Replacing the 351W in the '68 Mustang Part 6

Re-installing parts on the engine was pretty much complete last time out. This weekend I kicked off with the fluids: the coolant, engine oil and transmission fluid were all refilled, and I put a couple of gallons of gasoline in the tank. I had to put the car back on the ground before I could add the engine oil, and I installed the drivers side valve cover too; it much easier to add the oil when there is somewhere to place a funnel:

Time to prime the engine. To do this I used a 5/16" socket on the end of a fifteen (15) inch extension chucked into a cordless drill. It is important to run the drill in reverse; you can hear the drill in the video. (Note: I have a extra robust 5/16" oil pump shaft; the stock size is 1/4").

After proving I have oil pressure, something that was sadly lacking in the old motor, I installed the passenger side valve cover, the distributor, and connected the spark plug wires. I have this post-it note taped to the lid of my toolbox so I can easily look up the firing order for the 351W. If I was a proper "car guy" I would have either learned this by heart or had it tattooed somewhere.

I'll be replacing the cable ties with something more visually appealing in the future:

The first attempt to start the engine was not successful - gas was actually squirting out of the rear breather hole at the carburetor (see arrow below). This indicates that the float is too high. 

After some back and forth adjusting the carb settings and mopping up gasoline from on top of the intake manifold, this was the result: 

A couple of pictures of the engine without the air cleaner:

To be continued....

Replacing the 351W in the '68 Mustang Part 5

I'm writing this update after a whole blissful weekend of tinkering with the '68. However most of the first day was spent working under a couple of spotlights due to those nice people at PG&E deciding to switch off our power for the day. 

The only reason I have any light is that we have a generator - we have fairly regular power outages, and we need to be able to keep the freezer and the sump pump running. The generator can run off gasoline or propane; it produces more energy from gasoline, but I prefer to use propane since it is easier to store.

First up was re-installing the radiator, the overflow bottle and the fan shroud: 

Then the chrome-plated water pump:

After that I attached the chrome-plated alternator and the supporting bracket, the pulley that goes over the water pump, and the radiator cooling fan:

Studs were threaded into the four corner bolt locations at the cylinder heads for alignment of the intake manifold:

Intake manifold installed:

Re-connected the heater hoses and the bypass hose:

Re-installed the radiator hoses and the ignition coil:

For some reason the car never had a grounding strap on the alternator, so I fabricated one from some 4 AWG cable and installed it:

Re-installed the battery and re-connected all the under-hood wiring. The power to the house/garage was back on by the point when this photo was taken:

I recently rebuilt the Autolite carburetor out of my '67 F250, which was an interesting mini-project and helped me understand much better how this type of device works. I'll link to the related post when I get around to publishing it. The carburetor from the '68 has been sitting "dry" for almost a year. What's more it has been over ten years since it was rebuilt, so what the heck, let's do it!

The Mustang is equipped with a Holley 4160 which was in much better shape to start with than the Autolite 2100 which came out of the truck: 

The Holley has two (2) separate fuel chambers and two (2) independent floats; these parts do not need cleaning:

The main body of the carburetor was soaked in the same cleaning fluid as the Autolite:

The lower section was too big to fit into the can, so I cleaned it by hand with an old toothbrush and some spray-on carb cleaner.

After cleaning and drying/blowing out all passages with compressed air:

The 4160 was rebuilt with a Holley-branded kit and I used this tutorial for disassembly and most of the rebuild and this one for some of the finer points of the rebuild. Which gave the photo below.

Re-installed the 4160, and reconnected the incoming fuel line and the throttle linkage:

To be continued....

The Patch

I’m super fortunate that I love my day job, but it hasn’t always been that way. Especially not thirty plus years ago when I worked at (something like) Q&R Pattern Books, on the outskirts of Stockport, Greater Manchester. The company made wallpaper sampler books, essentially by hand. I know, wallpaper sampler books! That alone tells you how long ago these events took place.

At the time I had just pitched up from London, and I needed a way to make some $$$ immediately. The funny thing about Q&R was that in spite of the work being mind-numbingly boring, it was surprisingly well paid. The owner’s wife told me at my interview that there could well be a lot of overtime available, and “…if we ask you to do overtime, we would like you to do it.” I told her I was in. I was informed there was only "about four weeks" of work available, but she was very vague; in the event I was there almost five months.

In previous jobs overtime meant staying later at the end of the day. At Q&R I was shocked to discover it meant expanding the normal 8:00 am to 5:00 pm workday to 6:00 am to 6:00 pm; Saturday was 6:00 am to 12:00 pm. We always got paid in cash at lunchtime on Friday, and with overtime being time and a half or double on Saturdays, I was taking home almost 400 quid a week - an absolute fortune in the summer of '95. (Note: This was the same year that Oasis headlined the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury).

I'd never worked in a factory before, and it took me a few weeks to get used to the culture. It started with having an actual thick paper timecard which we had to get stamped at the start and end of every day. If you clocked in more than three minutes late, the time would be stamped on your card in red ink instead of black. Two or three minutes before the end of the shift, a line would start forming by the time clock. If you ended up at the back of the line, it could cost you fifteen minutes of queueing and waiting to get out of the parking lot.

The other thing that was new for me was the bells which would ring at the start and end of every day and every break. There was a mezzanine floor at the far end of the factory where everybody except management would sit around in cliques before work and at break times. Lunch was only 30 minutes and in any case the factory was in the middle of nowhere so there was no incentive to step outside. It was actually tough to find a space to sit at first; almost every chair had somebody's bag or towel hanging on the back. Q&R's generosity extended to providing hot water from a gigantic urn, but access to cups, tea bags and milk was tightly controlled by the various groups of permanent staff and I couldn't be bothered to get involved. I figured I wouldn't be working there long enough to make it worth the effort. 

At 8:00 am the first bell would ring and there would be a gentle buildup of noise as chairs scrapped across the floor, teacups were put away, and people gradually made their way down the stairs to work. There was a cycle where the gap between the bell and the chairs moving would get very slightly longer each break time until it was approaching 30 seconds. At that point one of the supervisors would have a moan and the cycle would reset. 

On my first day at Q&R I was given a huge pile of what would become the front covers for wallpaper pattern books and shown how to install two (2) fake brass corners at the top and bottom right of each cover. I took me until mid-afternoon to work through the pile, and when I informed the supervisor, he showed me where "the rest of 'em" were stored. It took all of the first week and a couple of days of the second to install corners on all the covers. After the last one there was a brief pause to move the front covers to another part of the factory, and then I got started on the back covers... 

It was a very boring place to work. You would find yourself looking at your watch just a few minutes after you last looked at it. There was a strict no smoking policy on the factory floor, but it was allowed on the mezzanine at break times. It was also standard practice for the smokers to head into the bathroom for a ciggie in between each official tea or lunch break. I was a non-smoker at the time, but after a few weeks of working there I began popping into the can too, when I was ready for a mid-session sit down.

When, on my first day at Q&R, I had asked a coworker for the location of "the toilet," he had pointed into the far corner while announcing "the shithouse is over there." He was right too; it was a shithouse. If you've seen Trainspotting, you can probably imagine it. The best bit about it was the graffiti, which was either football related, e.g. "all Manchester United fans take it up the $%#&" or about people who worked there - nowadays it would be stone cold bullying; at the time it was hilarious. Part way through my time at Q&R the bathrooms were painted black throughout in an attempt to stop the graffiti. The decorator said it was the worst bathroom he had ever seen. But it didn't stop; folks just scratched their messages into the wall with their keys.

There are a number of different steps or jobs in the production of a pattern book, and there was a well-established hierarchy to those jobs. Top of the tree was the nailing table where the covers were attached to the books with ornate fasteners which had to be hammered in by hand. I never made it to the nailing table. After that it was the jobs that involved machinery: cutting, printing etc. Installing metal corners was near the bottom of the list, but it wasn't quite the lowest of the low: that was The Patch.

The Patch was a large group of tables at the front of the factory where the most menial tasks were accomplished; tasks which mainly included sticking several sheets of wallpaper or fabric together with glue. The name "the patch" arose because you had to be a cabbage to work there! It was a phrase that was best not uttered within earshot of management, especially if you wanted to avoid immediate redeployment to that section of the factory. I was told a story about how one guy that had worked at Q&R was moved from the patch to work on one of the better jobs that involved using some type of machine. After three or four weeks he suggested to management that maybe he should get a pay rise. The next morning, he was back on the patch.

I did a few weeks on the patch. Everybody did, because they figured if you could stand that, you might be worth a permanent contract. There was actually a pretty high rate of turnover among the temporary staff. As workflow went up and down, temps would get canned or hired, and it was always at the back of my mind that I could be the next person looking for another job. But there was actually an observable pattern: when staffing levels got too high, people would be assigned to just about anything to keep them from sitting around. This included having a big, supervised bonfire outside the factory to get rid of trash. Anyone who got put "on fires" was almost always canned on the Friday lunchtime.

As well as nicknames for parts of the factory, there were plenty for the people that worked there, well for the guys anyway; I can't think of any female staff members that were labelled in this way. Some of the more memorable examples include the following: 

Disco Pete - he once came to work in some shiny red "disco" shoes.

Morph - he was super short and very grumpy.

Jasper - he looked a lot like Jasper Carrott. 

Chippie - he was always getting food from the takeaway, although he remained very slim.

Texas Pete - he was bit of a cowboy. 

Yeti - he had exceptionally long hair.

Porn star - he had dark hair and a moustache.

Maggot - this was based on his highly disheveled appearance.

Thankfully, I didn't work there long enough to get a nickname, but I did get a sort-of promotion. One Friday afternoon I was asked to help out in the screen printing room which was the bottle neck in the production line at that moment. The main guy, Jasper, was out on vacation, and Nick, the second in command, was having a meltdown because they were busy and he didn't have the correct type of paint for whatever logo he was printing. He ended up having a big shouting match with the boss and then refusing to work overtime to get caught up. The factory needed all the covers printed before Monday morning to keep the production line going. Instead of Nick, me and another geezer pulled a 6:00 am to 2:00 pm shift on the Saturday, and then I went straight to Edgeley Park to watch Stockport County play. I only just made it there in time for the 3:00 pm kickoff, and I fell asleep in the second half. When I went back to work on Monday, Nick was on The Patch, and I was the new screen printing guy....until Jasper got back.

I actually had a great summer at Q&R. Most of the folks there were friendly, even to a Southerner, and I played five-a-side with my workmates a few times at The Pits in Ardwick. I was making decent money all Summer, which was great after a lean couple of years, and I didn't have much free time to spend it. Q&R were also super cool with me taking half days off here and there to go to job interviews. By September '95 I was working in a low-stress office job during the day, and I was enrolled at Stockport College to study 'A' levels in the evenings. But that's the next chapter...