Project

A couple of posts back we showed pictures of the nasty heater box from the Mustang being disassembled. Here we see one of the internal, cable operated flap assemblies cleaned up, painted, and new die-cut foam glued in place to restore operation. Heater box internal door – restored Same door assembly as it was removed…

A full rebuild of the ’66 Mustang’s transmission was not part of the budget and that’s a gamble. Here’s what we knew: The car had sat for a very long time but we were able to drive it off the trailer and into the shop.There was a lot of grease, dirt, and oil caked on…

Lots of stuff going on behind the scenes. While waiting to get the body into paint we jump over to other systems for refurbishing. Many brackets. mounts, and covers get degreased, media blasted, and painted to look like new. Car covered – waiting for paint Various pieces after sand blasting. The steering linkage gets disassembled…

Sand, bodywork, prime, sand some more. That’s what prepping for a beautiful paint job is all about. Take these zinc die-cast headlight buckets, for example.They’re part of the front grille assembly. The castings were broken from a previous collision so they had be specially soldered to repair. Multiple layers of old paint (right over rock…

Huh? Across the pond they a car hood is called a bonnet. Okay. Either way, this ol’ girl has done a lot of bumpin’ and grindin’ with other obstacles in its past. An old repair found along the leading edge of the hood needed some love. Hood is re-bodyworked Some primer/surfacer will help us get…

Slow but steady progress as we bring the ’66 Mustang closer to paint. Here, the passenger door gets primed with surfacer so it can be sanded for a smooth, ‘flat’ surface. Door and truck get primer/surfacer Austin strips the old interior paint finish from the door. The metal is actually embossed from the factory with…

Work continues on the junkyard donor door someone installed along the way. We were prepping it for body and paint and noticed a tiny bubble in the front lower corner. Turned out to be rust cancer starting to form. This is the first we found on the car but not too surprising since the origins…

After one of the collisions that took out the passenger side quarter panel, the ’66 Mustang got another door from a donor car. It did not have any provision for the courtesy light like the one found in the drivers’ door. This car came with the special ‘Pony Interior’ which included courtesy lights in the…

The (what feels like) never-ending process of bodywork and prep for paint stage. The biggest thing to slow our progress on the Mustang has been the quarter panel replacement and dealing with other previous crash damage which wasn’t obvious at first. Replacement quarter panel being finessed and fine-tuned at the various joints and seams Matching…

What do you do when the offshore aftermarket sheet metal doesn’t fit like it‘s supposed to (and never does)? You cut, weld, and grind it into submission! When we test fit the quarter we found it came up short in two spots: It did not reach the factory seam of the dutchman panel (behind the…