New Member in Iowa

Hello everyoe,

I'm new to this group and have been a Mustang lover since the first car that I owned, a well-used 64.5 D-code, 4-speed coupe that I bought in February 1967. I knew nothing about Mustangs other than they would be a cool car for a young single guy, but over the next year, I began reading car magazines, learning about Mustangs and Shelby's, and decided that I wanted a fastback with the hi-po engine, and began my search.

I remember looking at a 65 silver hi-po fastback and a 66 GT350 at a Ford dealer, but the fastback wasn't in good enough condition to suit me and the Shelby was out of my price range. A little later, I found a nice 66 base model hi-po coupe at a Dodge dealer and traded in the tired 65 D-code in March 1968. That 66 was a really sweet car, both stock and with the minor mods that I did to it, a Weiand intake, Holley carb and mag style wheels with wide-oval tires.

The 66 coupe got traded in on a slightly used SS454 Chevelle in 1970, and I didn't own another 1st gen Mustang until 1997, when I bought a cosmetically-restored, rust-free 66 hi-po fastback from California. I knew it didn't have a hi-po engine in it when I bought it, but Shelby Parts & Restoration in Green Bay found a 68 service hi-po block and built up an engine with a 302 crank and aftermarket parts. That engine puts down 290 Hp on a chassis dyno (estimated 340 at the crank) and I used the car for Shelby club track events from 1998 up thrugh about 2010, before I retired it in favor of late model Mustangs. I don't plan to ever sell it or restore it to original.

But I do have a non-Ford car with a hi-po 289. A Sunbeam Tiger that I bought in 1972, daily drove it for a year, did an amatuer body restoration, and replaced the stock 260 with a 289 hi-po from a 63 Fairlane. I still have that car today. Now, the only parts from the original hi-po engine are the block, crank, rods, pistons and damper.

Bringing my hi-po journey up to the present, I got to thinking that it would be nice to have a stock hi-po Mustang , like I had back in the late 60's, just to be able to compare how it drives versus my 66 fastback. I don't want a show car, but want something that looks nice and is a solid driver quality.

So, I bought one of the K-code mustangs at the recent Mecum auction through online bidding, not expectng it to have a K-code engine, and find that it doesn't, as I inspected it after its arrival yesterday. It's a late 64.5 car (build date 27G = July 27), but it has a 6-bolt engine that has an intake date 5A29 (January 29, 1965), well into the regular 1965 model year.

Looking under the valve covers, the heads are not hi-po with the cast pockets for the valve springs, but someone has installed screw-in rocker studs, and the heads are attached with ARP bolts. It has a dual point distributor, but the cam apparrently uses the 351 firing order. The cam is hydraulic, since none of the lifterters have the clearance you'd find with a solid cam. I'll need to change the cam to make it run like an original hi-po. I will drop the pan to see what it has for rods. I don't care about date code originality or 6 versus 5 bolt block, I just want it to run like an original hi-po.

I'm convinced that its a genuine K-code car, Its door tag looks original and agrees with the left fender VIN, and I pried the right fender up enough to see the same VIN under the right fender. However, when I took a quick look under the back, it has the non-hi-po differential bumper, and does not have the dual exhaust hanger studs protruding through the wall behind the back seat. So I'm wondering if this is a hi-po car with a non-hipo back end on it. In other words, pieced together from two cars. I'll be investigating this more. The body looks very solid, with no rust damage. The only body shell thing I found obviously repaired is the curved section of the front of the trunk bottom, in front of the fuel tank. There's obvious tack welds holding that curved section in place. I'll remove the back seat and get it up on a lift, to see if I find evidence of grafting on parts to fix a car that has been rear-ended.

More to come when I get it inspected more thoroughly.

New user "65-16 Mustangs"

I agree with you 6T09KGT. BTW, I have owned 6T09K201478 genuine K-code fastback GT (as determined from its body buck tag that has PIO on it) for nearly 25 years.

Since my first post, I have pulled the front fenders off my 65 coupe purchased last month, and have pulled the engine and transmission. I'm now 99.9% sure that I have a counterfitted K-code, where the 3 VIN's on the top of the aprons have been welded in, and the matching door tag is on the door. One of my sons has a restoration shop, and when he looked at the aprons, he imediately noted that the metal around the VIN's had quite a few rust pockmarks, while the remainder of the aprons have none. The body of the car, including underneath, appears to be quite rust free and very solid. I know what Mustangs that have lived in the Rust Belt look like underneath. I have a 68 J-code covertible that I did a huge amount of under-body rust repair on. Per the K-code VIN, the K-code car was sold to the Pittsburgh DSO and the car's history back to at least 2015 is from Pennsylvania.

The former owner sold it last Fall at the Carlisle acution, it was bought by a classic car dealer in western PA, who had it listed on his website for a while, but sold it at Mecum in Kissimmee where I bought it over the internet. The classic dealer didn't do anything to it, because it looked just like it did when it sold at Carlisle, including the K-CODE decal on the center-top of the windshield. The previous peronal owner's title shows that he had owned it from Sep 2015 until Oct 2024. I googled his name and he appears to be a software developer for the state of PA, so I'm highly suspicious that he never knew that he had a counterfiet. At this point, it doeosn't make any difference, and I probably won't burst his bubble by contacting him. I'll probably never sell the car, and if I do, I'll be honest about what it is.

I'm certainly disappointed to not have a real K-code body, but my purpose for buying it is to have a car that runs like the 66 hipo coupe that I had back from 68-70, since my 66 fastback is fairly heavily modified in drivetrain and suspension for track use.

The 6-bolt 289 had obviously been rebuilt, as the head bolts were ARP's. The head's are not hipo, but the rebuilder had installed screw-in rocker arm studs. Without removing the heads, I changed the valve springs to hipo spec springs, put retaining cups udner the bottom of them, checked the load of each spring at spec heights and shimmed each spring to hipo spec installed loads.

The piston bores have been bored .030". Looking down through the spark plug holes with a bore scope, the cylinder walls look good. It has pop-up pistons, thus it's better-than-expected compression readings before I pulled the engine. The standard rods already had ARP bolts, which are stronger than the stock ones, so I could torque them to 35 Ft-lbs, instead of the stock 24 Ft-Lbs.. I installed ARP main studs, which will be stronger and have more pre-load force than the standard main bolts, to hold the standard main caps in place.

Of course, I installed new rod and main bearings and torqued the ARP bolts and studs to their specs with their special lube. I installed a Howards repro hipo solid lefter cam, to replace the similar-lift hydraulic cam that was in it. I also bought a NOS hipo timing set with the narrow chain and hatchet counterwight off of eBay, and re-installed the hipo damper that came on the engine. I hope the balance is good enough to comfortably rev it to hipo rated RPM of 6000.

I also installed a repro Cobra intake and 600 CFM Holley double-pumper, like I had on my 66 coupe "back in the day".

The transmission is a wide-ratio Warner T-10. Since I have a close-ratio toploader (with the VIN 5F09K602281 stamped on the bottom) that came out of my 68 J-code convertible, because the transmission growled due to bad bearings, I'm rebuilding it to put in the 65 coupe.

I don't think the rear axle is from a Mustang, because it doesn't neck down in diameter where the leaf springs mount. It is a 9-inch with 3.89 gears and feels like it has a locker differential in it (can spin one tire forward with the other side locked, hearing a ratching sound, but if hold the driveshaft, both wheels lock up if try to turn them backwards. I'll deal with the rear axle later after I get the car runnning. I'll at least change it to a stock 3.50 hipo ratio. I'm hoping that the stock driveshaft out of my 66 fastback, which got an aluminum driveshaft years ago, fits the 65 coupe.

More later after I get the car running with the rebuilt engine and transmission.

Another update. The Hipo-ized 289 is back in the car. The easiest startup of a rebuilt engine that I ever experienced. I had pre-filled the new Holley double-pumper from a temporary fuel bottle, fully opened the throttle a couple times to get both accelerator pumps to squirt into the manifold, just touched start and the engine started and ran smoothly. I got really close on pre-setting the timing. I ran the engine 2000-2500 RPM for 25 minutes to break in the Hipo-spec solid lifter cam. After letting it cool, I removed the oil filter, cut it open, cut out the paper filter medium and let it set a few days to let the oil flow out of it. No signs of any metal or other foreign material.

I then turned my attention to cleaning up the electrical wiring under the dash, because a previous owner obviously had a sound system that had been removed. It had speakers in the kick panels, which I am replacing with original style panels. Who needs a sound system when you want to hear the sound of a 289 Hipo. It had what I think is an early repro Rally Pac. I could not get the tach to read right at more than one speed. I took the tach out, and it is analog (no dip switches like newer ones), so I just removed it and installed a 3" Autometer tach that I had in my 66 FB several years ago.

I think the car has wiring for a 4-way flasher switch, which made me suspicious that its really a 66 car with 64.5 VIN's welded into it. Whoever counterfeited this car as a K-code did a really good, but not perfect job of trying to hide the fact that this was a different color car. It's prairie bronze now, but I've found clear evidence of it being a red car in a few spots under the dash. Since I've got the seats, carpet and rear interior trim removed, I can look into the area where the rear windows crank down into, and see where holes have been welded up in the recessed area between the back of the doors and the rear wheelwells. I can see that there are holes plugged right near the back of the sculpted area, which could be holes for the 65 side trim, but there are also holes about 5 inches farther forward, which would indicate the "E" trim that 66 coupes had.

While I would never pass this car off as an original K-code car, I want to make it mechanically equivalent to one, so that it truly drives like one. Since it had the standard 5/8" front sway bar, I installed a 1" that I had removed from my 66 FB when I put a Total Control Products front suspension in it 20 years ago. That's heavier than the stock Hipo bar, but close enough for me. I installed repro Hipo front springs, and a set of repro Hipo rear springs just got delivered today. It came with the Hipo style dual exhaust, including resonators at the back, but since the car did not have the hanger studs under the back seat from the factory, the installer had just run self-tapping screws through the sheet metal in not quite the right places. I bought the reinforcement plates from Classic Industries, so that I could put repro hanger studs in the right locations.

The rear 9" axle is not from a Mustang, as it does not reduce to a smaller tube diameter at the spring mounts. I found some online posts that indicate that a number of Mustang hot rodders have put 57-59 Ford rear axles in Mustangs that never had a 9", which would be over 99% of 64.5-66 Mustangs, including this car of mine. Those 57-59 axles must have all been 9", and are apparently the same width as Mustang axles. Its got a 3.89 locker in it, which I will want to change to a 3.50. The locker is the one thing that the 64.5 Hipo that this car is a clone of did not have. My door tag indicates that it was a 3.89 open axle. I'll leave the locker in it, as long as it works ok.

More updates after I get it driveable, which should be less than a month from now.

My "re-bodied" 64.5 K-code with it's hypo-ized 289 is back together, and I took it out for a short drive last Sunday. Probably only put 10 miles on it, staying within 3 miles of home, in case anything stopped working. The engine runs great, and it really likes RPM's, like a hipo should. I didn't rev it over 5000, but I'm sure it will go to 6000 easily. It seems to be balanced OK, with the 28 oz balance SFI-rated iron flywheel that I put on it.

My rebuild of the close ratio toploader, that I had from a different unknown-destiny hipo car, works fine. Even with the book on rebuilding a toploader, it was a challenge, where I could have easily fouled up something. I backtracked a couple of times when doing the rebuild, when I realized that I had done something wrong.

I installed a vintage Hurst shifter that I had bought to use in my 66 fastback track car, back when Hurst shifters had poor quality, sloppy rather than precise gating. They have improved a lot in recent years. I suspect they made new stamping tooling for the internal parts.

When I turn sharp, like going around a driveway circle, I hear some clunking in the back. I'll get it up on a lift and see if I can find evidence of something hitting. If not, it might be the locker that is in the 9 inch differential that I believe is from a 57 Ford. I did install new, repro hipo front and rear springs. The rears looked equivalent to hipo's, but had been heavily rusted and creaked when I raised or lowered the car on a lift.

I'll take the car to the local Mustang Club's annual show in early June. I need to decide if I want to have the 3.89 ratio 9-inch center section rebuilt to a 3.50 ratio, like a stock 65-66 hipo before then, and maybe it should have a normal clutch type limited slip. I should probably just buy a whole new center section. Quick Performance, the widely known builder of center sections and custom axles, is right here in my town, Ames, Iowa. I put a custom 9-inch 3.50 ratio axle in my 70 SS454 clone that I built with a 572 crate engine and a T-56 transmission. With a full Hotchkiss suspension and 17" wheels and wide tires, that car drives and handles better on the street than any of my other vintage cars. That's my only classic or performance car that doesn't have a Ford engine.

I hear you, but I'm set on changing it to a 3.50 ratio. My 66 hipo fastback that I used to use as a track car has a 3.89 gear, which I selected to put me at 130 MPH at 7000 RPM. On the main straight at Road America, I would back off of the accelerator about 3/4 the way down the straight to keep the RPM's to 7000. That engine is a hipo block with a 302 crank, Edelbrock heads, long tube headers and a hotter solid lifter cam than the stock hipo. It's retired from track use now, but the last time I took it to the local Mustang Club show 35 miles away, it was not a leisurely drive at 70 MPH on the interstate most of the way. It would have been revving about 3600 RPM, and it was getting close to overheating. A 3.50 is a bit better on the highway, but still a performance ratio.

My objective with the 5F07K car is to make it drive like my stock 66 hipo from back in the day. Other than hi-rise intake and Holley carb that I installed in 1969, which I've done the same in the 5F07K car. If I was putting a 5 speed in this car, I would keep the 3.89, but that would not be stock. Maybe I'll change my mind someday. I installed a TKX 5-speed in my 427 66 Fairlane GT to make it more pleasant to drive on the interstate, and it only has its stock 3.25 gear.

I could have bought a true 64.5 hipo with its original engine, with a Cobra manifold and Holley carb, for less than I paid for my 5F07K car, even before I started putting more money into it. It was at Tuscon Classic cars, whom I talked to just prior to Mecum at Kissimmee. They said they'd take it to Mecum at Glendale if not sold by then. They did and it sold for less than the dealer was asking for it.

My problem was that it was a white car with a base white interior. I hate white cars unless they have something on them to change the look of a plain white car. Like my white 68 convertible has the GT "C" stripe on the side and a black top. My 5F07K "K-clone" has a beautiful paint job in Prairie Bronze, which I find quite attractive. It has an original black vinyl top which goes well with the bronze. I could do without the vinyl top and have a solid-color car, but the top is still in pretty good condition.

That Tuscon car did have a 5 speed and 3.89 gears, but I was also looking to go stock on the trans at that time. We'll see how I feel about my "stock" K-clone in a year or two. It should be a good driver class car when I get all the little things sorted out, which I think I've pretty much completed.