Passenger door revised

I messed up with the lower patch panel for the passenger side door. See the blog entry of this miserable moment. I ordered a new patch panel (Canadian made, excellent fit btw.) from NPD. Despite of my ugly welds, it took me one night to remove the potato field off the door and another one to fit and weld the new one and a third one to finish it.

Although mig-welding is almost as fun as chain sawing, I felt pretty frustrated redoing something while I still have enough work until the car is back in the traffic. But now the result has approved the quality control carried out by myself. Looks much better now, doesn't it.

The wide picture shows what has happened on the rear quarter panels. A friend came by and offered a helping hand with melting some lead over the sheet metal welds. Now he can proceed with right side door and front fender.

Meanwhile I think I'll concentrate on finishing the floor and installing the rear axle. Destiny still has to wait a week or two until she can burst out of the garage doorway.

Front suspension and steering linkage

The parts for front suspension had been media blasted and primered in spring. I painted them black along with the engine compartment. The lower control arms got updated with new bushings but the ball joints appeared to be in such a good condition that I approved them. As a matter of fact if they are worn, you need to replace the LCAs as a whole. If both your upper and lower control arms are in a bad shape you might consider a kit available from Cal Mustang for replacing all the control arms. But I did not want to invest to them at this time. These will do until I'll do the disc brake conversion as well.

First I attached the LCAs and the sway bar with new end links. I had ground the rivets off the original upper control arm ball joints. The new ball joints seem to have the grease fitting in a diffent place than what the originals did. Therefore the screws were installed sort of upside down. Maybe it does not matter anyhow. The camber and caster are adjusted with shims in '65s. I installed them back as they were when disassemled. The control arms are similar on both sides so there is a fifty-fifty chance that I've mixed them. I'll have to adjust the camber and caster later anyhow.

Next: I attached the strut rods. These are the old ones which have only been blasted and painted. Even the rubber bushings at the front end of the rods are original.

I could not figure the purpose of the "wings" between the strut rod and the LCA even though I studied the Mustang Illustrations Catalog. But I decided to install them back anyhow.

Later I discovered that the wings act as limiters for steering. If turn enough the spindle arm will meet the "wing" and prevent the wheel from turning too much.

Once the control arms were ready I placed the spindles in between. And not only the spindles but the RUSTY (???!!!???) front brake drums also. OK, I'll do something for the drums at the time when all the for drum brakes are checked. The back side of the drum brake plate was cleaned with wire brush and painted black.

I want this vehicle to roll so I won't spend time with rusty brakes for now.

The front coil spring got themselves new insulators for upper ends and a coat of enamel. Here is shown a best position for compression tools (borrowed from a friend, thanks). I decided that there must be six rounds of coil spring wire between the jaws. Take some time to position the jaws in a way that they will not be in way when you place the spring between UCA and the shock tower top end.

And here is the coil spring 4 inches shortened and ready to go in. Instead of ratchet you may find useful to use wrench tool for loosening the compressor tool because...

...you may end up with a situation where you can not detach your ratchet because there is no more space left. I know , I did and had to compress again.

But finally the spring was there.

My carage is small, only 6,0m x 3,5m. Therefore I need to move my car while proceeding with the project. This can be done with a help from a couple of friends and their wives or by rolling the car on its own wheels with a help from my own wife. That's why the steering box and linkage are the next thing to be installed. Not much time did I spend with restoring the steering box. You can not fix it art home. If it's worn replace it. The steering shaft is Spear O'matic -type, a solid rod which may be harmful for your chest in case of an accident.

And the opposite side companion for the steering box: the pitman arm.

Tie rods were worn to an extent that they were replaced with new ones. I'm so stingy that I revived the original tie rod sleeves and installed the tie rods prior to attaching them. I screwed an equal amount of threads at both ends so while adjusting the toe neither of the tie rods will drop out of threads. And a rule of thumb is that the tie rod with counter-clockwise threads is the outer one. The inner ones have normal, clockwise threads.

I couldn't resist the desire to see Destiny ( I call her My Destiny nowadays) on her front feet shamelessly posing with the new KYB Gas-a-Just shock absorbers. I would have preferred the softer and cheaper GR2-type of KYBs which might have been better for a daily cruiser but my local dealer bargained these for 100 € /pair VAT 18% included. ($150) . In US you can obtain ones from NPD for $43,95 /each.

A lot of negative camber seen in this picture below. This is the weakness in Mustang's front suspension. The camber variates depending on the ride hight which is not good for the grip. Too much negative in the up-position and too much positive in down-position. Those willing to improve their vehicle's handling and performance on curvy roads may want to do something for this disadvantage. But I don't ! At least not anymore. No reason for adjusting camber/caster/toe at this point. The front will move downwards once the 200/C4 is installed.

But where is my engine and tranny ? Only a licquid gas container can be seen under my workbench. And a jar of California Sun Maid Raisins on top of it. Is that all the thieves left ?

Engine compartment paint

Two weeks, I said in May. I'll let the primer dry for two weeks until I'll give it a final coat of semi-gloss black. After 21 weeks of drying I guess it's time to crawl back into the garage and start sanding and preparations for the paint job.

The engine compartment had a lot of drips and I had to use rough grit sandpaper for those areas. But mostly I managed with 250 grit.

The wheel well side turned out to be easier. Epoxy primer needs to be sanded to ensure good adhesion for the clearcoat. The color turns gray when the surface is ground. A friend of mine suggested polyurethane coating for the engine compartment. It forms a good shockproof surface and will not get scratched if it is hit by a wrench while fine-tuning his huge aluminium big-block engine. I discussed this issue with my candidate-for-body-paint-job. He absolutely refused the idea and voted for acrylic based paint. I do not want to argue with a specialist so acrylic shall it be. And due to the fact that my wrench is so small and my six-banger is so narrow, I felt OK with the decision.

The windshield window frames of a convertible will be covered with mouldings to such an extent that no body color will be seen. Only the inner side of the pillar will be visible. My interior will be black so I decided to do the frames and dashboard as well.

A lot of vacuuming was needed until I was able to apply silicone remover and Dinitrol 410 seam sealer and as soon as this was done I proceeded with spraying the Spies Hecker Permacron® 630 . This was done using wet-on-wet technique straight after I had finished with seam sealer so sorry, no pictures of that phase. Actually the sealer includes polyurathane but is compatible with the acrylic enamel. Here are a couple of pictures of the finished product after three coats of paint.

I ordered something between glossy and matt. The guy at the paint shop said he mixed 70% of the gloss-compound. The result may be too shiny but looks fine to me.

I had prepared the UCA's, LCA's and the strut rods and handled them as well.

The dash is now ready for the installation of the mono AM radio.

Looks quite menacing now, like UFO has turned out to Darth Vader's battleship.

To my opinion this paint job succeeded well. There can be seen a few scrathes from using the rough sanding paper but once the engine is back in they'll be difficult to be noticed.