Gen1 1968 Coupe Build Thread Profile - Gen 1 Mustangs

[Jungle_Jim]

This is the Build Thread for 1968 Coupe. Reply below.

 

[Jungle_Jim]

Hey all. Lot to this story but I'll try and shave the cliff notes. I know there's not too many Gen1 folks around here (Patrick I see you) but the site's still a good resource and still lots of knowledge to gain on my part so figured it was time to make something.

Short of it is: bought the car at 16, used it as a weekend cruiser for quite a while, got bit by the racecar bug and instead of buying something else I decided to tear up this one and make it a track car. Spent a few years wire-wheeling, painting, welding, wiring, and finding some form of religion to get it where it is now.

Started out the year with a few events and I'm shooting to get ~5-8 in this first year. So far so good!

 

[Jungle_Jim]

I'll start back-dating some information in here, mainly as it comes up in my camera reel, so no real chronological order to any of it but just getting some more info out there. Most of the mods are in the actual car details but still fun to get some pictures along with it.

The car has a pretty standard set of race safety equipment. Fuel safe fuel cell has been great; found out a few weekends ago that the foam and trap doors really do let you use ALL the fuel in that tank before you run it dry and get to hang out on the side of the road while you wait for your wife to come bring you fuel . I made the cage for the cell and the mounting/panels to finish it all out. You can also see in this shot the overflow I made for the axle breather.



The cage is the only thing I didn't have a TON of involvement in, I had a gentleman build it for me when i was in NC who was an old NASCAR hand. Overall it's a great cage and should do its job. One thing I wanted to share some extra pictures of was how we mounted the seats in. This was some back and forth between the two of us and everyone who has seen it really likes it. The "sill tube" terminates between the main and front roll hoops, everything else is easily visible. This also helped out with the fact that I'm 6'5" so I was able to move the seat down ~3" and back about 6".





Can also see in the above that I've got a mounted safecraft system. There's an automatic nozzle up under the dash close to the firewall and one in the trunk. In addition to that there's two manual nozzles up in the engine bay.


To round everything out, as mentioned I'm a pretty big dude so I needed a seat to fit. The EvoII was the first one I had in the car but after some shakedowns and realizing I was never going to street-drive the thing (hardly) I picked up a pilot. Both fit me well, I'm about 250# with a 38" waist and neither are tight with a suit on.

 

[Jungle_Jim]

Suspension wise, I have the Street or Track 4R front brakes mounted on 71-73 disc spindles. These things are freakin massive and have been fantastic so far. Pads all around are a PolyH compound. I've also got their front strut rod up front as well. I didn't ever see serious track time with the stock unit but even driving around on the street and bedding tires it's a noticeable upgrade.




In addition to the 3.55:1 gears, I've got some SN197 brakes on the rear axle courtesy of a mustang steve kit.


I don't have any real good pictures of it, unfortunately, but I have a tilton over-slung pedal box in the car as well. I think there's a pair of 1" masters in there now; the point being that I've made I think 2-3 rotations on the bias knob rearward and they're still not locking before the fronts, so I may need to decrease my rear master size a bit to help re-balance things a tick.

Another one I don't have a real good picture of is the panhard bar in the back. With a 275 rear tire (that's certainly not needed at this point) i wanted to keep the rear axle as centered as possible. It's currently set to the "middle" position and maybe next year if I get good enough I'll start playing with tuning on that.

All the suspension bits are rounded up by a set of 620# front springs that have about a full coil cut out of them and some 5-leaf rear "reverse eye" rear springs. Those get paired up with some "race" valved bilstein struts and I've been real happy with them so far.

Some other fun bits to the car include the modified valve covers and catch can I made. The catch can has a center divider with perforations so I can shove some stainless brillow pads down there for added "catching" of the vapors. In the first picture you can also see the upper stainless line I made for the coolant. The motor has some pretty solid mounts (but they aren't an actual welded mount) but the silicone couplers on either end seem to give it enough play to not bother much.



Standard "rear plex window" cut out and fastened with rivnuts after making a template. I also used some small aluminum c-channel and adhesive foam to make supports in the middle for it.




Another little trick bit is the "extended" shifter I made for the car. Moving everything back made any kind of directly connected shifter to the trans just kind of akward. This one was pretty simple too, made a couple plates to bolt onto the trans shifter and then a simple connecting rod out of 5/8" tube to link that and the shift "arm" further back. There are some plastic washers that serve as bushings between the tabs and the connecting rod. Overall its a nice tight feel and isn't difficult/annoying to shift at all.


Last fun bit is that i used some bike derailleur cables for the door latch pulls. A quick welded bracket to the inside of the door and the other to the cage serves for the mounting points. I simple drilled a small hole into one of the latch arms and crimped it for the door side and then made a loop and applied heat shrink for the drivers side.

 

[Bill Pemberton]

Lots of interesting mods and I am sure you will get some kudos from Fabman, the mad Doctor who created Frankenstang and who also happens to be one Bad Modder !!

 

[GB899]

welcome to the old iron group.... looks like a bunch of fun....

 

[PatrickStapler]

Welcome…not many vintage guys here as you can see. Still a great group of racers though.

 

[Jungle_Jim]

welcome to the old iron group.... looks like a bunch of fun....

thanks, It has been!

The car has been through a lot. It was the first car i bought with my own money and a co-sign on a bank note with dad (small town bank will let you do that on a then 50 y/o car i guess). Enjoyed the heck out of it as a cruiser, made a few trips with it up across the state of MN and then MN to San Antonio TX. After college I just wanted to do something different with it and also wanted to get more involved with grip driving. I have no illusions about being the next Cole Trickle so making it into a "racecar" seemed like a helluva lot more fun than buying another car and then just leaving this one to sit (more) as a cruiser.

 

[Jungle_Jim]

Welcome…not many vintage guys here as you can see. Still a great group of racers though.

I was actually looking for more info on your champ car after you said something or posted something about it on VMF some months ago and that's how I ended up here.

Like you said, lots of good resources though so just trying to continue the absorption.

 

[PatrickStapler]

The ChampCar runs Shaun’s (SorT) front suspension. We use most of our allotment of points on that. Still on rear leafs…narrow. A panhard bar would help us a lot. Our brakes are much smaller than what you run. Disc front and rear, but with 315’s all around it still stops pretty good.