Restoring the instrument bezel

Greetings Mustang fans...

I'm getting there... rummaging through all the photos and pulling out some of the work in no particular order.

In todays episode I've tackled the instrument bezel.

I marked all the wires and pulled the panel out of the dash.

Here's an interesting bit of Mustang trivia for you... the meters run on 5V.  Mounted on the back of the instrument assembly is the 5V voltage converter.

What a marvelous bit of mechanical engineering. Yes... mechanical. Have a look at this...

What you see here is a bimetallic strip that is wrapped in heater wire.  When the strip is cool, it makes connection and current runs through the heater wire.  Which then heats up and causes the strip to bend and break contact, breaking the circuit, cooling off, making contact, and around we go again.

So basically, this is acting like a buzzer to produce a series of pulses with an average voltage of... you guessed it... around 5V.  Would never work in the digital age, but for the old style magnetic meters it works a treat.

I actually intended to replace the innards of this little guy with a solid state 12V to 5V converter (e.g. - 7805). But there's a problem with doing this... the solid state devices produce exactly 5V whereas the mechanical version is "around" 5V.  The affect is that the meters are all off by a little bit. So you have to use an adjustable regulator to find the best "5V" for the meters.

Anyway, back to the instrument panel... internally, the original was in pretty good shape. Normally the internal light bubbles (used for illuminating the instruments at night) are completely melted. But these were still in one piece (albeit slightly melted), so I decided not to touch them.

Now they actually make LED versions of the 12V light bulbs to avoid the heat that melts the bubbles.  Bit pricey though.

Now this may come as a shock to Mustang owners, but the ammeter is stuft!  The 66 ammeters were very touchy, basically a voltmeter across a piece of wire.  Didn't take much to burn them out and there are probably very few original ones out there.

Funnily enough, the early 65's apparently used induction to power the meter and they were fairly robust.  The story goes that converting it to a voltmeter saved Ford a number of cents in production costs. Anyway, I digress... but there are plenty of stories on the web if you're interested in the history.

I noticed that the needles on the instruments were faded to a light orange, so with some creative masking I gave the needles a new coat of flouro orange paint.

Sweeeet.... eh?  Well, you ain't seen nothin' yet! Now... wait for it...

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Howzat!  These reproduction parts are absolutely brilliant.  A toast to Scott Drake and his amazing team of engineers.  I've got to be careful or this car will be in better shape than when it left the factory.

Thanks Mustang Fans... and stay tuned... I've got over 500 photos to go through...

Repairing the Engine Bay

(Ok, ok... I know... no posts for 6 months, yada-yada-yada... get over it.)

Well, this is it. <insert drum roll> After 6 months of planning, whinging, spending and hoping... I actually had time to tackle the engine bay.  Cast your mind back to when we first pulled out that uber-radiator to uncover an absolute butcher’s job on the sheet metal and rails.

I've been preparing for this moment over a period of 3 months, doing bits and pieces here and there. So I'll give you a quick overview so as to save you hunting thought the rest of the blog.

First, this is what arrived from America...

Those of you who know Mustangs might be saying "gee, that radiator looks a bit big and hey, why is the battery over there?"  I didn't really appreciate what they'd  done until I pulled the bloody thing out and compared it with a real Mustang radiator... YIKES!

It's almost twice the size of the standard one. Now in hindsight, I think I see what's going on. A while back I discovered that there was no thermostat installed. These guys must've had a serious heat problem. I fear there's something wrong with the engine, but we'll save that for another time.

Now you're probably thinking "hmmmm, how could you possibly fit a radiator that size into a Mustang engine bay?".  Easy... you just chop huge chunks out of the body rails and aprons. 

The aprons were obviously beyond reasonable repair, so I resigned myself to replacing them. Over the next couple of months I carefully removed them (ok, I bashed the crap out of them).  As you probably know, they're held in with spot welds. Bloody marvellous things these spot welds, unless you're trying to remove them.

I purchased spot weld removal drill bit thingy (technical term) to drill them out, then bashed at them with a spot weld sheet metal separation tool (e.g. - screwdriver).

Then in April, the time had come... Easter!  A 4 day weekend, a "get out of chores" card from my wife and my mate offered me space in his car shop (onyer Baz).  What more could I possibly need? Oh yeah, stop off at the bottle shop and grab a carton of beer...

Anyway, I had the ol' girl towed down to the shop where all manner of tools and welding equipment could be found. I am soooo jealous... this is like, you know, the ultimate man cave ever.

<insert celestial choir music here>

Glittering steel workbenches overflowing with every conceivable hole boring, bolt wrenching, metal bashing tool known to man.  Giant compressors thundering away in the background powering massive, metal crunching grinders of doom. Sigh...

Where was I...  Right, the Easter weekend had finally arrived. Good Friday???  Pttttt... It was a GREAT Friday!  Here she is in the shop... 

I have 2 days to finish as much as I can. Yeah, I know... it should have been 4 days but you didn't really think I got a "get out of chores" card from the missus, did you?

Best place to start is repairing the rails... they're nice and "boxy"... good place to hone my welding skills (from about 30 years ago). First step is to cut off the mangled bits and create some straight edges that I can weld to. By the time I'd finished, half the first day was gone. WTF?  This is a bit more tedious than I thought.

Off to Bunnings to buys some flat galvo steel to start filling it in. This involves cutting and grinding away at the bits of metal until there's a reasonable fit. Hold the piece in place with magnets, then just weld it in... easy.

Someone once said that it's not how good a welder you are, but how well you can grind away your mistakes.  He was so spot on...

Finally, it starts to take shape.

Another handy hint... body bog hides crap welding too...

As does a lick of paint... have a look at this...

Crikey, how good is that?  After doing the rails, welding in the aprons was easy as...

The final step was to wash it all down, whip up a batch of satin black paint and voilà!

I may not ever have a successful career as a panel-beater, but I'm quite proud of that result. Actually, I guess you could say it just looks like it's supposed to look... still, it's progress.

To finish off, all it needs is a bit of colour...  got the little fella to drop in the engine while Baz and I enjoyed a beer.  He's such a good kid...

And there you go, satin black with a dab of Ford Blue.

Sigh... don't you just want to get in there and give her a big snuggle?  Be still my beating heart...

Stay tuned, I have a huge backlog of photos and I'll try to set aside some more time to get this blog updated.

hoo-roo