Fear of hose clamps

Groan... yet another nasty surprise to fill me with dread and rip apart the insides of my wallet.

Being a bit naive, I decided to strip the seats and prepare them for the new upholstery. I knew they were in a bad way...

but was unprepared for what lay underneath...

The frames were a mangled mess.  It looks like they've been repaired a number of times in the past and I don't think they could take another repair job.  They are STUFT!  So now I've had to go and locate a new set of bucket seats...

Anyway, enough complaining... back to the subject of the post... you notice a couple of hose clamps in the first photo?  They actually hold the metal frame together... the large tubular frame was actually busted in two and held together with those hose clamps.

Now, check this out...

This is me, removing a hose clamp that's holding the ignition switch in the dash... WTF???

The car is almost stripped now and I have over 30 hose clamps, about 6 of which were actually used to attach hoses.  It's reached the point where I break into a sweat whenever I see one.  Who knows what horrors are hidden beneath them?

Beware the hose clamp...

My extra parts have arrived

When I bought the car, the previous owner also had a truckload of restoration parts that I also purchased.  They have now arrived and it's like an early Xmas. Well, actually they arrived a month or so ago, I'm just catching up...

Check out the wheels... sweeeet....

And a pony interior.

Boxes and boxes of goodies...

Woohoo!  An original centre console...

And if that wasn't enough... my wiring harness arrived about the same time... swoon....

So... if I take all this...

and add it to this...

then I'll get...

How easy is that?

Painting the Engine

Ok, ok.... I'm slack... I get it... but I'm an important man and got a lot of important things to do.

But, I have managed to do a fair bit to on the Mustang, so thought I'd take the opportunity to blow out my server quota with a few photos.

In our last semi-exciting episode, I had just removed the engine from the car. Although a lot of different things have been done since then, today we'll continue following the engine on its exciting journey to restoration... well, a paint job at least.

First I stripped off all the non-essential (i.e. - easy to get off) bits.

I painted the manifolds first in a high-temp grey.

The harmonic balancer was next...

Yeah, the rubber is old and cracked... it'll need replacement one day.

Next, the valve covers are run through the media blaster to get all the old paint off, then sprayed with etch prime.

Then the tedious part... cleaning the engine block.  A dozen cans of degreaser and a high pressure hose gets most of it.

But getting all the nooks and crannies clean requires a bit of elbow grease... and time.

Finally, she's ready to go and the painting begins.  Note that I'm using Ford Blue, which is a standard colour that's been used by Ford for a million years or so.  Well, except for 1965, which was a lighter shade.

And here we are...

Now it's time to finish up all the bits and pieces and bolt them back on.  You can see the end result in another post.

Removing the engine

I know, I've been a little slack in keeping the updates coming... but I've been busy.  It's not like I had a lot of spare time when I acquired this thing  ;o).

First off is to disconnect and, where possible, remove everything that isn't bolted down.  er... you now what I mean.

I started with the alternator and the carbie.

Now at this stage I noticed something strange... where was the timing marker?

According to Chilton's it supposed to be just to the left of the fuel pump... sigh, something to worry about later...

Next I removed the heater box and hoses...

Followed by the water pump...

And... WTF?

The timing marker was hidden under the water pump.  Ummm... it's either a) the wrong engine, b) the wrong timing cover, c) the wrong water pump, or d) any combination of the above.  Still investigating that one...

Anyway, everything is eventually removed and disconnected and we're good to go, so time to bring in the engine hoist.

And with a bit of TLC...

Out she comes, no worries.

The engine now sits in the corner of a garage awaiting cleaning and painting. The engine bay is also ready for a good clean, then some bashing with a hammer to patch up the radiator damage before bringing in the welder.

Much, much more to come...

Mustang makes the man

I've been a bit slack, but only because I've been very busy ripping bits out of the engine bay.  I'll post an update on the weekend.

In the meantime, some light relief in the form of a Ford advertisement from the late 60's...

lol... (true but)

Tackling the engine bay

Yeah, way too much time on my hands...

Ok... interior is too expensive at this stage of the game, so I'm going to focus on the quick win stuff that shouldn't cost too much. But remember I did say that about the interior. Sigh...

Anyway, I gotta toss the over-sized, giant, mega radiator and put in our new 1966 repro. This will allow me to put everything back where it belongs and basically tidy up the engine bay.

So I drain the water, disconnect the hoses, remove a couple of bolts and tada... out she comes.  Now I've been told a billion times I exaggerate too much, but check this out.

The radiator on the left is what should be in there. Ok... maybe I exaggerated a little, it's not quite twice the size.  Well, excuuuuuuuuse meeeeee.....

Unfortunately, they had to alter the engine bay a bit to fit that monstrosity in, here's the result.

Nice....  so looks like I've got a bit of patching to do.  You notice the plate of scrap metal sitting on top of the platform in the 2nd photo?  That's what's left of the old battery tray.  Why unbolt it when you can slice it off and hammer it back out of the way?

Oh, did I mention the custom battery tray they replaced it with?

That is a piece of plywood held up by two shelf brackets... I kid you not.  You can see some rust bubbling up above the tray (battery acid), so that's going to have to be cleaned up.

Anyway, talking to the experts at Caloundra Brake and Clutch, it would be much easier to do all these renovations if the engine was not in the way.  So although redoing the engine bay was low on the to-do list, I've gone this far so I might as well bite the bullet and just get it out of the way...

So stay tuned for our next exciting episode when I attempt to dismantle the engine.  What could go wrong?

Stripping the Interior -- Part II

I think I mentioned that there is a bitumen-like substance that has been painted over the metal of the car interior.  It was painted onto the metal, then covered with corrugated cardboard (WTF?).  Which is why I'm having to chip away at this crap with a paint scraper to get the embedded cardboard (and dirt, carpet fibres, insects, etc) off so I can protect it.

I assumed this stuff was a rust-preventative or something like that, which is why I was happy to see it coating the surface of the front seat pans. Unfortunately, it's not all that crash hot at preventing rust, although it did an excellent job of protecting the rust that was underneath it.

While not as bad as the back pans, it's still fairly thin in places.  I haven't taken a grinder to it yet, but I'm sure when I do some of those thin places will magically transform themselves into holes (nothing up my sleeve).

So looks like I might have to just bite the bullet and get the entire back and front pans done on both sides and be done with it. Unfortunately, this will triple the costs and blow out the meagre pre-Xmas budget, so I'm gonna have to put the floor on hold for a little while and turn my attention to other things.

It's not like there's nothing else needs doing...

Yet Another Cunning Plan

Not that there was anything wrong with the last couple of cunning plans...  I just need to tweak things a little to account for the latest exciting surprise... rust.

The first step is going to be to get everything out of the interior. Seats and carpet are already gone, but as you saw last time, I need to find something like a Tactical Particle Accelerator to strip out the years of crap that hide the floor... ok, maybe a wire brush on the end of a drill might work. I don't know, I'm making this up as I go along.

Once I can actually see the floor, I'll need to grind back the rusty bits to give me a better view of the structural integrity... or lack of therein. At the minimum, I know I'll need floor pans for the rear. My fear is that the surface rust in the front pans is hiding something more serious underneath.

I know all you seasoned restoration gurus from the forums are right now laughing and slapping each other on the back, saying "remember how we told that newbie it was easy to change floor pans?  He actually believed us.... ha-ha-ha...".

Yeah... I'm onto you...

That's as far as my cunning plan goes for now. If it all goes well and I don't discover something like the firewall missing, I'll tackle the metalwork on the rest of the interior. From the size of the holes in the dash and doors, I'm convinced the previous owner had installed a plasma TV with surround sound rather than a stereo.

Stop sniggering, you lot...

Stripping the interior

Well, I guess this means I've officially started the restoration now.  I've decided to start ripping out the interior to get a look at the floor pans and prepare for the rewiring exercise.

So I jacked up the car and removed the seats by unbolting from underneath. Not much of the seat cushions left, the foam has almost completely disintegrated.

There will be some repair work to fix up the springs and frame, but if I can get the individual bits and pieces (e.g. - springs) hopefully I can reuse the frames.

Ripping up the carpet, found there is an underlay underneath and a couple layers of cardboard beneath that.   But a pleasant surprise under the cardboard... the front floor pans are actually not too bad... a bit of rust, but most of it on the surface. A big sand back should hopefully fix them up no worries.

You can see that whoever put in the carpet used lots of glue, so a lot of crap is stuck to the floor that will take some elbow grease to remove.

The bad news is there's some half-serious rust in the rear passenger floor pans. Here's a close up view of the worst spot... you can see it's started to crack, so may need replacement.

I know, shock and horror... a Mustang with rust in the floor pans...  I'm just surprised only because it can't be seen from underneath.  After I get it cleaned up and sanded back to bare metal, I'll have a better idea of what it will take to fix.

So overall it's not too bad. After all, it could be a lot worse...

A comment on comments

Apparently comments have not been appearing on the blog... and here I thought you guys just didn't care.

Ok, I've had a fiddle with the settings and hopefully have it resolved.  So leave another comment and I'll see if we're up and running...

The new and improved "Cunning Plan"

Well, after a couple weeks poking around under the car I finally have a clear plan of attack in restoring the old girl.  And as expected, that plan bears no resemblance whatsoever to what I had in mind when I first got the car.

Remember, boys and girls, the initial objective is to get her on the road, I just have a few more steps now to get her there.

The first cab off the rank is to fix up the engine bay. As mentioned in previous posts, the extra large, giant radiator has got to go, all the cables, hoses and battery put back to where they belong, repair the body rails and install the new repro radiator.  After that, the bay should be much tidier... and legal.

Next is to rip out the interior, seats, carpet and dash. There are 2 reasons for doing this; 1) I want to check the floor pans for any bad rust and 2) I'll need everything out of the way for the "Big Job".

The "Big Job" is installing the new wiring harness.  While the process itself doesn't look overly complex, there is a fair amount of planning required before I start ripping out the old harness.  I have the 66 wiring diagrams and I'll need to work out what wires will go in which cable assembly. That'll be fun.

After that will be the interior... at the bare minimum I will restore the dash and paint it white while everything is out of the way.  I'll have to weld in a new radio plate as the holes were buggered up sometime in the past for an after market stereo system.  Appears to be such a common problem that they actually make a plate just for the radio assembly.

So stay tuned...

I would like to thank...

I have been completely remiss in acknowledging my significant other who, while not exactly actively supporting the decision to purchase a mustang, has accepted my new hobby with a stiff upper lip.

So I would like to take this opportunity to say...

... and thank you.

I was thinking of showing my love by getting her a nice tattoo...

or maybe not...

Wiring Part II

In last week's episode, our intrepid refurbisher found the dash wiring in his beloved 1966 coupe to be completely r@sh*t.

Where would we be without the Interweb?  All the answers are out there, you just got to sort through the rubbish to find them. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth I have uncovered 3 options:

1. Install a new fusebox.  Well, to be honest this isn't really a viable option as many of the dash wires have been changed and it would be a very hard slog to identify what is missing, where it was supposed to go and then replace it.  Too hard for this feeble mind.
2. Install an OEM wire harness. This involves replacement of the entire wiring harness for the car. There are a number of reproduction harnesses made for this specific car and all that's really required is to rip out the old one and then plug in the new. This is probably the easiest option, but also the most expensive with harness kits beginning at $700. I would prefer this option, but my bank account doesn't.
3. Install a universal harness. This is the cheapest option with manufacturers supplying harnesses to fit generic cars and models. These work by supplying the basic wiring inherent in all motor vehicles, e.g. - every car has brake lights, headlamps, turn signals, etc.. It requires a bit of electrical nous as you have to cut the wires to length and attach the appropriate connectors. But with prices starting at $250, this becomes an attractive option for me.

So being a totally cheap b*stard, I'm going with the universal harness.

Note that this option may not be for everyone. As I said, you'll need to be a bit handy with the soldering iron and know the basics of electricity. You'll also need to be very careful, checking and double-checking your wiring prior to powering it up.  I heard a story about some poor bloke who installed a brand new repro instrument cluster and associated wiring only to have it destroyed by fire starting from a short in the wiring... ouch!

And these harnesses are normally colour coded to GM standards, primarily because Ford did not really have colour standards until later in the 60's. So if you plan to enter your car in a concourse event, it would not be the original wire colours. But for me, I'm building a cruise-mobile and could care less what colour my wires are... as long as they conduct electricity reliably.

So I have placed an order with Ez2Wire in America to take delivery of a new Ford universal harness.  I have no doubt this choice will generate oodles of entertaining adventures for myself and my readers, so stay tuned.