Hey Stinky!

So getting to the bottom of why it smells of exhaust in the car most of the time, we figured out that the exhaust manifold gasket was completely shot. This and the exhaust pipe was also in bad shape. We replaced these two, and took the opportunity to paint the exhaust manifold.

Keeping the rusty bolts in order so they go back in right. We put a good coat of Anti-seize on them so we don't have issues next time the manifold needs to come out.

The Accelerator return spring attaches to the exhaust doughnut flange. It's was time for a replacement, this one rusted through as we were taking it off. Replaced with a nice shiny stainless steel replica that should last forever.

Here you can see the leakage, exhaust gasses, and is that oil?

Nice results with high temp paint.

High Energy Ignition Upgrage

The HEI Ignition system is not a traditional Ford ignition system, but there are good drop in replacements for the standard Ford distributor that make this an easy upgrade for the Mustang. If you believe all the claims, it's a hotter spark, longer dwell and simpler design. Initially we had gone with the original distributor, a Pertronix ignition module, and a Pertronix Ignition coil. After the issues we had with the ignition while doing the T5, we did a bit of research and found that it would not be much more expensive to replace the whole distributor, electronic ignition, and coil with an HEI. This would also correct the strange issue we were having with cracked distributor buttons. We are on our 4th button in the 3 or so years the car has been running, and there are not that many miles on it in that time.

The Pertronix Module

Old Ignition Coil (that went bad)

The old distributor, wires, and ignition coil

Adjustment of the Pertronix

Replacing the vacuum advance

So this fall when it got cold, we had a number of issues. We ended up adjusting the distance of the Pertronix module, changing the vacuum advance, and a few other debugging steps. Looking back on this, I think part of our problem was that the ignition coil was starting to fail.

Here is the new HEI replacement that includes the distributor, the ignition control module, and the coil.

HEI Distributor with Vacuum Advance

While upgrading the transmission we found that we were getting voltage sag at the ignition coil, which is a common issue, and easily remedied with an ignition relay. These are common since probably the 1970's but this car did not have as part of the original design. This was already on the to-do list, so we went ahead and added that to get things running again.

The new kit included new wires, and recommended a spark gap of 0.045 to 0.050" which is larger than the standard gap so we decided it was a good excuse to do the plugs too. 

Before pulling the old distributor, with the spark plugs off, we turned the engine to the TDC mark on the crankshaft pulley. We know from our previous experiments, that the TDC mark is for cylinder 6 and NOT cylinder 1. With this in mind, we started with wire 6, and went around the firing order listed on the engine 1-5-3-6-2-4. So we wired 6-2-4-1-5-3 starting with the wire where the distributor button was pointing at, and going clockwise around the distributor.

Fired right up! A quick twist, and then we readjusted the wires for the new TDC position we needed. Second start was nice and smooth. We also now see the timing gun fire on every pass. Previously it was skipping a strobe once in a while, and looking back that's probably a misfire, or a cylinder that would diesel and run rough.