1969 Mustang Fastback Pro Grand Touring Build

[69_Sportsroof]

Christmas came a little early for me, I blew up the engine in my 94 cobra by letting the fuel tank get too low while doing a track night at PBIR. While dreaming about all the mods I wanted to do, I realized I was going to be spending a lot of money on a car that was never my "dream car". Sooo, I looked around online and found a great candidate for my new project (and somehow convinced my wife to let me buy it while I have two mustangs taken apart in the garage already). It's a 1969 Mustang fastback, originally a 302 2v manual trans car with silver jade metallic paint. The car has lived in Texas its whole life and there is no real rust anywhere. It has had a couple fender benders in the front and it looks like the radiator support may have been replaced. Other than that the body is extremely straight. The previous owner put a lot of goodies on it and was gearing it more towards a track day only car. He stripped the dealer installed AC, and I believe removed all the radio components if the car ever had any. He had racing lap belts with no shoulder belts, and had planned on putting a cage in the car. I plan to make the car a great cruiser for road trips through the mountains, as well as some track nights and autocross.

The run down:

• 1969 Mustang Fastback, extremely straight body
• Built 393w stroker
• AFR 205 Heads
• Vic. Jr. Intake
• Holley HP 830
• Custom Ground Solid Roller Cam (.608 Lift, 234/240 duration @0.050)
• CompCam Magnum Valve Train
• MSD Ignition
• GlobalWest Stage 4 Suspension
• GlobalWest subframe connectors
• Opentracker spring perches
• Wilwood superlite front discs
• Ultrastang rear discs (87 lincoln mk vii calipers)
• Tremec 3550
• TCP Power R&P
• KRC PS Pump
• Currie 3.55 TSD rear (ford 8" rear)
• Long tube headers, 3" borla exhaust through Dr. Gas X-Pipe
• Vintage Wheelworks 16" x 8" mags

The bad:

• Rear windshield leaks
• Most of the rubber seals for doors/windows need replacing
• Drivability is very poor at part throttle, lot of stumbling and sputtering
• Cockpit is too small for me. I'm 6'1" and the wheel is in my lap and hits my knees when I drive. The brake pedal is waaaay too high, my foot hits the back of it when I move over from the gas pedal
• Seat belts are currently lap belt only with shoulder belt cut and hanging
• No radio
• No parking brake
• No heat/air/defrost
• Wipers not working
• No reverse lights
• Exhaust PCV system is pressurizing the crankcase and blowing oil out of the dipstick tube
• Paint is 20+ years old, cracking/chipped in places and has orange peel
• Exhaust is LOUD, definitely too loud to have a reasonable conversation while driving
• Tremec 3550 is hard to get into 2nd gear when coming from 3rd. Feels like synchro just can't get the shafts matched. No grinding but it just won't go
• Front right fender is a repro with poor fit. Longer than the hood and large gap by the door. He did include what is supposed to be an original 69 fender off a salvage car that needs paint and a little work

Car history from the previous owner:

This car was originally sold by a Ford dealership, in Decatur, TX. It was purchased by an older lady. After a few weeks, she rear ended another vehicle, in the rain. She blamed the car, and took it back to the dealership to trade it in for a different car. The damage was minor. Basically the front lip of the hood had been mashed down, and the dealership fixed it.

In 1970, my grandfather was looking for a car for his son (my uncle) to take to college. He found this Fastback at the dealership, and they made him a pretty good deal. I believe it was $2000, and the dealer added an AC unit. It was a basic car. 302-2v. Three-speed manual. Silver jade, with hood scoop. I was nine years old at the time, and I immediately fell in love with my uncle's car.

In 1976, my uncle had graduated, and he was teaching in Irving, TX. That year, the car was stolen from him. It was not found, so the insurance paid him, and he bought another car.

Eighteen months later, in 1978, the Irving PD found the car abandoned. Apparently, it had been hot-wired, taken for a joy ride, then dumped. The PD knew the car was stolen, and they reported the find to my uncle's insurance (they owned the car at this point). They asked my uncle if he wanted it back. He did not, but his father-in-law did. So his FIL bought the car, then took it to Teague, TX. The only thing wrong with the car was a broken ignition switch. He fixed that, then parked the car in a shop. [Keep in mind, this was at the time of the first wave of vintage Mustang enthusiasm]

My eighteenth birthday was in Feb. of 1979. My uncle's FIL had lost interest in the Fastback. My uncle knew I loved the car, so he asked my dad if he wanted to buy the car for me. YES!!!!! Best birthday ever, for me. I believe it had around 66K miles on it, and my father had it painted. I drove the car until early 1984.

In August 1982, a drunk driver pulled in front of me on a two-lane highway, in East Texas. It was tool late to stop, so I was going to pass him, but moved to the middle of the road. I drove into his left rear, in a somewhat controlled collision. Luckily, my car nose-dived, so it pretty much went under his car. Hood, fenders, and radiator got trashed, and the motor mounts were broken. The frame was okay. We were able to tow it home with no trouble.

I got lucky, and I found a '69 coupe that had been rearended, then parked. I got it for $350. I pulled of the front clip, radiator frame, and the front inner fenders. The swap to my car was easy. After a paint-job, it was good as new. I ended up selling the parts off the coupe and eventually the coupe for more than I paid for it.

In Jan. 1984, I was living in Denton, TX. We had an icestorm. I made a left turn, going home, and the car started spinning on the ice. I came to a stop, when the driver side fender slammed into a telephone pole. I was able to pull the fender off the tire, then drive home. Unfortunately for me, my father and were at odds. The car was not going to be fixed (only needed the fender replaced). I drive the Fastback to East Texas, and the car is parked on my dad's place. I go back the '65 F-100 truck.

The car sat there until the mid-1990's. My dad's brother, who was very active in the Wise County Antique Auto Club in Decatur, had a friend that wanted to do a restoration project with his son. My dad sold the car to the guy, and the restoration was done at the Auto Club.

In 1998, the guy found a Mach 1 that he wanted to restore, and he wanted sell my car to fund the Mach 1. My uncle called me, and he said "Randy, I know where your car is, and its for sale." I pick up the car, the next weekend.

Cosmetically, the restoration was good. Body and interior completed restored, and everything worked. Mechanically, it was iffy. The tired 302 had a rod knock. Exhaust leaks. Loose parts. The car was not fun to drive. I finally figured out what they had done. The guy's son must have been pretty young, and all the wrenching he did was not very good. So the car pretty much sat in my garage.

Around 2000, I decided to try fix the car mechanically. New 351w, with all Edelbrock parts. Tremec transmission. The Global west suspension kit. All this was completed by 2002. Unfortunately, the 351w had at least one cylinder that was mis-aligned, and it through a rod bearing.

At that time, my daily driver was a Dodge Stealth, and I was still a big Nascar fan. Driving the Stealth made me set new goals for the Fastback. Four-wheel power disc brakes. Rack and pinion steering. A bada$$ 393w stroker. I got all that finished around 2004 or 2005, and I had Fastback that handled like the Stealth, but had 600 ponies under the hood.

[69_Sportsroof]

My first project was to tackle the pedal height. While looking around under the dash I found out that the pushrod from the booster was adjustable. I crawled under the dash and made the rod as short as possible. In the process I had to remove the brake light switch. I put everything back together and the brake lights didn't work . Get back under the dash, fiddle with the setup, put it back together, and one brake light works. Now I'm really scratching my head. I check the wiring, there's only two wires and the brake light switch just interrupts them. Put it back together again and both work once or twice... Find out these things are known to be super finicky and you have to bend the metal wings and test fit to get it working. Then I find out the brake lights are routed through the turn signal stalk, I had bumped the turn signal lever and it was interrupting one side. Centered it and everything worked. I was able to drop the brake pedal 2.5 inches.

Pedal Heights from the floor now:
Gas 3.5"
Brake 6.5"
Clutch 7"

The next thing I tackled was the sputtering. The PO indicated he had it tuned with a larger air cleaner but the hood wouldn't close so he put a smaller one on and that was making it run rich. He had a giant K&N with a filter top in a box, as well as a smaller K&N ring. I looked and it and figured out I could fit the medium K&N filter with the filter top and the edelbrock chrome base and just barely clear the hood scoop.

[69_Sportsroof]

To get the car road worthy in Florida I figured I needed wipers. I started looking and found the wiper motor harness was disconnected at the wiper motor plug. I looked all over the engine compartment and couldn't find the other end. Then I decided to trace it from the wiper switch inside and found the harness was rolled up and tucked behind the dash. I found a homemade firewall plug where the harness used to come out of the firewall. Removed the plug, hooked up the harness, and the wiper worked!

Decided to drive the car to work, but it still had bad sputtering at part throttle. Did some reading and figured it may have been related to the accelerator pump or timing on the distributor. At work a coworker pointed out a lugnut was missing from the front right. I didn't think much of it (rest were tight by hand and I didn't have a lug wrench) and drove the car home. Adjusted the accelerator pump preload, I could move the throttle about half an inch pushing on the end of the throttle cam without any fuel squirting. Went to drive the car the next morning and heard a creaking as I left. Pulled over and remembered the lug nut issue, two more were loose. Limped it home and took my truck into work. Got home after work, pulled a lug off the other side and found a wonky "extended thread" lugnut. Nobody locally has them so I just bought 4 conical seat nuts, installed one, and will order the extendeds. The little loop I did around my neighborhood seemed like the part throttle drivability was better. We will find out later.

I also ordered some aviation style 3 point retractable seat belts last week from Wesco, they showed up today, pic below.

[69_Sportsroof]

I spent all the free time I had yesterday fabbing a seat bracket that moved the seat back 3 inches from the corbeau bracket and trying to mount my new seat belts. The problem is the retractor box is too wide to fit between the rocker and the seat. I contacted Wesco and asked if I can exchange for a kit that mounts the retractor up high. Went back to the lap belts for now.

[gsxrken]

Nice find! Following along

[69_Sportsroof]

Did some work over the holiday weekend. Got the carburetor torn down to try to fix the part throttle stumbling and found there was a power valve blockoff plug. I cleaned everything up, put a 6.5 PV in, and the drivability is 100 times better now.

I installed the seatbelts from Wesco. They work well but I had to drill a new hole in the floor for two reasons. 1) The retractor and belt use different hardpoints, meaning you need a new hole no matter what. 2) The retractor hit the seat thanks to me moving the seat back a few inches. I drilled through the floor pan where several panels overlap and then used a large fender washer to keep it from pulling through. Pretty clean overall.


Also replaced some rubber seals here and there, shift boot, brake pedal bushing, around the bottom half of the doors. Nothing too crazy yet. Once I get my other car sold this will start getting some more serious mods.

[69_Sportsroof]

I was tired of not having a radio to listen to anything, so I started watching ebay and started collecting speakers and an amp. I'm not sure where I'll mount them but I picked up some alpine 6.5 components for the front, and 6x9s for the rear. Bought a JL Audio XD400/4 amp from a friend and started mounting it all up. I removed the radioshack speakers from the rear deck and found the mount holes were really jagged sheet metal. So I busted out the dremel and made some nice smooth holes using the templates that come with the 6x9s. Tweeters mounted with a 2" hole saw, nice and easy. Mounted the amp to the back of the rear seat, when you are standing at the trunk and open it you can't even see it unless you duck down. I picked up a $40 JL audio bluetooth adapter, this has RCA outs and the high definition audio codec to stream high quality audio over bluetooth. I decided to try with no head unit for now, and control everything over bluetooth with my phone. Once I got the rear speakers and amp wired up I sat in the car and listed to some rock songs, and was unhappy with the lack of bass. I tried a few settings but gave up and found a JL audio 10w3v3-4 subwoofer locally. It's in the mail now, not sure where I'll mount it. Possibly the rear deck because I really don't want a large box in the trunk. Trying to keep it all as clean as possible.

[69_Sportsroof]

Haven't posted much, in the past few months I've done a lot of little projects on the car. I got the engine back together in the cobra, put a bunch of miles on it, listed it for sale, and found a buyer. It's been paid for, just waiting for it to be picked up. Sad to see it go but less distraction from the fastback.

The exhaust was insanely loud before with side pipes, so I made a new h-pipe with more reasonable mufflers. I went with borla proXS units. Bought mandrel bends and just cut them, tacked them into place, stacked 2x4s under the car to hold mufflers up, rinsed and repeated until I had a full setup.

While I was under the car I found my fuel line was cracked, squeezed it and fuel came out... Which could've turned into a bad situation.

[69_Sportsroof]

Since I added a vacuum advance distributor to the car the idle was too high. The throttle plates had 0.150" holes in them, so I bought new plates with no holes. Of course the car wouldn't run, I spent hours taking the carb off and drilling one size bigger.

I kept having an issue where it would not idle, I'd rev it, and then it would hang the idle around 1500rpm and not come down. I found out one of the boosters was dripping basically all the time. Started digging into that issue, tried to lower float level and found out the adjustment was bottomed out already. Took the carb off and had to bend the float tabs to get them at the right height.

Once that was resolved I ended up with 0.140" holes on the blades... My issue all along was probably the booster and fuel height.

[69_Sportsroof]

While the car was down I attended a champcar race with some friends. Champcar is a budget endurance racing series with a points limit on cars and any mods done to them. The race was at Daytona and lasted 14 hours. It's pretty intense, and they were contacted by a car which bent the front right control arm about an hour in. I got to have the full pit crew experience helping them pull the arm and front splitter off while the race was still going. The picture of the control arm shows how bent it was. The ball joint end is supposed to be flat on the ground.

We got the car racing again roughly 2 hours later. If you want to experience something like the IMSA series from the race teams side I would definitely recommend it.
Attachment 178395

[69_Sportsroof]

I decided to add a wideband gauge to the car to help tuning the carb. Eventually I want to go EFI but it's not in the budget for now. I noticed two holes on the side of the steering column and funny enough they perfectly matched the autometer gauge cup I bought. Once I had the wideband mounted I got distracted by the wiring, it was configured with three switches and a push button on the dash. You could jump in the car and drive off without a key.

I decided to redo all of the accessories on those switches and the starter signal to use the ignition switch. There was already a fuse box in the glove compartment, but it was hot all the time. I wired a relay with some heavy gauge wire inline with it and triggered it off the ignition so the fuses were hot in run and start now.

At this point the car had been sitting a couple months on jack stands. I finally got it down, and decided to go for a test drive. Started it up, and backed it out of the garage. Since it doesn't have a parking brake and my yard is a big hill I had to shut it down to close the gate. Jumped back in it and the car cranked once then stopped... battery was low. I figured it was just from sitting so long, so I jumped it with my truck. Drove around the block and the voltage never went up, so the alternator isn't charging. It's a 20+ year old one wire unit so it seems the internal VR died. Ordered a new one which should be here this weekend and hopefully I can drive the car.

Took some quick video going over what I did here: https://youtu.be/08cl3zp6MZU

[69stang]

Following
Definitely interested in your progress. I've had many mustangs and the 69 is my favorite. I like seeing what others do with theirs.
I have a build thread here and on 1969stang.com.

[jaybee]

Great project, I love these garage-level projects.

[69_Sportsroof]

Started to put some dynamat in the car. I put dumps on the mufflers until I get a panhard or watts link in the rear and it was resonating really bad. The trunk floor over the axle in particular was really loud when I knocked on it.

In the doors I found out I could fit a large sheet in by going between the window and window seal from outside the door. I even managed to save the paper layer

[69_Sportsroof]

Following
Definitely interested in your progress. I've had many mustangs and the 69 is my favorite. I like seeing what others do with theirs.
I have a build thread here and on 1969stang.com.

Thanks, I'll check your build out.

[69_Sportsroof]

Great project, I love these garage-level projects.

Yeah, really wish I had a lift when doing the exhaust but oh well. Almost paid someone to do it but convinced myself hours under the car holding pipes over my head was better haha

[69_Sportsroof]

I've spent many weekends fiddling with the carburetor. Tried to get a renowned carb builder near Orlando to take a look at it but he has been backlogged for months. Broke down and decided to start collecting parts for the EFI conversion. Super victor EFI intake, Siemens deka 80lb injectors, walbro 400lph pump. I didn't realize how big of a problem counterfeit fuel injectors are now, but I ordered from power adder solutions and see no signs of them being fake. Decipha (well known tuner) vouched for PAS so I should be good to go.

Plan is to go megasquirt, sequential injection and possibly individual coils per cylinder but on the fence about that.

I ordered a 22gallon EFI tank from tanks inc. Ive read mixed things on their baffles not being good enough for track use at low fuel levels but figured if it gives me issues I'll make a surge tank setup. After I got I I was pretty impressed with the sump actually, it has L shape tubes so that when you turn/accelerate/brake the fuel can't drain. The finish is also very nice on it, for the price I have zero complaints.

I ordered the 400lph pump assembly from tanks inc. I'm building the fuel system to support 800hp easily which should give me plenty of room for growth. The pump is turbine style and is pwm compatible. I'm going to run it with a solid state relay from a Jeep cooling fan setup which only costs $30ish with a new connector. Part number RY330K for anyone interested, found it on the megasquirt forums.

[artmixbroll]

this is my dream build! congrats! there's no need to mention it looks amazing. https://suppsforlife.to/dbol-vs-anadrol/ you're basically living someone else's dreams. my dreams! with all the good! congrats

[ryeguy2006a]

Looking really good! Have you consider the Terminator X EFI for your build? They make a kit with a throttlebody now, that would bolt on that new intake you have.

[69_Sportsroof]

Thanks a lot art. I went several years without a car, then had a car I didn't love, and finally got this one. I've been dreaming about building a 68 fastback for a long time.

I have seen the terminator system. I considered it and honestly it's cheaper but I wanted the flexibility of the megasquirt setup. I had a turbo fox years ago and a part of me keeps thinking about turbocharging this thing... The 4150 style TB saves me an inch of hood clearance, which is very tight on this car.