Chapter 13
If It Isn't One Thing It Will Be the Next
by Ryan King
5/11
The heater core needed to be replaced.
As a matter of course with this car, that led to removing the engine.
If you remember where we left off with Chapter 12, I had just replaced the intake to fix a leak that was caused by a hole in a coolant passage in the original intake. When I replaced the intake, I hooked up the heater core. That's when the problems with the car jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. The heater core wasn't any good and was leaking under the dash.
In order to get the heater core out of car, it required the removal of the heater plenum, which required the removal of both the dash and the A/C lines from the condenser. Since I had to remove the A/C lines, I figured I'd just pick up the A/C Eliminator kit from Ford Racing (which is really the factory brackets for Fox-Bodied Mustangs without A/C). Since my original 5.0 was a non-A/C car – and I didn't want A/C on this car – I decided to make it a non-A/C car while I was in the heater plenum, which houses both the heater core and the A/C condenser.
While I was busy removing the A/C lines and pump from the car, I ran into the first problem with the extensive repair I’d outlined in the previous chapter. The coupler for the line going into the heater plenum was frozen and would not come free. In fact, I twisted the metal line trying to undo it. So to start, I had to cut the line itself to remove it, thus solidifying the change from A/C to non-A/C. Just so you know, if you have to disconnect your A/C system, you should have the system bled by a certified shop so as to keep the refrigerant from escaping into the atmosphere and destroying our very precious and overtaxed environment.
All was going well, until I realized that it would be far easier to get to the clutch linkage and inspect it for the nasty squeaking noise it was making with the dash out of the way (again see Chapter 12). Not to mention replace the adjustable clutch quadrant.
A lot of people want an adjustable clutch linkage, but I’ve had one in the first Project LX Mustang and I had a few reasons for swapping it back to a factory adjustable set up:
- The previous owners had replaced the clutch with a King Cobra clutch kit (which was softer than the factory clutch) and didn't need the strength of the adjustable quadrant
- I didn't want to screw with adjusting the damn clutch every 5,000-10,000 miles when the factory one could do it for me
- I also had the old factory quadrant from the other Project LX chassis and a new factory cable lying around
Of course, nothing goes as planned.
It seems that I was missing an important spring for the factory clutch quadrant and nobody sells just that spring. Ford, however, did sell the quadrant and support shaft as an assembly.
Any reservations I had about the cost of returning to an adjustable linkage were completely laid to rest when the adjustable cable fell apart in my hands after I removed it. It was cheaper to buy the quadrant assembly than a new cable for the adjustable linkage so I continued with my plan to return the clutch linkage to the factory self-adjusting setup.
I had hopes that replacing the cable and lubricating the ball connector and clutch fork seat when I replaced the linkage might cure the ear-piercing squeak, but it didn’t. It was coming form further in the bell housing.
That, of course, meant removing the transmission. On the positive side, I needed to repair whatever was causing the excessive whining in the transmission, so it had to come out for that anyway. However, as you can see, this story is becoming a sad sort of comedy. More a comedy of errors or a good ol' Shakespearian tragedy really – all the story would need is a window and two star crossed lovers and the car already had several windows to choose from.
Things just continued to get worse from there.
How much worse?
The whine wasn't a bad front bearing (or any other bearing). The teeth of the countershaft that mated to the input shaft had been bent over, and those of the input shaft didn't look much better.
To make matters worse, I pulled the bellhousing to take a look at the condition of the clutch fork and found the clutch installation the previous owners had done was in keeping with all of the other work they’d done to the car.
I was horrified.
There are a few basics that need to be followed when replacing a clutch in a 5.0 Mustang, such as resurfacing or replacing the flywheel and – although the factory repair manual for an ’89 Mustang doesn’t state this – replacing the flywheel and pressure plate bolts as well as the alignment dowels with knew ones is a good measure for safety.
The bolts were replaced all right. They used random 5/16" bolts…in a number of different lengths. Four were grade eight, one was grade five, and one had no grade markings at all.
Scary, huh? It gets even scarier when you know that the threads for 5.0 pressure plate bolts are 8mm not 5/16".
To keep the sloppy fitting 5/16" bolts in place, they used a chemical threadlocking compound that appeared to be Loctite Red or an equivalent.
As a side note, while they used a Valeo pressure plate they called a “King Cobra,” they also used some oddball clutch disk I couldn’t identify.
Since I had to replace or completely rebuild the transmission before it could go back in – and I didn’t have the necessary parts to do so – I had to take the time to research my parts needs and options.
That research time gave me the opportunity to think about other problems.
After looking at the engine, I knew that someone, somewhere along the line had removed at least one of the head bolts. I knew this because there was a ground strap that was supposed to be connected to the engine under the lower rear driver side head bolt that had been removed.
Because of everything else wrong with this car I felt a strong compulsion to go take a look at what may have been damaged in the engine.
It was a good thing too, after removing the saddest set of headers I've ever seen (they were called "MAC long tube headers" in the auction but definitely weren’t), I discovered that one of the lower cylinder head bolts was busted off.
Since I was removing the heads, I figured it would be a good idea to just re-gasket the whole engine and that lead me to break off a frozen water pump bolt in the block, which ultimately lead to removing the engine so that I could get the seized fastener out.
FYI, the heads were never removed – thankfully.
Who knows how much more damage could have been wrought on this poor thing had they actually managed to make it the rest of the way into the engine.
Hang on for Chapter 14 and the demise of ’89 Mustang as well as the dawn of the ’93 Hatchback.