A ’66 Mustang Gets A 5-Speed Fix - Detroit Muscle S3, E5

Today in Detroit, we'll take an old-school Mustang and throw some new-school technology at it, figure out how to hook a late-model five-

speed

overdrive into a first-generation Pony, and get in the driver's seat, too. of one of the most desirable second generation Camaros is out there today, let's play with this 1966 Mustang hardtop, yes it's kind of a 302, it has a c4 automatic and obviously has an older personality, with more of 9 million built since April. 1964, the Ford Mustang is the best-selling American Muscle platform of all time. His iconic status has been maintained during what has been an uninterrupted career of more than 50 years to this day.

One of the most popular is the first generation of ponies like this slightly modern powered 1966 example, sporting one of the infamous Eleanor body kits, this little white Ford is a good cruiser, but it comes with some of the common problems of a old car and we brought a decibel meter to measure how loud this will make it work. Calculate correctly if You see what I'm saying, everyone praises them after letting it run a little at 55 and it goes right to 93, it's the quietest car ever, it's not really what you think, okay, so let's go to the highway.

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now on the interstate i knew it said well on the interstate we average about 90 this car is definitely very loud it says it's a lot like car horns or even a concert we've all been to it feels like you have a head full of interstate cotton for an hour.

I'm ready to go. We embarked on this, so to make it a more comfortable Cruiser, we have to take our pens on the road. The best way to do it. is swapping this three-speed automatic transmission for an overdrive Now, after taking our old Mustang on a field trip, we definitely noticed that it could use some upgrades to bring it into the 21st century. Now it's a pretty good old car, but that's exactly what an old car is, the steering and brakes are fine, they could definitely use some upgrading and as we were driving down the highway it was definitely loud at rpm, We are very high up, so to lower them we will install an overdrive, everyone knows that.

Hitting the gears and a stick shift is a lot more fun than one of those wows, it's tragic and you know, four speeds aren't going to give us that overdrive we're looking for and to do all that we'll use this t5. five speed that we have from the American drivetrain, this thing has a final ratio of 0.63 and what does that translate to, if you're only driving at about 3000 rpm, you put it in overdrive, you'll be sitting at about 1900 and that's It'll just be mmm oh how sweet, of course there are a lot of little things you'll need to complete a transmission swap like this.

Do you need a cross member that is specific to your vehicle? Now, of course, you will need a clutch pedal. Speedometer Cable and Bell Housing Hardware Now there are different bell housings depending on your power level but for our application this OEM unit will be fine now we chose this super street clutch kit that comes with the flywheel pressure plate and clutch disc clutch which is an organic blend of Kevlar. For longer life and durability you can now complete your conversion with just the parts listed along with a factory style manual clutch fork system, but for us we decided to go with a Hydra Max hydraulic clutch system from the American powertrain.

The centerpiece is this hydraulic release bearing and it's powered by this master cylinder with a proprietary housing and bracket assembly, but before we can install those new parts, we need to rip the old ones off on this particular car, the first thing we'll have What to do is get the driver's seat. Side header out of the way the reason we have to do this is because the bellhousing is too big to fit between the header tubes so one of them has to go next, it will be the driveshaft, be careful with the oil when it arrives.

Off the tail shaft, we can then begin work on loosening the bellhousing as well as removing the starter motor. We'll crank the engine to turn the torque converter so we can access the bolts holding it to the rear axle. flex plate we also have to remove these coolant lines from the transmission with the conversion to manual, these will not be reused so they will be gone with the transmission, then we will unclip the link and disconnect it, we also have to get the old speedometer removed kit comes with a new one that will replace this unit the cross member is ready to be removed which finally allows us to lower the old c4 automatic from the car so our last victim will be this flex plate which of course will be replaced by a flywheel for a big bad transmission five speed, oh and don't forget the spreader plate is coming, how hard will it be to fit a big bodied transmission into that old four, stick around and find out later.

I'll tell you why these zwerling second-generation Camaros were appreciated, but that's changing quickly. Hello, welcome back. Now we're in the middle of this five-speed conversion on a '66 Mustang. We pulled out all the old stuff and are getting ready to put it in. The new thing first of all are these pins, now they are going to align the pressure plate with the steering wheel. Let's go ahead and install them first. The American drivetrain kit we were using came with a new pilot bearing and from our car. it wasn't automatic it didn't have one a impact socket on a brass hammer will snap it into place now our spacer plate can be put back on the back of the block and then we are ready to plug in our new flywheel which we will use a bit of red threadlocker to hold everything in place and then tighten the bolts to spec before anything else happens with the new flywheel you want to clean the mating surface with some brake cleaner, the clutch disc can then be Place and align using the tool provided with the kit, the pressure plate is next, making sure to align the pins for a proper fit.

These bolts are also tightened. 235 foot-pounds. We're going to temporarily assemble the bell housing because we need to do some measuring. We have our bellhousing bolted on, but it's only temporary because we're going to have to make a measurement from this surface to the fingers of the pressure plate so we can set the tolerance for our slave cylinder. We place a ruler. against the bell and measured it to the fingers where the release bearing mounts. Ok, we have our bell housing mounted on the transmission and we are ready to install the clutch slave cylinder or release bearing, which we need to do.

What we do is we remove this little bolt and replace it with this dummy because that's what keeps everything aligned and the hoses on top. Then we can take our measurements. It's that easy, just remove the bolt here and tighten this one down. You can always add a little. Locker thread or lock, then we slide the hydraulic release bearing into place making sure to line it up with the bolt. You will need to measure the thickness of the bellhousing and add that measurement to the distance from the inside of the bellhousing flange to the surface of the release bearing, then the bearing can be removed to install the correct number of shims needed.

It takes 320 thousand hours, which is equivalent to five shims, you slide them into place followed by the release bearing and you're ready to do one more quick measurement just to make sure that that gives us a hundred and fifty thousand of clearance between this surface and the surface of the fingers on the pressure plate. Now we can plug our new transmission into place under our Mustang. We have to take out the exhaust on the Solo a bit, since the transmission body is a little bigger, that's not a big deal. We'll also use a screw jack to tilt the engine back a little.

We are discovering that the recoil lever will have to be cut to make room for the bell housing, which is easy to pick up with a cut-off wheel. Up next, it's the nimble brother to your big-block Camaros and then we'll finish the installation and manual conversion on our little white Chevy Mustang that's finally joined the pony. car stampede in '67 with the sexy new Camaro when it came time for the second generation, fans had to wait a little longer to get their hands on it, but it was worth the wait, buyers found themselves with a radical departure of the 69 that he shared. same wheelbase, but was longer, wider and lower than previous models, took its styling cues from European sports cars, the roof was moved rearward to exaggerate the short-deck look of the long hood and rear Rear had round taillights, most notably an addition with the wide-mouth grille and headlights molded into the fenders.

Many people refer to the second generation as split bumpers, but only rally sports came that way. The package included bumpers, turn signals mounted next to the headlights, and an extended nose made from durable new bodywork. The styling also fixed many shortcomings of the first generation, which was rushed into production to compete against the Mustang. The first generations were noisy and lacked some performance sell, so GM engineers added a new front subframe to the monocoque that provided greater overall rigidity. Block power could be had with an SS 396, but for more refined highway handling there was the racing z28.

New Trans Am regulations allowed larger displacement engines, so the Z has a new engine to replace them. Chevy released the lt1 350 straight from the vet. It ran 11-to-1 compression, the highest on the 82nd Jen, using solid lifters, aluminum pistons, a hot cam, and extra-large valves for small blocks. It made a huge officially rated horsepower of 360. The z28 came with the f40 one suspension package which gave it higher rated shocks and springs. and front and rear stabilizer bars, plus you have a posi rear with up to 410 speeds, power brakes, 7-inch mag wheels, f 60 by 15 polyethylene glass and a rear spoiler.

Racing stripes completed the look and were unique to the z28. This marked the first. At the time when the badge didn't have a bar between the Z and the 28, inside there was a new wraparound dashboard with gauges moved from the console to the instrument panel. This also features the luxury finish option. The z28 now comes with the option of a hydraulic turbo. matic 400 or a Hurst for speed there are several year-only features to help spot a 70 Camaro. The appearance of a chrome nose seat in the trunk is unique: this was the only second generation with a Chevrolet Camaro inside of individual seats. should have low backrest with adjustable headrests, this was also the only year the z28s had a bottom hinged accelerator pedal and the only 2nd gen Zs that came with a 12 volt rear.

Frank Marullo has always loved all of the second Jim's cars. It's great to drive, it really doesn't have any weak points, it has a lot of power, it has great brakes and it handles very well and your son loves them, for another reason you don't see it much and we are usually the only ones to do it. a car show, no one really knows what it is, that's because the second generation is a victim of its own. Yes, it was such a success that the new body style lasted 11 years, the longest of any Camaro, so the '70 is usually grouped with those later models. that have far less horsepower, many people simply don't realize how unique and powerful the 70 version is.

It's a car that's almost guaranteed to make you want to catch any Z with its back to the rest. He's modifying our Mustang to finish that 5-speed shifter. guys, while you were gone we went ahead and installed the rest of the metal housing bolts, tightened them, put our urethane bracket in place, now it's time to move on to this crossbar, now that we're nearing the end, we have the transmission installed. and we go ahead and install the clutch pedal we ran into a little problem but it's no big deal let me show you what I'm talking about as our car is automatic it has a wider brake pedal and we added this extra pedal well .

It's going to hit, so we're going to trim it a little bit, no big deal, just a simple well, we have clearance, but it's a little too tight, so we're going to trim it just to make it more flavorful, yeah, that's it better. so we went ahead and unbolted our brake master cylinder and moved it out of the way a little bit to make more room to fit that bracket for our clutch master. Once we did that, we found out that this bracket was hitting it and what this is. this holds theproportional valve to the master brake and we just cut it a little bit and that will fit just fine.

We also go ahead and measure and cut a rod to fit so it's ready to go in, then we'll get our clutch. master bolted into place we will install our reservoir and the hose that connects to it and then finally our pressure line we almost have our transmission conversion bolted up the last thing we need to do is measure a driveshaft and luckily , American powertrain offers that service and they will also give you a little worksheet. We have to do our homework. You want to measure from the surface of the machine here, where the seal goes to the center point.

Measuring the driveshaft camber, the right way to do it is with the rear ride height, so we're going to put these screw jacks here, we're going to set it to the ride height and then we're going to take our measurement now, you can let it not be so. very far, but every little bit counts and you don't know if your rear ends will move forward or backward once you load it, so to be safe, we'll load it now with this yoke on the rear end, a good rule of thumb is to have this horizontally that way the pinion angle doesn't affect the measurement at the tamper, the flange, the center of the cap, so measure up there with a ruler and it's 53 and 360.

Now we need to determine which joint we want . I need you to know, so we need to measure the cup of the joint and it's an inch and 16. Any measurement for your joint you're going to make sure to push the cups in on both sides and you also don't want to use the little hook here on the end. Therefore the thing moves and can influence its measurement. Oh, like we're okay, we're at three and a quarter looking at our chart, we have a 13 10, well, we're going to send all this information to the American powertrain and We'll have a driveshaft in a couple of days.

Now we don't have much to do with this car, but we do have a couple of tricks up our sleeves, but you'll have to wait until next time for that.