Scott Drake Electric Remote Trunk Release 1967-1970

The options available on new Mustangs these days are pretty amazing. Glass roofs, navigation, heated seats, six-speed transmissions, our Pony car has come a long way. Even the standard features available now are things enthusiasts from the '60s could only dream of.

One of those things that many people take for granted is electric trunk release. Pretty much any car these days is going to include one. Back in the '60s, the only way you're opening your trunk is with the key. Scott Drake doesn't feel that enthusiasts should have to suffer without this feature, so they offer this electric conversion kit for a '65 through '70 Mustang.

As usual, Scott Drake provides everything needed for installation including this vintage style release lever, new electric latch, wiring with relay, and full color instructions. For this installation we used a 3/8-inch ratchet, a 3/8-inch socket, 7/16-inch socket, Phillips head screwdriver, drill, flashlight, electrical tape, wire strippers, crimping tool, multi meter, and safety glasses.

Scott Drake offers two versions of the electric trunk release kit, one for '64 through '66 cars and one for '67 through '70. The only difference with the installation is going to be the trunk latch itself. We're going to be installing our kit on this 1967 coupe.

First step, remove the original latch. To remove the latch, first we're going to take the lock cylinder and the rod out. The cylinder is held in place with a small little spring plate. With a good pull on it take it right out. Next step just push against the lock rod and the lock cylinder rod will come right out. Next we can remove the latch itself by removing these three 7/16-inch bolts.

Here you can see a comparison between the original and our Scott Drake trunk latch. Obviously the Drake is much larger due to the electronic solenoid built into it. It's only going to use these two mounting holes. You also want to make sure that it's in the open position. Ours currently is locked. You want to turn it and open it before you install it. Install using the original hardware. We are going to fish the wiring harness down first bringing it out on the driver's side. Inch it in place and put the bolts back in.

I am going to reinstall our factory lock cylinder. Now I'll move forward to the wiring. We're just going to fish the wire up to the back seat area. In this case we're just going to lay it across our trunk since our trunk mat is going to cover it when it's reinstalled.

Now we'll move onto the handle. Next we'll be installing the release lever. We'll be mounting it on the seat platform right here next to the seat. The next step is going to be to remove our door sill plates so we can fish our wires through.

Now we're going to drill pilot holes to mount our bracket. Now we're going to remove our backseat, just the lower cushion, to make it easier to fish the wire from the trunk area over to our lever. Just stick your hand underneath it and just pull upward.

This is the wiring harness that goes between the lever in the interior and our trunk latch. It has a built in relay. The relay end stays in the trunk. You want to fish the other end through to your interior. To make it easier grab an old coat hanger and tape the wire to it. It makes it easier to fish it through your back seat.

See our wire is right where we needed it. Take the tape off it here. I'm going to pull through enough slack so that it reaches the lever and then it'll go back to the trunk. The relay is going to have to be ground. We're going to use this screw right here so we don't have to drill anymore holes. I'm going to scrape it clean so we get a good ground. Now we connect the bullet connector to our trunk latch.

Relay has a double stick, we're just going to remove that and stick it right on there. I'm going to fish the wire through the trim panel. Pull back on the windlace and the panel will stick out a little bit more. Fish the wire underneath the back tucked up underneath the carpet here. Now we're going to terminate it and connect it to our lever. The lever has this black tape over the wires for the first couple of inches to make it easier to hide them. I'm just going to cut a small split in the carpet and we can fish them from the underside and hide them even better.

Now with the solderless connect we can connect to the wire that we fish from the trunk and our additional wire is going to go up to the fuse box to power our trunk release. We're going to line it up with the wire here with just a little bit of extra slack. Cut off the excess. Grab the supplied connector. Plug it in. Then we're going to hide the wire behind the carpet.

Now we're going to fish the other wire forward to connect to our fuse box. Next we're going to remove our kick panel to make it easier to fish the wire up into the dash area. Fish the wire down our carpet. Go up behind the kick panel across the dash. We'll come back when we're done and we'll zip tie all our wires so they'll be out of the way.

Now we're ready to hook up 12 volts to our lever. You have a couple of options here. You can either hook it up to constant power that way it's always hot and will open any time you want to or you hook it up to switched. It will only work then with the key in the ignition. For security sake we're going to hook ours up to the switched power off the back of the radio.

Fish our 12-volt power across our dash. We're use these solderless connects to connect it to 12-volts. Now we're ready to hook up our battery and test our trunk release. First we are going to test with the trunk open just to make sure our latch is working properly. We're going to close it by hand. Now we'll try it with the trunk closed.

In our case it didn't open the first time. If you have the same problem you're going to want to adjust the latch a little bit to make sure it opens properly. Both the catch and the latch itself both have some adjustability to them. Our old latch worked pretty well so we're assuming the catch is in a pretty good spot. Since we replaced the latch I am going to start by making some adjustments there. We'll try it again.

Once you've zip tied all your wires safely out of place put the door sill plate, kick panel, back seat back in, and your installation is finished. The electric trunk release is a nice addition to the '67 coupe. Depending on wiring and adjustments you can figure your installation is going to take at least about an hour. You'll be back on the road in no time.