T-Bird Gallery

1969 T-Bird Gallery

Generated with Arles Image Web Page Creator

I purchased this 1969 Ford Thunderbird in the summer of 1988 in Dallas, Texas. I am the third owner. At the time of purchase, the vehicle had about 34,000 miles on it. I have enough repair records from the original owners over the years to show that this is original mileage. At the time of writing (October, 2001) the odometer has just turned over 50,000. When I bought the car, it had spent its entire life in the Dallas, Texas area. Three years after the purchase, in the summer of 1991 I moved back to my hometown of Ottawa, Canada where the T-Bird spent the next 8 years. It was never winter driven, but it was regularly used during the non-winter months from 1991 through until the end of 1994. In January of 1995, I moved to southern Germany and the car was left in storage at my home in Ottawa for the next 4 ½ years. I had not expected to be gone for that length of time so the car was not properly prepared for storage. A neighbor did start the vehicle every now and then, but for the most part, the car sat covered in a non-heated garage.

Upon returning from Germany in the summer of the 1999, the car was transported via moving van to my home in Morgan Hill, CA where the photographs above were taken. After arriving in California in the summer of 1999, I was able to get the vehicle started quite easily after buying a new battery. From what I have read elsewhere, these cars have a reputation of starting well even after many years of storage. The carburetor was quite gummed up so I purchased a rebuild kit (see photos of rebuild) and while that did make some difference I had continual problems with the cold idle. As well, the gas tank was obviously not all that clean from years of sitting in storage. In the summer of 2000, I brought the car into Steven’s Auto Works in Milpitas, CA on recommendation of a friend. There, I had a new Holley 4160 carburetor installed as well as most of the brake system (essentially everything except the master cylinder) replaced and the gas tank was sent out for thorough cleaning. The fuel system has been behaving itself, though the Holley carburetor does seem to need its float levels adjusted every now and then. Since then, I've done some work on the car to get it back in shape again and I've moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Recently I have replaced the leather on the driver's seat (2020), replaced the automatic transmission gasket (2021), bypassed the heater core as it was leaking (2021) and replaced one of the valve cover gaskets (2022).

Data:

Engine: 429 cid

Bore: 4.36 in

Stroke: 3.59 in

Compression: 10.5:1

Horsepower 360

Options: Tilt steering wheel, automatic tilt-away steering wheel, Selectaire A/C with automatic Temperature Control

Repairs:

1. Carburetor rebuild.

2. Gas tank sending unit replaced.

3. Gas tank purged and cleaned.

4. Clock.