65 Barracuda daily driver

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65barracudaLA said:
After I filled the rear with 80W-90 gear oil mixed with a can of Motorcraft XL-3 friction modifier I took the car up to Scholl Canyon where I know the only parking lot around that is usually empty enough to do some figure 8s. Absolutely no noise from the differential! There is some whining from one of the bearings I think. When I replaced them a couple of years ago I could only find one Timken bearing on short notice and the other one was some cheapo brand. I'll have to investigate, but for now it's not a big concern.
The neutral safety switch is still leaking, so I ordered a NORS one on ebay for 65 bucks. I bought a newer, 3-prong one for 8 bucks just for the gasket, but apparently they don't work with the early 904s.

Anyways, when I testfitted the "new" deck lid I noticed that it wasn't closing all the way, which the current one also did, but I thought it was because it was all bent up. I ordered new "marshmallow soft" Y-profile weatherstripping from Detroit Muscle Technologies, because what was on there was the wrong style.

After I removed the old weatherstripping some paint had come off with the glue and some paint had been scraped off by loading stuff in the trunk.

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I hadn't really thought about that and thought glueing it down was gonna take an hour max. If I didn't paint it now it would have been tricky and messy in the future. So yeah, scraping, sanding, priming and painting took all afternoon.

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I let it dry for 24 hours. I used the 3M Super Black Weatherstrip adhesive. Steele Rubber has some instructions on their website. They said to spread a thin layer on both surfaces with a popsicle stick and let it get tacky and then add some more on one side and press it down. It got tacky so quickly that spreading it wasn't really working. So I just spread it right out of the tube and I think it worked well. The clothespins weren't really necessary - just added insurance.

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Once it's pressed down you can't adjust anymore, so it's not perfect, but good enough.

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The lid (latch) still needs some more adjustment, but it's already way better than before. The latch could probably also use some lubrication. And on the hinge side it's also sticking up a bit. Here you can also see why want to replace the lid...

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Excellent progress! Did you apply the 3m adhesive on both sides (trunk gutter and seal), or just one of the surfaces?
 
Over the weekend my band was playing the Lightning In A Bottle Festival and it was once again a great road test for the Barracuda. 100+ miles each way, which is the longest trip with the new engine yet. Made it through the infamous Grapevine without overheating. Car got a bit warm idling in line to get into the festival, but it wasn't that bad. I added some Water Wetter to the coolant before I left. On the bottle it said that if you run just water without coolant it would run cooler? And even cooler with Water Wetter and water. Never knew that. I might just run water until winter then?! Other than that it used a bit of oil, which is interesting because it doesn't smoke at all. I'll keep an eye on that.

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The car ran comfortably 70mph and got a bit shaky around 80, which is not bad considering that I haven't gotten it aligned since swapping from the slant to the small block.

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Just got back yesterday, but tomorrow we're going camping at the beach and I plan on sleeping in the car. Tested it and this air mattress fits almost perfectly in there. It's a little high, so there's not much room for ankles, but it works. I could consider taking off the chrome bar and pull it further to the front.

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