Finally, the mad thrash leading up to Drag Week is over, Drag Week is done, my business trip to Europe is over, the shop has been thoroughly cleaned (took a good three weeks!), and I've had my big Drag Week victory party. FINALLY, I'm back now on this project. I had Friday, Saturday and Sunday more or less free, so I got back to work getting all the new components for this car hooked up.
The biggest items were the hydraulic clutch setup and the master cylinder and brake lines, so I started there. Figured it would take me a full day to get all this done. What a joke LOL! I'll bet I've got 20 hours in this part already, and haven't even started running the lines. I started by removing the master cylinder in order to get access down below to mount the clutch cylinder. After pulling the master cylinder, I knew I was in for more than I had originally bargained for:
The firewall is totally hacked up. To the right of the clutch rod you can see the remnants of the original hole where it came through the firewall, and it has been hogged out towards the middle of the car so that the clutch rod can come through. Why was this done? I have no idea. But looking at the clutch rod itself, there have obviously been some "modifications":
The problem here was that the new hydraulic clutch cylinder is supposed to bolt onto the firewall, around the original hole. Since that area has been opened up, I had to fabricate a custom piece to bridge the enlarged hole, in order to support the hydraulic clutch cylinder. The cylinder and the 1/8" steel backing plate that comes with it sandwiches the firewall to hold it in place. I ended up making a whole new steel backing plate. The picture below shows the original backing plate on the right, and the new one that goes across the hole and bolts to the firewall on the left:
Of course another issue with all this is that there's a fair amount of work to be done under the dash. I'd forgotten how much fun that was
Trying to get the bolts through the plate from under the dash, while my son held the hydraulic clutch cylinder in place on the engine compartment side, caused lots of cramps in my arms and neck, and bumps on the head. Finally, at the end of the day on Saturday, I got the clutch cylinder in position and bolted down:
Sunday morning I got out to the shop, expecting the Wilwood master cylinder installation to go much more quickly. It did, sort of, but fabrication was required here also. The Wilwood master cylinder just had a threaded rod coming out the end to attach to the brake pedal. No way I could just screw on a rod end and bolt it to the Mustang brake pedal; the pedal has a fairly thick stud coming out of it, and of course the brake light switch is also integrated into this assembly. After thinking about this for a while I decided to cut the end off the original master cylinder pushrod, and graft that onto the Wilwood master cylinder. So I cut the end off the original master cylinder pushrod, and also cut the threaded portion off the 3/8" rod end. Then I bored the rod end out to a depth of 1/8" or so, and pressed the original master cylinder pushrod end into place. Here's a picture of the Wilwood master cylinder, and the original pushrod that was cut, the rod end that was cut, and the 3/8" original master cylinder end pressed into the threaded body of the rod end. Also shown is the brake light switch:
The Sharpie marks on the rod of the Wilwood master cylinder are where it needed to be threaded down to, so I took a tap and threaded the rod all the way down to the second Sharpie mark. Then I welded the old master cylinder end into the piece of the rod end that I'd cut off. Then I had to cut the Wilwood rod down to the correct length, but after filing that smooth I was able to thread the "new" rod end onto the Wilwood master cylinder, along with a jam nut:
With this arrangement I can adjust the length of the master cylinder pushrod, lock it with the jam nut when I've got it correct, and still use the factory brake light switch.
After a break this afternoon to watch some football, I got back out to the shop tonight, and mounted the rear brake proportioning valve, and also the reservoir for the hydraulic clutch cylinder. Here's a picture of everything bolted into place:
Despite the new parts this corner of the engine compartment is a real mess. But this car is going to be a driver, not a show car, so at this point I'm satisfied that everything is solidly in place and functional. I still need to finish the clutch rod and master cylinder rod hookup under the dash (
), and then run the lines and bleed the brakes, but hopefully the rest of this job won't be as bad the last couple days. I'll try to post another update on this project next weekend - Jay
