in place for now as there's several other wires running from the direct power. Over the winter maybe I'll get a distribution post to replace it.

-BP

[Maverick]

Yes, that's a good way to do it and how I did the Maverick. The integrated solenoid in the starter draws too much juice to power it thru the ignition switch. The solenoid on the inner fender takes the place of the relay normally used with that starter. Just flip the old cable to the starter over to the battery side of the solenoid to get a direct connection to the battery and run a #8 or #10 wire from the output side of the solenoid to the starter.

[Basement Paul]

This morning 32V and I got the trans cooler mounted, and this afternoon I got the tranny lines bent up and all hooked up. We also got the trans dipstick installed (not as easy as it sounds). I might try to install the radiator and some coolant hoses tomorrow. We'll see what the day brings.

-BP

[Basement Paul]

Last weekend the radiator got installed, with the hoses and heater hoses going back on yesterday. 32V and I spend the better part of the morning and early afternoon taking care of the final nonsense to get the car ready to run.

Initially after filling all the fluids up, we cranked the motor with the coil unplugged in hopes to get oil pressure built up before starting it. After spending awhile doing this, still no oil pressure. To verify that the gauge was working or not, we pulled the oil line to the gauge off the back of the block and it was dry. So we made a makeshift distributor shaft out of a 1/8" allen head socket, and a 1/4" extension and hooked to my 1/2" drill. After several attempts with the drill cranking it kind of slowly, and getting NO oil, I decided to run the drill wide open for a little while.... This produced an 80psi fountain of oil that coated my garage ceiling, my S-10, the Mustang (both inside and out), and a lot of the floor. It's pretty amazing how much oil can come out of such a tiny hole so quickly...

Oil pressure problem solved, then we commenced to trying to start it. There was lots of backfiring, spuddering, and other odd noises that told us the timing was off big time. After some head scratching, we went back to basics, found TDC, rewired all the plugs and it fired! Unfortunately, not for long as the fuel pump doesn't seem to be sucking gas any more. I guess all that sitting killed it. So I'll order an new one this week.

Also, while this was all going on, my NEW heater core starting leaking. UGH. That's another two hours or so to swap out. So it looks like it will be another week or two before the old dog is back on the porch. But what's good is that I know it will fire when those things are cured. The starter and wiring work correctly, and everything else seems to be OK. The only concern now is the tranny / torque converter, but I have high hopes as there didn't seem to be any weird noises while we were doing all the cranking and running on ether.

What's another week at this point, right? I just can't wait until it will move under it's own power so I can take it outside and wash all the oil off of it.

-BP

[Maverick]

I hope the '82 Stang heater core is easier to change than the one in the '72 Maverick. The AC as well as the cooling system had to be emptied and the whole heater/AC box removed from under the dash. It was worth it to take the front seat out to make room to work and was best done with two people. I made sure EVERYTHING (vacuum motors, evaporator, insulation, blower resistors, ...) was in good shape while it was out because I didn't want to pull it again.

Hope the oil didn't damage anything.

[Basement Paul]

Definitely have to take the seat out to do the heater core. All this is still fresh since I just did the job this summer. All the A/C stuff has been removed already, so it shouldn't take as long the second time around. For me it's a one man job, but a little rough on the neck.

Short of wiping it up, the oil is no big deal. I do need to wash it off the truck though...

-BP

[Basement Paul]

The heater core is out and returned. The new one should be here tomorrow, which means most likely a next weekend install. I finally got the new fuel pump yesterday too. Now I need to figure out how to hook it up to the existing fuel line. I'll go on Summit's website tonight to try and figure it out.

Oh yeah, I washed the oil off the truck yesterday too.

-BP

[Basement Paul]

This morning 32V and I set out to get this thing running again. And we succeeded. The new heater core is in, the new fuel pump and lines installed, and we were able to fire the car and get it running on it's own. We had issues keeping it idling to some degree, and any time we gave it any fuel off idle, it would throw a flame pretty high through the carb. Over 2000rpms, it seems good.

Good things though: the starter works great, I now have fuel pressure, there are no major leaks, the car goes in and out of gear, the hood is back on, and more...

My next step is to get rid of this single plane intake manifold. I really am convinced that there's not enough camshaft for a single plane manifold, a lesson I learned with my Trans Am. So I'm going to get an Edelbrock RPM air gap. This is a dual plane design that is still rated for the street (1500-6500) and seems to fit my application better than the single plane. I think most single plane intakes don't really make power until well over 2500rpms. I'm looking for more streetability here. I'm also concerned that maybe the intake gaskets are messed up anyway. I've never been thrilled with it's off idle performance, no matter which carb I had on there. Here's the intake:

http://www.edelbrock.com/automotive/mc/ ... 351c.shtml


I'm also going to go back to the 750 mechanical secondary carb that came on the car. I think it will work well with the new intake. I'm going to get a carb rebuild kit for it and just go through it completely. I don't think it has a lot of miles, but does have a lot of sitting time and is probably a little gummed up inside. Here's what that carb is:

https://www.holley.com/products/Fuel_Sy ... ts/0-82751

I'm hoping these two things will bring it together and make it turn key and responsive. If not, I'll probably take it somewhere and let them tune it. In the meantime I'll get all the hvac stuff hooked up and the seat put back in. I think I might pull that intake off in the meantime too.


-BP

[Maverick]

Most, maybe all, of the tuning shops around here won't work on carbs. Don't think there are many pro mechanics left that know carbs or care to work on them.

[Fred32v]

BP said that he thought that the old fuel pump was failing when we drove it home
and contributed to the car's hard starting. It does look like a quality unit but it sat
for a long time and that may have did it in. It looks like it could be rebuilt.

That first start is always one of a car guy's bigger thrills. Serious fun!

[Blue_69_malibu]

BP: don't forget that you still have three free Dyno pulls from your victory at TRP last year.

And fortunately for us, we've got a tip top Dyno joint that definitely works on carbs.

Serious congrats, though. That's very , very cool!

[Basement Paul]

Yesterday 32V and I tore the manual secondary 750cfm carb apart and cleaned it all up and put a bunch of new parts in it from the rebuild kit I bought. That was a pain in the rear as every gasket surface had insanely stuck gaskets on it. I think it took us about 3 hours. Then we took the intake manifold off. That was another gasket disaster. But after he left, I spent the rest of the afternoon getting the surface ready and installing the new intake and freshly rebuilt carb.

I ran out of time for a test start, so this morning I finished hooking up the PVC hose, rechecked the plug wires, and went to start the car... no luck. It did start on ether though... but I did remember that a couple cylinders were FULL of fuel when I had the intake off (I did dry those out when apart) and it made me think the plugs were all fouled out and I was right. So I pulled all the plugs, wire wheeled them, and the car fired right up. After a small amount of tweaking the carb, it would idle just fine but still seems to have a flat spot off idle. I'm going to put a bigger accelerator pump in the primary and that should cure it. It doesn't seem to be squirting much fuel out with that tiny pump in there.

After running the car for around 10 minutes or so, I notice a tiny bit of coolant coming from the drivers side cylinder head right up front. Now, there are no cooling passages in the intake manifold, so there wasn't anything we did to cause this. This POS is becoming a seriously sucky project. So at some point this week I'll get the head gaskets ordered, and ANOTHER set of intake manifold gaskets. Jeez I'm gettin kind of tired of wrenching on this car without actually being able to drive it anywhere.

-BP