Our Favorite Tech Tips

You can use old engine, alternator, air pump, and power steering pullies to bend tubing such as fuel lines and transmission cooling lines. They give you smooth, professional looking curves. Just place the tubing and pulley perpendicular in the jaws of a vice, and gradually pull towards you, following the curve of the pulley. I've done tubing that I swear you couldn't tell from factory bent tubing. Collect different size pullies to give you different radius bends. This methods prevents kinking, also. ----Steve LaRiviere

If you need to pull a torque converter seal, use the spare tire j-bolt. Works slick. ----Mike LaRiviere

A little trick to putting in a headliner 71/73 Mustang. On the back quarter there are a number of teeth that you need to bend out to stretch the new liner on. A nut pick (From your favorite walnut bowl) works perfectly to bend them out. You can then stretch the new headliner over the teeth and bend them back down. Worked great for me............
----BOB429 {Robert Lovell}

I thought I would pass on to you all what we discovered in removing
the lower control arm from the spindle on a '67 Mustang.

First, the distance between the upper control arm tapered, threaded bolt and the lower control arm tapered, threaded bolt is approximately 5 1/2 inches. I took a piece of 1/2" pipe 4" long and put a 1/2" bolt in one end and in the other end a 1/2" bolt with a nut and washer. This way, I was able to place this assembly between the ends of the tapered, threaded bolts and by turning the nut while holding the bolt fixed and pop the upper control arm off. I got the idea from the 67 manual.

This was easy.

The problem was the lower control arm. I tried a ball joint pickle fork but it seemed that the pickle fork fingers were too long and hit the spindle's tie rod arm. I could not position the pickle fork to apply any force to the lower ball joint. I tried to find a pickle fork with shorter fingers but it appears that if anything is standard in this world it is the length of pickle fork fingers.

The solution: We took a 2x4 wood block and placed it between the lower control arm and the frame connection of the lower control arm and placed a jack under the brake drum. When we jacked up the brake drum to the point where it would just start to lift the car, it forced the spindle in such a position where we were able to insert the pickle fork and miss the spindle's tie rod arm. With a few whacks of a 3 lb hammer on the end of the pickle fork, the lower control arm popped off the spindle. This worked on both sides of the car. Sounds dumb, but it worked. I had spent two night hitting the side of the spindle trying to shake it loose. I even tried a rotary hammer drill with a blunt stub to vibrate it loose. Only the wood block worked.
----APONY4ME

I've got an AM radio in my '66 GT fastback, and it has four wires coming out the side - two blacks, a black with green stripe and a blue with red stripe. What goes where?

I found the wiring is as follows:
Blue with Red stripe - light
Black with Green stripe - speaker
One Black - chassis ground and other speaker
Other Black is power.
You need to open up the case and see which black goes to chassis ground.
----Allen, '66GT Fastback

If you have to change valve springs with the head on the car, you can do this without compressed air.
Just take natural {soft} rope, put the cylinder at BDC, feed about three feet of the rope through the
spark plug hole, then turn the motor by hand until the rope is compressed and holding the valves in place.

After you've changed the valve springs, just turn the motor counterclockwise, and remove the rope.
----Steve LaRiviere

What's the easiest way to remove the brake cables from the backing plates? Use worm-type hose clamps
to compress the springs and they'll fall right out ----Steve LaRiviere

Did you know you can use the newer wide-terminal cap and rotor on older Ford distributors and lessen the chance of
spark crossfire in the cap? You'll need the newer type spark plug wires, though. ----Steve LaRiviere

To use this tool I attach 3 to 4 feet of 1/4" vacuum hose to the 1/4" fitting. The other end gets hooked up to any
vacuum port on the intake. Then I put the cigar into the 1/4" fitting that is in the end cap. I then light the cigar
and screw on the end cap to the rest of the tool. I then hook up regulated compressed air (low air pressure) to the
mag wheel valve stem on the other end cap. This will force the smoke from the cigar into the intake. Using a halogen
type flashlight, you will see smoke coming out somewhere if you have a leak. Also, you can use rags or any other
thing you can find to stop the smoke from escaping though the top of the carb. You could also unadjust your rocker
arms so no smoke gets into the cylinders. One more thing, although I have a hugh compressor, I use a small tire
compressor that you can get from any parts store that has a locking valve stem fitting on the end of the hose.
I also cut the cigarette lighter end off and put some battery charger clamps on the end of the wires.
WaLa, have fun. ----Richard Swart