Starting body work, and engine prep.

I have been working on getting the engine painted up and the gaskets changed in it. The engine is a 390 cid and was rebuilt by a junior college somewhere near Houston,Texas. Aside from a little carbon build up in the intake the engine is in good shape and should run real good for us. We decided to go with the ceramic coated hooker super competition headers on this car because the standard manifolds are hard to find and do not flow very well. We went with a holley 650 double pumper with mechanical secondaries for fuel delivery, this will also add horsepower and fun. The heads we have are c7me-a castings and did not have the gt bolt pattern so I had to drill and tap them out to make the headers bolt up correctly to them. Some of the other parts that we bought from summit racing were a lakewood explosion proof bellhousing, a ram billet steel flywheel, ram street clutch, misc gaskets and some stock appearing pertronix spark plug wires.

Mike has started the body work, and is working on getting the roof straightened out....when it was sitting in the shed someone jumped on the roof and put a million little dents in it. Here are a few pictures for yall to look at! Bye, Andy

Getting back on track.

As you can tell by my previous posts my life has been a bit busy, and the mustang has been put on the back burner. My daughter Emma is doing great and is a huge blessing from god! So I am back to working on the mustang and I have some updates to tell you about.

When I last blogged about the stang I was doing a rundown on what we have done on the car so far, since then I have installed the acoustisheild on the rear quarters and fit them to the doors and deck lid. The trunk hinges that I had were worn out to say the least and caused my gaps to shift when opening and closing the lid. I decided to order a new updated set of hinges that utilizes a clock type spring instead of the old torsion rod, what a good decision! The deck lid opens and closes like a refrigirator door and the gaps are good. The task of replacing all of the sheetmetal on this car means that all of the panels have to jive together in order for the gaps to be right throughout the car. A ton of labor was spent getting this to happen, portapowers were used, hammer and dollys, relief cuts in metal and so on and so forth.

One other set back to tell you about was with the seam sealer that I used on the floor and all the other seams. The stuff I used is 3M brushable seam sealer and I applied it as directed but ended up having to grind it all out because it lifted. The 3M rep came and looked at it and decided to blame it on the etching primer under it and the acid it contains causing the lift, I blame it on a crappy product. So after 10 hours of wire brushing and scraping off the seam sealer I was ready to re-apply with some 2 part epoxy type seam sealer. This stuff was the ticket and I wish I would of used it from the start, it comes in a seperated tube and is mixed in the applicator nozzle. Because it is a epoxy it sets up within 10 minutes and will bond to almost anything, the trick is to not apply to much and then go back and spread it...it will get hard on you too fast. After the re-seam sealing I prepped the engine compartment and Mike painted it. Today I got the passenger quarter completly welded off and tomorrow I will get the driverside done then it is on to paint and body! Hopefully in 3 weeks I will have pictures of a completley painted car. I will be working on the engine and drivetrain in the coming weeks as well getting ready for that oh so sweet first test drive! Talk to you all soon...