Ownership Verified: The More-Door Fairlane, V2!

[NotLaw]

Well, as some may have seen, the previous iteration of my Fairlane has, more-or-less bit the dust. More about what happened to it can be seen here

This thread is about the replacement, which really, is just more of the same.
The short version is that it's a 1967 Ford Fairlane 4-door sedan.
Unlike my previous car though, its a base model, with a 289 V8, 3-on-the-tree manual transmission, bench seat, and it's a radio delete car.

The originality is fantastic, and there's no rust whatsoever. There are a few missing parts I will need to source, like a rear bumper and some tail-lights, but otherwise, it's a surprisingly complete car, considering how it looked when I first saw it.

The plan is that I will swap over the entire drivetrain from the V1 Fairlane, into V2. Additionally, the new interior parts I have for the V1 car will go into the V2 as well, as will several other bits and pieces.
Along the way, I will upgrade the front suspension and steering even further than I had done to the V1 car, add air conditioning, and finally, after years of wanting it, I will have the car painted Tahoe Turquoise.
and of course, the obligitory proof pic:

To back up to the start of the V2's story though, we have to go back to a few Thursday's ago.
I got the news that the OG car was going to be considered a total loss, and I was going to be receiving a check in the mail. That very night, I started the search in earnest for a replacement. I had done some light searching already, and had a couple candidates in mind, but there was one car on Facebook marketplace that seemed like a particularily good option:

The ad had been up for quite some time (since midsummer) but the price was in the range I wanted (and less than 1/5th the payout I was going to get), and despite clearly missing a few external pieces, what was left looked very promising.

I sent the guy a message, found out that the car was still available, asked some pointed questions about condition, and by the end of that Thursday, I had a verbal agreement on a price, and had scheduled to pick the car up from Prescott Valley, AZ first thing Saturday morning.


Friday afternoon after work, my dad drove down in his GMC Canyon with the car dolly,

and we set out for Arizona that night, planning on spending the night in Kingman.



Saturday morning, we arrived in Prescott valley, and the car was as good as I had hoped it would be.

As it turns out, the fenders and grill were basically just sitting there, not bolted on. The grill appears to be from this car originally, and is in decent condition.
The fenders on the other hand are NOT from this car (obviously) and while they are rust free, the passenger side fender has some dings and dents.

The engine bay looks very stock

The window is cracked pretty bad though:

Yay, factory 3rd pedal! I can ditch the janky aftermarket setup in V1 that is wore the hell out from being used as an actual car and not a racecar

Quite a few bits and pieces sitting inside the car (on that super fugly re-upholstered seat)

Looks straight from the back too:

The harbor freight moving blanket was a good thing to bring, enabling me to work on the car without getting super-duper filthy. (I was bolting the fenders on so that they were secure for transit)

I snapped this pic after we winched the car up onto the dolly.
I was under the car to pull out the driveshaft for transit, and wanted a shot of the sweet rust-free underside.
Also, note the exhaust, which appears to be factory still! just the first hint of the serious originality of this car.

Dad looking boss as we prepare to hit the road:

And the other side in the sun. You can see the passenger fender is a bit messed up near the door gap. I think its fixable though, and easier to fix than the rust on the V1's fender.

It's a long drive from Prescott valley to Cedar City via Las Vegas. We stopped every few hours to check on the car and ensure that it was still well secured.
This picture is from just north of Kingman, on highway 93:

We had left Prescott around noon AZ time, and arrived in Cedar City around 8:30 Utah time, for a total transit time including meals of 7.5 hours, having driven just under 430 miles.


TBC in my next post...

 

[NotLaw]

The next morning I took some walkaround pictures, and started investigating what I had a little deeper.

The fender is not attached properly, so I think it looks worse than it really is, but here's the worst of the passenger fender:

Engine looks filthy, but otherwise complete:

Missing the starter solenoid/relay, which is why I didn't attempt to start it in Prescott:

My starter cable on the V1 Fairlane definitely was not routed this way. I was pretty sure this is 100% original:

I later confirmed the originality, that starter cable still has the ford P/N printed on it! It's neat that they route it through a clamp on the motor mount. I think I will probably use a similar routing when I install the hot 302 in this car later.


Got the air cleaner off, and of course, the carb is still original. More surprising though is that the heat riser tube for the choke is not only still present, but still covered in the original insulation!

Original throttle linkage too. I had some parts of this for the V1 car, but I was missing a few pieces. It's neat to see how it was supposed to work though:

At this point, I started to empty the car out so I could take stock of what parts came with it.

This is the front bumper that came with it. Decent chrome, but its tweaked pretty good:

The pile:

I've got both headlight brackets, all 4 headlight buckets, 6 headlight trim rings, 2 high beam headlights, (sealed beams ofc) headlight trim for both sides, grill, extra radiator fan, a NEW radiator, extra horn ring, front bumper brackets, rear bumper brackets, all 4 hubcaps, and the sill panel that goes between the grill and the bumper.
Not pictured is the factory bumper jack with all associated parts, and the spare tire.

I also found some documentation in the glovebox, including a registration that expired in 2017, and a couple registrations expiring in 86, 85, and 84.

Of more interest was this:

which indicates that the car had 43078 miles in Oct 1983.

The car had 43525.6 miles when it arrived in front of my house 2 weeks ago.

Spoiler alert: When I got the car moving under its own power a few days ago, I proved that the speedometer and odometer not only still worked, but were relatively accurate too.

This car actually only has 43,500 miles on it, and it really has only driven 450 miles since 1983!

Over the course of the next week, I tinkered on the car a bit here and there.
First by reinstalling the driveshaft (and what a cluster that turned into. I ended up having to degrease, rebuild, and re-grease the end caps for the u-joint)
Then, I got the starter solenoid swapped over from V1, as well as the battery cables.
With battery power restored, I was able to check the wiring in the car, and verify that most things seemed to be working fine, though I was not successful at getting the car to turn over.
The starter was acting as if it was seized, even though I was able to turn the car over by hand with a wrench, proving that the engine spun freely. (yes, I spun it with the wrench before I tried the starter)

The next Saturday is when real progress started though. By that point, some of the parts I had ordered were starting to show up, and also, my dad came down to Cedar again to give me some stuff that he had been storing for me for a while (he needed the space back, hence the trip)


We started by swapping over the starter from the V1 car. This got the car cranking, so our next step was to run a compression test.
The compression test would kill two birds with one stone. First, knowing that all the holes have compression is generally a good thing. Second, the act of cranking the engine to check compression also causes the oil to circulate, priming the engine for a startup.

The oil in the car was a clean honey color, and there was evidence that the car had undergone a minor service in recent years, (tires were datecoded from 2016, we checked before we left)

Anyways, the results of the compression test ranged from 100 psi to 130 psi, which was plenty acceptable to me, so we rigged up a fuel system, roadkill style,

and attempted a start.

Now, it's not really as clear in the video as it was in person, but there was one hell of a clatter coming from the engine area. I didn't know what it was, so I didn't run the engine for very long that day, and at the end of the day, the starter just made spinny noises, and didn't actually turn over the engine at all.

As it turns out, borrowing the starter from the V1 car was actually an awful idea.

I had forgotten something very important.

Ford small blocks have two different teeth patterns. A 164, and a 157.


The V1 car with the T56 has a 157 tooth flywheel. I made a stink about it during the swap because it used to have a 164, like most manual trans ford engines.

Most manual trans ford engines, like the ones that's in the V2 car.


The rattle was the 157 tooth starter being unable to disengage from the 164 tooth flywheel.

Anyways, I ended up reinstalling the original starter a few days ago (Monday? Tuesday? I can't even remember now) and figuring out that the no-start issue with it was due to the starter cable not being up to the task anymore. (remember how I mentioned it was original? yeah, that's not actually a good thing)
Additionally, I also ordered a new ACDelco starter solenoid from Amazon, since as it turned out, my factory original starter solenoid from the V1 car is not up to the task of operating a direct drive starter anymore. (can you say, spark show?)

Back to last saturday though, Once my dad and I had the car started, we moved on to getting the fenders installed properly.

For transit, we had only installed them with 4 bolts each, and we didn't even attempt to line things up.

It took a few hours, but eventually we got them lined up enough that I am happy for now.

They also have a full complement of bolts now.

This post is getting long, so I'll leave it there for now.

The next one should cover last Sunday to now.

 

[NotLaw]

So, Sunday.

I was working by myself again, so the speed of work slowed down considerably, but I was still able to get quite a bit of progress done.

I started by installing tail-lights. I stole the passenger side light from the V1 car, and i had ordered another light from ebay 7 days prior, so those went in, and a set of LED 1157 bulbs from Superbright LED's went in also.

I also ordered replacement gaskets, lenses, and bezels for the taillights, but I'm going to sit on those for now. I'll install them when the car is closer to being actually done.

Next, most of the morning was spent playing with the starter, trying to figure out wtf went wrong. (discovering the tooth count thing in the process)
Once I knew what I had done to the starter, I dropped it, and moved on to the front end trim.

The headlight brackets went in first:

Followed by the valance sheet metal:

I then used many bad words and power tools, and removed the front bumper from the V1 car, since some of the supports were missing from the V2 car, and the V2's bumper was tweaked anyways.

the supports that were missing from the V2 car?
Turns out they are pretty much toast on the V1 car too:

I'll be able to use the ruined supports as a guideline to fab up some custom new ones later though.


Some time was spent messing around with the turn signals/parking lamps for a little while, with the intent of swapping the bulbs for LED's.
Unfortunately, my attempts were thwarted by the Utah corrosion, and I was unable to get one of the lenses off.

I will have to use more drastic measures later, but for now, since the incandescents still worked, I decided to just leave them for the time being.
I had to wire in some delphi weatherpack connectors to provide a disconnect for the lights, since the wires on the AZ car were cut, and there's no connector between the inner fender and the lights anyways, but I got it done, and it was all working, so I moved on to installing the bumper and the grill.

I also set the bezels in place to get an idea of how it would work, though I was not ready to final install them quite yet. I've got some plans for the headlights in the works, and didn't have all the parts yet.

Thus concludes Sunday's work.


My afternoons for the week since have been spent tinkering on minor stuff, getting a starter installed, doing some headlight wiring, and finally, completely draining the fuel out of the tank (which looked and smelled like it may well have been from 1985) and replacing with some ethanol free fuel so that I can run the car off the factory fuel system, and not the roadkill special.

Once I got the starter in, I was able to drive the car around a little bit. I do have some video to upload later that I will edit into this spot, but it's not quite ready yet.

In the meantime though, I was able to drive the car into my garage, and park it properly for the first time:

The V1 looks a little sad with its crumpled corner and missing bits, and the V2 similarly looks sad with the teeny little pizzacutter wheels, but the day will come with the V1 will go into storage, and the V2 will be all shiny and nice.


Anyways today, I took the car in to get the glass replaced:

and I noticed as I was securing the wheels that the drivers front wheel cylinder appears to have a little leak, which explains the fact that the brakes pull hard to the left.

The plans for the weekend are to first, pull all the drums and inspect everything, replacing whatever needs replaced.

Second, the horn and windshield wipers are the only electrical circuit that appear to not be working. I'm going to fix that.

Third, my headlight parts arrived, so I'll get the lights installed.

Fourth, if I have time, I will swap in the replacement radiator that came with the car, because the factory original one leaks very badly when the engine starts to warm up.


I'll leave off then with the following video that I filmed tonight.

It's in the garage, so it's not really evident, but this thing runs quiet.
It's so smooth too...

 

[GRtak]

Congrats on finding a really nice old car to starry building up.

 

[NotLaw]

Well, it's been a few weeks, and so, time for another roundup status post.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the brakes were pulling very hard to the left, and as I was unloading the car after getting the glass replaced, I noticed signs that the drivers front drum had some kind of leak.


Since I wanted to inspect all 4 brakes, I started with the end that seemed like it would be easiest, and pulled the rear drums off.

To my relief, both rear drums were cobwebby, but otherwise looked great!
The drivers rear took some working to get the actual drum off, but once removed, it looked just as good as the passenger side.

That being said, I think the rear brakes were completely new, and had never been adjusted, as the shoes on both sides were miles away from being in contact with the drums.

Once I got both sides adjusted in, not only did the brake pedal feel much better, but the parking brake started to work too.


Moving on, I pulled the drivers front:

See the problem?


How about now?

There it is...

Yeah, that boot on the wheel cylinder is not supposed to be like that.


To make matters worse, once I removed the springs, and the shoes, I was able to see that some GDPO had deliberately punched a new hole in the boot, rather than using the existing hole for the pushrod.


This has been wrong since the day that wheel cylinder was installed, and everything showed about the same amount of corrosion and wear.
Sadly, the wheel cylinder itself was trashed beyond recovery.

New shoes and wheel cylinders for both front brakes, along with a frustrating time bleeding the front circuit solo, and I finally had great brakes.


With the mechanical issues sorted, I called it a day so that on Sunday, I could deal with the electrical crap.

Next on the task list was the non-op horn and windshield wipers.

For that task, my first point of investigation was of course to check the few pointless fuses that Ford deigned to install in cars in the 60's. I wasn't sure if any of the non-op circuits were on these fuses, but it's worth a check.

I found this:

I don't know how that happened, but I was certainly not expecting to see such terrible corrosion on a car that is otherwise more-or-less corrosion free.

All of the fuses turned out to be OK, but per my multi-meter, the contacts were not making adequate connection at all.

I used a combination of a screwdriver, pick, wire-brush, and some contact cleaner, and while nothing really looked much different, I was getting continuity from one contact to the other across the fuse at least.




Sadly, this did nothing to fix the horn or wipers.

Next,I manually applied voltage to the horns, to make sure they worked.

They did.

Then, I checked for voltage at the horn contacts in the wheel, and had nothing.
I traced down the wires into the connector at the column, and found that I did have voltage at that connector on the column side. Bridging the correct pins in the connector, and I was able to sound the horns, so the issue is 100% in the column.

I'm not going to dick around with the wires in the column because it's all going in the bin eventually anyways, so I rigged up a temporary momentary switch, and cable tied it to the column.

I've got a horn.


With that box checked, I moved on to the wipers.

Much like the horn, I first looked for voltage on the appropriate pins at the wiper motors. Only the contact that provided power for the wiper park function had voltage, so something was definitely bad with the switch.
Regardless, I also wanted to test the motor, and found that the ground on the motor was less than great.
I cleaned up the ground, but sadly, the test was a failure. The motor was dead.

Since the motor was definitively dead, I removed the cowl so that I could access the retaining clip on the linkage.

I'm glad I did...

It was seriously nasty in there.

The shop-vac made quick work of it though:

I was quite relieved to note that there was no rust under all that crap too.


I opened up the cowl on the UT car as well, since it was going to be donating it's functioning wiper motor to the AZ car, but I'd been in there before, and I knew there were no surprises.

Since I now had a known working (and tested in-situ) wiper motor in the AZ car, my focus moved to the switch...

I pulled the dash for better access, and found this:

Super, super dusty, dirty switch.

The two wire switch is for the washer pump, which was also not working. When I pulled the motor from the UT car, I also snagged the washer pump, fluid bag, and the rubber hoses to swap into the AZ car. After a few hits on the washer switch, it started working, which suggested to me that the internal contacts were probably so filthy that it was preventing the switch from working.


I used a liberal quantity of spray contact cleaner, as well as compressed air, and the wiper switch started working fine.




The final electrical task I had to do was the headlights.

Now, on the UT car I had rewired the headlights to not only be fused, but to be on relays. In addition, I had removed the appallingly shit sealed beam lights, and replaced them with Autopal housings that would accept H4 and H1 lights.

When I did this a few years ago, I quite liked the clear lenses on the Autopal lights, but times and tastes change, and I was ready for either a more traditional looking light, or for full-on modern LED's

Since high beam only 5.75" round LED lights still don't exist, and at this point likely never will AND since LED retrofit bulbs for H1 and H4 housings do exist, and appear to be reaching possibly acceptable levels of quality, I thought I'd give that route a chance.

So, I ordered up some Hella housings (since Autopal doesn't want to sell to Utah anymore apparently) and some cheap-ish SuperBrightLED H1 and H4 lights.

It was getting darker, (and more importantly cold) so no pics of either the housings or the bulbs, but the bulbs were of.. acceptable build quality.

The H4's actually were quite good really. They have a metal base, as well as a moderately sized aluminum passive heat-sink. The passive part was something I'm interested in, since these lights are not exactly protected from the elements in a '67 Fairlane.

I was slightly disappointed in the build quality of the H1's though, since while they used a similar heat-sink to the H4's, the H1 base is just a plastic sleeve over the H1 blade. The sleeve is looser than I like, but for now, I decided that it would do.

Without further ado, here's the beam pattern for the H4's on low only:

And then the whole lot on high beam:

The pattern is not... great but, it is significantly better than the sealed beams the car would have had, and for not having relays in the lighting circuit, the brightness is great.

Also, I had the cardboard considerably closer to the lights then I should have for checking pattern and aim, and in practice, the lights seem to work quite well.


All in all, it was a good weekend's work, and pretty much everything I wanted done got done.

The car was now ready for the DMV to open so that I could get tags.


Now there ended up being a bit of a rigamarole around getting the car registered, and long story short, I was not able to tag the car until the following Thursday, but it did get done:

I thought the vintage Utah plates would be a nice touch too

Of course, since the car is rolling on OE 14" rims, there was one last touch that it needed.

I dug the original dog-dish hubcaps that came with the UT car out of storage, and threw them on.
Also, bonus, the headlights and front trim is looking good

Now, before I could really drive it, I had to replace the radiator, but I'll post about that project later, this post is already too long.

 

[73GMCSprint]

I've been considering a headlight swap for the Sprint as well but it only has a single light on each side, which makes it simpler.
I just swapped most of the rear lighting on my XJ for SuperBrightLED bulbs and they seem decent for that application.

 

[93Flareside]

I simply added H4-H1’s to my wagon and that was enough of an upgrade over H4656’s awful DOT pattern. The H1’s are like coast guard search lights.

 

[NotLaw]

I've been considering a headlight swap for the Sprint as well but it only has a single light on each side, which makes it simpler.
I just swapped most of the rear lighting on my XJ for SuperBrightLED bulbs and they seem decent for that application.

I simply added H4-H1’s to my wagon and that was enough of an upgrade over H4656’s awful DOT pattern. The H1’s are like coast guard search lights.

Compared to sealed beams (which I still have on the K5) these LED bulbs in H4 and H1 housings are on the same scale of improvement as going from carburetor straight to full multiport EFI.

There's literally no comparison.

The only place the LED conversion looks bad is in comparison to modern OEM LED solutions, that often require multi-thousand dollar housings. The beam pattern is not quite as crisp as say, my Dad's 2014 E Class.

The beam pattern is also maybe not quite as nice as the H4/H1 halogens might be in the same housing, but it's at least 90% as good, for much less power draw.

I've driven the car a bit in the dark now, and I've not been flashed even once, so I'm pretty happy with my results.


Speaking of driving the car, as I mentioned in my last post, I had the car tagged and insured as of the 19th of November, but due to a very leaky radiator, I couldn't really drive it.

The next order of business then was to replace the Radiator.


Now, luckily, the car actually came with a new radiator that had never been installed. It was just a factory replacement, so nothing special, but it would do the job. I also had some radiator hoses on hand, just incase I had one fail on the other car, so if I needed them, I wouldn't even have to run to the store.

Getting the old Rad out was easy. It's just 4 bolts and two hoses. I was even able to recover most of the coolant that was in the thing.

The problems started when I tried to install the replacement.

Now that picture was taken when I was mid-way through fabricating the solution, but if you look at the flanges on the sides of the radiator, you can see that the new black radiator's flanges are about half the size of the old rusty junk.

The radiator that came with the Fairlane is in fact, a mustang radiator.

The core is the same size, and it is a V8 radiator, but it simply doesnt fit. It's too small.

So, using some scrap aluminium left over from my adventures with the UT fairlane, I quickly hand-fabbed up some brackets that would allow the mustang radiator to fit into the Fairlane brackets.

All in all, it only took a morning to do, and once the brackets were made, everything came together great.

I closely inspected the hoses that were on the car, and they passed muster (for now, it's only light duty use anyways) so I didn't even have to replace them.




of course, I only had 1 day before Thanksgiving that I could actually drive the car, but I was able to successfully commute to work without issue.

In the weeks since, I've put about 120 miles on the car, and everything seems to be running OK.

It's got some lifter clatter, I probably need to pull the valve covers and give it a good adjustment.

I also had some noises coming from the alternator, but with use, it has since quieted down considerably.
I've limited the car to just around-town runs. A couple trips to work or to wally-world, but no real long drives.

Overall, this thing is MINT though. It's got plenty of low down grunt, and it drives more-or-less like new.

Of course, new in 1967 is not really that all that great by modern standards

It doesn't wander per-sey, but there's definitely less caster than I like. The manual steering is relatively easy with the 185 section tires, but it requires constant attention to keep the wheel pointed in the right direction at speed.

The ride is plush, but very boaty. I feel like I'm captaining a small to middling yacht at any speed over about 40.



For now, unless something breaks other than the heater core, which currently has a small leak, I'm done working on this thing.

I've got big, big plans for 2020 though.

 

[NotLaw]

Well, I figure I might as well throw a quick update in.

Basically, everything is going better than expected.
I've got a little over 300 miles on the car now. Strictly around town, occasional errands, but mostly commuting to work.

I still dont trust the mechanical fuel pump, and I think I need to adjust the valves since it's a bit clattery but otherwise, this thing runs awesome.

Starts on demand, and it's been very reliable so far.

The headlight switch is no good though. I have to hold it just right, or I've got no lights. A replacement is on the way.

The heater core still has a small leak, but I'm ignoring that for now. It'll sort itself out when I install the airconditioning.

 

[NotLaw]

So, I mentioned in one of the above posts that the Fairlane's got some lifter clatter. Last weekend, I popped the valve covers off to have a look-see.

The first thing I noticed is that this 289 is spotless.

I also quickly noticed that the pushrod for #5 exhaust looked brand new; the other 15 had clear signs of having been in there a long time.
All of the nuts holding the rockers on for #1 through 4 (the whole passenger side bank) looked new, but only exhaust #5 and intake/exhaust #8 on the drivers side bank had new nuts.

Someones been in here before.

Then I tried moving some rockers around...

...yeah. I think that qualifies as loose haha!

As it turned out, almost every single rocker had been tightened down to the point where there was just barely no preload at all. (a few were clearly much looser though)


If this engine had solid lifters, it would have been a bit on the tight side, but probably OK.


The only small block ford in 1967 to have solid lifters was the "K" code high performance engine.
This is not that.

I reset all the lifters with a conservative half-turn of preload, and this was the result:

Still making clickity-clacky noises

It's better than before, much better, but still noisy.

It's probably got some unhappy lifters, but there's nothing I am going to do about it. It'll live just fine until I manage to swap in the hot EFI motor later this year.


In other news, whilst messing around on the Fairlane, I also did a quick test on the distributor's vacuum advance canister.
I'm honestly not sure why I checked it, but check it I did, and a good thing I did. The vacuum can is 100% blown out. No vacuum at all, and the mechanism inside the dizzy is locked up too. I've got almost no mechanical advance, and instead of vacuum advance, I had a huge vacuum leak.

For now, I just capped the port on the carb, and am running with no vac. advance. I've got several distributors left over from the other Fairlane's build progression, none of which have points and all of which work, so I'll swap one of those in soon.


Finally, I replaced the headlight switch with a new one from Restoration Parts Source out of California.

The price was pretty good, and now I have reliable headlights again.

As a bonus, the new headlight switch fixed the non-op dash illumination, so now I get too look at that lovely soft green glow when I drive at night again:

I love my custom dash that I made for the other Fairlane, and it will be swapped into this new car along with the rest of the goodies, but I always did like the original illumination.

 

[NotLaw]

Ok, so, over the last couple weeks, some major strides have been taken towards dragging this car into the 21st century.

On Thursday the 20th, some friends came over after work and I set about using the car as a teaching aid (and them as labor) to get some projects done.

Didn't really take any pictures, but we installed the electric fuel pump/bracket that I had set up for the UT car back when it was still carburated, and we also swapped over the original ford distributor that came with the UT car.

I swapped the dizzy over because back in 09 when I first got that car, one of the first things I did was install an Accel points eliminator kit. That dizzy also had a full set of spark plug wires that were in OK condition. As part of the process, we also changed over the coil to the one that was on the UT car. The coil from the UT car was replaced in 09, so it's definitely newer than the one from the 70's that was on the AZ car haha.

We also deleted the mechanical fuel pump because I have had nothing but bad luck with those things.

Despite not taking any pictures while we were working, I did go out and grab some shots of the completed work.

First off, the fuel pump, installed just forward of the fuel tank, and about even with the tank:

Then an overall of the new fuel line routing.

Rather than cutting the original hard line that hugged the block, I used some mil-spec P-clamps and ran a brand new rubber hose in a position that keeps it somewhat out of range of engine heat.

Detail of the clamp on the coil:

detail of the clamp on the distributor:

Upgrading to the electric fuel pump, eliminating the points (and gaining a working vacuum advance at the same time) and most importantly, timing the engine to be at 34° timing all in at 3000 rpm or so revolutionized the way that engine behaves.

It idles even smoother now, and the ass-dyno is indicating at least a +15 horsepower gain.
If my first Fairlane had this much power, and a 4 speed stick, I may not have even started down the rabbit hole of installing go-faster parts.

well.... no, I still would have wanted to go faster but I would have been much happier with the car to begin with.



The fuel and ignition system was just the teaser though. The real work happened between Friday the 28th to Sunday the 1st.


It began with this:

That, is a full tubular front suspension kit from a company called Street or Track

It eliminates all the crap, weak suspension parts that Ford used in '67.
It also holds the position of the lower control arm much better, so that you don't have that terrifying situation where the wheel is physically moving forward and aft in the wheel-well under braking and acceleration. The movement in the ford design is due to the compression of the bushing in the LCA brace. That bushing is now a heim joint.

This video from street or track shows the issue pretty well:

The first step obviously, is to remove all the old crap.

The LCA brace (or strut rod) bushing was 100% toasted:

Getting the ball-joints loose from the spindle was, as always, a major pain in the ass, but we got it done.

Its notable that for the first time in my entire history of working on cars, I was able to use the "hit the spindle with hammers at the ball joint connection" trick, and have it actually work.
Of course, the trick only worked on the upper ball joint. For the lower, I had to rent tools.


Rather than disconnect the tie rods, I just swung the drum brake/spindle assembly out of the way. A home depot bucket was just the right height and size:

Once everything was apart, I used a template that came with the kit to move the upper control arms down 1" (the famous Shelby Drop)

and test fit the new Upper control arm:

(I'm still using the factory original spring perches, which suck. When I take the car apart for paint, I'll swap them out with the roller perches that are currently in the other car.)


Now, I haven't mentioned it yet, but getting the springs out of the car was a horrible experience. I've got an internal spring compressor, which would be fine, except I'm not sure it's meant to be used on springs that are quite this long.

Getting the springs out, it's OK to just loosen the compressor and let the spring take flight, so long as everyone's limbs are out of the possible path for harm.

Getting the springs back in? yeah, that was sketch.


Had to do it in two stages. First, compress the spring enough to get it onto the ledge that sits below the UCA.

This is a shock tower hat that was turned upside down to get some more effective length for the compressor:

Then, we threaded a tie-down through the UCA mounting holes, and secured the spring to the car so that it couldn't just fly out. (you can see the faded orange strap in that first pic with the spring)

We then re-set the tool, so that it was grabbing a lower coil, and draw the spring up high enough to clear the UCA.

we then started lowering the spring onto the UCA. This pic was taken just before touchdown, but you get the idea:

Then we installed the rest of the parts:

including the upgraded sway bar from the other car:

No pictures, but I also installed 4 brand new KYB Gas-A-Just shocks. Their the same type that I was running on the other car, and I could not have been happier with them. Lasted about 100k miles, and the firmness of the ride was just right for my taste.



And the next weekday with decent weather, I got the car aligned:

The front of the car was lowered a surprising amount. Way more than expected:

Overall though, the car drives much, MUCH better. I think it might could use some more toe-in, because it wanders a bit on-center, but once I've got the steering loaded in a corner, it drives sweet as could be.

 

[Der Stig]

Glad to see more progress being made on the Fairlane!

 

[NotLaw]

So today's post is actually only tangentially related to the Fairlane project, but it's an important infrastructure step that makes the next jobs possible.


To tell the story though, we have to go back to middle October, 2019. At that time, my father approached me about getting some or all of my spare parts that I have been storing at his house down to my place in Cedar.

I hadn't done so yet, because I literally had no-where to put them.

To solve the problem, he offered to help me out on the initial cost of purchasing a 20' shipping container to be used as a shed. Once he and I came to an agreement of how much it would cost and who would pay what portion, it was on me to prepare a spot for it.


In middle October, this is what the proposed container location looked like:

By the scheduled delivery day on Monday the 28th, the spot looked like this:

(incidentally, My dad and I left to go pick up the new Fairlane from Arizona the following Friday)



It was a real challenge for the guy delivering this thing to get the trailer into the back-yard, but it was done. (my property has street access on both the north and south facing property line, which is the only reason it was even possible)

I did have to nudge it into a final position though:

And Boom, with a few thousand bucks, and several hours a day for several days of clearing bush, as well as few hours of installation, and I had a nice sealed dry place to store crap.

Now, that was at the end of October. In the intervening months, I was slowly filling the container floor with crap. Old parts, other projects, tools, supplies. All sorts of stuff.

It was a highly inefficient storage space because I was using it very badly.


Today's project was to fix that problem, and make it so that when I start disassembling two cars semi-simultaneously, I have somewhere to put the stuff in a orderly manner.


This morning, the container looked like this:

and by 1:00 PM, it looked like this:

I assembled 3 48"x72"x24" shelves that I got from home depot.

They aren't the best quality shelves in the world, but they were affordable, and they'll work.





The next infrastructure project I need to do is to rebuild/reassemble my Rol-Air 5hp air compressor that was one of a pair of compressors that my father bought off craigslist several years ago.
I'll also need to get power to the thing.


I'm also considering getting that Polaris 4-wheeler going again, so that I have something (other than my truck) that I can use to pull the two Fairlanes around when they are engineless.

 

[NotLaw]

As per usual, turns out that I'm not that on top of making regular updates.
Of course, a global pandemic didn't help, but if we're being honest, my lack of updates has nothing and less to do with that haha.


So, instead instead of regular updates, I'll instead cram 7 months of progress into just a few posts. This is going to be picture heavy, and detail light, especially for the older stuff.


Anyways we pick up pretty much right after my last post.

with my Rol-Air air compressor that was in dire need of a rebuild.


My dad had actually already taken it apart, and he even got a rebuild kit for it; but since he had a spare that one went into duty, and this one went into storage.

Now that it was mine, and I was going to need compressed air, I started the rebuild.

The head came off first:

Followed by the cylinder(s):

It needed new gaskets, reed valves, and rings, as well as a hone, but it all went back together smoothly:

I also had to add in a 230v power outlet, and that was handled by putting a double pole, double throw switch in-line with the power feed for the clothes drier, and putting the appropriate plug on the other pole. The switch was of the on-off-on variety, ensuring that the 15 amp breaker could never be thrown by running both the compressor and the laundry at the same time. The plug was located inside the garage to provide maximum utility, since it could, theoretically, be used to charge an electric car.

Of course, I was terrible at taking pictures, so i only have 1.

The wiring works fine, and the compressor works fine. The compressor is able to fill it's 9 gallon tanks up to the 140 psi cutoff in about 4 minutes, which is sweeeeet.



Next update in a day or two will cover how I managed to melt my wallet, before I get into the really cool stuff.

 

[NotLaw]

Around the same time as when I was working on the air compressor and it's wiring (late march, early April) I managed to find a deal on Ebay for something that I've been wanting for a very, very long time.

To you, that might look like a box, to me though, it represents the opportunity to turn a dream I've had for a decade into a reality.

I'm speaking of course, of the glorious 1970 Ford Torino Cobrajet Shaker:

I managed to nab that one for less than half the usual going price.

It's die-cast aluminum, and its missing almost every single part that would have made it function back in 1970.

No matter though, all that 70's mechanical equipment would have been worthless to me, because I am going to be fuel injected and modern



Now, the arrival of the shaker marked the real beginning of the new Fairlane project.
I had been dreaming of ways to make a fully functioning shaker/cold air intake, but now I needed to engineer those dreams into a reality.


I started, by measuring:

The goal of course, was to try and figure out approximately how much room I actually had between the factory style GT40 lower intake, and the hood.


I made a cylinder of foil and put it on top of the intake to measure intake-to-hood clearance:

These measurements were just preliminary's. They were in no way accurate enough for me to actually do the necessary engineering, but they told me something super important:
They told me it was possible!


Now, the next several months were primarily spent doing CAD design on the computer to make it happen, but I'll cover that in the next post.

I also spent buckets of money on big-ticket items that I knew I was going to need.

For example, Rims:

and Air Conditioning:

Along with things like a new radiator, a hydroboost brake booster, power steering pump & quick ratio power steering gearbox.

I also yanked the drivetrain out of the blue car:

and stored it:

I also found out that the 306 in that blue car was not as healthy as I wanted. The Main crank journals were just a little bit scored.


So I bought a new stroker 347 short block that was assembled by a professional:

Once the engine was out of the blue car, I also yanked the springs, and did some suspension cycling with the new rims to see how much I was going to have to massage the fenders (some, but not a whole lot)

The next big post will cover the CAD design and engineering...

 

[GRtak]

I like those wheels.

 

[BerserkerCatSplat]

Bruh you weren't kidding about the buckets of money. That thing is gonna be fly as hell.

 

[Redliner]

I like where this is going.

 

[NotLaw]

Thanks. I've been really pleased with the project so far. It seems like 10 years of driving the other car, and thinking about all the ways I wanted to make it better is finally coming to fruition.

GR, the rims are from Legendary Wheel. The LW69 model which apparently is based of the '69 Shelby mustangs.
Mine are in 17"x8" flavor.

One of the reasons I picked them is that at first glance, they almost seem like the usual Magnum 500 type rim you see on lots of Fords and Mopars, but on the second glance, its obvious that they are different.

I'm planning a Tahoe Turquoise/charcoal theme for the exterior paintwork, so those rims should work out quite nicely.


Anyways, On to the planned update. This was going to be two posts, but they seemed a bit short that way, so instead: All in one!

------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------​

Thanks to my place of work, I have access to a Leica laser tracker and laser scanner, as well as friends who know how to use it. (Technically, I know how to use it too, I also sat through the training)

So I was able to grab scan-data and ultra precise point measurements from the car:

and the engine: (the 302 is pictured, but the 347 is the same on the outside, it's just a stroker crankshaft)

I brought that scan data and the point measurements into Autodesk's Inventor software:

Once I had some real, workable, accurate data, I was able to embark on a 5 month iterative design process in CAD, to come up with a way to blend the modern fuel injection technology, with the styling of the 60's, while maintaining manufacturability for me, with the tools and skills I have at hand.

Behold:

My custom intake design consists of 5 major components.
First is the only part I won't be making, which is the factory GT40 lower intake manifold for a 1996 Ford Explorer (though mine is ported for better flow)

Second, is what I call the Mid Assembly, or mid-intake:

The Mid-assy is a weldment, that consists of a laser cut steel plate (3/16 thk) that mates up to the factory ford intake.
Then, there's 8 1.75" diameter tubes (all the same overall centerline length, though how they get there is different for the upper vs lower)
The tubes then attach to another laser cut steel plate (this one is .065" thk) This plate provides the flange that the next piece attaches too.
Finally, there's going to be 8 "air horns" that will serve to help smooth the airflow into the tubes. These will be 3D printed ABS.

The third major assembly is the Upper Plenum:

This assembly is almost entirely aluminum, and is assembled with a combination of aircraft epoxy and solid rivets. It's mostly 2 3/8 thick aluminum flanges (one to mate to the Mid, the other to mate to the throttle body) that are joined to each other by a number of .050" thick folded aluminum sheets.

Moving further up the intake tract, we have the Airbox Assembly:

This assembly mounts to the top of the upper plenum, and mounts in such a way that I'll be able to adjust and compensate the positioning of the box to accommodate the positioning of the shaker itself.
This box has gone through a number of design revisions, and what I have pictured does not actually represent my current assembly plans.

I've got it pictured to be a composite box, but I may end up using an alternative construction method. The general shape wont change though.

This box will fit a standard air filter from a 1st gen V8 Jeep Grand Cherokee.


And the final major assembly is the Shaker Lid:

this combines the shaker with a .090 thick aluminum plate (with reinforcing bends)
The plate is also the lid that keeps the air filter inside the airbox, and sealed.
The shaker however, will not be fully sealed to the plate.

There will, of course have to be a hole cut through the hood, and the laser scan data will help me locate and figure that out as well, but it's going to have to happen much later, just before the car comes apart to go to paint.




The intake is not the only thing I was working on designing though, Oh no, not at all.








You see, I've never been very happy with using V belts to drive my accessories. V belts are antiquated technology, and trying to drive a modern accessory package off a host of V-belts is a recipe for disaster (in my opinion at least)

However, serpentine drive systems have their issues too, at least in small block ford world.

Ford used a wide variety of different serpentine systems on the SBF. There's a whole host of different combinations of water pump direction, water pump length, accessory locations, accessory types, and cooling fan setups.

I looked at many of them, and for one reason or another, I hated them all. Most are too long, some are too hard to get ahold of. Aftermarket solutions are too damn much money (Hypocrisy? maybe, but still)

One of the things I specifically wanted from a front accessory drive was to increase the amount of room between the engine and the radiator.



The Fairlane is a mid-size car by the standards of the time, and as a mid-size car, while there is more room than a mustang, I still have to watch every inch.
Clearance between the long snout of the water pump and the radiator fan has always been a concern of mine.
In the blue car, I had less than .100 of an inch between that pump and the electric fan, and it made working in the engine bay a shit job.



The shortest of the factory drive systems is the Ford Explorer. It was so short in fact, that it uses a unique timing cover that insets the water pumps' impeller into the timing cover housing.

The downside is that it high-mounts everything, which is fugly
It also uses an integral harmonic balancer/crank trigger wheel/serpentine pully.

It's also a 50oz balancer which sucks big-time, because most aftermarket stroker cranks, like the one in my actual 347, are 28oz balance.

Normally, those would be showstopping problems, but I just designed a custom intake manifold. I think an accessory drive system is within my abilities.

The thing that cinched the deal is I found a vendor that caters to early Broncos. Wild Horses 4x4 offers a custom crank pully that will bolt to a standard early 3-bolt 28oz balancer, but that will allow the use of the explorer accessory drive system.

This means that all I had to do was design a set of brackets that would mount the whatever accessory's I wanted to use in whatever position I wanted, so long as the pulleys were in alignment with an OE Explorer setup.

I bought an entire explorer accessory drive system from the junkyard that I then laser measured and scanned and reverse engineered.

Combined with the scan data of the car and engine from before, I was able to design this:

This system uses a aftermarket standard Gm Type II power steering pump, with provision for a 3" round PS fluid reservoir:

and it also uses a standard 2-bolt type ford alternator, and the standard explorer AC compressor: (I'll be using the same 3G alternator I had in the other car)

All the idler pulleys & tensioner are standard Explorer parts.

The brackets themselves are 3/16 plate, laser cut. The pulley alignment is handled by precisely cutting the spacers to length, and the whole thing gets welded together.


here's an image of all the CAD parts together, with the scan data:

Of course, once all the CAD design was done and checked (and design reviewed with my Dad & friends) it still had to be made, which I'll cover in the next post.

 

[captain_70s]

Holy shit man, this is wild. RIP your wallet I guess.

The Fairlane is a mid-size car by the standards of the time

Not gonna' lie, until I read that I just thought the Fairlane was a lower trim of Galaxie...