Transmission

I recently acquired the T5 that will back the 302 motor going into the 'Stang. I drove out to Los Angeles after work today to pay some guy named Romeo $180 for the transmission and shifter base. It supposedly came out of a 1988 5.0 Mustang...but who knows. Traffic coming home was horrific, but I survived the L.A. freeways without injury. I plan on swapping Calvin's old 1966 hood for the bellhousing + $20 to pay for a new pivot ball that it is missing. I talked to a guy in San Juan Capistrano named Brian that is going to sell me the flywheel, clutch and pressure plate for only $30!!! The flywheel was recently resurfaced and the clutch only has 6,000 miles on it...can you believe it?! I'm going to pick it up from him on Monday after work. I'll still need a few parts like the block plate, clutch fork, bearings, clutch cable kit and starter. it might seem like a lot, but its really not. maybe another $350 before its all said and done. Things are lookin' up!



I've been cleaning up chrome and stainless steel parts for the car when I get off of work during the week to help move things along while I can't physically be with the car. last week I had a '65 glove box door and the stainless steel molding that goes around the front windshield. This week I have the '66 bar grille, horse and corral, grille support molding and one emblem. I should have them cleaned up and ready to take back to the house to exchange out for other parts.








I like the pace things are moving along. I think we'll pull out the straight six on Sunday when I'm at the house to drop off the transmission. More to come!

Dismantling

The 'Stang will be sitting at my parents house until we have a place of our own that we can park that car. My dad and I pushed the car into the driveway in front of the garage to make it easier to work on when we do find the time to put into it. I went over to the house on Saturday to pull out the transmission and driveline since a guy wanted to give me $150 for them. I noticed some rust on the underside of the car on the passenger-side rear of the car. We'll need to pull out the interior and weld in some sheet metal to shore it up. Now the mid-section of the car is empty and awaiting a T-5 to fill the gaping hole that now occupies its underside.






While I was at the house and had some extra time to kill, I decided to start dismantling the front end of the car so that we could more easily work on the engine compartment. While I was pulling off the front valance and fenders, i noticed multiple metric bolts in the place of the standard bolts that are found on American built cars. The metric bolts were put into place to help hold the car together since the previous owner didn't have standard bolts laying around. The front of the car looks a bit naked now, but its hidden from the gaze of strangers. The frame of the car appears to be in pretty good condition as well, so I won't have to do much work to it to get it ready to put the fenders back on and prep it for paint. I did find some rust on the trunk of the car which will require a little extra attention. Its only a little spot on the bottom left corner of the trunk, but it will need to be cut out and filled. We'll also need to stop the rust from spreading by using some anti-rust product.


The next step in the process is to pull out the engine so that we can sand down the engine bay and prep for paint. We'll use a metal etching primer and a high heat black paint that will withstand the high temps that the engine will be putting out once that beefy 302 with 289 heads is dropped in. It was the same engine that was completely rebuilt for my first 1964 1/2 Mustang that I had when I was in high school. I took out the engine to put in a different 302 that my dad had in his Ford pick up trunk because I thought it would be a better engine. As it turned out, it was a little slower than the first engine that was in there, but I left it out anyways. Fortunately we still have it in the garage and ready to be used again to burn some rubber off the rear wheels.

Buying the Car

While we were in Honduras, Lauren and I discussed one day buying and restoring a classic car. After looking at pictures of different cars, we decided on the Ford Mustang since we both liked the way they looked and that parts were fairly abundant--knowing how to work on them was an added bonus. We figured that we would buy one in a few years upon owning our own home and having steady jobs. I happened to run across an ad on Craigslist.com for a complete 1966 Mustang coupe with a 3-speed manual transmission for $1350. The first thing I did was call my dad to see if he would be interested in buying it for himself, but he then offered to front the money to buy it for me and Lauren instead. I talked to Lauren about it, and she thought it would be a good idea since the car was complete and very affordable.



Upon arriving in Fontana to look at the car, we realized that it didn't have a 289 motor like the ad claimed...instead it had a straight-6 which meant that it also had a 4-lug rear and front spindels. Everything else about the car looked good though and since it was complete, I couldn't pass it up. I low-balled him by offering him $800, but he said that he wouldn't sell it for less than $1200. A few minutes later I talked him down to $1100 and had a pinkslip in my hand. We had a tow truck from AAA come out to pick up the car to take back to my parents house in Riverside for storage.



Besides the car being set up for a manual transmission, another good thing about it was that it had an original center console much like my first 1964 1/2 mustang. The console was still in great shape, although it needed to be cleaned up quite a bit. The rest of the interior was in-tact (or in the trunk) and would be easy to restore with a little time and money. I am going to put in the 289 that was rebuilt and dropped into my first Mustang when I was in high school. I took it out to put in a 302 that was in my dad's old 1973 1/2 ton Ford pickup truck. I'm fortunate to still have the 289 sitting in the garage with a high rise Edelbrock "Performer RPM" intake manifold on it. I'll have to convert the front spindels and rear differential to a 5-lug set-up, but I may have found a guy that will sell both of those to me for $200.


In the mean time, I will spend my extra time cleaning up the parts that I will be able to re-use so that I won't have to buy new parts. I brought the entire center console to Anaheim Hills to clean it up in my spare time after work. I think that it has turned out pretty nice so far. I'll clean up the glove box door next by also stripping off the faded-black paint that adorns it. For now I'd say that the console looks pretty darn good. My only concern is that it fits with the 5.0 Mustang T5 transmission that I'll be putting in.





Looking at the rest of the car, its not so bad...
















































































I'm going to do my best to document the restoration process so that my kids will one day have something to look back on--maybe it will inspire them to do something great. Plus I just like to write and upload pictures, so this provides a good outlet.