66 Mustang newbie

the inline six is a tough motor. it takes a nuclear explosion to kill one, and even then if you change the oil, put in fresh coolant, and a new battery it just might still light off and run.

there were two different one barrel carbs use don these engines in the 60s, both had a few variations as well, the autolite 1100 and the holley 1940. both are decent enough carbs, but suffer from the limitations of the cylinder head design. a two barrel conversion, either with a carb adapter or a direct mount setup(this requires some machine work thus removal of the head) does wonders for the driveability of the engie when tuned. and you have a few options, the 2100 autolite, the 2300 holley, the 32/36 weber progressive carb, and the 38/38dgas non progressive carb all work well on this engine. if you have the load-o-matic distributor, swap it out for the later dual advance distributor, especially if you swap to a two barrel carb, as the load-o-matic wont work well with the later carbs.

when setting the timing of the engine, you might find it best to "power time" the engine. this means advancing the timing until you detonation under load, and tehn back off the timing until it stops. the reason for this is that sometimes the balancer slips and the timing marks dont line up properly.

as to the car itself, one thing you should do is change out the master cylinder from a single bowl to a dual bowl master cylinder. one froma 67 mustang wirh drum brakes all around works nicely. i did this on my 64 falcon. all you need is some plumbing bits, brake line, "T" fittings, brass adapters, and a couple of couplers, and not the ones with the compression fittings, use a proper coupler. if you keep the drum brakes you dont need a proportioning valve or distribution block, so that eliminates some issues. my falcon has several thousand miles on the conversion with absolutely no issues, even when towing a small trailer, and that includes highay driving, city driving, and mountain driving as well, and various weather conditions, like rain, snow, etc. also upgrade the wheel cylinder to the V8 wheel cylinders. they bolt in place of the six cylinder ones, and provide better braking for cheap money. again i did this with my falcon and no issues.

going back i recommend using the later duraspark distributor from something like a 77 maverick with the 200. i hooked mine to an orange chrysler ignition box, their street performance box, and ran a blaster lll coil from MSD. once hooked up the motor would light off first try with no choke in sub 30 degree weather even after sitting overnight. you can find how to wire the ignition box to the distributor here;



let me now if you have any questions, i will try to answer them for you, or find the answers you seek. and if you plan on keeping the six, check out the forum i am an admin on.

roysion said:

Yeah.... that's the kind of practical real world experience I'm looking for.
Actually, rbohn I think you're reading my mind. First thing i was thinking about was a carb swap. Then a points swap and finally overhauling the brakes.
Naturally, bushings, seals, wiring, etc. gotta be replaced (little budget killers) but I was wondering how deeply I should go into this engine.
I would like to keep the single throat carb just to avoid all the 're-engineering' involved. Also I'm partial to them. I had 6 on a six cylinder 911 once, a long time ago.
Question: if I did swap for a 32/36 Weber (my carb of choice) could I actually close the hood? Is there enough clearance?

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i did the 2100 two barrel swap on my 66 falcon using a 2v to 1v adapter. i had barely enough clearance to close the hood with a small air cleaner. the weber carb is shorter, so with the adapter and a small air cleaner you should have enough clearance to close the stock hood. the nice thing is that the adapters are usually thick enough that you can machine them down a bit to gain as much as 1/4" clearance easy. also a lot of the guys on ford six use the weber cabr without issue even with an adapter.

A different carburetor set up would open up the options for the second concern, the distributor swap. Can I ask why you didn't go with the simple Pertronix upgrade?

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i actually did a pertronix style upgrade(the allison xr700 electronic ignition) on my 64 falcon only because i have yet to swap to the two barrel carb, and because it is the earlier 63 170 engine meaning it has the smaller 1/4" oil pump driveshaft so the later distributor wont fit without modifying the block to handle the large distributor shaft. though i did find a distributor from an aussie six that uses the large oil pump driveshaft, but fits the boss in the block as well. the system is reliable, but i prefer the dual advance distributor over the load-o-matic, its more consistent in its advance mechanism operation imo.

The brake upgrade seems easy enough. Thanks for that. Currently the drums are all locked up and on rollers so this is something I will address soon. I'll get it started then I worry about stopping it.

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it really is very easy to do. overall including the wheel cylinder upgrades and bleeding the system, it took me just about two hours working by myself in less than ideal conditions. i will upgrade my 64 to disc brakes at some point, at which time i will add the distribution block with proportioning valve that is available from a nummber of vendors.

Finally, you are involved with fordsix.com. This is a fantastic site. I have been following it since the start of this project. I recommend it to anyone with a vintage car. Jam packed with information in easy to understand language.
Much appreciated, as always.

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thanks we work to keep that site running well and with all the guy that are experts with the ford six around the world, you havent lived until you get answers in massive detail from user name xctasy . he puts out som much detail that sometimes his longer posts need to be read a few times to learn everything he puts in them. the guy is brilliant. he is from new zealand as well so he has access to things we dont get here in the states much.