As most of you know, I've been traveling the last few days - headed to Addison, Texas (a suburb of Dallas), traveling in my '66 Mustang fastback (original owner). I'm going there to attend the annual convention of the Santa Fe Railway Historical & Modeling Society, one of my varied interests.
How it relates to the forum, is the travels in the Mustang (we once had a section for Mustangs).
I had replaced the original engine in the Mustang with a Ford Racing 302 last summer, topping it with a couple of 4-barrel Edelbrock carbs. It has a pretty lopey cam at idle, and it's a roller cam/roller lifters. It also has GT40 heads with roller rockers, so it scoots along pretty good. I drove it in the Arizona GT Getaway that Rich Roback put on in April, to get some feel for the reliability of the car.
In the last month or so, I changed out the rear springs (5 leaf instead of 4), replaced all the tie rods, and replaced the front springs with the '66 Mustang GT coils that were also used in the Shelby GT-350's (there were stiffer ones in the '65s). I also changed the front anti sway bar from an 11/16" diameter to a 1-1/8", which is about 2.7 times greater in cross sectional area. Finally, I added Koni adjustable shocks, as were used on the GT-350s.
I left home last Thursday morning, in the midst of a heat wave all over the southwest. Once I got to Kingman, AZ, I stayed pretty close to the old Santa Fe Railway tracks over which I had traveled often from 1951 through 1961. The tracks pretty much follow Historic Route 66 all the way to Albuquerque, NM, and are currently the mainline tracks across Arizona and New Mexico used by the BNSF Railroad. I spent the 1st night in Flagstaff, AZ, and the 2nd in Albuquerque.
The recharged Mustang performed beautifully through the heat, better than the original engine, which I ascribe to the aluminum heads and intake manifold doing a better job of dissipating the heat. I then followed the southern route (known as the Belen Cutoff), across the eastern half of New Mexico, spending the night in Clovis, NM, at the Texas border. The town of Clovis was originally built by the Santa Fe Railway and still serves as a district manager for BNSF.
Today I drove to Wichita Falls, TX, and I'll spend the night here before the short drive down to Addison. For those of you that remember Rally IV, I knew I was finally in Texas when I was filling up with gas & cleaning the windshield.
I love the stiffer suspension in the car, especially noticeable on some of the rougher, potholed sections of some of the roads.
More to come....
How it relates to the forum, is the travels in the Mustang (we once had a section for Mustangs).
I had replaced the original engine in the Mustang with a Ford Racing 302 last summer, topping it with a couple of 4-barrel Edelbrock carbs. It has a pretty lopey cam at idle, and it's a roller cam/roller lifters. It also has GT40 heads with roller rockers, so it scoots along pretty good. I drove it in the Arizona GT Getaway that Rich Roback put on in April, to get some feel for the reliability of the car.
In the last month or so, I changed out the rear springs (5 leaf instead of 4), replaced all the tie rods, and replaced the front springs with the '66 Mustang GT coils that were also used in the Shelby GT-350's (there were stiffer ones in the '65s). I also changed the front anti sway bar from an 11/16" diameter to a 1-1/8", which is about 2.7 times greater in cross sectional area. Finally, I added Koni adjustable shocks, as were used on the GT-350s.
I left home last Thursday morning, in the midst of a heat wave all over the southwest. Once I got to Kingman, AZ, I stayed pretty close to the old Santa Fe Railway tracks over which I had traveled often from 1951 through 1961. The tracks pretty much follow Historic Route 66 all the way to Albuquerque, NM, and are currently the mainline tracks across Arizona and New Mexico used by the BNSF Railroad. I spent the 1st night in Flagstaff, AZ, and the 2nd in Albuquerque.
The recharged Mustang performed beautifully through the heat, better than the original engine, which I ascribe to the aluminum heads and intake manifold doing a better job of dissipating the heat. I then followed the southern route (known as the Belen Cutoff), across the eastern half of New Mexico, spending the night in Clovis, NM, at the Texas border. The town of Clovis was originally built by the Santa Fe Railway and still serves as a district manager for BNSF.
Today I drove to Wichita Falls, TX, and I'll spend the night here before the short drive down to Addison. For those of you that remember Rally IV, I knew I was finally in Texas when I was filling up with gas & cleaning the windshield.
I love the stiffer suspension in the car, especially noticeable on some of the rougher, potholed sections of some of the roads.
More to come....
