The Silver Bullitt '68 Mustang GT

[Silver68RT]

OK, some of you have seen this car before, but since I'm actually working on it on now, I figured I'd start a thread. It's a real '68 Mustang GT fastback 390 4-speed car, and it's silver, so I thought I'd go with Silver Bullitt for a name. The silver was special ordered, so it's got to be pretty rare. I bought it off the uncle of a guy at work a couple of years ago.

It's been modified, and although the current engine is an FE, I'm not quite sure of the displacement, as the uncle who knew the details died. I think it's likely a 390 or a 428. The heads, intake, carbs and air cleaner are all '63 vintage 427 low riser pieces. It's got headers on it, a 4.30 gear, and some home-made traction bars, and you can see where it had tow-bar brackets welded on at some point. I think it's a safe bet that it spent a fair amount of time either at the strip or street racing.

[Scott Liggett]

I like. Two thumbs up. It's nice to see one that hasn't been Eleanor'ed.

[Silver68RT]

There are a few problems.

1. Brakes: they barely work, because there's no vacuum to speak of. They added a vacuum reservoir, but it doesn't really help. The RR also had a bad habit of locking up, but Bill rebuilt them for me, so at least that's going to be better. I'm thinking of ditching the booster and switching to a manual setup. It does have front disks.

2. Carbs: they leak gas. Bad. I've pulled them off, and bought rebuild kits, but that's about it. I also hate the braided steel lines, so I picked up an original 427/428 style fuel log.

3. Cooling: it's got a small block radiator that leaves a sizable gap on either side of the core support, and it overheated the one time I drove it more than a couple of blocks. Also had a small electric fan that had been zip-tied to the rad, and wired to the heater fan control.

4. Steering: remnants of a power steering setup, being the center link with the big whatchamacallit on the end. Everything else is gone. Steering briefly locked up on me a couple of times. I picked up the stuff to convert it over to manual steering, we'll see if that fixes it.

5. Suspension: home-made traction bars, spring plates, and coil-over shocks at the rear. I'm going to put it all back to factory and see how that works. Got some 428 springs from Eaton.

6. Oil Pan: dented in pretty good because it was probably used to jack up the car. Bought a stock replacement, but also considering a Canton Racing pan, or a Cobra T pan. Recommendations or suggestions welcome.

[Silver68RT]

7. Valve Covers: ugly, cheap, stamped tin things with spacers underneath. The strut tower braces were also missing, maybe to clear the spaced up crappy valve covers. I bought a nice set of chrome pent-roof style valve covers. I pulled one of the ugly ones off today. Oh boy.













I hope the other pieces of the spring washer, and any remaining bits of cotter pin will be waiting in the oil pan when I take that off. How the hell does that happen, and what else do I have to check now?

[hauen]

That's a beautiful car, given all the 427 parts it may just have a 427 in it, wouldn't that be cool? I remember reading something about the springs breaking, but it's been so long I forget why, over revving combined with shaft flex maybe? Just be glad the shafts didn't break! Cam Research (and others) make better shafts, spacers, etc. to help get you out of that bind...no pun intended. http://www.camresearchcorp.com/rocker_arm_parts.php I'm going to follow this one closely if for no other reason than nostalgia, I had a '67 fastback with an a-code 289, it was a fully loaded GTA in everything but name and the GT light bar.

[82z]

Sweet mustang. If I remember correctly Barry Rabotnick sp? is a member on here Barry R. He owns survival motorsports here in detroit, and is big into the fe motors.

[JOES66FURY]

man the last few pics sure are not as pretty as the first few. I hope that the missing pieces are in the pan, what the hell happened to the head at the push rod there...did you find pieces in the motor form that as well? Awesome car overall, would be cool to know some of it's history.

[Silver68RT]

The block isn't cross-bolted, so I think that rules out it being a 427. I'm hoping it's a 428. There were a few pages out of some Ford racing publication about the 428 CJ in with the paperwork that I got. I'll see if I can measure the bore and stroke when I get the pan off.

I've bought some stuff from Barry's Survival Motorsports in the past, and they're local, so if I can't come up with replacements for the broken bits from the Mach 1's extra set of 428 heads I'll give him a call.

Someone milled out large chunks of the intake manifold for, I presume, pushrod clearance with the big lumpy cam that makes no vacuum at idle. I would think that a little clearancing with a Dremel tool would suffice, but it's just another example of the stuff on this car that just makes you go WTF!? Some people should just not be allowed near classic cars with tools in their hands.

[JOES66FURY]

shows how unfamiliar I am with fords..the push rods go thru the intake..weird. looking at the pics again, it is obvious.

sometimes you got to wonder what the hell some people were thinking.

[Scott Liggett]

shows how unfamiliar I am with fords..the push rods go thru the intake..weird. looking at the pics again, it is obvious.

sometimes you got to wonder what the hell some people were thinking.

The intake partly covered by the valve covers and push rods going through them is how to spot them FE's.

[milner351]

Another beautiful car in your stable Doug - I'm sure Barry R can help you sort that thing out. It's got monstrous potential. Save up some coin and put a hydraulic roller in it that will allow the power brakes to to work. With that much weight over the front end - I wouldn't go backwards to manual brakes. Same goes for the power steering - NPD is just up the road in Canton - they have everything to make the power steering work - I may have a pump that would work for you if you need one.

[Silver68RT]

I hadn't really considered a cam swap, but that would solve my brake vacuum problem. I have been considering whether I should just get a set of aluminum heads, a dual plane intake and a single four barrel carb. The dual quads look awesome, but I think it's probably overkill. I don't know what the compression ratio is, but it sounds pretty snappy so I'm guessing it's pretty high, and the guy said they used about 50/50 race gas and premium. If I could get some heads with bigger combustion chambers it might get me down to something I could just run 93 octane on.

I went through the NPD catalog adding up all the missing pieces for the power steering, and when I hit $1500 and wasn't done yet, I said no way. My '70 Road Runner had manual steering, and it was fine. Parallel parking wasn't a lot of fun, but how often do you do that in a muscle car.

My original intention was to just fix the stuff that's wrong, get it out on the road and enjoy it this summer. If I let the scope start creeping, I'll never make it.

[Silver68RT]

Well, fordman and son came over today to work on the car. We got the oil pan off, and it's got 2U on the crankshaft, and the pistons have 2143-97 on them, so I think I've got a 390. Book says that's a '66-'73 390 crank. Those pistons are apparently a TRW/Federal Mogul 390 part. Anybody know anything about them? It's got 63AE-6090-J heads ('64-'65 427 low riser 427), with 72.8 - 75.8 cc chambers by the book. It would be nice to get a ballpark number for the compression ratio.

Dual quads on a 390 seems like massive overkill though, so I'm thinking that I should just pull that intake off, and put the Edelbrock Streetmaster 390 on it. I should swap the cam for something milder at the same time so it'll make some vacuum for the brake booster.

Made some good progress today. Need to stop by NPD tomorrow and pick up a few things.

[Silver68RT]

OK, just ordered an HV oil pump at NAPA, and the guy said the pickup / screen is no longer available. Next stop, Barry R's Survival Motorsports - ordered his FE book, and an ARP oil pump drive, a windage tray, and the pickup / screen. Still need to hit NPD for a bunch of stuff.

Browsed through the solid lifter cam selection on Survival and Summit, but didn't buy anything. Lots of choices. Any recommendations? '68 Mustang, 390 cu.in, 427 LR heads, 2x4 intake, headers, stickshift, 4.30 gear, need sufficient vacuum for the power brake booster. Not sure about the compression ratio.

[min301]

How you doin?