Vintage Thunderbird Club International

www.waytekwire.com has a lot of bulk wire harness products. I know they have black woven nylon and polyester harness coverings, perhaps not exactly the same as original, but close.

I rebuilt mine with a HV pump, but I did not change the pressure. At high speed the additional pressure could put too much stress on the drive shaft. Some reports of twisted oil pump shafts and even weird spark timing issues caused by HP pumps scared me away from that option. Additional oil pressure...

I have a good pair of original door panels I'm going to use to replace my rotted ones, and I'm thinking I will reinforce the back side with fiberglass before I install them to make them stronger and protect against moisture.

The reproduction sheet metal that you can get from the T-bird suppliers comes from a couple different suppliers, one of them is Classic Sheet Metal, I forget the name of the other one. These are basically pre-formed patch panels. These are useful for fixing extensive damage to the outer skin, and th...

Wow, it is a Highway pilot equipped car. Unfortunately it doesn't have the part I'm looking for...

A lot of wire harnesses in these birds are hacked up and I've seen a lot of safety systems bypassed, but with the exception of the '64 amp gauge, I think the fuses, circuit breakers, and fusable links will protect the cars from fires, as long as the wiring hasn't been tampered with. The only wire wh...

The A/C belt routing is hidden by the fan shroud in all the pictures I have. There are one or two idler pulleys on the belt, but it doesn't go around the water pump pulley with the alternator and PS pump belts.

There should be 3 belts, one for power steering pump, one for the alternator, and one for the A/C compressor.

My bet is a missing trans tunnel plug. I've heard of that causing heat problems.

I think a lot of the shortened life expectancy of FE engines back in the day was due to the oils used back then and carburetors which run rich under certain conditions that wash oil off the walls of the cylinders and contaminate and dilute the oil. If you run modern oil and keep your carburetors tun...

The book "Big Block Ford Engines" by Steve Christ has a step by step procedure for engine removal with pictures. A 1966 Thunderbird with A/C is the example vehicle so it is particularly applicable for Flairbirds. http://www.amazon.com/How-Rebuild-BIG-BLOCK-FORD-ENGINES/dp/0895860708/ref=sr...

Barry at Survival Motorsports is building the engine for my Thunderbird. He has written the book on performance FE engines: https://books.google.com/books/about/How_to_Build_Max_Performance_Ford_FE_Eng.html?id=x7x2ZWP2U0MC&hl=en If you are east of Toronto, his shop is just a few hours away in th...

Certified rebuilders has developed parts and tools to properly rebuild the upper back panel limit switch. I have one and I believe it is better than new -- as promised. All the details are on the website: www.certifiedrebuilders.com

The hope would be that Ranco still make a sealed capillary tube & dome calibrated to the right temperature currently installed used in some other device that could be installed into the funky switch with a little bit of cutting and soldering.

Repairing a capillary tube like this would be a bit like making a neon sign. You've got to charge the tube with gas and then weld it shut. It might be something like R12, Which is almost completely liquid at reasonably cold temperatures, say 0°F, so you could get the whole room really cold, includin...