I ATE TOO MUCH FOOD!

I am lucky to have a wife that cooks so well, we ate like Kings and queens on christmas. We had ham, cheesy taters,watergate salad,and even pumpkin pie, the only thing that would have made it better is to have been with all of my family. Santa treated us all really good, but kaleb did the best. He got a new yamaha pw50 and a nintendo ds with a bunch of games to go with it. Hope you all had a great time as well.

On to the car....I still havent gotten to weld anything up as I am in the process of fitting the floor to firewall extensions in properly, this has been tougher than I thought because the aftermarket pieces are not exaclty the same. That being said you cant cut on the same line and expect it to fit, found out the hard way! No biggey though, I just got out the 20 pound sledge and made it fit [Joke]. So, I should have them fitted by thursday and then I will have my local frame guy come and help me get the front end squared so I can weld the frame extensions in and weld the torque box back in also. Gotta go, will get pics up by weekend.

Ho Ho Ho...

I cant believe that christmas is almost here! This year has been a good one and I have many things to be thankfull for. I want to tell all my family how much I love them and to keep track of the true meaning of christmas!

Ok, so I have been working hard on the stang, I ended up taking the floor out and basically everything back out and wirebrushing and grinding every nook and crany to get all the rust cleaned up and the metal nice and shiny to weld. Anyone who has welded auto steel knows that it isnt easy, and that any imperfections will affect the welds. Once I cleaned up all the surfaces I put on this stuff called weld thru primer, it is made by 3m and is grey in color. It is supposed to create a corrosion proof surface.

You can see in that pic the frame rail extensions, they came bare metal so I took the time today to prime them and paint them so they dont rust up, I also undercoated all inside the frame rails and "A" pillars, and around the top of the roof were it is hard to get paint and primer into, no stone left un turned!!! Since christmas is coming I had to get Kalebs big present ready so Mike and I tested it out. It is a Yamaha PW50, talk about a blast this little things got some pep.



Here are some more pictures for Uncle Davey to stew on over christmas...ho ho ho








Merry Christmas Everyone! I will be back at it on Monday.

Fit to Weld.

So yesterday and today I worked on getting panels screwed into place and removing the rear inner fender aprons. When I got the old ones out and cleaned everything up I went and grabbed the new panels and found out that they are cheaply made. As a matter of fact I even wondered for a moment if they went to this car, lol. Anyways after a conversation with my pal Russell at Mustang Mania he dropped some new and improved panels in the mail and the should be in next week. The bad thing about that panel is that the hood hinges bolt to it and they have a tendencey to crack out around the nutserts and fall out. When I get the new panels in I will look them over and see If I need to reenforce them some more or if they will be good enough stock.

I have most all of the holes punched to start spotwelding the panels in and I will start on that hopefully tommorrow. Here are some new pictures that I took to tide all of my fans over for awhile. Hee Hee.

Mock Up Day

Today I got the driverside outer cowl put in and the fenders and doors mocked up. I everything had presentable gaps and is ok to go ahead and weld into place. I also put in the seat risers and the passenger frame rail extension. On monday I will put the inner fender aprons in and maybe get to welding a little. I still have the drivers side frame extension to do also and the floor to firewall extensions. After that basically all that is left is the radiator support and the two rear quarter panels, and of course a shit load of welding!!! Super tired, I will put up some pics monday night...Later.

GITTER DONE!

This first pic is of my buddy Mike working on a customers 70 Chevelle SS 396 convertible...Ya, it is nice! I did a lot of hammer and dolly work today, the door post on the passenger side was actually bent in on the bottom pretty bad so we did some fancy work to get it straight again. The upper and lower cowl is in now and the passenger side panel. As you can see I have a lot of different tools laying on the floor, I keep the 15 pound sledge around just incase Dave calls and tells me to put the windshield in again.....Ha Ha, just jokin uncle Dave! Hitting it hard tommorrow am. Later, Andy

Hammer Time!

Today rocked, I opened a can on the ole mustang and got a bunch done. I got the floor in and removed the dash, and also the upper and lower cowl panels. I am glad I did because their was some rust hiding under it. It is amazing how much rust you find when you really get into a car. The driveshaft tunnel was pretty beat up towards the front probably from putting motors in and out so I did some hammer and dolly work on it and got it back to original condition. They hit it so hard that it actually ripped the metal in a couple places so I welded that back up and ground it true.

I ended up getting the firewall prepped and ready for tommorrow when I will mock up the upper and lower cowl panels and the dash structure. Pictures to follow!

Grind...Cut...Weld...Hammer....repeat.

Well what can I say, its been awhile since I have updated this blog! I am sure you guys are just chomping at the bit to see what I have been up to. I have been busy taking out the old floor and prepping it for the new one to go in. This requires a lot of grinding with a air cutoff tool and a grinding disk, the object is to grind out the weld and leave a backing on the inner panel to weld to. Also what I did was take a scribe and mark around the old panels that way when I put the new ones in I have a reference line. Some people use spot weld cutters but they don't work well, especially with the kind of hit and miss spot welding they did in the 60's. Once I removed the floor I have to start thinking about the floor to firewall extensions and the cowl side panels, and also the frame extensions because they are all tied together. I put the floor in temporarily but ended up removing it again for ease of dash and side cowl replacement. The frame extension on the drivers side had a lot of rust under it into the frame so I have to fabricate a plate to fix that, shouldn't be a big deal because is is basically just a flat piece of steel. There is also damage on the firewall and on the rear floor where the shocks mount on top that I will be fixing soon. The pinch weld on the rocker panels is really smashed up from jacks hitting it and whatever else so I am straightening that out also.

Let the sparks fly!

Well I went to Mustang Mania in Katy Texas on October 23rd and picked up the sheetmetal! All I can say is what a cool guys Russell and Stuart are, they were so helpfull and have a ton of knowledge in mustangs. They have a website and it is www.mustangmania.com , and I would suggest anyone that is looking to or already restoring a mustang to just call them and let them help you! I spent about two hours walking around with Russell looking at some used parts we needed and even found a numbers matching 390 for the car! This motot was a college project and when they were done with it Russell picked it up. It has all new machine work and parts, what a deal! With Russells packaging skills we put all the sheetmetal in my truck, I could hardly breath in the cab but it fit. Now I have the parts off loaded in the storage trailer and I am on track to start replacing the floor on wednesday.

bringing home the "diamond in the rough"

Hi, my name is Andy Huffaker, I have been given an opportunity by my uncle David Shuck to restore a 1967 mustang fastback, and I have chosen this site to track the progress of it. My uncle asked me to be on the lookout for a 67 mustang fastback gt 390 4speed car, it seems he had one of these in high school and regretfully sold it and then it caught fire on a trip to Florida with the new owner.



I am always hunting for deals on the internet and other places so I started my hunt! After a lot of phone calls, driving around and hound dogging everyone I knew I found one!! A man had one stored for around 12 years or better in a storage crate...like a old semi trailer or something. He told me it was very rough but it was indeed a original 390 big block 4 speed car which was what dave really wanted since his original one was.



I planned a trip out to see the car and when I got there he was pulling it out of the crate....there she was a raven black gt fastback, wow was I excited! I began looking it over, I was on the phone with Dave the whole time almost sharing my excitement, it looked as if it had been raced before and the floors were gone, the radiator support had been cut for ease of motor removal and installation I was thinking.



The whole car was really a basketcase to say the least....the left rear quarter panel had a lot of body filler in it and was heavilly damaged, we were basically looking at a total top to bottom restoration. Dave and I decided to purchase the car and get to work on it. On August 11th 2008 we Dave of Shuckys classic autos bought the car. I picked it up and the extra parts including a motor. The motor ended up being a 1969 date coded 390 ci and we need a 1967 or earlier casting to make it a numbers matching car.

The first thing I did when I got the car home was strip all the parts out of it and try to make sense of what I had and didnt have...turned out that I didnt have much of anything good at all except the core of the car and the vin number. Everything was pretty worn out, even the clutch linkage was wobbled out from so many shifts. We kept focus on the big picture though and kept plugging away at this hot rod. Dave ended up flying in from Florida on august 15th 2008. We went to work on stripping the interior on the 16th and got it all torn out except for a few small things...Dave is a doctor and he was complaining of some muscle pain after we worked for a couple hours, I told him to suck it up! We took the glass out of the doors which is a pain in the behind I might add.









After I got the whole car stripped down to the bone Dave and I decided that we would get it soda blasted, this is a high pressure nozzle that uses baking soda to blast paint off and does not warp or pit the surface. As we would find out this also uncovers some nasty history, we found body filler and rust in most of the panels. The good part is that the rocker panels,inner fenders,trunk and frame were all in good shape which is a big thing! You can buy most all of the sheetmetal for a mustang online...we choose to use the guys at Mustang Mania in Katy Texas, they have been very helpfull and also have used parts. Here are some pics of the soda blast process and some of the things you see under the paint.












As you can see, the soda does not take of the rust, only the paint. They ended up using sand on the tough areas like the underside of the car. Well lets see...I guess once I got the car soda blasted I had to figure out were I was going to do all the body and sheet metal work at, in comes Mike Moeller.

Mike is the guy that I got the car from, he owns a business called mmk enterprises and preffered auto and truck sales. After he delivered the car to my house we got to talking and found we had similiar intrests. He is a few years older than me but we seemed to really get along good. When it got to the point of needing to prime the bare metal on the car I asked him if he would be intrested in doing it, one thing led to another and we decided we could work together on this deal and just work on it out at mikes shop since he has all the equiptment and a paint booth. We decided on a rent payment and he said bring it on out! This is a big plus for Dave and I since he has great experience in the restoration process. Here is a picture of Mike

Well this is basically the begining of the restoration of a classic, in my next blog I will talk about the sheetmetal prep and replacement. I am going to houston texas on thursday to pick up all the sheet metal, fenders,doors,quarter panels,floor,valances, all kinds of goodies. Here are some pics of the Doctor himself getting his hands dirty!






And here is some pics of me...