Ford Performance Universal Valve Cover Breather Cap Grommets 1965-1995

If you've been following along with our Weekend Wrench project car, you've seen a lot of the upgrades at this point have been to the interior. We've done a few exterior upgrades, but the one place we haven't touched at all is going to be our engine bay. Our 289 runs pretty good, but cosmetically, it could definitely use some help. Today, were going to dress it up a little bit with some parts from Hose Candy and Scott Drake.

We are going to be installing this Hose Candy kit for the '65 through '69 small block Ford Mustang. It's included in their hose skin kit for all of your radiator hoses, along with the Sidewinder kit for all your vacuum lines. For our Weekend Wrench, we've chosen to go with the red and black Kevlar on the hose skin kit. While we're at it, we'll install these chrome valve covers and this chrome air cleaner assembly from Scott Drake.

For this installation, we suggest the use of a jack and jack stands or a lift, although not required for the installation. You will need a 3/8 ratchet, half-inch deep socket, 7/16 deep socket, 7/16 shallow socket, six-inch extension, pick, pliers, short Phillips head screwdriver, standard Phillips head screwdriver, half-inch wrench, scissors, heat gun and safety glasses.

We are going to start by giving our engine bay a good cleaning. You want to use some sort of a degreaser and make sure everything electrical is covered up before you spray down the engine. Once you spray the degreaser, you want let it sit for about 10 to 15 minutes before you hose it off. Make sure when you're hosing it off, you do have your fenders covered so you don't get any degreaser on your paint. The Hose Candy kit will come with hose wraps to go over the factory hoses. It also replaces your original worm clamp.

To do this, you're going to drain the cooling system first so we can remove the hoses. First step, take off the cap, but make sure the car is cool before you do this. Now, we can move underneath and drain our radiator. Then, you want to open the petcock on the bottom of the radiator to drain your coolant. Once you get most of the coolant out, you're going to retighten the petcock and move onto the lower radiator hose. We're going to unscrew the clamp. You may have to do this from the top, so get a small screwdriver. You can get it from down here, as well.

Now, move back up top. I'm going to remove the upper clamp for the lower radiator hose from the water pump, and remove the lower. We're going to start by removing the upper hose by taking the clamp off the radiator. Remove it at the engine and we'll get the bypass hose off.

While we're here, we're going to pop off the thermostat housing and replace our thermostat. If you haven't checked it in a while or don't know the last time it was replaced, it's a good day to do it while you have everything apart. Carefully pry it off, remove the housing, and remove the thermostat.

Now remove the lower heater hose from the water pump, and we need to get the heater hose off the intake manifold. We're going to pop off our air clamp and make it a little bit easier to get to it. We'll disconnect at the intake. These two hoses here go back to the heater core inside your heater box. To fully cover these, you actually have to pull the heater box up against your heater core. What we're going to do run the wrap back to the far wall and then terminate them at the far wall instead of pulling out our heater box.

While we're letting the cooling system finish draining, were going to swap out our valve covers. We'll start by pulling this off here, move your PCV valve and then remove the bolt. We can repair our valve cover by installing our new gasket. Let's cut out the gasket. It's going to fit right into, making it easy to line up and we're ready to install it on the car.

I'm installing a new bolt. We'll just get them hand tight for now and we're going to tighten it down, you want to do a crisscross pattern. See here, our PCV hose isn't quite long enough to reach over to our new valve cover. We're going to swap the hose out and while we're at it, we're going to replace the PCV as well. Remove our hose clamp. You are going to see the hose we removed from our Weekend Wrench. This is the correct hose here. The back hose here is from a 351 Windsor. When using aftermarket valve covers, particularly ones that are slightly taller, a lot of times we recommend going to the Windsor hose. It's a little bit longer and makes for a much better fit. Now reinstall the clamps, put on a PCV valve and reinstall it on the car. Install the PCV and the valve cover and reconnect it behind the carburetor.

Next, we'll move onto the driver's side valve cover. Install the grommet for our oil fill and flip it over and install the gasket. Now, we'll place in our new oil fill. We cleaned off our original thermostat housing and never used it. We're going to use a brand-new 180 degree thermostat, along with a new gasket.

Now, we're ready to work on our hoses. The Hose Candy Hose Skins will work fine with your original hoses. If they're in good shape, you can continue with your installation. In our case, our upper is not bad, but our lower and our bypass have definitely seen some better days. We're going to upgrade to these Scott Drake silicone hoses, which are also going to be stronger than the factory rubber.

It's a good idea to test your hoses before installation. Our upper and lower radiator hoses were fine. In the case of our bypass hose, it's definitely a little bit too long so were going to trim it down before we install it. Now, were going to start installing the hose skin. We're going to start with a top feeder hose here. Since we're actually not terminating it, we only need the hose skin and our Super Shrink. We won't get into boa clamps for this part, but you will need a hair dryer or preferably a heat gun.

We're going to start by bunching it up as much as possible. That'll make it easier to install. I'm going to start feeding it over the hose. I'm going to get it just about to the end, put it on and make sure it's a tight fit for the hose. We're ready to install the Super Shrink. I will cut off our excess at the end here and make sure it is all the way up against the end, and you're ready to heat it.

Now, we will connect the other end of the heater hose that's sitting on our lower intake. You want to make sure you put the Super Shrink on first. We'll slide our hose skin back a little bit, put on one of the boa clamps and put it back on our intake. Then we're going to heat up the boa clamp. Once the clamp is on, we're going to stretch out our hose skin again and we'll heat up our Super Shrink.

Now, we will repeat the process on the heater hose that goes to our water pump. Going to install our upper radiator hose. We just can't connect the water pump side for now. I'll show you where it goes there. We'll put our boa clamp down into place and we will heat that up. Let's slide down the Super Shrink and you want to pull it tight toward the top. We want to cut off the excess. We're going to install this Super Shrink with the top connection, press our hose again back a little bit, grab our boa clamp, connect to the radiator. Now, to clamp it over and heat it up. I'm going to stretch the hose skin back out tight. It should shrink up and heat it into place.

Now that we're finished with our coolant hoses, we're going to move onto the vacuum line. The kit includes their Sidewinder kit, which will replace vacuum lines, actually pretty much any other hose under your hood as well. We're going to start with the vacuum advance from our carburetor and then remove it from our distributor.

We're going to start by grabbing the silicone hoses included with the kit, measure out a piece that matches the original. We will cut it and we'll grab our new end. The kit includes different diameters of the silicone hosing, matching hose skins, selection of fittings, as well as a quick disconnect. You want to find everything you need up front before you begin the installation. We're going to grab one of the ends with the thread that'll catch off the quick connect, put it into the L-shaped fitting that's included and put that on our carburetor.

Now, we'll grab another one of the threader fittings and this time, a straight fitting. We're going to install it from the vacuum advance on the distributor. We are going to measure out the hose skin for our new hose. Just like before, press it, open it up a little bit to install it. Then, we'll cut it on the other side as well. We will install the other fitting through this splined end. You will hear it click into place. Do that with both ends. You want to grab both pieces of Super Shrink, put them over the hose, put the barbed end of the fitting into the hose and we will Super Shrink up to the end here and we will heat it up.

Now, we are ready to install our custom vacuum advance hose. To install, we simply route the hose to our quick connect fitting, slot it on, lock it into place. Last step is installation of our new air cleaner and our installation is finished. Our air cleaner is a reproduction of the one used on the original HiPo 289. Obviously, it's false advertising at this point. You don't have to use the decal, but we like the way it looks. Now you just got to fill up your cooling system. You're ready to go for a test drive.

We're not quite ready for a judged car show yet, but our Scott Drake and Hose Candy parts, we're no longer embarrassed to open our hood on local cruise night. Installation, run you about two hours. You'll be back on the road in no time. For more install videos like this, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.