More Body Work

 Today was Lauren's 28th birthday and also Labor day. Unfortunately she had to work today which left me with the option to work on the Mustang while she was at work. I made sure to get home plenty before she got home from work so that I could take a shower and be ready to give her the attention that she deserves today (and ever day really.) Since my goal is to have the car at least coated with the first coat of primer soon, I decided to pull out the brand new front and rear valances in order to sand them and make sure that they were ready. I had to put a skim coat of Bondo on the lower corners of the rear valance since that is where the mounting brackets were tack welded.

I wanted to keep as many original parts as I could and the upper stone deflector as well as the part below the grille were in good enough shape to save. I sanded them down so that they'll be ready for primer.

 My dad helped me out a lot today by doing much of the body work that I have been neglecting. He put a skim coat across the tail light panel since it was a little wavy. It was obvious that body work had been done back here on at least one occasion.

The lower running board area where the rocker panel usually mounts looked to be pushed in on the driver's side near the rear wheel. There were no other obvious signs of an accident in this area so I chalked it up to simply being imperfect from the factory since the rocker panel covered this area before. I raised up there area with a coat of Bono-Glass and then my dad came back over and skimmed it with a coat of Bondo.

The rear passenger's side quarter panel was one of the worst looking parts on the car (with the exception of the roof.) If you remember from previous pictures, there were multiple dents in this area. My dad went over it with a coat of Bondo to flush it off. He almost did it all in one pass, but there were a couple of areas that were slightly low so he made a second pass.

Here is a picture of my dad in action sanding the roof where there were at least ten dents:

The roof almost has a layer of Bondo all the way around it since there were dents all the way around it. I'd really like to know who hated the previous owner of this Mustang and what they used to do so much damage to it.

One of the last things I did was strip down the headlight rings to be ready for a coat of primer. I also took apart the headlight buckets in order to sand and paint the inner bucket.