My 1969 'Stang
A Little History
Believe it or not, the old Mustang was my FIRST car... and I STILL have it. Puchased in the fall of 1974 while I was still 15 years old, the car had no idea of what it was in for. I distinctly remember the pain of having the car setting there in the driveway but having no (legal) means to enjoy driving it. Originally equipped with a two-barrel 351 Windsor engine, the car was extremely jacked up in the rear with no engine modifications. I spent the next several months cleaning and detailing my new found love in preparation for my 16th birthday. It was probably cleaner then than it ever has been since. Since I worked at an A&W drive-in before I owned the car, I definately had 'car fever'. For the first year of my ownership, the car was left pretty much alone. I did lower the backend down some by removing the air shocks that were in addition to the re-arched springs.
What Was Next
The summer after my 17th birthday I had a delimna... I had some extra money I wanted to spend on the car. But what to do? I originally went to purchase some fancy 'side pipes' of the day... those that look like you have full headers exiting behind the front tires and then dumping into a big 4" pipe. (In reality you only had a 2" pipe feeding that big 4" unit but it still looked pretty cool. It definately wouldn't help performance any though.) Once I got to the store to buy the pipes something happened. I can't remember if they didn't have them stock or I just chickened out.
I ended making a decision that I personally think changed my interest in the car for a long time to come. Instead of buy those 'showy' pipes, I came home with a new set of Appliance brand headers and shorty header mufflers. One of the downfalls of the Ford Windsor engines was it's limited exhaust capabilities and one of the best performance mods you could do to a car back then was headers. So after my friend Tab Marsh and I spent a day and a half trying to get these headers on the car... (it was a real pain since the car had power steering back then) we were ready to 'race'.
Hot Rod Heaven
The reason I say that decision changed my interest in the car is that IF I had bought the side pipes, I feel certain I would have been primarily concerned about the 'showiness' of the car and nothing about performance. By buying the headers I got a taste of increasing performance. I loved tinkering with my dirt bikes looking for that 'extra edge' before I got my car license so I guess it might have been natural to do the same with the car but now I was hooked.
The car became nearly my ONLY interest and I continued to try to get all the performance out of it I could. The next improvement was a new intake manifold. I wanted the Ford 'Shelby' intake for the 351W but at nearly $200 back then, I just couldn't come up with the cash. I settled instead on a 'split port' job which probably was a good choice since it would help provide more low end torque. Of course now I had to have a four-barrel carb too and a new 780cfm Holley was in order.
Performance improved dramatically and now I was ready to get serious (ha ha) about racing. I remember that summer of street racing nearly every night and working on tweeking the car out during the day. By then I had 'moved up' to working at the Humpty-Dumpty grocery store as a sacker. This gave me the whole day to work on the car, work the evening shift, and then go racing after getting off work. The most fun was racing a huge guy we called 'Tiny' in his 440 powered Chrysler. The car was completely stock and would run head-to-head with my modified 'Stang. Of course we would have been lucky if we were running 15 or 16 second quarter mile times but the was fun... and dangerous too. Somebody must have been watching over me all those years since I was never present during any mishaps while street racing.The Way It Is
Today the car sits in the garage in the middle of a long, long rebuild project... in fact it's being going on now for nearly 10 years and it's not much further along than it was when it began. I have a plan but time, money and committment are hard to come by today.
Oh well, here's the plan:
- Replace full floor plans with repro units
The old floor pans are shot and while the interior is out they will be replaced.- Rebuild front end assembly
The front end of this car has always been a problem and with everything being apart, now is the time to get it right. Plans call for a complete rebuild/replace of front end components and dropping the mounting points for the upper a-arms to make it handle somewhat better. New lower control arms, bushing, upper spring mounts, etc are planned. Also some welding and reinforcement is needed in the shock tower areas.- Check back soon for more plans...