Taking a couple of weeks to get a bunch of projects done on the Maverick. Biggest is swapping the Tremec TKO for the TKX. The TKO is just to tight in the '69.5 tunnel. Tremec says we are starving the front of the trans because we can't get it any higher than 5.1° down. The TKX should solve that without cutting the tunnel...I hope. Moving the Lokar parking brake handle and installing the E-Stop electric parking brake actuator to run the Wilwood parking brakes to free up space in the tunnel for the driveshaft. Still trying to figure out where to put the unit. Not much room for anything under the car. Perhaps in the trunk. Perhaps on the back seat braces. Beats me at this point. Installing 3 point seat belts. Still need to figure out the mounting for the retractor. Dread cutting a hole in the perfect headliner for the pivot. Rerouting the fuel and brake lines to get them away from the tunnel. Still scratching my head on the route for this stuff also. The car has all RRS suspension including the 3 link rear with a torque arm so there's a bunch of stuff in the way. Pulling the door and quarter glasses and getting all the glass tinted. Thankful for a friend that has a mobile tint business so he'll be doing it in my shop. I'll be shooting some video of the processes so I'll post them on the YouTube channel as I get them edited. IMG_6820 by TerryHatfield, on Flickr
Alright, here's the updates. Got the TKX in. Mission accomplished on it clearing the tunnel and I was able to space the tail 1/2" higher than it was which helped the engine/trans angle tremendously. Unfortunately that caused the exhaust to be right against the torque arm crossmember but a trip back to the exhaust shop solved that. Like the TKX way better than the TKO. Much better shifting and significantly quieter. Was able to sell the TKO to a fellow Ford guy so all good in the end. TKX is WAY smaller. Moving the tail shaft up also meant that I would have to do away with the Lokar park brake handle that was mounted on the tunnel for drive shaft clearance. Swapping in the E-Stopp was a fairly simple deal. I placed it right behind the back seat. I put nutserts through the floor and bolted it right up. Bought a new cable set as the left cable was too short to working this configuration. Mounted the button in the dash tray. Convenient spot was to hide it behind the Vintage A/C duct. The car has a custom raised floor in the trunk and it went right back in over the E-Stopp without a single modification. You'd never know the E-Stopp was there. I revamped the entire fuel system. Moving the pump and filters and running all new lines. Glad to get them out of the tunnel where they were before. Reran and got the rear brake line properly mounted along with redoing the wiring to the fuel pump. Pretty pleased with how it came out. Next up was to convert from the lap belts to a 3 point retractable set from Seatbelts Plus. I figured out that there was just barely enough room to place the retractor behind the quarter interior panel. The upper bung in the early cars is a weird 3/8-18 thread vs the standard 7/16-20. There should be a shoulder bolt there so the upper point can pivot. I ended up making a 3/8 id x 5/8od bushing 3/16 long to make it work out. I cut holes in the interior panels and used a couple of seatbelt pass thru bezels left over from our King Cobra build to finish them off. I reverbed and refinished the interior panels and the kick panels while I had them out. Super happy with how the belts came out. Simplest of the upgrades was adding the Humphugger console. Snug fit between the ProCar buckets but it works and looks like it came that way. Last of the projects was to get the windows tinted. I removed the door and quarter glasses and convinced my friend that does mobile tint work to do the windshield and back glass with them in the car. Love the look. It's 20% on the sides and back glass with 70% on the windshield with a 20% eyebrow.
Here's the install video for the 3 point belts if anyone is interested in the process. I just found out this morning that Melvin's Classic Ford Parts has the correct upper pivot bolts available. I have links to the seat belts and those bolts in the notes and comments on the video.
Thanks for sharing all, especially the seatbelt install. That came out really nice, looks factory. The seats look like they have deep bolsters and must hold you in place real well.
Thanks! Glad the posts are helpful. The seats are great. They're ProCar Elite buckets. Super comfortable and they have a lot of support and adjustable lumbar. I like them a lot.
Finally finishing up the strut tower brace project I started a good while back. The towers are notched and have some reinforcement. Guess they thought that was good enough. The guys at RRS suspension were pretty adamant that the car needed bracing so I fabbed up supports from the firewall to the towers and across the towers. Thankfully enough room to fit the swedged rods between the Sniper and the distributor. The swedged rods, heim joints, spacers and nuts for the rods from Speedway. Couple chunks of 1/4" 6061 off Amazon and a bunch of stainless bolts and such from my local bolt and screw supply.
I would have done one like yours but the A/C compressor was in the way. After some head scratching I finally realized that there was enough room to fit a bar between the Sniper and the distrubutor.
Finally got around to making up the new MSD 8.5mm plug wires today. I hate making plug wires but it looks so nice to have a set of wires that fit. The multi angle boots are nice. Cylinder 7 and 8 are problematic with the Patriot mid-length headers. These clear nicely. Cool to finally have the MSD retainer on the cap as well. Sme days it's the snall stuff.
