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.