In the past 3 weeks, I have been working on small things on the side, mostly while waiting for parts. I have made some progress on the brakes, but each step has been leading to 2 steps back (and more waiting for parts). I thought I would share a few of the little details to fill in the space

The 1 inch anti-sway bar finally arrived. I ordered it when I ordered the front suspension, but it’s been delayed for weeks. It’s much thicker and heavier than the original. As you can see, it came with the mounting brackets, but not the bolts for the front retainers. I was able to solve that with a quick trip to the local hardware store for 4 bolts and 4 lock nuts. Cheaper than CJ and faster.

I ran into some trouble mounting it since the car is still not on the ground. The geometry is wrong so I cant compress the bushings enough to get the nut on the top of the rod where it attaches to the lower control arm. Another thing waiting for tires to touch the ground. For now, its just held in place with the lower bushing removed.

I spent a little time cleaning up the horns and re-finishing them. I really need to test them out. Evidently its as easy as attaching them to the 2 terminals on the battery, which I have charging from the trailer here in the garage. I should look around for some wires I can use for testing that. I probably have something from the trickle charger wiring set. Pro tip from future me: DO THIS. I ultimately had to replace horns.

Everything I read says they should be mounted facing the ground. Well, I hope I got it right since this meets that requirement. Digging around the old pre-restoration shots, I think I got it right.

I don’t remember if I mentioned it earlier or not, but I also mounted the center riser for the hood latch. More waiting for mounting hardware. I hope I don’t have to take these things off again later when I start putting the engine together. Either way, its probably the best place to store these things while I am digging out the recycle pile.

I ordered some front brake lines. It turns out that nothing is that easy with this since I have started down the path of non original. Brakes in this case. The lines outside the engine bay will work. They connect up as you see here, and go in just behind the spring into the interior of the engine bay. I will need to get a fitting to connect to the next line, and the rubber seal for the hole through the shock tower, but they will work. Note: This is the drum brake hard/flexible line mounting point. Stock disc is different, but both work for aftermarket kits like this.

I also got the line that crosses across the firewall, but since I am replacing the stock brakes with a Wilwood system, I need to fabricate some brake lines so they all connect up. Doing the math, it would cost about the same to have that done as it would for the nice tools. I think it’s time to learn a new skill.  More on that later.

As I mentioned, I am going with a complete Wilwood brake system. The master cylinder has arrived. That’s when I realized I didn’t get the kit and had to order the proportioning valve and mounting hardware as well. Here’s what it looks like put together. Pretty slick. Pro Tip: I later learned the left mounting distribution gets in the way of the hydraulic clutch and had to switch to the passenger side mounting kit. Plan ahead.

The next thing I learned was that the master cylinder is held in place by the pedal assembly itself. The bolts go through the MC and the firewall, and the nut is part of the pedal assembly.  So I started cleaning up my pedal assembly.

Not a bad starting point. Remember it originally came with the 3 speed, so the original pedal assembly has the clutch pedal. It has a bit of surface rust, but nothing the blast cabinet can’t make short work of. Taking it apart was pretty straight forward, as was cleaning it up. Once I looked it over, I found a little secret from the clutch pedal.

The housing was egged out. It looks like this may have been one of the reasons a previous owner thought to switch out the transmission to an automatic. The clutch pedal could not have been operating very well.

Here you can see it’s not just warped, but totally broken.  Doing some research, I found Mustang Steve can take this and replace it with a bearing setup that he welds on, then aligns the pedals correctly. Sounds like a deal, following the “never going to do this again” motto, so rebuilding it to be final. I expect the assembly to arrive back here this week.  I will update on that when I am putting it all together with the master cylinder mounting.