Today in the PowerTV garage.

[Bobby Kbro]

This is the pained face of the man that is trying to remove the top two bolts on the bellhousing. What was suppose to be a simple clutch job turned into a nightmare when I realized that there is no simple way to remove those two bolts. An earlier model car, the bolts can be removed from the top of the vehicle. But somewhere in the late 90's, Ford must have decided to kick the mechanic off of the vehicle design team and the maintenance of the late model cars became much more difficult.

I ended up using two 12 inch extensions, one 6 inch extension, a universal joint adapter and a 13 mm socket to reach those bolts. This hill billy tool set up worked and I was able to remove the bolts.........but I'll be damned if I know how I am going to get them back in.

Speaking of bolts going back in....has anyone removed the top bolt on the starter on a late model mustang? Who the hell designs this stuff?

Time for me to switch gears for an hour or so and work on a GM to regain some of my wits.

[powerjames]

I've cursed plenty at a GM engine in my day. LOL.

[Bobby Kbro]

Yes Sir, I have too. But.....even through the cursing, I can see the logic of what GM was trying to do. In the case of the Ford starter bolts on our Mustang 4.6, no mechanical logic was involved in the design.
Case in point:
I put a very long extension and socket together, fished around till I felt the bolt, put the socket on the bolt and removed it. I had to go fishing for the bolt because you can't see it, you can't feel it......you just know it's there. Still have no idea how I'm going to put that back in.????
Geez, if that doesn't defy logic, then I am a very contradicted man.
Somewhere in this process, I began to understand what FoMoCo really means.

You gotta have serious maintenance skills, a good set of tools and butt loads of patience to work on Mustangs!

[Bobby Kbro]

Today was the day that I found out how I was going to re-install the top two bell housing bolts and the top starter bolt on our Project Sun Devil 4.6 Mustang Convertible.

It wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. All weekend long I dreaded tackling this job. I even started to break out in hives as it got closer to go time. After all that fretting and worrying. It wasn't that bad.

A couple 12 inch extensions and a universal joint adapter, they went right in.

The key to the process was removing the H-pipe. Once that piece of metal was out of the way, everything else seemed to open up.

Hell, I got this stuff down now. No stopping me. I can wrench on anything.
I work on Mustangs, and that pretty much says it all.