[Tiresmoke410]

Great work jpro. I have seen much lower quality from shops getting paid to do work.
This car should be a warning to all those new to the hobby looking at a very pretty car to buy. Bring a knowledgeable friend if you want rust free and look at it closely! Or pay someone in the business if you’re super serious. Unfortunately I think this advice goes not just for a 15k car that seems like a great deal but also a 50k car that was said to be done by a pro shop. If they don’t have pics like jpro I would assume they are full of it until verified on site.
Also to put things in perspective. Jpro said he has over 500 hours in so far and no major custom work has started yet. A cheap shop at 50/hr would be over $25k in labour already. Just for rust repair. The build hasn’t even started yet!
Remind your kid that some elbow grease has saved there college tuition.

 

[J_Pro205]

Great work jpro. I have seen much lower quality from shops getting paid to do work.
This car should be a warning to all those new to the hobby looking at a very pretty car to buy. Bring a knowledgeable friend if you want rust free and look at it closely! Or pay someone in the business if you’re super serious. Unfortunately I think this advice goes not just for a 15k car that seems like a great deal but also a 50k car that was said to be done by a pro shop. If they don’t have pics like jpro I would assume they are full of it until verified on site.
Also to put things in perspective. Jpro said he has over 500 hours in so far and no major custom work has started yet. A cheap shop at 50/hr would be over $25k in labour already. Just for rust repair. The build hasn’t even started yet!
Remind your kid that some elbow grease has saved there college tuition.

Thank you! And I definitely agree. I brought a 2 guys with me that have helped build cars before, but not a classic and they were destined for track only, so we didn't look for the things most relevant to the older mustangs. I had a friend back home that had done some killer work on older mustangs that told me some stuff to look for, but I guess I had to live it to learn it!

When researching and preparing to buy something, I specifically looked for an unrestored project. I'd seen enough horror stories/posts about people getting into finished or nearly finished work only to have to redo it as far down as I am now. Figured it would be easier and safer to knowingly start from the bottom.

Thankfully I'm only charging myself materials cost... lol. But I'm sure I'm working slower than others, but I wanted to track the time regardless to give myself and others the perspective on what it would take, or take me anyways. Results may vary.

 

[Jetfixer6]

Mad fabrication skills, incredible planning, patience, and foresight. Next level build and I am subscribed. I have to ask........did you at any point consider a replacement shell from Dynacorn for $17500? Your car is literally back from the dead taking hundreds of man hours, thousands of dollars in materials and who knows how many sleepless nights lying awake figuring out ways to accomplish something in your head because that's what Engineers do.

 

[somethingclever]

What's really amazing to me is how good the car looks in your initial picture and just how incredibly bad it really was!

Really impressed with your persistance and patience to make the patches you have, with the tools and garage space at your disposal.

 

[rpm]

Even with an inspection, I'd say most of your rust wasn't visible without tearing into it. $50 an hour, good luck with that. 75 to 100 bucks here.

 

[Jetfixer6]

Something Clever you hit the nail on the head. I had to scroll back and look at it a 2nd time. Deceiving how good it looks in that photo and then to see the carnage that lay beneath the layers. Incredible

 

[Tiresmoke410]

Jpro I might be that friend from back home. Haha. Joined this forum just to watch this thread. Way better than Facebook updates that are in the wind a day after it is posted. This is easily referenced for everyone and searchable.
I am personally hoping your work helps those coming in to be cautious of the pit falls that a lot of restored cars can be lipstick on a pig. But more importantly this is motivation and reassurance that one doesn’t need a 20k square foot fab shop to do good work. Anyone can with patience, practice and persistence. It is just as much about the journey as it is the end point when working on something like this.

 

[J_Pro205]

Mad fabrication skills, incredible planning, patience, and foresight. Next level build and I am subscribed. I have to ask........did you at any point consider a replacement shell from Dynacorn for $17500? Your car is literally back from the dead taking hundreds of man hours, thousands of dollars in materials and who knows how many sleepless nights lying awake figuring out ways to accomplish something in your head because that's what Engineers do.

Thank you! And to answer the question, yes, that was considered. But, I counted my time and labor as $0/hour and with that and parts, I'm in it's a good bit less metal wise than the whole body. The panels and sheet metal have all been fairly reasonable for the current market, plus I learned a lot! you're not kidding about thinking all the time about the different paths. I have a note file in my phone for those random moments of "ah ha" with any project. They often come to me at the strangest times too!

What's really amazing to me is how good the car looks in your initial picture and just how incredibly bad it really was!

Really impressed with your persistance and patience to make the patches you have, with the tools and garage space at your disposal.

RIGHT??? I knew of the frame rails and the spot at the roof, but a lot of the other issues weren't as noticeable. I'm sure someone who really knows these cars would have seen more and walked, but that just means this newbie got his chance! And thank you! I've since upgraded to a 3 car garage with more than 1 15a outlet! But, as with any increase in space, I've just managed to fill it with more stuff so I'm still working in a 2 car space haha!

Even with an inspection, I'd say most of your rust wasn't visible without tearing into it. $50 an hour, good luck with that. 75 to 100 bucks here.

Absolutely, behind the door hinges is a great example of that. I would have had no idea until i got as far as I did. A TON of rust was covered by someone previously with body filler and painted. Tells me someone sometime back was probably trying to turn a quick buck with minimal effort once they saw the extent of the damage.

 

[J_Pro205]

Jpro I might be that friend from back home. Haha. Joined this forum just to watch this thread. Way better than Facebook updates that are in the wind a day after it is posted. This is easily referenced for everyone and searchable.
I am personally hoping your work helps those coming in to be cautious of the pit falls that a lot of restored cars can be lipstick on a pig. But more importantly this is motivation and reassurance that one doesn’t need a 20k square foot fab shop to do good work. Anyone can with patience, practice and persistence. It is just as much about the journey as it is the end point when working on something like this.

Hmmmm, you sounded familiar lol. Yea I think this will be a better place for folks who may want to reference, and for those who have experience and can chime in with advice along the way! Facebook updates are mostly for family and close friends who want to see it moving along. I'm in a bunch of the mustang groups, but don't post in them. Thanks man! Yea, I think my car serves as a good warning, but like you said, also as a good story to show it can be done really by anyone. I didn't get to grow up around restorations, metal work, really even wrenching. I picked it all up through college, co-ops, work, and friends. I've really enjoyed the journey so far, and I know there is still a long way to go, but each step is a new challenge and reward in its own right. I'll have to bug you for the body work and paint learning so that can stay in this scope as a DIY!

 

[J_Pro205]

Metal Fabrication/Replacement:
With the passenger side quarter panel tacked in, it was time to tackle the driver side. The process was done pretty much the same way, starting with hanging the driver door and front fender and then finding all the tack welds and then prying it off.

Also, like the passenger side, the quarter panel was hiding a few areas that needed additional attention or patch panels.

In this time, about 5 patches were needed to be made and installed. Unfortunately, I had to basically get the patches made, installed, wheel house hung, and quarter panel on in a day as I needed to get the car moved out of this garage at this time for transport to our new house 1 state away, so I was hustling and didn’t take as many pictures.

 

[J_Pro205]

Metal Fabrication/Replacement:

With patches made and everything ready, I hung and tacked in the driver side quarter panel.

Before moving, I decided to clear house of all the old/bad metal that came out of the car. I had retained it all during the repairs in order to reference back or rob certain things if needed. If definitely was handy at times to have the metal around. At this point, I had pretty much replaced all the major issues, so I felt it was the right time to make a trip to the scrap yard after re-assembling the car…

 

[J_Pro205]

New Parts/Big News!:

At this point, it was time to move. This was ~March 2022. The next time I did any physical work on the car was in August. But I used the time between those 2 periods to do quite a bit more planning and part gathering. One of the biggest things, and often the first question asked, was powertrain choice. As with all of the decisions on the car, a few factors were decided before-hand and direction was set from there. Basically my list went as follows:

• Reliability - will be daily driven when it’s not snowing/raining
• 7000RPM+ capable - will see autoX and track time and Revs have become addicting thanks to other projects/builds I’ve worked on
• Power – I’m not after the 1k HP show queen. My goal was set at 500 HP and 400ft/lbs
• Modern tech – familiarity for me (I know, I’m sorry!)
• Uniqueness – I’m a sucker for punishment as you all have seen, so why do something that’s been done 100 times over?

My brother suggested on the drive home from New Jersey on day one an engine that would fit this bill, but I blew him off about if for about 18 months before coming back around. My plans and Decision Analysis changed a bit as ideas and other parts changed, so I finally honed in a search and found my donor after almost 1.5 years of searching:

Yep… I’m going to do a VooDoo…

I found the car on the west side of MI from a FB seller. He had bought it to swap all the parts into an S550 convertible and make a 350 clone convertible, but he went a different direction. This one took a gnarly hit on the passenger side just behind the A pillar, and minor front and rear plastic damage. Believe it or not, it runs and drives straight. Drove on the trailer and into my garage. It’s a 2018 with about 6,700 miles on it. I plan to try and utilize a lot of large parts off of it, but also small things like trunk release/latch, small trim pieces, coolers, etc… Known big parts being used will be engine, transmission, front seats, rear seats (with minor modifications), wheels, and possibly front brakes. Many other parts will be sold off to offset some costs associated with buying an entire car. I’m excited about trying to integrate other small things into the classic to change functions just slightly. I still want to retain the classic appeal of the car, and just add my subtle flare, so I think I’ll be able to tie it together well.

Now, going with the Coyote-based architecture up front, that means that the front suspension/shock towers are, in this case, going to be changed. When developing my plans years in advance of this project, I had already narrowed my options down to a few and started contacting people at each company to learn about the options and their support. I even spoke with Shaun at SoT about what his opinion was on pairings to his rear suspension as I wanted the car to be dialed in as a whole and I was only going to run the SoT full floater rear set-up. In the end, I decided to go with the full set-up from Cortex. Full disclosure, it’s not cheap, but again, suspension and handling is only below safety on my list of importance when it came to the car, so my budget after saving for years reflected that in the planned allocation. There were also a few perks that did it for me from Cortex. Like Shaun, their support team is amazing. I had conversations with Filip, Rick, Chris, and a few others at their company for almost 2 YEARS before purchasing. They never turned me away or ignored my questions. Hell, they even set up a conference call with me to discuss options and what was best for my purposes. My in-laws live 10 minutes from their shop, so they even gave me a tour of the shop and showed me products before I had an order in. The support alone sold me, but the products are a thing of function and beauty.

 

[J_Pro205]

Metal Fabrication/Replacement:

These new parts gave me another kick in the rear, as more metal work was needed to get all the fun bits to be a part of a car rather than crap laying around the garage. I started by removing the stock lower brace and getting the new K member in and squared up.

The frame rails needed a little bit of prep before install, both sides needed the flanges cut down and welded to allow for the pockets to slide over the frame rail. The passenger side also needed 4 holes drilled for the insert with metal sleeves to be installed to mimic the driver side frame rail.

With the frame rails prepped, I mocked up the K member

The lower weld nuts had to be drilled out on both sides to allow for the K member mounting plates to be installed.

Before drilling, I had set a “laser level” on the ground in the center of the previous weld nut. By doing this, I was able to make sure the next mounting location was pretty darn close to where it should be.

 

[J_Pro205]

Metal Fabrication/Replacement:

With the K member bolted in place, I then added the pockets to the frame rail to mark if they needed trimmed for installation to the K member. The passenger side was actually a hair short, so I made a cap for it to bring that gap in and manageable.

I also figured it’s good to share my measurements taken to make sure things were square. I dropped points from the car to the floor via a plumb bob. From those points, I measured every which way to make sure my front and rear suspension were square to each other, and to the car in general, within reason.

With some measurement error, I’m sure, I’m at worst .35% off when comparing a non cross directional measurement to its counterpart. I believe with the adjustment on the front and rear suspensions, I can compensate for my slight inaccuracies and make sure the car drives straight and has predictable handling characteristics. At least that’s the idea. Another disclosure, I’ve never built a chassis or set suspension points before, so this was just how I saw to do it, I’m sure there are other ways that might be more accurate and correct, but time will tell if this was a good way!

Next step was to install the UCA mounting plates. These were located using the shock towers and more measurements.

Once located, the shock towers came out 😲

 

[Kjsmitty]

OK,
Now you really peaked my interest. This may be the first Coyote swap “Cortex” install we’ve had on the forum. Maybe just the first I have read? Good stuff! (Correction: I guess I should have commented “Coyote style” swap however utilizing a Voodoo👍)

 

[J_Pro205]

Metal Fabrication/Replacement:

Next step was to make some supports for under the top of the UCA mounting plate. This is where I got to use a new tool for the first time! A close friend and I went in on a tube bender as we are co-building another track dedicated car, so I decided to get the first use out of the bender on the mustang! I made my template using more poster board and geometry and bent up some 1.5 OD .120 DOM.

 

[J_Pro205]

OK,
Now you really peaked my interest. This may be the first Coyote swap “Cortex” install we’ve had on the forum. Maybe just the first I have read? Good stuff!

Haha glad to keep reeling you in! I know for sure they've done their fair share of them, but I can't say I've seen them on here. They are somewhat active on their socials sharing progress photos here and there.

 

[kblagron]

What 120V welder are you using?

 

[CantedValve]

Another Jersey rust bucket! Congratulations! You didnt buy it from a guy named Cervini did you?

We pulled a pair of 70 Mach 1s out of there last spring. We were only able to save a few bits. Its mostly a new car at this point... or atleast a pile of new pieces!

 

[jtfx6552]

Do you have plans to control the Voodoo vibrations? I'd imagine there's a bunch of threads about swaps into various vehicles that cover how to dampen that down.