Engine/Water

What's the best way to keep water out of the carb, distributer, etc. and still enjoy playing in the mud?

 

Make a fording kit for it....They sell them for military versions,I cant afford them but I imagine they make a civvy version...

 

Just as a note to those that don't know.. The fox body Mustangs usually have a rubber cover that goes over the distributor. I have gotten several of those from junkyards in the past for some of my offroad projects and they will pretty much fit everything.

 

Are your inner fender skirts missing?

 

There is a number of ways you can go and also some simple tricks. Dilectic silicon grease is a good way to go. But remember the earlier post in this thread about condensation in your dist. You can install the grease before you go muddin and wipe it off when you are done. Sealing up your dist for just a day shouldn't cause problems in my opinion. If you choose to seal your dist all the time you could drill a small vent hole and install a nipple and use something like windshield wiper hose to vent elsewhere. HEI conversions also work much better in wet conditions. With my stock Delco dist on my 73 I always had problems sealing the area where the vacuum advance linkage entered the dist. I now run HEI. You will also need good plug wires. I also sometimes use dilecrtic silicon in the plug boots. This can cause problems by making it easier for them to pop off. You should make sure that the metal wire ends inside the boots snap on the plug ends good. I have also tried spring type hose clamps on the outside of the boots(band type work best rather than wire type) with good results.
As for water in the intake, oil bath type air cleaners really like to ingest water so I prefer factory dry types. You can make baffles to go over your oil bath. For instance a friend simply cut off the bottom 4 inches of a plastic bucket that was just approx an inch larger in diam than his air cleaner and installed it upside down over his air cleaner for a baffle on his V6. On a factory dry air cleaner you can either turn the air horn rearward or install a flexible hose over the air horn and route it rearward out of the spray kicked up in the engine compartment. There are also simple tricks to break up the water droplets before they enter your air horn. The foot portion of nylon stockings or pantyhose taped over the end of the airhorn help in this regard(Make sure you inform your wife or G/F what you are intending to do with it so she doesn't start to wonder about you). Also do not forget to vent your axles,tranny and transfer case with hose, fittings etc to a higher location. Fans can also be a problem electric preferred over engine driven(this depends on the depth of water you are intending to go through. Removeable splash pans in engine compartment also can help.
These are some of the tricks a friend of mine and myself used several years ago when running in the stock classes in local mud runs with Scouts and Jeeps. We usually did well enough in the stock classes to be allowed to compete sucessfully against some of the more modified/big tire classes. The sucesses were almost always attributed to simply keep the engines running strong by preventing them from getting wet.