The 69 Mustang Saga - 2020

Well, after my "successes" with the car last year, my plan to work on it this year is a fairly mild one.

1. Fix the headlights
2. Put gauges in the car
3. Rear end swap/gear something
4. Make the Windows great again!

The headlights, I already I knew i wanted to do an LED upgrade. I had seen seen it done at car shows and loved it. Plus, something was wrong with my headlight harness I made a few years ago.

These are the headlights I went with. Was debating on getting ones with halo rings (Was afraid they be to rice). But saw some others so figured, WTH. Plus, at $100 shipped...





Now the fun part was fixing my harness. When I built it, I wanted the outside lights to work when the brights were turned on. And I had it doing that, but when it was on low, it caused some sort of cross and the Highs would be just bearly on. This in turn, caused them to burn out.


So for Christmas, I got a new harness, but hated it. It wanted you to drill holes and ground each H4 plug. Plus, when I built my harness, I had it all setup on the driver side and this new harness would use the passenger side. So I used it as a guide to fix mine. Low and behold it was setup simple, low turned on low, and high turned on high. Novel idea.... This is actually fine with the new LED lights. Only thing, is low will turn on all 4 and so will high. For now, this is how I am going to run it. Might change it later (Doubt it)
I stripped down my harness and I got to tell you, I have no idea how it even worked, I had everything messed up. So started rewiring it based on the other harness.







So I get this damn thing complety done and realize, I forgot to run wires for the LED Halos. I don't know yet how i am going to use them, but i sure as shit did'nt want to go back and add the wires later. I take all the splitloom and tape back off and add the wires. now get ready for this. I'm like 6 hours in working on this thing now. I get it all in place and plug in a light and... NOTHING. WTF?! So I make a jumper plug and and test the light directly and they are fine. Hmmm what is wrong. Yep, harness was wrong again!! I got the ground and the high mixed up. Like FML, time to take it all apart again for the 3rd time and fix. Had to get new H4 plugs for the center as the wires were now to short.










The headlight fit pretty well in the stock buckets, but there is a "vent" that just would'nt allow it to seat. So used a holesaw, figured that would be the best looking cut i could make in it. Never going to see it, just hate doing stuff like this.




Old setup


Test fitting one of the lights after modifing that bucket.





This is as far as I have got with the headlights. New H4 plugs should come today. then I can get back and modifing the headlight buckets.






Next was the cluster. Since I have owned the car, not a single gauge has worked. I have some basic eBay gauges in now, but they look kind of jank. I had plans to put something in it as I was not interested in restoring the old gauges. Everything I looked at was from 800-1000$. Kind of a hard pill for me to swallow.
Was cruising around Ebay and saw the Intellitronix brand was on sale for $400 with a GPS receiver. Now, this is not my first choice, but its made in Ohio and its only $400 to have a full set of working gauges. I could'nt pass it up.


Just got started tearing down the old cluster and getting this setup. Was almost done in getting the cluster seated when I found the lens panel is missing a hole, so going to have to call them Monday and get that sorted out.

Got the headlights done, turned out better than I hoped.


OLD


NEW




White Halos




Orange Halos




Orange Halos with Lows on




Lows Only On




Test fit the new switch panel. This replaces the Ebay Tach and fuel gauge i had there. Going to wire the horn, and the 2 different Halos there. The other side is a USB for phone charging.

Nice progress. Wiring is the worst. GL!

Lois great man. New lights and gauges deff bring any car up a notch!

Dude, lets see pictures of the whole car... It's a 69.

I’ll be watching this closely.

Finally got back out in the garage and made some progress.

First, I had to get a handle on the wiring behind the dash. I had mismatch crap everywhere, and even though the pic may not look like it, this is the cleaned up version





Made some simple block off plates for the radio and heater controls. Maybe Ill replace the heater core someday. I do want to put a radio in it, just not really sure what that will be.



Finished up getting the cluster assembled and wired. Ended up getting it wired to a 12 pin connector so I can remove the entire assembly easily in the future.






Finally getting it powered on for the first time. You can see the turn signal light in the left side.



And back in the dash.





Pretty much only thing left is to get the switch panel, dash reinstalled and the GPS mounted.

Here are the other threads I had on the progress of the car over the years.
https://www.svtperformance.com/threads/finally-back-in-a-mustang-a-69.1109017/
https://www.svtperformance.com/threads/the-69-mustang-2018-edition.1160707/
https://www.svtperformance.com/threads/the-69-mustang-it-better-run-this-year.1173431/

I remember your other threads. It's coming along slowly, but nicely. I like the new gauges.

Interesting.

And we are now complete. Started the car and everything seems to be in working order (Minus the GPS, still need to drive it to test). Biggest complaint of the gauges, is the RPM reads in increments of 100. I didn't notice that when I bought it, but its written plain as day on their website. Oh well, it is still better than the void I have had since purchasing the car.

Anywhoo. So here is the new front. I ended getting a new grill as well. Old was was getting a bit shabby. Also has new LED Parking lights from Vintage LEDs (Same place I got my sequential taillights from)






Here was the old front with the old grill, headlights and a normal bulb in the parking lights



Old Grill from the day I bought the car with the John Deer tractor lights:


And the dash is back together with the GPS and the new gauge panel.
















Old Dash




This was after I had put things back together for the first time. I replaced all the blown bulbs with Blue LEDS and had installed the cheap 3 gauge pod



This was the old Tach and fuel gauge:


And the reason I put anything in the dash at all, because they chopped the shit out of it to put that EQ in there (Which didnt work BTW.). Man that crushed blue velvet. lol

Coming Soon....

I like those wheels!

So there was the rims and the Wilwood brakes I talked about in the other thread:



Yesterday, we wrapped up the 9" install from Quick Performance. Big shoutout to my friend Dave for helping me with this.

So the housing was built longer than stock to accommodate the rims and to remove the wheel spacer. Tucked the wheels in just right. Adapted the lowering block a little and I think we got the ride height just perfect. The disc brakes install went OK, ended up having to buy some different lines to fit this application. I still need to figure out the emergency brake, QP claimed this setup would work with my cable, well, no it does not. Other than that we took it for a drive and having the new 4.00 gear is so much better than the 2.80.

Front needs to come down now, so it has a set of coilovers in its future. Might do that this summer, or make it winter project.

Coming along real nice. Are you getting the LED tail light kit also?

aoc racer said:

Coming along real nice. Are you getting the LED tail light kit also?

Click to expand...

Yep, I have LED's in pretty much everything now. Also have the sequential taillights from www.vintageleds.com. I don't have a video myself of hem, but they are awesome!

Looking good!
‘69 my favorite year
-J

Wow, it's really progressing nicely! Nice touches! Nice work!

Thanks! Its getting there.

Been cruising around in it for several days, it really liked that gear change 2.79 to 4.00. I was having some trouble with my Raptor shift light, but those have now been solved. Still trying to find what it likes, but have it up to 6k now. I will prolly take it to the track and try to mess around with it more then.

Pic from cruising around:




Driving the car around with the new 4.00 gear,
the resonance at 2200 was getting pretty bad. So I added some resonators to my Magnaflow system. These are the resonators I put in and the ground clearance is amazing! Kind of wished I would have got some longer ones, they would have fit, but the ones I got did help a lot.

Aero Exhaust Resonator - tr251 TR Series - 2.5" Inside Diameter Necks








I was able to sell my old rim sets, so I did purchase the Viking Coilovers. I also got a new Wilwood E brake cable setup. Everything I was trying to do for the stock cables to work, was not working. And finally, i had to cut out the rear fender lips. Any big bump was starting to cut the tires, and so far, this seems to have solved the problem.

Looking good. Wheel set up and stance looks killer! I am sure the new shock set up will be nice as well. I run the Street or Track set up and it is Night and day from what I had before. Look forward to the progress.