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My God, it's been a year and a half since I posted an update?
There's been progress. The car is back from the bodyshop.
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The front wheels you see in that picture are S197 Mustang Bullitt-clones on the car, 18x9 with 255/45-18 tires. The rears are 18x10 with 285/40-18 tires. They looked pretty good, maybe a little too modern, but the real clanger was that it just wasn't possible to get enough front fender clearance without carving up the fenders to the point that we'd have to lose the stainless spear side trim. The body guy carefully rolled the fender lip and stretched the fender opening out flush with the trim, it looks really nice, but it still wasn't quite enough.
Depressing, in a way - the '61-63 cars seem to have taller front wheel openings and could probably accommodate a 9in wheel, but not the '64, not without altering the appearance of the car in ways I wasn't prepared to accept.
So, plan B, money I didn't really want to spend - the car is now wearing a beautiful set of American Racing style 427 wheels - these are the two-piece 427 Cobra-style Halibrand-clones. 18x8 in front with 245/45-18 tires, still 18x10 and 285/40-18s in back. They're gorgeous on the car, they look just right, and they do - just - clear in front. I think. I hope. I'll live with them even if it means shimming out the steering stops and a 42-foot turning circle. No, the front springs aren't in the car in this pic; when it's all done the ride height should be near stock.
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One unfortunate side effect of these wheels is that there's not a prayer that the rotor/caliper combination I had mocked up is going to fit inside these wheels. Off to find some C5 'Vette calipers...
The '65 Mustang convertible that pushed the wagon down the priority queue is moving along, the powertrain's in it, the electrical and all the door and window hardware are starting to go in, and I'm getting kinda itchy to at least get the engine and glass and a few other key bits into the wagon. I want to get these things running and give my carbon footprint a boost.
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Oh, and one last tidbit: a gentleman in Turkey who posts over on the MustangSteve message board has adapted a ZF Servotronic steering box from an Opel Omega B to a '67 Mustang. Over here, Cadillac peddled the Omega B as the Catera. The Catera was quite a nice car to drive; it might have been nice of GM to tell their US customers (as they told everyone who bought that engine elsewhere in the world) that the V6 engine needed a cam belt and tensioner change every 30K miles. So they blow up a lot, beyond what most folks would consider economical repair, and as of last week there were 38 pages of Catera steering boxes listed in car-part.com. Picked up the phone and $60 later I have a 56K-mile example in hand.
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This is the ZF box next to a stock '64 Galaxie box. The output shaft is about 3/4in longer on the ZF box, which would push the box up just a bit higher on the frame rail. The input end of the box has a sizeable valve housing on it, which would extend pretty much right back to the firewall in the Galaxie (as it does in the Omega/Catera.) In the case of the Turkish Mustang installation he did a bit of drilling on the valve housing to turn it 90 degrees, pointing the hoses and the Servotronic PWM solenoid upward instead of toward the exhaust header.
I'm not sure yet whether the valve orientation will be an issue in a Galaxie application; obviously some serious fabrication would be needed on the Pitman arm, the mounting bolt pattern is different, and the steering column would have to be shortened to end inside the car (as I've done on the '65 Mustang) with a U-joint to connect to the box. But if all this can be worked out, it looks to be an excellent fit in the car and (unlike the Saginaw 605 box) it's a first-rate piece of hardware - the internals are basically the same as used on the E39-series BMW 540i/M5 and the E38-series 740i/750i.