Rebuild of the 289cid V8 in my 1966 Mustang

In the spring of '98, I was forced to completely rebuild the original 289 in my first Mustang. It developed a bad knock, which turned out to be a broken piston skirt on number 4. My Uncle helped, since it was my first engine overhaul, and since he had the nifty crane. This picture shows the engine as it was being removed from the car, transmission attached.


The still complete engine hangs from the crane awaiting disassembly.


Hello in there... The engine compartment looks pretty weird empty.


I pose for a photo op while removing the last piece; the crankshaft.


The culprit. You can see the broken piston skirt on the left hand piston which precipitated this overhaul.


This picture shows the block after we had reinstalled the crank shaft and new pistons, and the cam and timing chain. The block had to be rebored, but thanks to the less-than-perfect job when it was bored previously, we were able to keep it a 0.030 inches over standard.

The heads had to be completely rebuilt, with new valve seats, guides, and almost all new valves. With the front plate, water pump and valve train, it's starting to look like an engine again.


Now that's a blue engine. We let it dry a week after getting this far on the assembly.


The last weekend, we started by hooking up the crane and installing accessories. Some parts, like the carburetor, were just stuck on for the picture.

In it goes... With the transmission attached, it's quite a handful.


Mostly in. You can see there is a fairly good amount of room in these old engine compartments. It was much easier going in than it had been coming out, probably because we'd figured out what we were doing by then.

All back together. It cranked up and ran right off the bat. After a little timing, it ran great, so we buttoned it up and test drove it the next morning!
For those of you looking to do this kind of thing yourself, you may be interested to see what all this cost me.

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