1967 Mustang Fastback GT 390 4 speed: October 2008

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.

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!