12-10-07: This is still an ongoing project, this page will be updated as work progresses.

7-17-08: Well, life has intervened and given me more pressing matters to attend to for the first part of this year (moving, new job, etc.). I'm hoping to get back to work on this project this fall. Stay tuned!



The goal of this project was to build a relatively low budget classic Mustang daily driver. We had a vintage 69 Mustang coupe with a knocking, smoking 351W and FMX. The car already had power disk brakes and a 9" rear. To make it more livable for city commuting, we wanted to add EFI, overdrive, cruise control, and air conditioning to it. We didn't want to do a complete restoration, because this car will be driven in all weather and not babied.

To start the ball rolling, we picked up a donor car, an 89 Mustang LX Convertible:


The donor car was running and drove just fine. However, the top was bad and there was some frame damage on the passenger's side. We paid $1500 for the car and pulled out the engine, transmission, all the wiring and electronics, plus some miscellaneous parts. Then we parted the car out on Craigslist and sold the remainder for scrap. After all was said and done, we made back $700.

As the official beginning of the conversion, we pulled the old 351W out of the 69. What a mess. We found a bad connector going to the alternator, a broken bolt on the water pump, a bad harmonic balancer, rust colored antifreeze and the lower radiator hose spring was entirely rusted and broken in places. Not to mention that the engine knocked and smoked when it ran. The job was so dirty that we stopped halfway through and pressure washed the newly exposed portions of the engine compartment.

Here's what it looked like when we started:


And here's what it looked like that evening:



Everything that was removed was sealed up into 55 gallon drums in case we ever decided to restore the car. Here's a bit about storing the engine: Storing an Engine. The benefit of this kind of storage is that the parts can be kept outside and not take up indoor storage space which is in short supply around here.


Here's the pressure washed and painted engine compartment:



The paint is semi-flat black. The pressure washing removed a lot of the old paint so I had to break out the shake-and-shoot and start fogging. It's not a great job but this isn't a restoration. Not a lot of "resto" in this "restomod". Oh, and those paint runs are OE.

This is the new engine sitting in the car:



We set the intake system on the engine to see how everything would fit:

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Before the donor engine can be put in the 69 there are a few things that should be taken care of, like changing out the oil pan and installing a new dipstick:

Preparing the 5.0L for installation

The Mustang was an automatic and we decided to keep it that way. The donor car had an AOD (automatic overdrive) transmission and we kept it for the 69. The overdrive will give us better economy while allowing a better rear end ratio than the original 3.08.
Here's what we did for the AOD:

69 Mustang AOD Installation

We've had cars in the past with overheating issues and they are frustrating. So for this project we decided to upgrade the cooling system as much as reasonably possible. The original radiator was shot so it was time for an upgrade anyway. We went with an aftermarket aluminum radiator. We wanted to keep the thermostatic clutch fan from the donor 5.0, but we couldn't make it fit and ended up using an electric fan. Here's more info:

69 Mustang EFI Cooling System

The EFI 5.0L engine needed a throttle cable that was much longer than the stock 69 Mustang cable, so we had do some modifications:

69 Mustang EFI Throttle Cable Installation

The car's fuel system required major changes to feed the new fuel injection system:

69 Mustang EFI Fuel System

We rebuilt the donor wiring harness for this installation. A few circuits were removed and some of the circuits that were separate on the donor harness were integrated into a single harness.

69 Mustang EFI Wiring

We also moved the battery to the trunk and installed a remote battery cut-off solenoid.

69 Mustang Wiring Modifications