FORD MUSTANG GT
RUN BY James Mann
OWNED SINCE May 2018
PREVIOUS REPORTJULY 2021
After the engine returned from its rebuild last spring, I enjoyed getting to know the GT, runningin the V8 for the first 500 miles and keeping the revs below 2000rpm to bed in the camshaft.
The ’66 Mustangs weren’t fitted with rev counters as standard – a Rally Pac featuring a tachometer and a clock was an expensive option. I decided to buy a more modest, retro-looking tacho online for £15, and wedged it into the ashtray by simply running the wires out of the back to the coil.
I was still having problems with the points closing up, so decided to fit a Pertronix electronic unit into the old distributor. But then the new rotor arm wouldn’t fit and
I discovered that my distributor was a Japanese-made knock-off unit, so I went back to the standard set-up. Tightening the points’ baseplate seemed to do the job.
Next on my to-do list was to get the heater blower working properly. The blower box was a mess, with some sort of small animal nest inside, so I replaced the lot but still only got a weak huff of air coming through. In the end, fitting a new resistor supplied from Mustang Maniac sorted it.
Storm clouds were on the horizon, however. On a drive up the A303, an ominous knocking sound developed and the engine was down on power. Fortunately I was close to home, so limped back to my garage. I sent Darryl Setchell, the mechanic who built the engine, a video of the knock and he agreed it sounded serious, so arranged to come back to take a look. I thought it was at the top end, probably a broken rocker arm, but Darryl believed it to be the camshaft, so we grudgingly removed the engine again, and he took it away to dismantle and inspect.
He called me a few days later to say two of the front pistons had seized due to overheating, although there had been no indication of this during the drive. We decided it must have been down to the old radiator and knackered water pump, both of which had appeared to be perfectly serviceable. Because the bores were already +0.030in, cylinder liners were fitted to the damaged bores and a new set of pistons was honed in, along with a water pump and new Pertronix distributor added for a belt-andbraces approach. I had bought a new aluminium radiator online for £130, including a fitted electric fan that we had to remove to squeeze the unit into the narrow space in front of the existing fan.
On a rainy Saturday in February the engine returned again and we refitted it without a problem in about an hour, but struggled to get it to run for more than a few seconds. The car went sweetly when fuel was poured in directly, priming the four-barrel Edelbrock carburettor, but there was only a weak flow of petrol coming up the line to the carb. This indicated a fuel-pump problem, which is pretty much the only part of the system we hadn’t replaced. One is ordered and I expect to be on the road in time for our local cars-and-coffee event in Mere in a couple of weeks’ time.