A new flexplate was purchased.

I compared it to an old FE 390 plate to make sure it was correct (neutral balanced and same number of teeth).

On the spacer plate the '66 plate (right black one) doesn't have the drill holes for the oil galleries around the cam plug. The other plate (upper left) is a '68 and does have them. So I laid the '68 plate over the '66 plate, transcribed the holes and drilled them. I had screw plugs installed in the '66 so they protrude and the plate needs to have clearance holes.

Engine in and the spacer and flexplate installed with Locktite and torqued to specs.

Once the engine was in and the transmission attached I gutted an old points distributor, filled it with oil, attached a mechanical oil pressure gauge and spun up the oil pump with my cordless drill.

With the drill at about 100 RPM it read 70 PSI. So far so good.

I ran the pump and verified a nice trickle from each rocker tip and yes this made a mess.

I still have to set the electronic distributor.

I still have to R&R the starter and install this side header.

For now I added a cooler bypass line to run the transmission as it's full of fluid.

This side header is installed.

This is just one reason this set of FPA headers costs 1200. The clearance is phenomenal for how tight this is. It's like threading a needle. Add that to the fact the tubes are heavy gauge steel and so is the flange. These are quite heavy and worth every penny.

This is where I'm currently at on the starter. So far this one looks good, just needs to be cleaned, greased and detailed.

Getting close to starting it up.

First Start, Well Eventually.

This was frustrating and it shouldn't have been. First the starter was acting up and that was my fault for not filing the contacts on the bendix switch. I was so excited to see it run I gave the switch contacts a quick look and even though they looked OK, I should have filed them. My error.

So what the starter was doing was not throwing out the bendix and just spinning. There is a high current switch that effectively takes one field pole (the one that attracts the ferrous pivoting core into the starter field pole) and places it directly across the battery potential. Once the ferrous core is magnetically sucked in, withcidentally this forces the bendix out the switch is opened and returns that field pole back in series configuration with the armature and matching other field pole. If that switch doesn't make good contact there's not enough inrush current to push the bendix out and the starter will just spin. It would do this from time to time.

Can't win them all.

The starters commutator had some noticeable low spots that needed to be leveled.

A job for the lathe, file and 400 grit sandpaper.

leveled and dressed.

I didn't take any more pictures, but since I need to clean the starter contact I shall show that later.

Now this is where I had other problems. When I set the new distributor and temporarily connected the ignition system and used the timing light I set base timing to 10˚ BTC. There was an odd occasional double flash but the mark was stable for the short cranking time in setting the timing.

Well didn't matter if I sprayed gasoline or carb cleaner or starting fluid it just backfired violently through the throttle body. This drove me nuts for a bit, then I rechecked the timing and I noticed on extended cranking the mark would now jump around. Thinking it was a flaky module I switched it out. I was using a generic GM 4 pin HEI module. So I changed it for a brand new Wells one. Same thing.

With that I grabbed the Duraspark off the '66 LTD 390 as that system worked. Again same thing.

In a fit of pique I just took the distributor out of the '66 LTD 390 and that worked. I had a stable timing mark. So the brand new distributor I bought has a flaky pickup coil in it. Another crappy aftermarket part.

Now I do have a video of it running open headers, but I couldn't spray fuel fast enough out of the spray bottle to get the RPM's up. Plus I used an actual video camera and it ended up compressing the audio so open headers doesn't seem terribly loud, but it was.

With that I ended up putting the full exhaust back on and using carb spray and that worked well. Tis happy.

Here's the video of it running for a few seconds. I call it poor mans fuel injection.

1966 Galaxie 500 XL Full Exhaust

More to come.

Cheers