1963 Ford Falcon Futura

That is a wild idea. Cutting down two V8 heads to make a 6 cylinder head and then epoxying it together? That took some balls to even try.

In reply to Ditchdigger:

Only some fan blades can be turned around and still work properly. PM with what your fan requirements are. I'm a Spal distributor and have a lot of them laying around in my lab. I may be able to hook you up cheap.

Oops!

mismeasured somehow. Hood didn't close. I figured it out though. The original radiator tanks weren't square. The ends have a bit of an angle that allows it to sit lower. I can do that to this one too. I might need to relocate the filler as well.

:shrug: Still no hurry. Looks like a pusher will require some trimming of the core support.

The good news is that my long term work project '62 250GTE is now a roller so I can move it on and off the lift and get back under the Falcon on weekends and evenings.

Thanks for the update. This is one of my favorite Build Threads.

Ditchdigger wrote: The good news is that my long term work project '62 250GTE is now a roller so I can move it on and off the lift and get back under the Falcon on weekends and evenings.

Come again?

In reply to singleslammer:

I should ask the boss if it is cool if I start a build thread on it.

Nice GTE - my buddy also has a '62 (red) that's in the 'process'.....

It's really funny that I found this thread. I have an 01 GTI that I was looking to replace with something more vintage. What did I find on craigslist? A 63 Falcon with a 170 small six. Haha. Of course its a 2 door hardtop but I just thought it was funny. I actually used your design for the lower brackets to put front coilovers on mine. I ended up dropping them a fair amount more than yours but same basic design. I made my upper mounts a little different and put QA1 adjustables on it. Keep it up man. I enjoy following your thread.

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Here it is right after I brought it home.

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And after the coilover install.

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GTI in back. Haha

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Sorry man. Didn't mean to hijack your thread. Thanks for the inspiration!

Man I love that roofline on the hardtops. The PERFECT falcon.

Some decent news.

Dropped by the machine shop during lunch and had them magnaflux the 200 head. It is good! It has a crack at the intake but that is fixable. It needs valve seats badly as well.

Time to order up a port divider and get to work.

Was a bit bored today. Shop was too full to get up on the lift so I poked around outside.

Last week I let a co-worker use the falcon for a quick trip and realized half way through the litany of "oh yeah, the turn signals don't cancel themselves and the clutch pedal is a bit stiff so you need to lift it back up with your toe and umm watch out for...." that I was describing a total turd of a car. Today I tried to fix a few of those issues. I swapped out the broken turn signal cam and then pulled out the Z bar to see what was wrong with the clutch.

Not much left of that bushing

So I grabbed an offcut of Delrin and spun out a new one

surface finish means nothing on a job like this

Back together and much better. I also started to address something that has been bugging me since day one. No backup lights. Getting out of parking lots is a bit treacherous. Folks gotta know what I am up to. More rummaging in the back of the bottom toolbox drawers and I found these cute LED bolts

Replaced the lower bumper bolts with them

And the next time it is on the lift I will wire them up to the switch on the T5.

That was all for today. To much mucus running out of my face

Damn I apologize for the crappy quality of those pics. Gotta check my lens for a lump of crap on it or something

You two are REALLY making me want an old Falcon.

Ditch- any idea of what hwy mpgs are?

Loving the build...

singleslammer wrote: Ditch- any idea of what hwy mpgs are?

It'll do 25mpg all day long at 60mph, over 70mph it drops to under 20.

The old gal is looking pretty sharp this morning.

Yes she is!

Well done.

Very nice one of my favorite build threads as well

About 18 months ago Bianca took the car to work in the morning and didn't realize she needed to manually disengage the choke when the car was warm. This of course led to a hot car, choke on, pumping the gas pedal to try limp into a parking spot until a big boom happened in the parking lot of her work. It split the muffler. She was mortified and I thought it was hilarious. At the time I dug around in the garage and found an old Magnaflow and cobbled it on. It was loud and droned like crazy and had one of those HUGE 5" ricer tips but it sounded pretty cool and it never occurred to me to do anything about it. Today I was driving and realized I had to keep turning up the music to compete with the exhaust and I just happened to be passing the old school auto parts store that still has shelves full of miscellaneous mufflers. 12 clams later and I left with a vintage "made in the USA" old stock muffler that I figured ought to work. Stopped at the shop and bent some new hangers out of 1/2" tubing from the scrap bin. Welded it up and hit the road.

Holy crap! what a difference. It sounds a little wheezy at high rpm but inside the car it is SILENT. This is the first time in my life that I have ever intentionally made one of my cars quieter. I can see it being a trend. So this is 40? At least now I can hear my punk rock better

If it makes you feel any better, im planning to add high flow cats to my 3 inch duals when I go efi to make the car quieter. No room for anything else.

Ditchdigger wrote: So this is 40? At least now I can hear my punk rock better

Absolutely. The little Falcon just keeps getting better and better. Love it!

Over the course of 13 years, had about 7 different systems/muffler/resonator combinations on my V8 Volvo trying to find a balance between some sound but not too loud. Finally settled on a replica Boss 429 single transverse muffler (2 inlets/2 outlets). Was quieter (finally!) for a bit, but as the packing degraded, it got louder. Cobbled together a single transverse muffler out of two 2013 5.0L Mustang stock takeoffs. Quiet at idle/cruise, nice sound under acceleration. I can hear my old-fart rock now. Moral of the story - buy an OEM muffler that handles the power output (or more) of your car and fabricate things so you can use it. You get quiet performance.

http://vid937.photobucket.com/albums/ad214/MichaelYount/Exhaust%20system%20Change/ExhaustVideo_zps677a8aca.mp4

In reply to MichaelYount:

Great advice, thanks for posting this... I've been struggling with muffler selection, and I've been thinking adapting something factory might be a good option.

singleslammer wrote: You two are REALLY making me want an old Falcon. Ditch- any idea of what hwy mpgs are?

Not quite Falcon, but I know of a sweet stock Comet for sale.

Today's simple project that took several hours longer than it should have.

Yesterday I stumbled across a duraspark II distributor that I had disassembled last year for some reason. I thought "Hey! easy route to no more points" so I cleaned it up and put it back together last night after work.

Today I hit NAPA for a 4 pin HEI module and dug through a few boxes until I found enough bits to get it installed.

The matching DSII coil with its nifty wiring clip/cap, a GM HEI heatsink/coil bracket and some wiring pigtails from the ford and GM harnesses. Sweet! I can make this work and look pretty clean.

All wired up.

Ready to install

Then I went to the car and set the engine to TDC, removed the clamp and pulled out the points distributor and that is when it happened. I heard the clink of the oil pump drive shaft hitting the bottom of the oil pan.

I cursed, I pouted, cursed some more and then I fished around with a long flexible magnet and none of those things got me any closer to extricating it so I got on my back in the dirt and pulled the sway bar and oil pan so I could get the damned thing out.

Anyway. Everything got back together, fresh oil and I'll be damned if it didn't fire right up and after twisting the new distributor to 10 degrees BTDC it idles quite smoothly. A lot more smoothly than it ever has.

Please excuse the filthy engine.

The drive home was uneventful. The car seemed quiet and almost silky. I could probably open up the plug gaps a bit now but I was still so frustrated by the pump drive event that I just threw my tools on top of my box and left.

So anyway. That is how you turn a 45 minute job into a 4 hour ordeal.