Passenger Door Panel & Other Fixes

I should have had a softball game tonight but there is some sort of tournament going on that prevented regular games from happening tonight so I got to work more on the Mustang. I feel like I accomplished a good amount this afternoon/evening. I stopped by the local DMV to pick up the month tag that they neglected to give me when I was there getting my personalized plates on Monday. I literally walked in and walked out with my tags in under three minutes.

I headed to my parents and got to work right away on installing the door panel since I installed the window regulator Tuesday. First I cut a piece of plastic to fit behind the door panel like I did for the other door and then used caulking to seal the door openings. I poked holes for the door clips and the arm rest base. I lined up each door clip and then started putting them in one at a time. The handles went on fairly quickly as did the arm rest base.

If you remember from my "Frustrated" entry, the passenger side headlight only worked intermittently. I installed newer style Halogen headlights although they are a sealed headlight like the older ones were. Hopefully this corrects the headlight flickering problem that I had on the passenger side.

If you also remember my frustration about the dash lights not working, I figured out what the problem was after pulling the dash apart. One problem was the ground had come disconnected on the back of the gauges. The second problem was that the fuse box is slightly corroded and was preventing a good connection for the fuse which stopped power from flowing to the dash. I think I've got both issues corrected now. I added the green covers to the extra tri-pod gauges so that they would match the dash gauges (blue covers with yellow incandescent bulbs.)

We also took care of at least one other important issue tonight. My dad bought a threaded sleeve to connect the end of the adjustable clutch cable rod to another extension piece  in order to make it so that the clutch isn't partially disengaged when the pedal is fully out. Before the clutch was never fully engaged and when you started to depress the pedal, it would immediately disengage the clutch. Now the clutch begins to engage closer to the bottom of the pedal rather than all the way at the top. I only rolled forward and backward in the driveway, but didn't get to take it for a test drive. I'll be picking it up tomorrow evening so that I have it here and ready to take to the exhaust shop Saturday morning.

Update 09/02/13: A new clutch setup was installed including a longer 96-04 Mustang cable. The post about it is HERE.

Unfortunately the speedometer cable was melted through right at the point that the open headers drop off the exhaust. while I had the gauges out of the dash tonight I unhooked the cable from the back of the gauges and will replace it once I have the pipes ran this weekend. Fortunately the cable is only about $20 at any local auto parts store.

Next on the agenda is to run a keyed hot fuse box inside the car from a relay in order to run some extra wires (i.e. electric choke).  I'll also need to polish the car again and put a fresh coat of wax on it as well as get the windshield guy to seal it correctly (3rd times the charm).