Sorry for the tangent, back to the galaxie.

Temporary engine like thing installed.

I will say this, those headers were 1150 dollars but you do get 1150 dollars worth of headers . Probably one of the last vestiges of true American craftsmanship and quality. Thank you FPA for providing these for sale it's a pleasure installing them.

With that I ordered everything I need to make this exhaust and also ordered some Moog Cardan joints for the propshaft. This portion is done till those parts arrive.

More to come...

Rant 1

There are better sources for cylinder heads, but the price really escalates. To rebuild/build up this engine is already going to be around 11 thousand dollars which is more than the car will probably ever be worth. I am trying to keep it from really getting out of control. If I have to use the cheaper Edelbrock heads and they need a little work so be it. In fact I wouldn't be so annoyed if Edelbrock instead printed on the their boxes "May need a little work before installation". At least it's honest and factual.

As for local machine shops. Where I live I am extremely limited on machine shop resources. Heck I can't even find an exhaust shop that can mandrel bend 2.5" pipe with a 4" radius within 100 mile radius, maybe more as I just gave up at that point and will have to lobster tail this exhaust system to fit in the tight spaces as in the '66 LTD.

In fact machine shops seem to be closing. I am lucky in that the one I use has been around a good long time and an old otherwise forgotten FE is no stranger to them. Sometimes you have to take what you can get.

Rant 2

I do a fair about of mitigating when it comes to what parts to buy to build up a car very literally from the first nut and bolt. I do buy the tail pipe kit but still have to alter that a little bit. That does save a little time. The main reason for lobster tailing is that X pipe right in the middle. It's such a tight fit I would need a couple of the kits with all the bends in them. That can get really pricey. Also most of those kits are thin wall exhaust and if I'm going to spend time making that centre X pipe fit perfectly between the transmission/proshaft and parking brake cable assembly I want thick wall tubing so that I will never have to replace it from rust. The tubing I used on the LTD was 0.070" and the tubing I bought for this XL is 0.075" both are aluminized steel. It's a very heavy exhaust, but I do not want to do this portion again... ever

The exterior of the exhaust system will be ceramic coated when finished and that should protect the exterior welds, the heat of the exhaust should keep moisture from accumulating on the inside.

Propshaft and Cardan Joints

The proliferation of substandard parts is really a problem. I've noticed that some nefarious people like to buy the good parts from Rock Auto then return cheap parts for full credit. I fell victim to this as seen below.

I bought some Moog joints and I did get the one on the right in a Moog box. It's imperative to check over every single part now-a-days.

You can see the difference in some poorly made Cardan joint on the right and a genuine Moog. The letters MG will be embossed on the body.

That's a brand new yoke on the left and a used '68 yoke on the right. The original yoke was so ground up from the Fire-O-Matic C6 it was destroyed. I wanted to use the '68 as it had the harmonic damper on it, but it had a noticeable groove from seal wear. I opted to go with the new yoke instead.

The original propshaft, cleaned up nicely and painted it. One nice thing about Southwest cars, very little rust.

All assembled. All joints move smoothly.

I will say that Ford didn't skimp on the propshaft, it's a decent diameter and pretty heavy. Keep in mind when searching for a replacement, that the propshaft varies in length and also has different sized Cardan joints/ears depending on what size engine was in the car.

Plus I have park now. Sometimes you just have to celebrate the little victories.

More to come