On a 65, you can remove the oil pan by simply removing the bolt on crossmember and unbolting the idler arm and centerlink to allow the steering to drop far enough for clearance. No need to raise the engine. I don't know about a '68 though.
On a 65, you can remove the oil pan by simply removing the bolt on crossmember and unbolting the idler arm and centerlink to allow the steering to drop far enough for clearance. No need to raise the engine. I don't know about a '68 though.
Since you are swapping in modern drivetrain... why not get rid of the Falcon based front suspension and do the Mustang II swap...
seems like it it once and done... as opposed to the original silly stuff Ford used... I've rebuilt many of those early power steering systems back in the day... and not one gave you a feeling of steering confidence....
In reply to oldeskewltoy:
I can't agree with using the Mustang II suspension, at least if you want the car to handle. The early cars are designed to be loaded in the shock towers, not the weak sheet metal frame rails like the MII does. The Mustang II setup works in a drag car, but otherwise you are better off upgrading the original suspension. There are a ton of parts that make them work way better than a MII will. As far as power steering goes, Borgeson and Cobra Automotive offer integral power steering systems (I have a Borgeson on my '65), and there are numerous rack and pinion options.
I've thought about the Borgeson many times over, but I just can't justify spending that kind of money on the car at this time, especially with so many other issues to address. I'd love a nice clean power steering system that actually works with spirited driving. Unisteer has a manual R&P kit on Jegs for $766, but I've also thought hard about using the AJE fox conversion up front too. The base kit is affordable for someone like me that needs to replace just about everything anyway. I know the strut system isn't as good as an SLA system, but when you add R&P front steering, I think it evens the odds pretty well. Of course that's a little ways down the line, gotta get her moving first.
I prefer a strut setup on these to the Mustang II. At least the strut setup attaches to the correct points on the car. Hell, my BMW does just fine with struts! I live near Unisteer, and have talked with their engineers. I originally bought their R+P, but have some health issues where I started getting worried about the steering effort, so I sold it before I ever installed it and bought the Borgeson when it came out. I'm not sure that was the best move, honestly, as it only goes about half way towards removing the play in the steering. I've talked with some people that think there's is better than mine, and even borgeson told me there should be virtually no play in the wheel, but I returned the box twice and it didn't help. They then cooled on helping me, even though I sent them a video showing that the play was all in the box, so now I just put up with it. I'm doing a bunch of other work on it right now, but later will likely swap it out for something better. So I'm not sure I'd recommend it, but YMMV.
Classic Performance Products has a P/S kit that runs $599 for everything, but it's for the 65/66 cars. That's the cheapest I've found by far for an all inclusive kit to add integrated P/S to our cars. From what I've gathered, the Borgeson is a mid-90's Isuzu unit, and the ABS guys use a mid 80's Toyota unit.
I've actually read about some of the drag race guy using 240z struts in the front so they could cut down the shock towers because big block.
I finally got off my ass and got that damned crossmember off the car. A couple nights during the week I would go down to the garage and spray the crap out of the two bolts with penetrating oil. I spent 2 hours getting those two bolts out on Saturday, 3/4 of a turn out then 1/4 of a turn in. The upper threads on them are pretty far gone, but the ones closest to the head are still good. I'll put em on the list of stuff to order. Once that was done, it was pretty much a straight forward affair. The idler arm came down with little fuss. I purchased the felpro 1-piece oil pan gasket to make my life easier under the car. Then it was just a matter of stabbing the dizzy, priming the system, reset timing, and away we went!! Last night was the first night the car actually made it out of my apartment parking lot. Good thing because it was pretty much completely out of gas. The car was surging along the way so I'm pretty sure something got sucked up in the carb. Oh well, it made it. I'd type more but I wanna go play now.
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