Ponies and Snakes 2025

This Sunday was the latest edition of Ponies and Snakes, the Bay Area Mustang Association's annual car show. I didn't take as many photos this year as I usually do:

Reviving the 351 Windsor V8 Part 1

If you can remember back to this post, you'll know that I have a serious problem with the 351 Windsor engine in the Mustang: namely no oil pressure whatsoever and fine metal particles in the oil pan and filter. I actually started preparing to pull the engine at the end of last year, and I only stopped because I decided to concentrate on the F250.  This is what I came back to:

I previously drained the oil and the coolant, and pulled the valve covers and the air cleaner. Next to go was the intake manifold and carburetor:

After that I had Amy Sheep help me remove the hood. It has to go eventually, and it will make the rest of the preparations much easier. I loved working on the F250 because there was SO MUCH SPACE around the engine, and I can get under the truck without needing to jack it up. The Mustang is a tight fit; it doesn't help that I'm using an engine from 1969 that wasn't designed to fit into the 1968 engine bay. 

Pulled the radiator, fan, alternator, starter and the exhaust/headers and disconnected all the remaining electrical connections to the block.:

There is one header bolt that is extremely difficult to get at:

I have a unique wrench in my toolbox that I made some years ago when the headers were originally installed:

I'm a bit disappointed by how dull the headers have become. I may have them powder coated in the future.

The transmission was next to go:

Time to attach the engine balancer:

Going once...

Going twice...

Gone!

This time I pulled the engine entirely on my own! And I'm establishing a tradition of leaving the freshly pulled motor on the dolly for twenty minutes while I have a cup of tea! After that I took off the bell housing, clutch and flywheel and mounted the stand plate.

Engine on stand

Turned upside down to drain remaining coolant, and removed the oil pan:

There were a bunch more small metal pieces in the oil pan:

I had a problem with one of the header bolts at the rear of the passenger side a while back; the soot all over the block is the result of an exhaust leak in this area. Some of the header bolt holes will need to be re-tapped or sleeved before the rebuild.

Pulled the water pump, harmonic balancer and the timing chain cover:

At this point I reinstalled the crank bolt and used a 15/16" socket on a breaker bar to turn the crank to TDC, then I pulled the timing chain which exposed this:

What this shows is that while the threaded oil galley plug at the top right remains intact, the two push-in plugs at the left side are missing. Oops! The absence of one plug would the enough to kill the oil pressure, never mind two. Pending further investigation, it seems likely that the plugs have been dislodged and "ground up" by the engine....

A well-known Ford small block modification is to replace both push-in plugs with threaded versions, as shown in the photo below which I found online. Obviously, this is the modification I will be making next.

To be continued....

Swapping the Engine in the '67 F250 Part 11

At the end of the last post, the replacement engine was running, which was huge milestone, but it still needed tuning and there were a few things left to install. As it turned out, there were a few teething problems to solve as well.

The first issue was a coolant leak or leaks. I noticed drops of coolant in the engine bay, but there was no obvious source, and the leak was only active when the engine was running, and water was circulating. I added some florescence emitting dye to the cooling system and then let the engine idle for a few minutes while shining a UV lamp on the radiator and all the connections. I found two (2) very small leaks this way, one at the intake manifold hose and one at the water pump. I had to drain the coolant before I could fix the leaks, but otherwise it was straightforward.

The next problem was an oil leak. I could see that oil was vaporizing or burning on contact with the exhaust header at the passenger side, and after running the engine for a few minutes I was able to detect a drip at the front of the header:

Oil was actually leaking from the valve cover. Cleanup and re-installation of the valve cover was the remedy for now. I'll be keeping an eye on this area moving forward.

This is after final routing of all the wiring and installation of shrouds, cable clamps etc. I went with the neatest approach rather than copying all the factory locations.

The last thing I re-installed was the after-market power steering pump and hoses and I added new fluid which was clear instead of brown:

The next little bit is a vanity project really, but whatever. Almost all of the original 1967 control knobs are present, which include the head lights and windshield wiper controls at the left side of the dash, and the heater, fan and defrost controls below the modern radio/CD player. And, thanks to my re-wiring project, all of these controls are functional.

There were a couple of issues with the controls to the right of the steering wheel - the left control was missing, and the original cigar lighter has been replaced with an 8 ball. The choke control works again after I reconnected it to the carburetor.

Getting a repro lighter was easy since Dennis Carpenter sells them. I did actually like the "8 ball," in the right place it would be cool, but in this truck it looks weird. 

Dealing with the absent control knob was more of a challenge, since I wasn't sure what was missing. I was also unable, at least initially, to find the answer on the internet. After a couple of weeks of searching, I acquired a reproduction operators manual: 

Here I discovered I was missing the "Pickup Box Lamp Switch (Optional)." For the uninitiated, this means a bulb that illuminates when the truck bed is raised. It's not something I need to replace, since the bed on this truck doesn't have a lift.

I imagine that the hole in the dash was filled with some sort of plug when the truck left the factory, and I dare say I could have made something to fill or cover the hole. But I had a better idea.

When I was rewiring the Mustang, I made a master "kill switch" which I hid below the dash. You have to feel around behind the dashboard to locate the switch through, which can be a bit annoying. I wanted to do something similar with the F250, just in case someone wants to have a bash at stealing it. The spare opening in the dash would be a great place to put the kill switch - hidden in plain sight, so to speak. 

I bought a basic push/pull switch from some place on the internet, and I acquired a suitable reproduction control knob and a trim ring from Dennis Carpenter.

The opening in the dash consists of a large hole to accommodate the switch or control cable, and a small hole which is for alignment of the "prong" on the back of the trim ring. The first issue with my plan was that the prong was at the top of the reproduction trim ring, and the alignment hole is at the bottom. I didn't really want to install the trim ring upside down, so I made a cardboard template to help me drill a new 7/64" hole in the right place:

Preparation stage #1

Preparation stage #2

Implementation complete

After that, I installed the new switch behind the dash. You may remember from this post, that the truck does not have a Neutral Safety Switch (NSS). To run the engine without one is a simple matter of connecting the incoming and outgoing NSS wires together, which is what I did. This time I decoupled the two NSS wires and re-connected them with the switch in between. This is the overall look after the reproduction trim ring and control knob have been installed. For the ignition to work, even if you have the key, the control knob must be switched to the "auxiliary" fuel tank.

Most of the above was completed towards the end of the long weekend. The final things I did were to re-install the shifter boot and the instrument cluster and then I reconnected the speedometer cable to the transmission. It is next to impossible to remove the instrument cluster when the latter cable is connected, so I left the re-install right to the end. I also set the idle timing to between 12 and 15 degrees before Top Dead Center (BTDC). I was on my own, so I could not make the adjustments to the timing that required revving the engine. The timing is pretty close for now.

I thought about taking the F250 out for a quick test drive, but in the end, I just backed it up to the top of the driveway and then coasted back down a few times. This was enough to test the power steering, and it was operating, as far as I can tell, without leaking. Below is how the engine bay looks (and sounds!) at the time of writing. There is a distinct lack of oil splurging out of the tail pipe, so I am going to call the engine swap a success!

Swapping the Engine in the '67 F250 Part 10

Ever since I got done with installing the new wiring harness and making all the dash and interior connections, which was documented in the Part 9, I have been chipping away at transforming the engine from a bare hulk to an operational motion provider. There have been some issues along the way, a few to-and-fros, several components have been installed and the re-installed two or even three times. What follows is a potted history of this process; the triumphs without the tears, so to speak.

I started with bolting on the parts I previously restored:

starter motor

headers

oil pressure sender, fuel pump and oil filter

power steering pump and fan belt

heater hoses and carburetor

This is later, after I installed a brand new Powermaster alternator and started working through the wiring connections in the engine compartment: 

The new master fuse box comes with the American Autowire harness:

A lot of the under-hood wiring was "roughed in" to start with, which will give me some flexibility regarding the final routing:

The NP435 transmission I am using does not have a neutral safety switch, so I just connected the incoming and outgoing NSS wires together for right now. I have a plan for how to modify this in the future. 

With all the basic connections made, I can re-install the battery....

....and test the lights and turn signals etc.

Next step: install new fuel lines and a fuel filter - there was no fuel filter in place when I got the truck which seems to be par for the course with this vehicle.

I ended up tossing the electronic ignition setup that came with the truck and installing an old school points-based distributor that came with the engine I got from Ninja; I re-used the ignition coil. 

Finally time to try and start the engine! I syphoned a couple of gallons of gas out of the Mustang and transferred it to the F250. I've had a lot of practice at doing this over the years and I managed to accomplish the task without getting a mouthful of gasoline!

After a bit of twiddling of the distributor I got the engine to fire up, and then I wound out the carburetor idle screw, so the engine runs rich but holds its own at idle. It was SUPER noisy running the engine straight out of the headers, so I had to abandon plans to work on the timing and turn to re-installing the exhaust. The photo below shows the section of the exhaust that I removed when I was painting the engine bay; the rear section is still on the truck:

Bolting the exhaust back in should have been easy, because it should have been done before the transmission went back. Oops! This problem was solved with a cutting wheel, a sheet of aluminum roof flashing and two (2) hose clamps. 

I got the idea from the previous owner who did the same at the other end of the exhaust (see below). Once the F250 is roadworthy, I'll be heading to the muffler shop for an upgrade to a dual exhaust. I'm not decided on mufflers or tips yet, but I'm considering getting Flowmaster 50s because they sound so good on the Mustang. 

At this time of writing, I still need to dial-in the timing and adjust the carburetor. The clutch might need some adjustment, and I have to figure out what to do with the steering. I also have to finalize the location of some parts of the new wiring harness. I plan to get a new set of plug wires because red doesn't look right with the blue/black/silver engine color scheme. This is how the engine bay looks at the time of writing:

And this is how the engine sounds: