Resurrecting the Mustang

It was the summer of 1988. I was completing my Advanced Instruments portion of my flight training and coming up on my first break since I had started training in February. My wife’s car (a 1968 Ford Mustang she’d bought from her father before our marriage) had just spun a bearing in the engine requiring an overhaul. Because we needed 2 functional cars, I’d bought a 3rd card (a 1972 Ford LTD Station Wagon) we named Bernadette as a temporary vehicle while the Mustang was sidelined. Money was tight. We had a new baby, two other children and the normal bills people have, but I had Anna, the greatest money manager a husband could have. She had managed to work the budge out to where I could afford to fix her car.

The repair of the car was going to be a well-orchestrated and timed maneuver. I had a Thirteen-day gap between Advanced Instruments (The Bain of my existence in flight school) and Basic Combat Skills. During that two weeks I had two, two-hour classes and no other demands upon my time. The engine overhaul was a go.

This is not an endeavor I was taking lightly. I had never rebuilt an engine solo before. I had worked on several with my father growing up and done some engine work with my brother (a master mechanic) and I had been a Wheeled-Vehicle Mechanic as a soldier before I had gone to flight school. But even there I had never rebuilt an engine as that was work done at a higher maintenance level than I had been assigned. Regardless, here I was borrowing the neighbor’s engine hoist and lifting this engine out of the car by myself. My neighbor was working and Anna was busy keeping track of three boys leaving essentially on my own.

Pulling the engine was pretty forthright and I cannot recall any major hurdles. It seems the engine came out with the minimum of hassle and mistakes by yours truly. The engine teardown also went pretty smoothly. I’m sure I’d called my father and talked to my neighbor Stanley about different things and I was prepared for what I needed to get done. I took the 289 cubic-inch engine block, crankshaft, camshaft, and heads to a local machine shop to have the block checked and machined as needed. I knew the heads needed some valves replaced, new valve seats and seals and new bearings for the cam and crank. I got a call from the machine shop the next day telling me that the crankshaft could not be salvaged but that he had a used one available for$100 or so. I told him fine and to continue with the machining of the engine. No other surprises emerged and I picked up the reworked block with cam and crank installed, and the reworked heads. Now it was my job to put it back together.

While the engine was being reworked, I had taken the time to clean up the engine bay and to try and assemble all the parts I would need for the build. Since I was rebuilding, all the build parts plus whatever was needed for an engine tune up, (Plugs, points, filters etc.) were also needed. The engine had failed due to the manufacturer’s use of a nylon toothed timing gear on the camshaft. They were used to make the engine quieter but they had a defect that as they aged the teeth on the gear became brittle and would break off. These bits of nylon would them make their way through the oil channels to the oil pan. When enough had broken off, they were sucked into the oil pump inlet where the eventually clogged the filter screen on the pump. This deprived the engine of oil and the main crank bearings failed due to oil starvation. As a result, both the oil pump and the timing gear and timing chain were also replaced.

The new timing gear was solid metal and is still working to this day. I gapped and installed new piston rings .030 oversize due to cylinder wear. (I was lucky as the cylinder wear was even and little machining of the cylinders was required.) and over the next few days installed the pistons and heads, adjusted the valves, installed the new oil pump and timing gear assembly. I can clearly remember one moment in this build. I was torqueing down the head bolts on the engine and my oldest two sons (David & Kevin) were watching me with great interest. I could see in their eyes the amazement that their father was a great mechanic who could rebuild engines and fix anything. At the same time, their father was praying to God to let this damn thing work. I found that moment so iconic and ironic.

Finally, the engine is together. I got the hoist out, drop the engine back into the car, bolted up the transmission and connect all the wiring and hoses. Now comes the moment of truth. Will it start? With great trepidation, I got into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The engine fired up immediately! Unfortunately, there was also a loud metallic squall associated with the engine. A quick recon revealed that I’d made only one assembly error, I had installed the flywheel backwards on the engine and the 3/8-inch difference was just enough that the flywheel was rubbing on the transmission bell housing. Three hours later, I had pulled the block back out, reversed the flywheel and reinstalled the engine. Viola! The engine started without a problem. A little fine tuning and minor adjustments and the build was finished and the car resurrected. I think I even had a day to spare.

A few weeks later, we determined that we couldn’t afford to keep three cars and that the 1968 Mustang and the 1977 F-150 Supercab were the vehicles to keep so we decided to sell Bernadette. (I really liked that car too.) I put for sale signs in the back windows and it was only about a week before we got a call from some nice soldiers from the Netherlands who decided to buy the car. $600 in traveler’s checks later, the car was sold and we went on to our next adventure.