By Jeff Glucker
It’s been a bit of a long road to get here, but the day has arrived. My 1967 Ford Mustang, dubbed NONWICK, is alive. The car runs. I’ve driven it. And now I already need to fix something major.
It’s a glorious moment to hear your long-dormant project car fire to life. This particular ’67 Mustang once sat on a farm in Tennessee for nearly three decades. It was plucked from a field where it then served as the plot point for season one/episode one of the show Roadworthy Rescues. I bought it from MotorTrend, then ripped out the straight-six, C4, rearend, and every other part that wasn’t part of my mission for the car.
Now, it has a very healthy 351 in the nose. The suspension is fresh. There’s a nine-inch rear in place. And I have a T5 backing up the motor—which leads us to the failure point in the car.
While driving the car from the garage where we assembled it to bring it home, the gearbox failed. At least, that’s my assumption based on what happened. Cruising along, a rhythmic noise developed, got worse, and then got loud. The car shut off, I pulled over to the shoulder, and there’s a bunch of bad sounds if I try to put the thing in gear. Thankfully, I saw no leaking fluids or exploded metal bits underneath the car.
So, that’s where we sit today. I’m in the process of removing the transmission to see what happened. But the good news is that as soon as I get a fresh gearbox back in the car, it should be good to go. I still have tons of other smaller projects to tackle, like putting in the remaining three seatbelts, cleaning up the interior, and installing a sound system. But all of that is peanuts compared to what it took to get the car to this point.