In about 1971 we were a young married couple with two babies about a year old, and were struggling financially, as most young couples do. My Wife had a 68 Mustang that she bought new off the trailer before we were married, and it became our only car. Unfortunately, the C4 transmission went out, so I started calling around to find one. One guy I called said "do you want a 4 speed?" I told him I would love to, but they were too expensive. He said "this one is free!" He went on to explain that a guy he knew had a 70 Mach I with a 351 Cleveland, 4 speed, and 9 inch nodular rear, and he wanted to trade it in but the dealers were offering him peanuts because it wasn't an automatic. So he wanted someone to swap it over to an automatic for him. Evidently the guy liked high performance cars but knew zero about how to work on them.

I hooked up with the guy and it was true, he didn't care how I did it, he just wanted the car to end up with an automatic in it. I found a used c4 for $ 75.00 and he delivered the car to my house for me to make the changeover. Half way though I found out Ford had made lots of changes between 68 and 70 and the swap wasn't as easy as I thought, so I called him and told him my transmission wouldn't connect to his Cleveland. He said "then put your motor and transmission in my car, whatever you need to do to make it an automatic! " So I pulled the 289 out of my 68, painted the engine a nice blue, put 302 stickers on it, and put it and the new transmission into place. All I had to buy was some new exhaust parts to make it all work.

But when I took it for a drive the gears in the rear were too deep for the new drivetrain (3:90 TracLoc) so I called him again. He said "then put your rear end in my car!" So I installed the 8 inch one wheeler in his Mach I and gave the car back to him. I ended up with an almost new 351 4 barrel engine, top loader 4 speed, and 9 inch rear for about $ 150.00.

He called me about a week later and said everything was fine, but now the dealers were telling him the car wasn't worth anything because it had manual steering, would I be willing to put power steering in it for him? I had to decline, I still had mine to put back together and frankly didn't ever want to see the underside of his car again.

BTW, my Wife never forgave me for ruining her nice little Mustang and making a hot rod out of it. I really miss that Mustang.

Don