[DesertXL]

Great Work

Thank you Dominick 1, very kind.

Cheers

 

[DesertXL]

Oil Pan and Things....

Thought I'd share a little more progress.

Here's the factory oil pan, it's fine for a slow car, but a brisk acceleration and the oil pump risks sucking air as all the oil goes backwards and away from the pickup. So the plan is to increase the capacity of the pan and make a pocket of reserve oil for the pickup under a bit of power.

I also want to add a low oil sender and oil temperature sender in the pan. I will use these. I like the Ford low oil level sender as it's metal unlike the GM ones.

I've already removed the pitiful inner baffle.

I want to do something like I did here, just with a few minor changes. This is the LTD's 390 I did a while back. I took measurements off this one to mark up the other pan.

I am using 16 gauge steel to make the larger portion of the pan.

One side boxed in.

Making the drain plug ramp.

Continued in next post.

 

[DesertXL]

Oil Pan and Things.... Continued

Making the templates for the baffle.

Other side cut out.

Rest of the oil pan boxed and sealed.

This is how the baffle will look once it's welded in. But before that I want to check my welds for leaks.

I found this works really well for leak checking. It's viscosity is near water, doesn't oxidize steel and has green colourant that leaves a green stain around a leak.

Must be my lucky week, over 8 linear feet of weld and not one leak. I let it sit an hour.

I welded the baffle in and did one last leak check. I should buy a lotto ticket, still no leaks.

Continued in next post.

 

[DesertXL]

Oil Pan and Things.... Continued

Ready for paint. So my idea with this pan was to create a sealed pouch of oil around the pickup. All the similar pans without dedicated traps and special pickups had holes around the baffle. This baffled me (pun intended) because under a hard acceleration the oil wouldn't stay in the pouch and just drain back. So all the ones I looked at Summit didn't make much sense to me. Maybe I'm missing something. Dunno.

Getting painted.

Final product compared to an original FE pan for these low frill base FE's.

One last thorough cleaning and installed.

It's ready for installation. I was going to run this on a dedicated stand, then I thought, just put it in the chassis and run it there. Duh....

A new flexplate was purchased.

I compared it to an old FE 390 plate to make sure it was correct (neutral balanced and same number of teeth).

On the spacer plate the '66 plate (right black one) doesn't have the drill holes for the oil galleries around the cam plug. The other plate (upper left) is a '68 and does have them. So I laid the '68 plate over the '66 plate, transcribed the holes and drilled them. I had screw plugs installed in the '66 so they protrude and the plate needs to have clearance holes.

Engine in and the spacer and flexplate installed with Locktite and torqued to specs.

Continued in next post.

 

[DesertXL]

Oil Pan and Things.... Continued

Once the engine was in and the transmission attached I gutted an old points distributor, filled it with oil, attached a mechanical oil pressure gauge and spun up the oil pump with my cordless drill.

With the drill at about 100 RPM it read 70 PSI. So far so good.

I ran the pump and verified a nice trickle from each rocker tip and yes this made a mess.

I still have to set the electronic distributor.

I still have to R&R the starter and install this side header.

For now I added a cooler bypass line to run the transmission as it's full of fluid.

This side header is installed.

This is just one reason this set of FPA headers costs 1200. The clearance is phenomenal for how tight this is. It's like threading a needle. Add that to the fact the tubes are heavy gauge steel and so is the flange. These are quite heavy and worth every penny.

This is where I'm currently at on the starter. So far this one looks good, just needs to be cleaned, greased and detailed.

Getting close to starting it up.

More to come.

Cheers

 

[DesertXL]

First Start, Well Eventually.

This was frustrating and it shouldn't have been. First the starter was acting up and that was my fault for not filing the contacts on the bendix switch. I was so excited to see it run I gave the switch contacts a quick look and even though they looked OK, I should have filed them. My error.

So what the starter was doing was not throwing out the bendix and just spinning. There is a high current switch that effectively takes one field pole (the one that attracts the ferrous pivoting core into the starter field pole) and places it directly across the battery potential. Once the ferrous core is magnetically sucked in, withcidentally this forces the bendix out the switch is opened and returns that field pole back in series configuration with the armature and matching other field pole. If that switch doesn't make good contact there's not enough inrush current to push the bendix out and the starter will just spin. It would do this from time to time.

Can't win them all.

The starters commutator had some noticeable low spots that needed to be leveled.

A job for the lathe, file and 400 grit sandpaper.

leveled and dressed.

I didn't take any more pictures, but since I need to clean the starter contact I shall show that later.

Now this is where I had other problems. When I set the new distributor and temporarily connected the ignition system and used the timing light I set base timing to 10˚ BTC. There was an odd occasional double flash but the mark was stable for the short cranking time in setting the timing.

Well didn't matter if I sprayed gasoline or carb cleaner or starting fluid it just backfired violently through the throttle body. This drove me nuts for a bit, then I rechecked the timing and I noticed on extended cranking the mark would now jump around. Thinking it was a flaky module I switched it out. I was using a generic GM 4 pin HEI module. So I changed it for a brand new Wells one. Same thing.

With that I grabbed the Duraspark off the '66 LTD 390 as that system worked. Again same thing.

In a fit of pique I just took the distributor out of the '66 LTD 390 and that worked. I had a stable timing mark. So the brand new distributor I bought has a flaky pickup coil in it. Another crappy aftermarket part.

Now I do have a video of it running open headers, but I couldn't spray fuel fast enough out of the spray bottle to get the RPM's up. Plus I used an actual video camera and it ended up compressing the audio so open headers doesn't seem terribly loud, but it was.

With that I ended up putting the full exhaust back on and using carb spray and that worked well. Tis happy.

Here's the video of it running for a few seconds. I call it poor mans fuel injection.

http://galaxieworks.com/sites/forum_videos/1966 gal500 XL Full Exhaust.mp4

More to come.

Cheers

 

[Dominick 1]

What no oil leaks
Sounds good

 

[DesertXL]

What no oil leaks
Sounds good

Thank you Dominick 1, most kind indeed.

Cheers

 

[DesertXL]

Miscellaneous Engine Parts

Just a little more progress.

Some brackets, cover, and tag to install. I made two new head studs out of grade 8 bolts and blackened them. It's sad I see many cars that are missing things like tags, or the transmission cover or the safety retainers in the transmission mount.

I hate studs that come out when you try to remove the nuts so these are glued in.

First the York/Tecumseh base plate goes on first.

Then the power steering pump bracket and then the A/C idler pulley bracket goes atop the power steering bracket.

I thought it would be neat to include the original engine tag since it's visible. It's still a 1966 390, just no longer a horribly underpowered 'Y' code one. I put the tags on the power steering gear and power steering pump. I will make new tags for the transmission and rear axle since those are really modified and the original tag would be more meaningless.

Plus I like little things like this that shows attention to detail.

Even with the York 210 it will still be visible.

So this bar slips into the rear transmission mount and is the secondary retention should the rubber sheer. This car was missing it originally and this is why parts cars are so invaluable as trying to find these little pieces adds up really quick on places like E-Bay and even salvage yards.

Continued in next post.

 

[DesertXL]

Miscellaneous Engine Parts Continued

This was another piece I needed to buy used as the original XL car was missing it and my parts car only had dealer installed air and had a 5 blade direct drive fan and that is not adequate for this application.

Now the used fan still had what looks like the original fan clutch and it's still quite viscous, but in no way would I trust a 50+ year old part that has a seal. I don't care if it still currently works or not.

Now it's starting to look more complete.

New lower radiator hose and these are the stainless steel hose clamps I use. I don't use that cheap garbage sold at autopart stores that seemingly fall apart and or corrode. I learned my lesson on those.

I've been using this rubber grease on hoses and it makes any future service really easy should you need to remove a hose rather than pry or damage stuck on hoses.

It's slowly getting there. I still have to modify the distributor, inspect and detail the brand new York 210, make a new engine dipstick tube, make a new kickdown rod and rebuild the power steering pump. Currently I'm working on the power steering pump and waiting for parts.

Just to recap here's what this used to look like when we first brought it home. This was as bought. What a nightmare... that's the polite way of saying, what a pile of ......

More to come..

Cheers

 

[Action]

Love the detail. Tag yes!

The seven bladed fan is not that easy to come by. However I would have shot the blades black and left the hub with the contrasting color.

Thanks so much for the effort of posting and of course the detail.


Action

 

[DesertXL]

Love the detail. Tag yes!

The seven bladed fan is not that easy to come by. However I would have shot the blades black and left the hub with the contrasting color.

Thanks so much for the effort of posting and of course the detail.


Action

Hi Action,

You're right about that 7 bladed original fan. I think there is a generic one that will fit aftermarket, but the original one I saw recently on Fleece-Bay was over 200 dollars. Yikes.....

I left the fan blades silver coloured because the radiator and fan shroud will be black and when you're working on it with it running, the silver blurr whizzing around catches the eye better than a black blurr

Cheers

 

[DesertXL]

Power Steering Pump

This is a long one. It shouldn't have been, but it was. I swear this thing was cursed. Let me start from here. First of all the PS pump that was in the '66 gal 500 XL was the wrong pump. Take a peek once more:

It may be hard to tell but this has the skinny fill neck and slide in dip stick. For '65/'66 it should be the angled back (air conditioning) and the fat neck with the twist off cap with integrated dip stick. The reason why will become clearer later on. With that I used the pump from one of the donor cars. Well, some of it.

I rebuilt this pump about 7 years ago as part of this adventure The Unlikely 400 Dollar FE Refresh.

But since I only did the pump and not the steering gear I wanted to clean this out and change the seals.

And this is where the fun started. Did I say fun... perhaps not the best word.

So the bushing is breaking apart and disintegrating. Now this is the second bushing because I changed it because the original completely fell apart when I did this pump all those years ago. I can only surmise the remaining oil in the steering gear perhaps became acidic sitting abandoned for decades in the Indian Reservation. This poor car only had about 30K miles on it and it was left for dead.

Now this is a rare kit number as it contains a new bushing. The more popular 8501 just contains the seals. However I noticed BBB Industries is reproducing this pump. This begs the question just how good are the reproductions. If it's anything like the other reproduction parts for these cars I'll pass thank you and try to rebuild the original parts.

Now this is interesting, this is the Clevite part number. A while back I contacted Clevite to see if the part was still available. It was not.

Another interesting tidbit is after I finished this pump I happened to stumble across another kit that is still available that claims to have the bushing, seals and slipper springs. So I ordered two, it'll be interesting to see if that bushing is really included and where it's coming from.

The entire kit.

I started with the pump reservoir. It's cleaned and stripped. Now I am making modifications and some might find this interesting why I am doing this. Two or so months ago I posted a question on the HotRodders forum to see if people are using an old car (40+ years) as a daily driver and if so what did they do to it to make it reliable.

There was a plethora of responses. One stood out as stating he would never use AN lines/fittings as auto part stores do not stock them and if the car breaks down where locally could you get hoses. OK, that is a valid point.

But if I may agree to disagree and I'll explain. Back when I was doing the '66 LTD, the correct power steering hoses were no longer available, as in anywhere. There were hoses offered but they were really long (some other application) and you can not modify the high pressure hose so you were stuck and that was through Rock Auto and the local stores didn't show anything.

That's why I converted the LTD's power steering system to AN fittings. In the last year or so I noticed the correct hoses are offered again. I would suspect the boom in the economy from the last administration prompted companies to service once more the niche market cars (these 3rd gens fall into that category) as it made business sense to do so even if the profit margins aren't stellar.

However I wouldn't count on that in this administration. I would suspect some parts to go off the radar again as business have to evaluate their business plan (tighten production) once more in this new waning economy. With that thought I'm also doing this gal 500 XL in AN lines. But here's the thing to consider, even though I am making the lines myself and ordered through a speed house (Summit) in a pinch if the line blew away from home I can hunt out just about any airport; international, regional, or even those little house subdivision airparks where there is always an aircraft mechanic stationed or around.

If I need a temporary high pressure hose, it's very easy to call these A/P shops and have a certain length AN hose made the same day. Aeroquip 303 hose (common aircraft line) in 6 AN can handle about 1000 PSI and in 3 AN (brake hose) about 3000 PSI.

With that I beg to differ in that if away from home you can get AN lines made same day if you hunt down an airport. Just have to think outside the box.

Weld on AN fitting.

Continued in next post.

 

[DesertXL]

Power Steering Pump Continued

I use stainless ER312 welding rod as it's pretty forgiving on unknown steels (any traces of galvanizing still left, etc).

Onto the rest of it. Now on the pump there is always one pin that is pressed in and the other floats. The pressed in one on the pump from the donor car was slightly bent and I went to lightly straighten and it broke right off. <sigh>

OK, so even though the pump in the gal 500 XL was the wrong year pump, most of the insides are the same. That pump donated a new front.

Here's my little press in tool for the bushing.

Works a treat without harming the bushing.

The new front seal doesn't have sealant around the perimeter like other press in seals do. So a little Ultra Black RTV was lightly applied to the seal perimeter first.

Installed and excess wiped off.

The front pump end plate. The one on the left is the donor car and it's gouged. There had to have been crap in that steering gear and even though I cleaned the pump all those years ago, some of it flushed back into the pump.

Lesson learned, never rebuild just a pump, do the whole system at the same time for something this old!

Continued in next post.

 

[DesertXL]

Power Steering Pump Continued

When assembling these or even transmissions, you can use Vaseline for the assembly grease. It dissolves in ATF. Actually I think the '66 or '68 Ford Service Manual says to use it.

One of these shafts is pretty worn.

The teeth on the right side shaft are worn more. The shaft on the left is also darker suggesting it had a better heat treat process.

On the pump stator and the slippers take some Scotch Brite and cross hatch each item. Noisy pumps are usually caused by a combination of weak springs and polished hardened parts trying to ring together. Installing the cross hatch allows oil to creep between the parts and prevent the ringing together.

As for the springs you can lightly stretch them back out if you can't source new ones.

The end piece is the flow regulator. Remember power steering systems work on a regulated flow rate (independent on engine speed). The higher the flow rate the more assist you have.

The high pressure O-Ring, have to be mindful when installing the outer shell not to injure it.

Continued in next post.

 

[DesertXL]

Power Steering Pump Continued

The other high pressure seal for the pressure fitting.

The springs are the high pressure relief (hitting the steering stop) by allowing the plate to lift off and bleed off pressure.

Round 2 of aggravation. It just twisted right off like licorice. Give me strength. So '65/'66 only have this and this is my only one. OK, you want to play this way pump, you're never going to break again.

I chucked that hex piece on the lathe, centre drilled and tapped on the lathe. Then grabbed a grade 8 bolt chased the thread down and cut the rest off.

Let's see you break now you little...............

Sometimes you just have to remind it whose boss ~

Now I am not a fan of this gasket. I had a bad feeling about the grocery store paper bag gasket when I did the LTD's pump and sure enough, it leaks.

So fool me once......

Not twice..... This is good hydraulic gasket material and it will expand to 5%.

So the original cap had the dipstick broken off. I'm guessing that long stick wiggles quite a bit with engine vibration and that sharp 90˚ bend work hardens and the stick falls off into the pump. Reproductions are inexpensive. I would also assume why the design was changed for '67 for a narrow filler neck with a stouter dipstick.

Continued in next post.

 

[DesertXL]

Power Steering Pump Continued

OK so here's the year difference. If you notice the '65/'66 has the additional stud on the back that keeps the back of the pump stable in the bracket. The later year one has a bracket that attaches to the high pressure port.

Will the '67 and later work in the '65/'66 but for anyone to do that is a pretty poor show.

Pump tidbits to go on. Then I put about 1/3 of a quart of ATF in the pump and shook it up to coat everything and it's not enough to come out the low pressure port.

I wanted to show these seals as a reminder it's really fool hardy to think you can find a car sitting for long periods or just plain abandoned and think you can just drive it because you were able to get it started. I know there are a plethora of online videos that point to this notion, but really this once flexible seals are like pretzels, they just break when taunted with movement.

Just think this is just the power steering pump, everything else in the entire car is like this..............

New and correct belt for the application.

I powder coated the pulley and installed it. One thing I want to mention, if you really want to install that pulley correctly in relation to the coolant pump pulley/crank pulley use a straight edge on the PS pulley and stop installing when aligned with the other pulleys. In this case there is about 1mm of space still left to install the pulley but installing flush with the shaft would have pulled the pulley in a tinge too far.

The devil is in the details.

In order to convert the high side to an AN fitting I cut off the end of the high pressure hose.

This is the idea. Again TIG welded and painted.

Now if you wanted to use an original high pressure hose just take it off. I also use adapters that just screw into the steering gear.

That's it for the power steering pump. The new radiator arrived. However..........

Thank you Fed Ex for destroying a 752 dollar radiator. I swear FRAGILE translates to double dog dare you to destroy this package.

So the company is making me a new one, but it could be 16 weeks before I get it. <shaking head>

More to come.

 

[Action]

Is the PS pulley off by a mm?

Nice radiator, well except for that one spot.

Action

 

[redrag]

you can also always find a hydrolic shop and get jic fittings . they are steel, and can replace a n

 

[DesertXL]

Is the PS pulley off by a mm?

Nice radiator, well except for that one spot.

Action

Hi Action,

Well obviously a mm isn't going to matter on a V belt, a serpentine usually will squeal with the slightest misalignment. I was just crossing my T's and dotting my I's sort of thing.

Yuppers I don't know what some people think at times or if they even think at all. That expensive radiator should have been mini-crated in that box with 1/4" ply protecting it. Perhaps the new company that bought US Raditors will reconsider their shipping containers as even if they file a claim against Fed -Ex they still are going to have to eat a portion of that cost if not all of it, especially if Fed-Ex denies the claim, which they probably will.

752 dollars is not pocket change. Plus now I have to wait even longer to get another one.

Not happy.

Cheers