Here are the original Ram Air hood, ‘new’ fenders, and front & rear valances in the Ram before taking them to the soda blaster.

The sucky part about this whole thing is that the ‘blasters kept my stuff for over a month, and it turned out the soda blasting didn’t really work very well. The hood was so etched I needed to spend an afternoon sanding it down anyway, and the fenders suffered the usual front end damage these cars are famous for (the hood’s longer than you think, people). Didn’t get a lot done during that time except nit noids that I didn’t get pics of (mostly wasted time).

Today, we got him fired up, and so far so good. The engine sounds AWESOME and revs Very freely. After some ‘fiddlin’ with the timing and carb, things got even better. Then, I noticed a little bit of a stumble and decided to RTFM. Once I discovered that the needle valves worked a little differently than I’d thought, I made a few more adjustments, along with advancing the timing to where my friends at 7173Mustangs indicated that Clevelands prefer, and Wow – whatta difference! Even got a “Holy Sh!t” out of Jim when he blipped the throttle a few times. I can’t wait – this is going to be a fun car!

Built my new fuse box today. Started with a waterproof ‘bait box’ (of all things), added two fuse panels and a relay (for keyed ‘On’ power to light up the panel on the right for keyed accessories).

So far, so good – everything fits and it closes up tight. Now to mount it up.

The original place I had picked was taken up by the hood hinge (imagine that). Bummer. Next best thing – front of the shock tower. I might swap places with the Duraspark module and the fuse box – purely for aesthetic purposes.

I had to combine the AOD’s reverse light/neutral safety switch harness with the same from the Mach 1’s original wiring harness. I also decided instead of using crimp connectors, to solder and ‘shrink the connections between the AOD harness and Mach 1 harness. Much stronger and longer lasting splices.

Here’s the “hybrid” AOD/Mach 1 reverse lights/neutral safety switch harness, all cleaned up, spliced, and loomed.

Kinda tough to see (the camera flash washed it out), but the little patch of ‘yellow’ in the passenger side foot well is from the courtesy lights – They Work!!

I left the flash turned off to see the dome light lit up. First time this poor car has probably had electricity running through it since 1980-ish.

A better shot of the passenger side courtesy light illuminating the foot well and under the glove box.

The tilt mechanism on top is from the ‘new’ column, which was having problems tilting – probably because of the ‘extra’ piece I found floating around inside (in the middle). The bottom is from the original column that wouldn’t tilt either.

Apparently, that ‘extra’ piece was one of the pivot points and broke off. Fortunately, it looks like the original one is still intact. Maybe I can make one good tilt column out of two bad ones.

The other pics I took came out really blurry, so here we are with the column all back together. Everything works great – except for the key cylinder… which pretty much fell apart. See next picture.

I was almost done when the key cylinder just basically fell apart… then the tumblers dropped out, then it was pretty much all over at that point. I just ordered a new one, so hopefully it’ll be here by next weekend.

After lots of head-scratching, trimming, cleaning, and pop-riveting, here’s the ‘new and improved’ AOD shifter. Much less ‘dung beetle’ look, so it should fit into the console now.

Here’s the console being test-fitted with the modified AOD shifter. Looks like it’s going to work after all. Just need to adjust the console a little and come up with some kind of filler for the area around the shifter. So far, so good!

Swiped one of the wheels from Jim Eimer‘s Galaxie while he had it off (just to see what it would look like). Now I need to figure out how to get the other 3. LOL

After helping get the Auto Hobby Shop cleaned up for a safety inspection tomorrow, all I could do was get a picture of the AOD shifter to share with my friends at 7173 Mustangs forums. I guess there’s more slope to the Fox body floors than they thought. 

More stuff on the engine done: battery, starter solenoid, voltage regulator, spark plugs, spark plug wires, export braces in-place, and the power steering fan belt you can’t see.

Another shot – I wish Summit hadn’t sent me the ‘Universal Ford V8’ spark plug wires, but rather the ‘cut to fit’ wires I remember ordering. Oh well… maybe next time. Driver side plugs are gonna be a b!tch to change. LOL

Here’s the cool Holley Black fuel pump Jim gave me all mounted and plumbed (finally). Just gotta run power to it now.

In order to make it go, you also have to make it stop!

The power steering pressure line fitting was too big, so I decided to re-use the original. Still gotta clean it up though.

HVAC is all plumbed in, and now I need to pull the wiring harness back out – apparently, it’s from a ’73, and not a ’71 as I was told. No worries… someone will buy it, I’m sure.

This is where I left off with the brakes after getting the new suspension installed. New wheel bearings, but nasty ol’ rotors with no calipers. Not like I was needing brakes to move on and off the lift anyway.

Decided to check out the old brake booster since I can’t seem to find one through the local parts stores. Also dug out the dust shields and starting cleaning & hammering them back into shape.

After cleaning, hammering, ‘blasting, and painting, here’s the passenger side shields. Not perfect, but not bad, either.

Took me almost two hours of fighting with the caliper on the passenger side to get to this point. Still need to tighten the wheel nut and connect the brake line (missing banjo bolts), but almost done. Driver side took 15 minutes.