[LordNatedawg]

I've got a fairly busy life. Often times I can only set aside a few hours each month to work on my '66. Sometimes that time gets eaten up by other projects; my family loves using my mechanical skills to save some money. This thread will show you what I'm wrenching on when I'm not working on Papa Smurf.

The first vehicle I'm showing you is a 1998 Ford Mustang. It has the V6 engine and a manual transmission. We bought it from a family friend. He started a family and no longer had a use for it. It sat without running since at least 2016. I started working on it in early 2020.



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The first thing I did was check all the fluids My main concern was the condition of the oil. To my surprise, it was full and looked fairly clean. Next, I pulled all of the spark plugs and gave each cylinder a shot of lubricant. IIRC, I used a lubricant that is meant to protect marine engines during long-term storage. My goal was to make sure that the cylinders weren't bone dry when I try to start it. While I had the spark plugs out, I made sure they were all in good shape. It looked liked they all had been recently replaced. I also took the time to replace the spark plug wires. I had torn a few during the removal process.

Next, I siphoned as much old gas out as I could, and then poured in a few gallons of fresh gas. 4 year old gas looks similar to cheap beer. Smells terrible. I certainly didn't want it gumming up my fuel system.

At this point, I was ready to try and start it. I disconnected the fuel pump, cranked the engine and got it started on starter fluid first. My goal was to try and "prime" the oil pump. My starter fluid also claims to lubricate cylinders. After this was done, I reconnected the fuel pump and tried to prime the fuel system. The fuel pump refused to kick on. Unfortunately, Mustangs in this year range seem to have an issue with dead fuel pumps.

I immediately got to work on replacing the pump. I left the 4-5 gallons of gas in the tank when I dropped it. I replaced the fuel pump and the filler neck grommet while I had the gas tank down. After that was done, I reassembled everything, verified that I now had fuel pressure at the Schrader valve, and the cranked the engine. It roared to life and soon I was smelling a mixture of old gas, burning cobwebs, and burning leaves.



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Now that it was running I could focus on other parts of the car. The oil was changed, and the coolant, brakes, and power steering were flushed. The differential and transmission fluid were left alone because they looked brand new. As you can tell by the photo below, the coolant was....a little dirty.



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That's where I'm at with this project. It needs new tires, it sprung a leak at the power steering pump, and rust has deformed the disc brakes pretty bad. It also might have a bad throwout or pilot bearing. Releasing the clutch while the vehicle is in neutral causes a short but loud squeal emanating from the transmission. This vehicle will sit for a while because the soon-to-be driver doesn't have his license yet.