Body work and Parking Brake

Lauren had to work today so it was off to the races to get as much body work done as possible in only a few hours. As you can probably guess, not a whole lot really got done. I did a lot of sanding to find even more low spots which proved to be dents from who I can only imagine to be someone who really didn't like the previous owner of my '66. the entire body on this car has had damage and its been very frustrating to fix. Don't get me wrong, its been a good experience thus far, but its still annoying.

I found the most recent one right at the back of the roof more on the passenger's side and it was about the shape of a persons hand in a fist. I put a skim coat of Bondo there along with another skim coat of Bondo along the side of the roof where I found three dents.

I found these two at the front of the roof in the middle near the windshield. They weren't very big, but they were dents that needed to be fixed. Maybe someone didn't know how to remove the window molding?

I also used the air tool to smooth over the rear of the quarter panel extension area where the end caps will mount. There were a lot of gouges that needed to be sanded down and now they are!

The last time I was over I spent a good deal of time trying to find the threaded piece for the parking brake and could not seem to fine it. My dad spent about 5 minutes looking for it and found it in the place that I searched at least three times. Sometimes you can't see the forest through the trees. I pulled out the wire brush wheel and polished off the years of grime that was on it as well as the spring and then painted them both gray. 

I had to install the spring first and then slip it into the lever before I could then use the lever to stretch the spring in order for the lever to fit. Once I figured out that would be the only feasible way to install the parking brake it went pretty quick. I adjusted the setup to make sure that the lever inside came out far enough, but didn't come out too far. I might have to adjust it again once I've actually driven the car and worn in the brakes.

UPDATE 08/24/11: The parking brake spring appears to have broken at some point and simply cut down to semi-work so I bought a new spring for $7.95 and will install it the next time I'm over.

UPDATE 08/28/11: I received the parking brake spring and it was much longer than the one pictured above. I didn't take any pictures of the new spring by itself, but I did get a picture of it once I painted and installed it. The new spring isn't quite so stretched out now.

Hood, E-Brake, Headers, Speedo Cable

Today was a busy day for me when it came to the Mustang. Lauren had work and after the monthly mens breakfast I went over to my parents house to work on the car. My dad put a new motor on the air compressor since the old one burned up, but he was at work today leaving him unable to help me out on the car. When I arrived I noticed that he had been stripping the paint off the hood and my mom informed me that he had been out there every day this week to work on the car. Thanks dad.

It still needs a little more work done on the top before it's ready to paint, but I'm sure it will be ready soon. The passenger's side of the hood was pushed in a little , but nothing a little hammer couldn't straighten out. I'm debating whether or not I should put the F-O-R-D letters on the hood or if I should "shave" them. The rest of the car is going to be without emblems, but I kind of like the idea of having the letters on the hood. I started my morning on the underside of the hood with some scour pads and the air grinder.

It was far from being ready for paint since it had an undercoating sprayed on it sometime in the 80's. After realizing that it would take me a while to get it all off, I decided to recruit my older brother to help me so that I could focus on other things that needed to get done. He did a pretty good job cleaning it up.

I had to weld an area at the front of the hood that was cracked near where the hood rests on the on the bumpers. I'm not sure what would have caused it to crack, but its welded now.There were a couple of areas that had dents on the underside of the hood in the frame so I flushed them with Bondo in preparation for paint. I ordered a handful of parts from CJ Pony last week including new mid-length headers from Patriot, a speedometer driven gear clip and seal, a firewall to steering column seal, a lower radiator hose stainless steel spring, and a new front parking brake cable since the original one was frayed.

Patriot Mid-length Headers

The Patriot headers look awesome and will work much better with the cable clutch setup than the former Hedman headers that were on the car before. They came in raw steel and needed a coat of paint, so I bought 2000* flat black paint to paint them:

Patriot Mid-length Headers Painted

The speedometer gear that I bought for the T5 is a 21 tooth based on the calculations I derived based on tire height, rear gear ratio and the drive gear in the car. I won't know if it is correct until I actually drive the car with the new rims.

21 Tooth Speedo Gear with Clip and O-Ring

I also pulled out the front parking brake cable and handle in order to install the new one. While I had out the handle, I took the time to clean up the body of it and paint it. I was able to spot the original FoMoCo stamp on the part:

Parking Brake 

Once the headers were painted and dry, I slipped them in the car and bolted them up. The driver's side had much better clearance near the collector. Before the collector was right on top of the bellhousing and it may have caused some problems having the pipe run. The mid-length header extends out further leaving much more room to run exhaust.

Patriot Header Installed on Driver's Side

This is what the previous header looked like on the driver's side:

Previous Hedman Header 

The only problem I have with these headers is that two of the spark plug wires actually rest on the header--that's a problem. I'll need to pull off the boot and find one that will not sit on top of the header. The rest of the plug wires have plenty of clearance so it is only two on the driver's side that I need to worry about.

Patriot header hitting plug wires

The passenger's side header fits with no issues and the spark plug wires on that side don't his any of the header tubes.

It Takes a Lieutenant Colonel to Sand a Car

Today Lauren played in a charity golf tournament with Nikki and friends to it was a perfect opportunity to work on the Mustang as I am preparing it for paint. I invited Darrell (my mother-in-laws fiance) to join me in working on it if he so desired. He chose to come and help me out since he knows I don't have a whole lot of time to work on it.

I arrived first and started by removing the headers that I installed about 6 months ago. There is a long story behind that and its not worth talking about, but I did want to note that my car is header-less again:

On a brighter note, I did order a set of Patriot mid-length headers for about $154 that were designed to work with the cable clutch conversion so they should fit much better than the previous Hedman headers that I had installed before. I will need to paint them, but I've already ordered some high-temp black paint and will have them painted before I install them.

65-66 Mustang Patriot Mid-Length Headers

After I finished that, I started drilling the holes for the export brace across the firewall area behind the motor. If you remember I welded in a strip of sheet metal over the existing support in order to make it look cleaner. I drilled the four holes necessary to put in the bolts to hold the brace and then I tightened it down.

While I was at it, I needed to drill a hole on each side of the fender aprons for the new monte carlo bar that I just installed. That took next to no time at all.

Around the time that I was finishing up with the drilling, Darrell arrived. I gave him a nickel tour of the car and then put him to work on sanding the dash (Luke's job last weekend) and also the steering column. It didn't take him too long to get it sanded.

66 Mustang Dash Sanded

In the mean time I was working on getting that nasty gold paint sanded off of the car since it tends to flake and would make for a horrible base under my brand new paint. Last week I sanded the gold off of the passenger side door. As you can see, there was some body work from the previous owner.

This week I needed to do some sanding on the driver's side door which definitely isn't as pretty as the passenger's side door.It looks more like a Picasso than anything else with all of those colors. This side must have had more body work than the other side.

Darrell spent the rest of his time cleaning and sanding the inside of the passenger's side door. From the factory there was a coating of an adhesive that helped seal the door panel to the door and keep the inside of the car more quite. He used a wire brush to get it all off and then used some sandpaper to sand down the black paint which will be replaced with the blue paint from the exterior of the car.

The driver's side door latch has some problems of its own because all three of the screws that hold it to the door have cracked. One has completed cracked all the way around while the other two are still holding on. I'm going to attempt to use a tapered washer to hold the latch onto the door. It is holding fine now, but I want to make sure that it stays fine in the future.

Petey didn't seem too excited to be hanging out with me while I worked on the Mustang, but then again, he's a dog and the only things that excite him are food and walks.

It Takes a Family to Sand a Car

My wife arranged to have her brothers come over and help me work on the car this afternoon to help move things along since I have been fairly busy lately. As a matter of fact I spent Saturday helping friends move and never got the opportunity to work on the car. Today felt like a day of playing catch-up, but with the extra hands on deck, it went quite well. Since my primary goal at this point is to have the car painted by the end of August, I needed all the help I could get to get the car sanded down in preparation for the first coat of primer. Here is a list of my extra hands today:

Clint: Brother-in-Law

Brad: Brother-in-Law

Calvin Sr: Dad

Calvin Jr: Brother-by-blood

They each played a role in the sanding that was done today, but there is still more sanding to be done. When I first arrived, I pushed the Mustang under the canopy since there had been thunder storms overnight and into the morning. I used the air compressor to blow off some of the residual rains that were on the car and while I was doing that, the compressor (which has been used for years to paint multiple cars) decided to go up in smoke. My dad took it apart and will take the motor into a shop to have it looked it, but it wasn't going to do us any good today. Without a compressor, we were limited to sanding the old fashioned way with some elbow grease. Fortunately there was plenty of sanding to be done so I put them all to work.

I had Brad and Clint start off with the door jams on both sides of the car. We pulled the strike plates off with an impact screwdriver that my dad picked up from Harbor Freight. My 7-year old nephew took a break from the swimming in the pool to help sand the dash inside the car. 

Brad's side: Passenger

Clint's side: Driver

Once they were finished with the jams all the way around the door, they moved to the trunk where Brad stripped off the old weatherstrip and Clint chipped away cracking filler. I didn't get a shot of the work they were doing, but I did take a shot of the rear which will still need some more sanding.

I spent the bulk of my time working on the cowl. There are so many tiny little bars that need to be sanding so many different ways! It still needs a little more work, but it's mostly done.

1966 Mustang Cowl

I spent the end of the day taking off the layer of gold paint on the passenger's side door, but neglected to take any pictures since it was the end of the day and I was tired. I hope to have my dad and brother work on the car this week. I'm hoping that my dad will strip off the paint on the hood and that my brother will get off the undercoating on the trunk and deck lid. I should have the opportunity to work on the car on the next two Saturday's and the Sunday after that...trying to get it all done.

Export Brace, Monte Carlo Bar and TT2's test fitted

Today was a day to get a lot of different things accomplished. Lauren had to work, but I still had to help at Pipeline from 10:30-12:45 and then Bethany and Daniel were going to come over for dinner so I knew that I wasn't going to finish everything I wanted to. I started by setting the export brace and monte carlo bar (Scott Drake) in the engine compartment to make sure that they fit. Had the car been in an accident and not been properly repaired, the holes wouldn't have lined up. Fortunately, the front end is in good shape since all of the holes lined up perfectly.

Test Fit of Monte Carlo and Export

Next I wanted to make sure that the 17x8" wide rims I bought were going to fit on my car. The fronts just barely fit without hitting the upper ball join on the control arm. I probably had less than 1/4" of space which I'll definitely need to fit on the tire. Although the rims are considered 8" wide, they are actually a total of 9" wide. Add on an 1/8" of tire hanging off of either side and you have a total of 9.25" of width. Multiple this by 25.4 to find out how many millimeters wide the tire needs to be and you come up with 234.95 or 235. 

Front Pass. 17x8 Rim Space to Ball Joint

The rears seemed to fit like a glove with the 5.5" of backspace. Rolling the quarter panel lips proved to also be a good idea since after the rolled lips I  had about 1/2" of space from the edge of the rim to the inside edge of the rolled lip.I don't want to push my luck so I will put 245. Working the equation backwards it would look like this: 245/25.4= 9.65". Subtract the rim width from 9.65 and that leaves a total of .65" of tire hanging over the rim. Since there are two sides to the rim, only .65/2 or .32" of tire will be hanging over the rim.

Rear Driver's Side Rim Space

Here is the front passenger side of the car with the rim completely mounted to give you an idea of how awesome these rims look:

Torq Thrust 2.1 in 17x8

After I wrapped up at Pipeline I stopped by Kragen and bought two Monroe gas shocks for the front of the car. I needed the shocks in order to mount the shock tower cap which was connected with the same bolts as the export brace. The engine bay looks very dressed up now with the satin finish suspension and it even matches the aluminum radiator.

Export Brace, Monte Carlo bar and Shocks Installed

The shocks I bought just so happened to be a blue that is very close the the spark plug wires so they won't look completely out of place. There still need to be holes drilled on each side of the fender aprons and four holes drilled on the firewall side to accommodate the new export brace since I welded in a piece of sheet metal across the back sometime last year.

New Monroe Shocks Installed

I gave my dad the money to pick up the paint and primer as we hope to have it painted before summer is another distant memory. It is a two stage urethane paint by 4th Dimension. Of course it is Seaside Blue Metallic (Sherwin Williams 32642-G; 4th Dimension) and we also bought some blue pearl to add to the first coat of clear. Below is a picture of the paint next to the pearl.

Seaside Blue Metallic Next to Blue Pearl

Gauges Finished

I received my order from CJ Pony Parts today which included my instrument bezel, new blue gauge light lenses and a Scott Drake export brace and monte carlo bar in a "satin" finish. My gauges have been sitting in the office closet waiting for the final two parts that I received today. If you remember my ENTRY from seven months ago, I pulled the gauges apart, repainted the housing and needles and have been waiting to finish it.

The new lens covers were mounted in the housing to replace the warped and discolored originals. Below you can see the difference between the originals (bottom) and the new lenses (top.)

1966 Mustang Instrument Light Covers (blue)

Once I mounted the new lens covers, I put the gauges back in place as well. From left to right the gauges are Fuel, Oil, Speedometer, Amps, and Temp.

1966 Mustang Gauges

Once I had the gauges back in the housing, I put the spacer cushions in the new bezel which will keep the plastic lens from rattling. I think most people throw those away when they change their bezel because they don't realize that those little pieces of rubbery Styrofoam are actually useful. Next, I placed the metal spacer on top of the housing and  then finally set on the new bezel.

Complete 1966 Mustang Gauges with new Bezel

As mentioned before, I also got in my curved monte Carlo bar and export brace from Scott Drake. I was disappointing with the finish on the monte carlo bar as it is not in perfect condition. I suppose I expected higher quality considering that this was the most expensive monte carlo bar they offered. I purchased the satin finish because I just wanted something different than the standard chrome that everyone else puts on their classic Mustang.

Scott Drake Export Brace & Monte Carlor Bar in Satin Finish

I will get pictures of the rims on the car when I go to my parents house on Sunday afternoon although they'll look weird with an un-painted car and without tires. Here is a quick shot of one of the Torq Thrust 2.1 rims in 17x8 with 5.48" of backspace:

Torq Thrust 2.1 in 17x8

Shelby/Arning Drop

I've been doing a lot of reading on Vintage-Mustang.com lately and came across a suspension modification that I wish I had learned about when my car was in pieces--The Shelby/Arning Drop. You can read all about the history of how it came about and how it was implemented by Carol Shelby on his Mustangs by going to THIS website, but all you need to know for my blog is that it drops the upper control arms (UCA) down 1" and towards the rear of the car 1/8" on the 65-66 models. Although this lowers the front of the car, its main purpose is to improve handling by raising the "roll center" of the suspension causing the suspension to resist body roll.

I already purchased the 1" front lowering springs and had them installed which meant that I had to pull them back out of the car in order to drop the UCA to drill the new holes. I actually had to make a run down to Auto Zone to pick up a spring compressor that worked from the inside of the spring rather than the outside of the spring due to the limited space between the fender apron and the spring. Once I had the driver spring off I un-bolted the UCA and pivoted it out of the way.

Driver's Side UCA Off

I printed the template for the UCA drop off of the Glazier Nolan website and used that to mark my holes. The template wasn't quite wide enough to line up perfectly with both existing holes although when I measured, I found that the 1" and 1/8" measurements were accurate.

UCA Drop Template

I used a razor blade to cut out holes in the template where the existing bolts where and put a bolt through the template and the fender apron on the side I first punched and then did the same thing on the other side. Once I was done I had my marks to begin drilling. My right hand mark ended up slightly too far to the left, but I compensated for that by widening the hole.

Driver's Side Apron Marked

I started with a very small drill bit and used about five different drill bits before arriving at the last size. I thought my dad would have had a 17/32" drill bit since he has just about every tool you can think of, but alas he didn't so I finished with a 1/2".

Driver's Side Apron with UCA Drop Holes

Once I had the holes finished and the UCA lined up perfectly I slid it back in, bolted it up (without shims since I have a whole new front end and need to have a complete alignment done.) I haven't purchased front shocks yet so you won't see the shocks sitting inside the spring just yet.

The other side went much faster since I knew exactly what I was doing now. I followed the same process and touched up the areas that were drilled or damaged with some flat black paint. I set the springs back in when I was done. I'm hoping to have tires and rims in the next couple of months at which point I should also have the paint on the car done. I can't wait to get the car aligned and see how well it handles with this new suspension upgrade! The last piece that I'll want to put on the front end will be a 1" sway bar for even more responsive handling.

Passenger's Side with UCA Drop Complete