In this issue: Lots of paint, and lots of caulk

My adventures since body man Kirk has been productive and successful. After doing a little more prep to the engine bay I got it where I wanted it. I put some cheap rattle can primer on the anti-missile tank paint along the firewall as it wasn't coming off and I figured the primer would be better for the topcoat to stick to than missile-proof tank paint. For the bare metal I pulled out all the stops and went with the absolute best: Sikkens Washprimer, a transparent etching green primer at the low cost of about $19/can. After letting it set for 15 minutes I gave the whole thing two coats of Bill Hirsch Black Chassis paint...2.5 cans to be exact, at the cost of $16/can. It looks pretty darn good as I have been envisioning what the painted engine bay would look like ever since I obtained the car. I'm now giving the paint two weeks to cure before I do any work in that area to avoid chipping the paint. At just about a week after spraying it's starting to harden. All I can say here is respirators are a good thing.









Moving away from the engine bay, the weekend's activity was to get all seams sealed. Again, my respirator has proven to be my best $30 investment. I covered all the seams in the interior and trunk with 3M automotive caulk or brushable seam sealer, for the low price of $66 between the tube of caulk and 1 qt can of seam sealer. 'Brushable' is quite the overstatement because it is by no means 'brushable.' The best way to apply this is to work the sealer in the can with a paint stir stick and then put a glob on a scotch brite pad and rub it onto your seam with that. You can control the thickness of the covereage with your hand by the amount of pressure you're putting on the pad, and you still get the brushed-on appearance.






Also at this time: Other things getting painted! Like, hood hinges, engine mounts, um, oh I sandblasted and painted the brake fluid reservoir with a cast metal paint...it looks very pretty again, and, just other things. There are billions of parts to paint when you pull a car apart and I will digress and not name them all.

Coming up this Friday I'll take the car to the DMACC shop and bodyman Kirk will put in the new floorpan on the driver's side.

Never stand naked before a body man

It almost sounds a bit paradoxical. Not *that* kind of a body man, I'm talking the kind of body man that will find every single flaw in you. But they can't just sit there and stare at it; they have to touch it, and rub it, and hit it, and poke it, and grind it. If you are now truly offended by these perversions, then I suggest you never take your car to the body shop. No, they are not euphemisms, these are REAL LIFE THINGS that REAL BODY MEN DO. And finally--after enough mechanical manipulation--they will want to fill it in and hide it forever. The only thing separating a body man from a plastic surgeon are calouses. So never stand naked before a body man.

This philosphical departure comes after some reflection on the way home from my latest excursion on the purple people eater (yes, regardless of the lack of updates, I've been ferverently working away and new big neat things are happening). I took a body class at DMACC this fall because I can. It is in Ames at the new Hunziker Center so the sole convenience of proximity was my ultimate persuasion. We've learned rust repair, and a billion different ways how to hit, bend, distort, undistort, and unintentionally screw up metal. We've learned dent repair, rust removal, body panel fabrication, and welding. It's taught by a very animated, super nice guy skilled in his trade, and is more anal than a proctologist but equally effective at getting his point across. We'll call this guy Kirk, because that's his name.

Most of the welding is done on the car, namely the front end work. The next, and current major product is finishing up the rest of the car between the front [missing] bumper and windshield. So...painting the engine bay. I sanded and sanded on that forever. In fact, all I've done on this stupid car is sand. I've partially stripped most of the paint off with a stripping wheel on about half of the engine bay. The other half I'm convinced was painted with a missile proof army tank tar paint that seems impenetrable by nearly every thing at this point, but I haven't tried using a jackhammer yet. It was to a point where I was about ready to spray. I was in the throws of doing my final degreasing and getting down to the nitpicky of paint prep. But then body man Kirk came out and looked at it.


If you don't want to know every flaw in your car, don't show it to a body man. Fortunately I do though, and hopefully I have a good memory too because I have about a million pieces of new information on 'things to fix.' And then he basically explained to me that my engine bay prep wasn't ready for spraying yet. This is good to know because I would have sprayed the entire thing only to strip it off because I didn't do a good enough job at feathering the old paint remains.

I took some 320 grit sandpaper, by hand, and went over and over the panel smoothing and feathering the old surface out. Once I was convinced it was where I wanted it, I degreased it twice with paint prep, wiped off with a tack cloth, and primed and painted a test strip. It came out looking super sexy, I declared victory, and have a new motivation to finish the rest of the engine bay as carefully as I did this section.





Prior to this, the car spent some time at Mike Louis Auto Body getting some welding. The radiator support, passenger side front inner fender skirt, and passenger side strut support were all replaced. On the back driver's rear quarter panel where it meets the floor of the trunk, a patch of metal was welded in as the quarter panel had completely rotted/separated away from the place where it meets the trunk.














Also during this time, my rear seats came back from the repair man sporting brand new padding and burlap since the mice did a number on the seat guts. The seats look great, have better form now, and after getting them shined up I can't wait to ge them back in the car.





This entry is dedicated to Kirk, who undoubtedly saved me from inevitable insanity. Also, the formatting of this entry sucks and I'm completely fine with it.

Rebuild phase 1 complete

Oh man, I'm not even sure where to start. After tearing down, gutting, and stripping off surface rust and old finish, the first step in actually putting this thing back together and making it resemble a car again was beginning with the front suspension and exteriors of the inner fender skirts.

The exterior fender skirt was a chore of degreasing, sanding, and recaulking as pictures from previous blogs show. Getting to the finished product required two coats of a rust converter primer, two coats of rubberized undercoating, and 2 coats of Rustoleum (because it's cheap) to give a black shine and reinforce the rubberized undercoating.

I may have mentioned it in a previous entry, but all suspension components on the front came off and were sandlbasted and refinished or completely replaced. A list of the going-ons reveals many new parts:

Upper control arms: same arms used, but new Grab-A-Trak shaft and shaft bushings. Spring perch bushings replaced with Grab-A-Trak polyurethane bushings. New Moog ball joints.

Coil springs: old springs replaced with new Grab-A-Trak performance springs. The Grab-A-Trak springs are significantly more stout with a thicker diameter than stock springs and will also lower the front of the car 1 inch. Spring seat insulator in the tower replaced with Grab-A-Trak polyurethane insulators.

Lower control arms: The ball joints and arms stay because the only way to replace these is to replace the entire arm ( and they're about $80 each). New Energy Suspension graphite-impregnated polyurethane bushings.

Strut rods: New Energy Suspension graphite-impregnated polyurethane bushings.

Outer tie rod ends: new Moogs

Sway bar: I kept the original sway bar but refinished it (I've never driven this car before, so verdict's out on if I ever replace this), new Energy Suspension graphite-impregnated polyurethane bushings and spring links.

Front drum brakes: sandblasted and refinished drum and backing plate with ceramic caliper paint. New brake hose, shoes, springs, and turned drum.

Wheel bearings looked good but I replaced the seals of course. All suspension was painted with Bill Hirsch Chassis Black.

Now that it's back on its rollers, it's time to start phase 2 this week and take it to some welders to get some estimates.

Things are slowly starting to come together

Since I first bought this, it has been one continual project of destruction, and seemingly de-beautifying the car. In the midst of working on it most days during the week, the mess seems to get worse and the car becomes less and less in one piece. With some relief I think I have finally reached the threshold where things can start going back on and this project can start to take the shape as I envisioned. I'll formally kick it off today. With the priming completed yesterday, I painted the inner fender skirts with rubberized undercarriage paint...it should give it good protection against rust, the elements, and debris kicked up while driving, such as rocks and dust.

Most of the suspension parts also got their coats of paint, featuring Bill Hirsch Semi Gloss Chassis Black. I could not separate the spindles from the lower ball joints, so I brought them to Arnold Motor Supply machine shop to see if they had any luck. It was a bit of a trick for them too, but they finally got them separated. A dunk in the hot tank and those parts are now ready for the sandblaster. As soon as the suspension gets back on, it's immediately off to a trip to the welder.

In other developments, the fenders have already found their way into the body shop (it's looking like Mike Louis is going to be my guy) to get sandblasted on the insides. While they're there he's also going to do a chemical paint strip to see what lies beneath...

This will be a suspens(ion)ful entry!

In the time since my last posting I have been occupied with a never ending stream of sanding and grinding and surface prep. I now have all the exterior seams on the inner fenders and cowl sealed up with a combination of 3M caulk and/or brushable seam sealer (which isn't so 'brushable' in my opinion.) After sealing surfaces were primed with a rust converter primer that chemically reacts with rust and oxidation. Even though I could not visibly see any rust, it turns black when it reacts, and you can see every it reacted with the oxidized metal. This should give me some protection for the next coats.

In the exhibit below, you'll see my fancy paintbooth and some of the exterior parts I have began priming.

Between yesterday and today I completely removed the entire front suspension (pictured below). The pile of parts (also pictured below) will be hot tanked and sandblasted so they can be recoated with shiny new paint and fitted with new bushings. Removal involved numerous skinned hand parts, but when your hands are caked in ridiculous amounts of grease, the grease plugs up all the cuts so they don't bleed! As a microbiologist, these are the times when I turn a blind eye to these things.

I finally remembered to bring my camera with me so I could document more work. I work on it most every night, but at this point, there's not a lot to say. Basically every surface must be prepped for painting starting from the inside and working out. The interior is sanded down and any rust has been removed (fortunately there was not a lot of it). The driver's side front floorpan is a little too rotted apparently and there are a few small rust pinholes. The toeboard immediately ahead of that (area right under the pedals) also has a few small holes. I bought a replacement floorpan that will have to be welded into place. This is prone to rusting on mustangs as the cowl tends to leak there. I'll have to make sure I get the cowl sealed up very well (it drains inside the fender where it can run down to the floor).

The only rust I've found on the body that's broken through is on one of the tail lights, where I found several small holes that can hopefully be patched up easy enough. They're covered by the tail light bezels when installed. I've pulled off the front clip and both fenders to begin preparation on the underbody so I can paint/coat it all. Also on the way are new graphite-impregnated polyurethane bushings for a front end suspension rebuild. As I dig farther into the car it exposes the poor and shoddy first restoration attempt.

Most body panels seem to be held on with only half the amount of bolts they're actually supposed to be. The passenger side fender was only held on with three bolts at the top. It took me less than three minutes to remove the fender. For now I'll close with some pics until I have more worthwhile updates (the juicy stuff is right around the corner)

All caulking and seam sealer, whether interior or exterior, is removed to be replaced with new. Here I'm scraping off the cowl, where protection from water infiltration is critical.


The area just below the cowl drain is all sanded and cleaned up. I need to move ahead and continue with the fender skirt.



Small holes rusted through the driver's floorboard. The biggest ones are near the upper right.


Also found a small hole near the driver's side tail light.

Quick update

I've been quiet as of late, but have been feverishly working on it most every night. Since I'm at the laborious process of prepping the trunk and interior for recaulking, undercoating or painting, there's not a lot of exciting new to update. I've been in the process of removing all the old seam sealer and caulk and will recaulk or reseal seams. Most of the time is spent going over every inch of the metal (whether it be interior or trunk) that I can access with a wire cup or sanding disc on a drill. The trunk is nearly ready for priming.

I removed the gas tank today which proved to be a near catastrophic feat. The nice thing is the gas tank merely sits right inside the trunk so it's an easy removal/install. The bad thing is the fuel line is rotting. Here's how the scenario was supposed to go (keeping in mind the tank is mostly full of gas): pull the fuel line of the sender unit and drain into bucket. Put the line back on the nipple when I needed to stop the flow to empty my bucket into a gas container. Repeat.

Here's how it actually went: pull fuel line off sender unit, line is rotted and literally disintegrates in my pliers. Fuel starts going into my bucket except now I have no way to stop the fuel flow, and I can only hope I have enough containers to store all the fuel. I alternate with a bucket and my oil drain pan underneath while emptying the other. I could not remove the fuel line fast enough between bucket fills to try to replace it with some new line I had laying around. Eventually I wisened up and pinched the end of some new fuel line shut with a vice grips, and would slip this over the sending unit nipple if I ran out of gas storage. I ended up draining about 9 gallons out before the fuel got to below the level of the sending unit outlet. I was then able to tilt it and finish the removal and keep it stored in that position. There's still another gallon or two inside.

In other sad news, while I originally thought the floor pans were good, after some sanding and brushing today, I can see little holes of daylight through the driver's floorpan, which means I'm adding another part to the list and another task to the welding queue.