Last night I decided to wheel it outside and finish grinding out all of the old bondo in the quarters. This was about 4 hours with the angle grinder and sander.

Now we are getting into why I want to do this...I always knew these panels were all F'd at some point and filled in. Car was rearended at some point in its life...probably why my dad got this car for less than $100. Now what im not sure is if this is something that a body shop would fix, or just replace with a new lower quarter. I think the latter, but im not a body guy

So its coming along. I have the passenger door/fender left to strip. Then ill strip out the engine compartment. After than ill start getting some estimates to fix this mess.

 

Nice project. I had a S code 68 back in the 70's. Long gone. Nice to see someonew with a car that has some history. have fun.

 

Looking good,......two years on the ceramic sucks !

 

Finally got the engine hoist and pulled the motor yesterday

Headers look like they are 100 years old...The jet hot cermic coating came off after 2 years, really disappointed after the money I spent on these things.

Pretty much stripped now

 

Thanks guys...I have many great stories involving this car over the years. I did truly grow up with it. I will say that at times working on it gets a little emotional. For the last 3 years of my fathers life, he had a stroke and eventually a heart attack. While he was young (age 47), his death wasnt totally unexpected given his condition. He was concerned enough about it that after his stroke, he had me write out his will in his hospital bed. Now you would have to know my father/my relationship a bit....we were rarely ever serious with each other...especially at this time discussing death. So I remember this even as something pretty comical. Especially item #1 on the list....of course...the mustang. My dad never let me drive his cars..well anyone for that matter...he was a bit anal in that sense. I remember I asked him if I could take the mustang to my Jr prom at age 16 and I think he laughed continuously for 3 days. As he should, I plan on laughing at my son if he dares ask the same question. His message was always clear though..DONT MESS WITH MY CAR. Like when we would watch ferris buelers day off together...when ferris got into the ferrari, he would be sure to mention..."IF you ever...ever did that with my car..." It was very special to him and he treated it as such. Which brings me back to item #1 on his will and joking around..I had to say to him "go ahead, write it out! YOU SON IS GETTING THE MUSTANG!" Of course this led to him insisting that I hire an excavator and have him buried in it. Then I went on to tell him after it was mine I would
A. smoke cigarettes in it
B. allow my passengers to put their feet on the dash
C. Change the oil with 5w/30 that I bought at the supermarket
D. leave it parked outside under an oak tree and never clean off the bird poop

He did insist that this was all a farce and that he would live forever just to spite me and make sure I never get the car. It was actually pretty funny...dont think we really got much further than the mustang on the list. I do remember one serious thing he said that always stuck with. He must have had a sense of my emotional attachment to this car so he said "Remember something, you will get older and have a family someday...SOME POOR WOMEN WILL MARRY YOU...someday you might need money to take care of a family member, or your kids college....Dont be an *******...Its just a car, sell it and remember whats important." I of course as a 16 year old punk said something to the effect of "dad, as soon as its mine im going to sell it and buy videos games " But I did always remember that statement as it was such a departure from anything he would ever normally say. I was really really poor a few times in my 20s and the mustang was literally the only thing I owned that was worth anything...I never once thought about selling it though. Still after 20 years...I still get the image of "what are you doing?" going through my head as im taking a sander to the paint. Funny how that works.

 

love this story.
My Grandson( 2) might be doing the same thing after he inherits my 20 yr project after I'm gone

 

Looking good.

 

Stripping some paint. I have been waiting to pick up my friends engine hoist, so in the meantime, I started stripping off some of the paint.

Pulled the fenders. I was able to locate stamped VIN's on the drivers side apron and the passengers side.

Picked up a few new tools.
Halogen work lights....Its getting too cold for the paint stripped to work well, so I used these to give the stripper a little help, worked excellent!

Paint wiped right off, then I gave it a quick once over with my 120grit plastic bristle disc

After the hood, I started on what I knew would be one of the bad parts, the drivers quarter panel. I always knew just by looking at it and tapping on it. I have wanted to get this fixed forever, so it was nice to finally get an idea how bad it really was. Better than I expected actually.

So thats what I got for today, should have the engine out in the next few days

 

Nice story, I know how you feel about doing your own work. I've done everything to my car myself so far. Only thing i've not done myself is an alighment. You feel a lot of pride when someone complements your car and you've personally done all the work.

 

More tearing apart. Im sure the tear down is the boring part, but I only get maybe 2hr blocks to work, so I get done what i can.

This past weekend I took the car for one last short drive...wound it through the gears one last time. Then i backed her into the garage and put it into a coma. Pulled the exhaust system...couldnt resist running it one last time with the headers open

https://www.youtube.com/watch?edit=vd&v=Gi_HdEqlE_g

Then I went bottom side and pulled the driveshaft and trans. I almost forgot how ungodly heavy a RUG M toploader is. My car had a valve cover gasket blow out last month, which is the residual oil you see.

Wrestling match over, I won. In 2001 when I last had this out, I decided to paint it black...over the original cast iron....What can i say, I was a dumb kid.

The jet hot coating on my fpa headers lasted maybe 2 years....need to get these refinished.

stripped down the motor to the point I can pull it.

Pulled out the heater box. Took some pics behind it and into the cowl. Looks pretty good? I think?

air vent port

I think this area looks pretty good...would anyone media blast this? Im not trying to cut corners, but this looks pretty good to me. Any thoughts?

Then i went back underneath....Funny story to go with this picture..

These are two dents in the rear floor of the car, directly above the rear side of the driveshaft. When i was a little kid, maybe 6? Pretty sure I was 6 or 7....My dad takes me out for a ride in the car...it was a special occasion, maybe my birthday bc I remember it being cold. We go for a drive around the neighborhood and eventually to the end of a new cul de sac they had just built...no houses yet...He turns around then blasts on the car....BOOM! U joint snap, driveshaft slams into the floor than back onto the ground. Scared the crap out of me. We park the car, then my dad and I walk home.

My father used to cut a corner or two....fixed the U joint, put the driveshaft back in...done. I never really noticed it until we drove the car to Utah but it had a WICKED vibration. Then when I got the car and starting driving it...it was apparent something was not right. During the time I had the motor out, I noticed that the trans mount holes were now ovaled out....the pinion bearing was SHOT...so I took the drive shaft to a shop to have checked...He informed me that it was now a twisty straw as driveshafts go. So do to a corner cut...I had to have the transmount welded, replace the pinion bearing, trans tailshaft seal, and have an entirely new driveshaft made. Perfectly smooth again.

One new and funny development to this story came when i got in touch with an old friend of my fathers who was with him when he bought the car and helped him get it back on the road ~1975. He had told me all of the mechanical bits they replaced...One of the things he remembered my dad being too cheap to replace was the worn u joints....then he asks me "hey did you ever replace those?" lol. Anyway, so the dent in the floor always reminds me NOT to cut corners and make sure you check everything.

So moving along, hopefully I can borrow my friends hoist next week and get the motor pulled.

 

Nice story and great project...keep us updated

 

Thanks guys. I got to do a few more things last night. My wife works in a pediatric ER, so her hours are a bit crazy...2pm-2am...So on the days she works I pic up my son from day care at 5, try to get him to bed by 8...then maybe if all goes well I can work for a couple of hours out in the garage.

somehow my phone got switched to hipster for this pic, but 346x is written on the frame rail in white....I guess thats original...not sure who else would do that

Got most of the front taken apart...but i want to take the car for one last spin around the block tomorrow before disabling it for who knows how long

This was interesting...this is the pan that sits above the front valence and below the fog lights. My father must have bought a new one when he had the car painted blue. It was shipped to teterboro ford and has a date of Jan. 1975.

This, the front bumper, lower valence, driver fender are not original, so im thinking the car was dented up when my father bought it. Not sure how bad

Just to get an idea of how hard it would be, I tried scraping off some of the old undercoating...this is behind the front wheel. Wasnt too bad actually....did it in a few spots, thankfully I only found clean metal behind it and no rust...yet.

I still have not decided whether or not im going to have this car entirely media blasted, partially, etc. There are several well known restoration shops in my area and I have bought the car to each of them, met the owners and discussed my car a bit. All of them agreed that to do this correctly the car needs to be brought down to bare metal, which I also agree with. How to go about doing that is a matter of opinion im finding. Many of the guys I spoke to recommended that I not media blast the entire car since it has so little rust. Or media blast some of it, like the front clip/engine compartment, but hand strip the big panels. I could live with this too as I can handle using chemical stripper on the panels.

I visited one blasting shop, he was highly recommended by a couple restoration shops I visited. I saw some of the cars he was working on and everything looked really good. He gave me a quote for blasting the entire car and priming it with DP90 epoxy, $1500. Sounds pretty reasonable to me. However, there was one major issue that I just could not get past. He uses sand, more specifically black beauty mixed with extra fine sand as i recall him saying. Now my next question to him and the people who recommended him to me was about warping panels. All swear tht this guy is a pro and never warps anything. He probably is and im probably being paranoid, but its just pushing me back to wanting to hand strip the panels myself. There is another restoration shop who uses glass, walnut shells etc...He looked over my car and said he would not do the large panels, but rather areas under that car/engine compartment...moreso doing the spots that needed it. The general advice im getting is that the car isnt rusted enough to warrant the hastle of blasting it. But we'll see as the stripping continues...Its not like I cant change my mind at any point I suppose. Man, why cant this be simple, like rebuilding the engine? Piece of cake.

I should also add that in the 40 years this car has been in my family, never has it been worked on by anyone other than myself or my father. So something just feels wrong about taking it anywhere for anything. Anyone who I drop this car off to will have to undergo a "vetting"

The irony is that when I was 8 years old my father saw my writing in the dust on the front fender of this car and scolded me about doing that. He then pulled the car out of the garage and made me wash it with him...I thought it was fun, so I cant say it was a good punishment. But ironic how im now going to remove all of the paint entirely...ha!

 

Great story and to have your dad's car is priceless

Make sure your guy takes care when blasting. The heat produced can warp panels

Enjoy the resto

Peter

 

That looks like a really fun project. To be able to take something that's fully built and working apart and put it back together in even better shape is a dream of mine. Love it!

 

So I stripped out most of big interior stuff

As I was under the dash, I saw this taped to the harness

I took and down, and holy hell! Its the original build sheet! SWEET!

metal under the dash looks pretty nice, I dont think this dash had ever been touched. My tach broke last year, so I need to get that working again.

I posted this in the concours forum and I thought it was interesting. These are clips for the windshield molding on the outside of the car. They were just sitting until the trim that goes along the top edge of the dash...Im wondering if they got tossed in there when they were installing the clips on the outside, then left behind..windshield got installed, then the trim ontop of them

My car is a non folding seat fastback...I found this piece of wood under the package tray....Is this how they came from the factory?

most of the interior is out now, need to drill out those rivets and remove the rest. stay tuned

 

I realize its quite backwards to clean up an engine compartment, then pull everything apart the following year. However, few things...

1. I am not a mechanic. I work as a mechanical engineer and while I fix all of my own stuff, I lack hands on experience doing things like body work. I do know a thing or two about engines and mechanical bits, but body work is all sorcery to me.

2. I have had this constant fear that I will do something to ruin this car so I have always been super cautious about taking it apart and messing with it. So the engine compartment was a bit of a confidence booster for me and made me feel like I could finally tackle doing a complete restoration on this car.

So here are some pics of what the car is REALLY like up close.
Hood

Passenger door

Driver door

lacquer has spider cracks everywhere

trunk

original windshield seal, patched up with sealer at some point

many spots like there where the blue is coming off and revealing the original dark moss green below

roof rail

inner fender

I would say though that despite a few spots, the car has very little rust. For years the car had about 28 different oil leaks and when I pulled the motor in 1999, I took on the project of degreasing the underside. It was caked in this 1-2" think layer of sludge that was unreal. However, when I got through it, the original red oxide paint looked pristine, crayon marks were even still there.

So my plan, loosely...I am going to remove everything out of the car. Interior, drivetrain, trim, fenders, doors, windows. Then I found a local media blaster who will strip the car and prime it with epoxy. I did some research on his services and have seen some of the cars he has done so im confident in his skills. Then after the car is primed, i will have an idea what i am in for body work wise. After that, I want to paint it the same color blue and make it as stock appearing as possible....but it will always be a driver.

I started taking the car apart last week, ill post some pics of the progress shortly

 

Joe, that is a beautiful looking car. I love 67 Fastbacks, nice job on the engine. Nice story, you must be mighty proud to still have your dad's car. Thanks for taking the time to post, looking forward to following your work on it. :thumbsup:

 

Thanks man. It has really been an amazing journey with this car. Its been a part of my life from as far back as i can remember. Many great stories and fun times with this car. It is a very special item to me....Like if someone was to ask me the "if you won the lottery" question...my first answer is always "either have the most professional restoration possible done on my mustang, or quit my job and learn how to do everything myself"

So I did finally get started with the dissembley. There are many areas of the car I have never seen before..ok i left the headlights in bc i wanted to take it for one last ride...who knows when that might happen again.

the rear

side windows/doors

that rust bubble from the inside

very carefully removed the trim and did not damage anything

found where they decided to stop with the blue paint

windshield and rear window molding...I bought the tool, managed to not bend any of it

just a bit of crud in there

my son has been helping

After this, I moved inside