Cold Air Intake

 Its all about the flexible pipe.

I have been slowly working on cleaning up the engine bay and "making it right".

As the Mach1 has the California emissions option, this includes a cold air intake plastic duct that runs under the battery tray and picks up cold air from behind the bumper in front of the radiator and feeds it into the air cleaner snorkel.

When I got the car the flexible rectangle pipe was missing and is a fairly hard to come by part.

With the help of the 7173Mustangs.com forum, I was able to locate a Jeep part that is very close that what I needed. So I ordered one from a local (within Australia) Jeep supplier.

The pipe is probably a bit small compared to the original factory one but is a good stand in.

Here are pictures of the pipe with the dimensions.

The gap that needs to be filled.

The plastic "mouth" piece on the snorkel has holes that look like the original part was stapled to it. As the replacement part is a bit smaller, I elected to leave it the supplier length and push it into the receiving plastic part.

I think the original part is supposed to slide over the plastic duct. But in this case it fits inside.

Install complete.

 Next job, hmm not sure..

Hanging Rock picnic

 Lots of cars.

On the 12th of Feb, the Macedon Ranges car club puts on the Picnic at Hanging Rock car show. This was the first year I attended and it did not disappoint. Well over 1000 cars on show.

Here are a few pics of the Mustang with its brethren.

The Boss 351 is a car fairly local to Hanging Rock. It was raced back in 1973 and 1974 in Victoria. It was converted to RHS in the 80's by the owner and has been in the hands of the current owner since purchasing it from the guy that raced it in the 70's. Very cool car..

Front stone tray and radiator support repair / paint

 Time to fix up the radiator support panel.

Since I purchased the car, the radiator support, head light brackets have bugged me due to the rusty look. The rust is only surface rust so clean, repair and reinstall should be easy enough. While I was at it, the sides of the front stone tray look fairly second hand so decided to fix that also.

Once disassembled, I sanded back the old paint on the stone tray and taped out a few minor dings in the tray.

I found that a few of the head light brackets are a grey colour. Upon some research via the 7173Mustang.com forum I was advised that the get is commonly called "slop grey". Apparently Ford just mixed up left over paint and used that to paint some parts.

the head light brackets are black where as the other parts are grey.

I headed off to the local Autobarn to get a rattle can colour match. Unfortunately, they were out of black and satin paint, so decided to paint the square part black and leave the other brackets for now. Will try and source the right colour then remove the 4 parts and paint then reinstall.

I cleaned up the steel that goes under the front bumper to mount the rubber bumper.

Then cleaned up and painted the bumper irons.

I then acid dipped the bolts, clips and washers. Then sand blasted to clean them up and painted them either black or clear.

I then repaired and washed the grill. I could not find a way to easily remove the chrome mould so masked it and then painted the grill. (note, it still has the masking tape on the chrome parts).

Here are all the parts now cleaned, painted and ready to reinstall.

I then cleaned up the radiator support as best I could and then covered the guards and painted the radiator support panel. Looks SOOO much better.

Here is the install all complete and ready to go.

Job done!..