Sweet Jeebus.
Zee German arrived, labor was done, many cursings were shouted, much mess was made, dozens of dozens of shop towels were used, and a pile of old parts was disposed of.
And now the car has a braking system consisting of approximately 95% new parts.
Unfortunately I sort of failed at taking adequate pictures, however Thomas was there taking a fair number, so many of these are his. I'll try and put them in some semblance of order, but no guarantees. Other people present may have corrections or additions to add as well.
Cue 5 minutes before work starts, backing down into DerStig's garage where the work would be happening:
Skipping right into it, old front drum assemblies removed and pitched:
I had decided that rather than spend a bunch more money on one of the multiple available rear disc kits which requires a fair bit of modification and fitting to make work (none available are direct easy bolt in according to everyone who posts about them on the classic Mustang forums) that I would just stick with the rear drums. They got completely rebuilt with all new components save for the backing plates. The old driver side wheel cylinder here had been slowly leaking for who knows how long, so it was especially messy once opened up.
Once the old brakes were off we moved on to removing the old master. Goodbye manual brakes!
Once that was out we started with installing all new brake lines. In hind sight, this was one of the mistakes I made. I ordered an all new set of stainless steel lines. I should have gone with mild steel. The stainless lines, while quality, were not perfect fits and since we were doing this job with the rest of the drivetrain in place, trying to fit the new stainless lines in around the engine and drivetrain was not fun. And once the lines were roughly in place the bends had be corrected and
beat into submission massaged into place. The lines were incredibly stiff near the ends and we had little room to work in and around them while trying to get them to line up. This was hugely frustrating and took up the better part of a day. Mild steel lines would have been pie to work on as they would have been extremely easy by comparison to fix the bends with. At some point I stressed my wrist a bit much and smashed it into something while working on this and I still feel it now. There is probably a nice set of line bending hand tools which would have helped, but we didn't have anything that helped really, so we just struggled.
Here's fitting the new lines up to the distribution block. 3/8 and 7/16 fittings for the flares all around. Except for one fitting for the front from the new master into the distribution block which was 10mm. That fitting can go screw itself, which actually would have very helpful as we didn't have a 10mm flare wrench.
There was some pause and discussion about order of operation for installing the new power booster (and bracket) and master cylinder. The instructional videos were conveniently glossing over many of the steps here, as well as demonstrating the install process on a cutaway car with no engine or cross bracing to be in the way. Ultimately we got the booster support bracket installed securely to the firewall, and then discovered there was literally no physical room to fit a wrench or socket down back behind in the corner to tighten the last nut to attach the booster to the bracket. We were *just* able to thread the nut on with fingertips stretched behind and working by feel alone. A generous application of loctite on the thread and some hopes and prayers are holding that nut on, but at least the other three nuts are good and truly tightened, so it should be plenty secure.
Master fit on without any issue. There's an adjustable proportioning valve mounted on the underside of the master to limit the power sent to the rear brakes as they're staying drum. You can see the adjusting knob on the right side of the master inside the hard lines. Vacuum for the booster fit up conveniently to a vacuum distribution block on the rear end of the intake manifold. Thomas was the first one to have blood drawn after breaking the old plug free from this fitting and bashing the back of his hand into the stud which holds the air cleaner in place and putting a nice bend into it.
With plumbing pretty much done at that point we moved back to more fun activities. Had to lube up that spindle shaft real nice.
And don't forget to lube up that hole either.
Just squeeze the lube all up in there.
Phew... going to need a quick break to recover before round two with mounting the new disc with new bearings. Torque the nut down gently to fit everything in place, then back off a bit before re-torquing again. You know you're on the right track when the lube squeezes out just a bit around the nut and everything feels nice a smooth.
OK, maybe I got a little carried away there. Back to business. Calipers! Brakepads! New brakes on!
At some point when I wasn't looking Thomas must have installed a Mr. Fusion blender because the car was floating with no wheels.
Anyway, also to be done was to install the new brake pedal and parking brake mechanism inside. Going to power discs meant the need to switch to a new pedal with a pivoting point in a different spot to ensure proper leverage. This was not particularly fun either as even with the front seat removed the ridge on the floor was in a perfect spot to dig into your back. And the lower dash was just perfect to limit your ability to get your arms up under there where you wanted them. It was sort of like being forced to work with T-Rex arms. I believe one of the other guys has a picture of Thomas in the same position as I am here.
One of the discoveries made a bit too late was that the new reproduction parking brake lines are about 2-3 inches too short for all the stock hardware to fit. More on this in a bit. So in the mean time we had a properly German engineered fix.
So after that it was on to bleeding the system. We "bench bled" the master in situ (DerStigs garage was suspiciously lacking of a bench vise), that seemed to go well. On to bleeding of the full system we started to try just vacuum bleeding, but whether it was the vacuum bleeder, the fact that the system was completely dry, or the DOT5 fluid used that was taking too long and making what seemed like no progress, so we went to the tried and true traditional two person bleeding method, which worked much better. Surprise! Only 1 small drip from a rear fitting from the hard line into the soft line/rear distribution piece as we assembled that hand tight and forgot to come back and fully tighten it. Everything else was leak free.
As a side note after driving for a week or two I should probably crack open the bleeders again just to check and be sure any residual air bubbles that may have settled out in the system are flushed. The pedal is still a bit soft, but not in a dangerous feeling way. After quite a bit of reading it seems the DOT5 silicone fluid I went with does have a tendency to retain tiny air bubbles longer than older DOT3/4 fluids and just in general feels a bit softer as it compresses a bit more. By now I would expect that if there was a bit of air still in the system it would have settled accumulating up under the bleeders and would be simple to let out.
At this point we were all anxious and excited to get the car down and moving under its own power. DerStig here reinstalling the shock tower cross brace.
And at that point the wheels were put on, and I went to open the driver door and the latch button on the handle promptly broke. Of course.
In any case the car was lowered down and a quick few tests around the block were made to ensure brakes were working. Cue a late night celebratory meal. Thomas insisted on a very Texan picture. DerStig and I weren't quite as gung-ho as him.
After food and while driving back I immediately noticed something was off due to a strange noise and some handling weirdness, only for me to quickly realize we had only hand tightened the lug nuts back on before leaving. We were too excited and we forgot to properly torque the nuts on after dropping the car down off the jack stands earlier. Oopsie. Luckily I was able to quickly pull into a parking lot and we only had 1 nut decide to go for a quick vacation. No harm done, a torque wrench was retrieved and the nuts properly tightened and all was good again.
So, after 3 12+ hour days of work the job was basically done, and most everything went quite well with not serious problems.
Cutting ahead slightly Thomas has gone further south for more racecar activities and I'm back in my garage having a fit with that broken door handle.
Not fun. Turns out you have to dismantle the entire door and pull out the glass to get up into the mechanism to find the problem.
And here it is. I suppose nearly 50 years for a small plastic fastener on the driver's door handle isn't too bad.
Since I had the whole thing apart, and I've been needing to fix the loose window glass I went ahead and ordered some replacement clips and a few more parts and started that process.
One of the things ordered was a parking brake cable coupling from a period Mercury Cougar. The Cougar and Mustang were very similar cars at the time, and the Cougar had a wheelbase a few inches longer than the Mustang, so as a result they used a coupling a few inches longer than the Mustang. I found several other people had run into the new parking cables being short issue, and one of the quick fixed suggested was to just use the Cougar coupling, so I ordered an original one up from West Coast Classic Cougar and it got here a couple days later. It spent overnight in a vinegar and salt bath to strip off the rust buildup and then received a couple coats of fresh paint.
And it all fit and now I have a working parking brake. I'll probably continue not using it since I never used the old non-functioning one and just don't think about it. :lol:
Another problem I noticed while we were doing brake work was that my throttle cable passing through the firewall was comically bad. As in the steel cable was literally sawing a notch sideways because it wasn't fit properly through a grommet. Not sure how I hadn't noticed or fixed this before, but it needed done now. In addition, the cable sleeve itself was beginning to fray and was a bit kinked, so it was due for replacement. I can't find a good picture of the bad routing before, unfortunately.
But I went and got a new Lokar cable to install, and fit it through the firewall properly. Old vs. new:
Now look on the right side of the washer and see the little notch in the metal? That was where the old cable was slowing cutting through.
And yes, I know the wire pass throughs need to be redone with some grommets as well, that's on the list and well be dealt with in the future, but they've been there for years without issue so far.
And up on the inside hooked to the accelerator pedal:
Going back to the window glass now. In an effort to prolong the adherence of the glue between the brackets and glass I went and got some glass etching compound and etched the glass around where it glues in, so hopefully give the glue a better surface to stick to. You can see my nice cleanly taped off line from the etching below.
I had gotten everything all cleaned up and ready to glue the brackets onto the glass, and then in the process stupidly forgot the glue only had about a 5 minute working time before it really started to set up, so while I was taking my time to make sure I got enough glue in the right spots for the rear bracket I realized after I went to slide it on that the glue was already hardening and so I couldn't slide the glass quite all the way down into the bracket. So the result was a bit of panic and mess made while forcing it together. Didn't quite get it as deep as it should be, but it does still work and the adjustability of the window seems to be enough to counter it. If I end up having more problems in the fututre I'll probably just have to bite the bullet and convert to '70 style bolt in glass which is a much better system and doesn't really have any problems. It just requires all new glass on both sides, and rear quarter window glass, and new brackets and trim, so it's not really a cheap conversion.
Front bracket glued, this time I was ready and did a much cleaner job.
Then there was more cursing as I
had tons of fun struggled to get the window back into the door, hold it in place, and bolt into the regulator by myself.
I found a few people mention that part of the problem for the design of the 69 windows is that the bottom stop actually pushes on the middle of the glass when the window is rolled down, which over time will help to push the glass out of the brackets if the glue loses strength. So people have found that taking a piece of coolant tubing and wrapping it around the window guides at the bottom just taller than the glass stop sticks up will stop the window on the bottom by stopping the brackets instead of the glass, hopefully preventing the glass from being pushed out. We'll see if it helps.
And I also replaced the outer window weatherstripping since the old stuff was cracked and broken.
Now she's all back together, everything seems to operate correctly, and I can go back to enjoying driving it! And I can drive on the highways without constantly thinking "what's my escape route if I have to slam on the brakes and slide sideways when the wheels lock up?"
Lessons learned, in no particular order:
- I need a properly sized garage for doing work.
- Don't try to run new stainless steel brake lines unless the drivetrain it out of the car.
- I'm no longer at all interested in trying to troubleshoot and potentially repair/replace the air conditioning system myself. I'll pay someone else to struggle with that.
- Metric wrenches and fittings have no business on a classic American car.
- I'm not excited about my AmEx bill after all this.
- FinalGear members are the best. Seriously, I could not have gotten this done without the help from Thomas and DerStig, and input from some others along the way.