Teardown Begins

I've spent a few evenings in the garage disassembling the Mustang. I started from the front and removed the fenders first. To do that, I also removed the grille and lights. After getting them off, I decided to buy new buckets for the headlights as they were pretty badly rusted. Someone had tried to fix them with fiberglass but that just would not do. Luckily Trade Parts had them in storage so it should not take long to get them.

Before fitting in the new fenders, I think I'll try to clean and paint the inner wheel wells. That might need a power washer or stream cleaner. We'll see. After removing most parts from the front, I also disassembled some parts from the rear.

After getting the damaged rear valance off, I also test fitted the new one on. It will need some tweaking but should be usable. I have a lot more parts to get off the car but at least this is a start.

Pony Moves Into a New Stable

It's been a while since I worked with my Mustang. I realised that there was no way I could prepare my car for the full repaint in my garage so I set out to search for a new one. The one I rented last winter was already gone so it was not an option. After placing a wanted add to Mustang Forum I found another one a few kilometers away from my home. I checked it out and decided to take it. Not that I had much choice in the matter as heated garages are pretty rare in the rental market...

As the Mustang was not registered at the moment, I got a pair of temporary plates and drove to the new garage. Luckily there is no snow on the ground yet. There had been some a few days ago but it melt away. The drive was uneventful and now I had plenty of room to work in. There were a few other cars in the garage too but the building was large enough for even more. I think first order of business is to tear the car down and possibly try and remove the old paint...

Home Again

I visited my friend again to finish up the rust repairs and to get the car back home. I acquired temporary plates for a day as the inspections time had already passed. We visited the garage and cleaned the welds and applied some more paint to the bottom of the car. As the interior had no paint at all, we just sprayed some etching primer in there. I would apply some Temadur over the primer back at home.

The following evening I set off and drove the 150 km from Tampere to Järvenpää. Some of the trip was done in the dark and the new headlights were excellent! Adding relays for them made a huge difference! Everything else also worked like a charm so hopefully I would not have problems in the inspection. Before it, I would have to install at least some of the interior back in the car.

A few days later I got around to also paint the driver footwell and after letting it dry, I bolted both seats in the car and threw in the rear seat too. This way the car at least seemed a bit more roadworthy...

I reserved an inspection time and drove the car there. Unfortunately everything was not fine with the Mustang. The main found problem was the rear brakes. There was a 42% difference between the driver and passenger side brake force! This is extremely strange because my friend had tested the brakes back at Tampere a few days earlier. Everything had been fine then and now, a short trip later, driver side brake was much weaker.

There were other smaller problems too: horn did not work, windshield wipers were perished and the front wheel bearing were a bit loose. Hopefully the bearings can just be tightened and the others should not be too difficult to fix either. Disappointed I drove back home and started planning for fixing the problems.

Rust Repair Continues

I drove to Tampere on sunday and had a full day of working with my friend there. The Mustang still needed a few minor holes fixed and the driver floor replaced. The wheel arch had been welded so I decided to try leading it smoother while my friend concentrated on the welding.

After the small holes had been fixed, he ripped the old floor out and sand blasted the frame under it. Luckily it was in much better condition than the passenger side. Some minor pitting was visible but nothing needing immediate attention. After painting the frame he cut the new panel to fit correctly and welded it in.

In the wheel arch side the welds had already been cleaned.

I started by cleaning everything with acetone and applied some flux paste with a brush. Then I heated it with a heat gun until it turned bright. I moved from side to side trying to prevent the panel from getting too hot.

With the flux on, it was time to clean everything again and then start leading. Again I added a small section at the time until the whole weld was done.

With the lead on, I grinded it smooth.

Unfortunately when everything was done, my friend noticed that the sheetmetal had warped a bit above the top of the arch. I had to apply so much heat to the metal that it had formed a small dent. Hopefully it can be forced out from the trunk later.

The weld area is still not completely smooth and will need some filler to completely hide the fix. At least it won't need the half a centimeter it had previously...

And speaking of filler, we dug out some of the cracks from the front fenders. It was not pretty.

Again a huge amount of filler that had been poorly applied. A lot of it was completely detached from the metal below. The old paint had been incorrectly prepared so the filled was peeling loose. The driver side fender also had some poor old repairs and rust holes so it seems pretty certain that I have to replace them both. And the old owned had known this too as a new passenger side fender came with the car and I also managed to find the driver side close by so both are waiting in my garage.

We still need to paint the new floor and do some minor things before I can drive the car back home. Hopefully already after next weekend.

The amount of poor fixes and filler everywhere unfortunately seems to indicate that a simple overspray paint job wont do. Most likely I have to have the whole car media blasted to bare metal and work from there...

Front Seat Upholstery Installation

Before taking the car to Tampere I stripped the interior almost completely. The Mustang pretty much contained only the driver seat. This meant I could try changing the upholstery on the passenger seat. It had clearly been changed at some point, most likely in the 90s during the last restoration, but the color had faded badly. CJ Pony Parts had a nice video of the operation in YouTube so I followed its instructions.

There were no tears or holes in my seats, but they just looked ugly with the discolouring. I considered buying some vinyl dye but after asking around, I found out that it would have cost almost as much as the new covers and most likely getting the right color would have been difficult. So, I ended up ordering new front seat upholstery.

After disassembling the seat, I decided to begin with the back rest. I removed the back cover and cut the dozens of hog rings that held the vinyl on the frame. I was careful not to damage the old upholstery if I happened to need it later. I also found a Distinctive Industries tag in it so as I had suspected, they had been replaced earlier.

I was glad to find that the foam and seat frame were in really good condition. All I had to do was install the new cover.

I also reused the old listing wire. I pulled it out of the channel in the old cover and pushed it in the new. Then I followed the install order mentioned in the video. I hog ringed the top of the listing wire to the frame and then pulled the cover over the foam.

Then I added more (many, many more) hog rings to the listing wire and the back of the frame. Finally I removed the metal pins from the old seat back and installed the new on.

Couple of small wrinkles were left to the top right corner of the seat back that I could not get out. Let's see how those settle after some use but I wasn't too disappointed for my first try at upholstery project. It kind of felt that the new covers were a bit larger that the old. Most likely the foam has compressed a bit during use. Perhaps adding a thin layer of new foam would help?

Then I had to do the same thing with the seat bottom.

I unbolted the tracks and cut out the old hog rings. After carefully removing the cover I was rewarded with a really good condition foam again. I followed the same routine as before and installed the new upholstery.

Then all that remained was assembling the seat.

All in all, installing the new upholstery was not that difficult and it made a huge difference with the look of the seat. Now I just have to do the same thing for the driver seat when I get the car back.

New Tires

I got fed up with the non-matching tires on my car and decided to do something about it. I found a good article about early Mustang tire sizes from Mustang Monthly magazine and read through it. I wanted something classical looking but, as I actually wanted to drive my car, they had to be radial tires.

I could not find many options available in Finland so in the end I decided to buy a set of 205/75-14 sized Nankang N-605 TourSport white walls from Dukopart OY in Lahti. They are Taiwanese tires and at least according to some friends that have them and what I read from online forums should be pretty good. They weren't insanely expensive either as most special tires are so I was convinced.

I have not installed them yet as the car is in Tampere but I'll do that when I get the car back.

Rear Wheel Arch Repair 1

While I was rebuilding the brake caliper, my friend started working with the passenger side rear wheel arch. The lip was pretty badly corroded so it had to be replaced.

There was a lot of body filler spread all over the quarter panel. Some smaller patch panel had been welded at the rear corner of the arch and the repair had been hidden with the filler. It'll be interesting to see how much of the stuff is on the car when the time comes to paint it.

After getting all the body filler off from the area of the repair, my friend cut the patch panel and marked its size to the car.

The quarter panel hole was cut a bit smaller than the patch panel. My friend stamped the flange of the patch so it would slide under the original steel. The inner wheel arch also needed a small patch to its lip. Luckily nothing more major problems were found. Annoyingly my patch panel did not reach all the way down at the rear of the arch. There was a little corrosion there too so it might need another patch.

The new panel was quite close to the original and didn't seem to need a lot of tweaking to make if fit with the inner arch and the shape of the car. Hopefully the quarter panel would not warp when welding the patch.