Crane's 1968 Mustang Restomod

It has been about 2 months since my last post. I would like to tell you a lot has happened since then, but can't. :)

We hauled the '68 to my painters mid April and it has sat there ever since collecting dust! Oh well. He told me it would be a while and he would work on it as he had time, and he has been pretty busy so I am being patient!

Every year, the day before Fathers Day our church puts on a car show and we usually average 200 cars. This year we hit 250. I don't have many pictures of the rest of the show unfortunately, and the pics of my car don't show the rest of what is going on, but it was a blast. We have live music, hot dogs, etc. It, along with the 4th of July, is my favorite day of the year. Forget Christmas, I want a sunburn and good selection of hot rods.

Anyways, I drove the car from the painters to the church, which was about 4 miles. The car ran absolutely great! This is the first time I have driven it with all of the essentials hooked up. My carb still needs some tuning, but it runs.

Anyways, I was not expecting this at all, but I actually won an award at the show for "Under Construction!" I was not the only one with a car mid way restored there, but mine definitely had the most contrast between the engine bay and the three different primers/paint. I also took off a front fender to show the shiny new suspension that was installed.

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This is my cousin with his dads 1970 Boss 302 w/ matching numbers. Very impressive rig pushing 450+ HP. Scary fast.

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All in all, not a bad day! Even my son has a good time and refrained from touching the shiny cars. He is BIG into cars, but typically wants to climb into them. He did very well and kept his hands to himself the whole time. A kind gentleman who seems to get the whole car thing let Peyton sit in the seat and turn the wheel. He loved it. Should have got a pic of the old truck, not sure exactly what it was, but my son sure loved it!

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Starting to loose patience with my paint guy. Hauled it off mid April- nothing yet. He has straightened the front 2 fenders. Yay. He did come down on the price...so I'm not taking the car back yet.

Anyways, any opinions on replacing the headliner and vinyl top? I don't think I want to attempt it myself, so I will probably farm it out. What would be a good price to have it done?
 
Crane...I feel your pain. My Mach 1 took aver 3 years at Mustang Madness Motorsports in CT. After I got the car back, the stripes were crooked (see my blog...very sad story). It became an unnecessary ugly fight to get them straight. After another year, I found another shop who fixed the stripes at a very steep price. It's sad that the auto body shops give the very few (who are good) a bad name. I hope all works out for you. All I can say is, "Stay on top of the Shop's Management. You're the Customer! Without you, they wouldn't bring in a paycheck."
 
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Talked to my paint guy yesterday and asked him to pick up the pace. I threw some more money his way and he promised to put one of his guys all on it. Dropped in today...and we have a lot of progress on the hood and cowl. Word. I will keep you up to date with the progress. Super exciting.

So you know...this is kinda what I am shooting for. I really like the Torque thrust wheels too.

http://mustangattitude.com/cgi-bin/showcar.cgi?type=show&pic=/1968/1968_00133_02

http://mustangattitude.com/cgi-bin/showcar.cgi?type=show&pic=/1968/1968_00099_01
 
Crane,
Personally, I would forego the vinyl top, as long as the roof is in good/straight condition. This is simply my opinion, of course and its your car/your choice. If you live in a humid, moist area, vinyl tops trap moisture under them and can cause rust issues, not to mention UV will likely deteriorate the vinyl more quickly than paint.
Just My $.02 And Worth Every Penny,
Gene
 
i kind of agree with Gene .a vinyl top can be a pain in the butt ,it depends on how much out side time it sees. i had a black 66 GT it was origonaly a vinyl top but when i restored it i left the top off .all that black just looked to plain so i put the top back on .i liked it a whole lot more with the top .now this car was full conquers and it almost never saw day light .but here in Cali. it would not have been that much of a problem. i lost the pic of it with the top .
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I finally made it back here to Canon City, Colorado in May. I am still looking for a new job, and it is making me very cranky!
I made a similar accelerator rod myself for my 67 a few years ago, and just want to point out a couple of things.
#1, make sure that when you floor it, the butterflies are opening all the way. That one gets a lot of guys. Also, make sure your kickdown linkage is hooked up!! You have no idea how much better driving of a car it will be. Also, that wedge foam air cleaner has got to go. They are notorious for getting sucked into the carb..Making great progress!
My 69 came with a vinyl top that had failed, and it took my body guy in Nampa 8 months to get if fixed. He didn't get on it until I told him I was leaving on another deployment, and then it was a week later! My other body guy in Nampa did a real good job for me, as far as I can tell. My painter did pretty well, but I m find a few flaws, and of course have no recourse from here.
 
I would loose the top too, except this is a gold nugget special which came with the top and same color paint job. If it was not the special I would be going a different color and painted top, but in this case I want to keep it close to original. I am doing without the C stripe and beefing up the stance quite a bit, but other then that it will retain a pretty stock appearance.

http://www.unclebillsgarage.com/uncle_bills_garage_012.htm
 
Went to the paint shop and talked about the exact paint color. I got the paint codes from a local supplier and they gave me the mixing numbers, so we mixed up a small bit to test and see what we got.

We started on the left side of this hood (right in the first image) with the bone stock paint code. As you can see a bit later on it nailed the correct color. However, we have been talking about adding some pearl to it, which is the center color. It doesn't show as much here, but will really pop with the contours of the car. The third is stock color with a bit of green pearl added. It looks cool under certain conditions, but we all agreed it wasn't as pretty as the first two options. I think we are going to go with the middle color, which is stock plus pearl.

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Also the Stang is moved into the shop:

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Good news and bad news. The good news is we are making progress. I forgot to shoot a pic of the whole car, but it really looks different now. They have been going to town with the block sanding.

The bad news is we ran into some rust. It appear that the passenger quarter panel has been fixed poorly at some point, and a LOT of filler was used. We went over the options and decided that it needed to be completely cut out. The funny thing is all the damage was in this local area. There was none up around the wheel well, on the drivers side, or anywhere else to speak of. A couple of pin holes here and there but minor enough they could just grinded and filled. They said over all besides this area the car is extremely straight.

[http://www.cjponyparts.com/product....ign=shopping&gclid=CNq07-2MqLkCFRDZQgod9mIABQ

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Also I have been ordering trim parts. I am opting for just replacing most of these parts. They are cheap enough it's not super expensive, and the quality of the new parts seems to be half decent. I hear bad things about Scott Drake every now and then, so I avoid them when I can, but the 5-6 different parts I have ordered so far look more then good enough quality. We will see how they hold up over time.

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Ordered a quarter panel patch from CJ pony parts. The panel is not exact, but my body guys say it will work for what we need. They will completely cut out the rust and weld parts of the new panel in. My car will be virtually rust free at that point.

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Creeping along. Looking forward to seeing it one uniform color.
 
i learned a long time ago to trim the patch panel to where it just covers the damaged or rusted area just encase it has to be done again later on.if you use the whole patch panel and you have to do it again later it is already welded at the full height of the patch making the next time hard to do. also the smaller the patch the easier it is to hide the repair. looking good
 
More progress on the paint today. They have been sanding and blocking getting ready to spray. Still have a ways to go, but at least progress is being made.

Working on fixing this:

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Also found this. Don't think we are going to cut it out, but rather will grind it down and fill it the best we can. It's not as bad as the other side my body guys are pretty confident they can stop it.

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Very sexy from this angle....as well as all the other angles.
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In other news I am still working on the electrical/engine stuff. It was not running as well as I thought it should, so to eliminate spark issues I ordered a used MSD dizzy off of eBay, as well as a MSD Blaster SS coil. To top it off I also found some MSD 8.5mm wires, the kind you cut to your own length. I hate the look of the wires going over the valve covers, so I opted for the build your own kit, which I found a brand new kit on Craigslist for $50.

The MSD Ready to Run Billet Distributor was $60....SCORE.

Oh, and a battery. You think this will do the job? Only the best for my baby.
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On other other news, I decided to take a look at the carb too. Good thing I did...it was a little messy inside. (sarcastic tone)

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There was about 3/16" of jelly in the bottom of my float bowl. !$@%# ethanol.

I completely tore the whole thing apart until nothing more would come off and boiled it in a solution of water, degreaser, and lemon juice. After that I went at it with a wire brush and rinsed again. I was surprised how well it worked. Then I blew out every passage I could find with carb cleaner and compressed air until happy. I found that the accelerator pump passage was 100% clogged. Now it flows freely.

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Tomorrow I will try to fit the MSD dizzy and new plug wires. All in all a good week.
 
Time to come up with my center console. I'm needing something to do while I wait for my paint guys.

Here is some inspiration:

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I want to use two of these (or similar)

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And have this built in:

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I also have 4 gauges: oil temp, battery, vacuum, water temp. Yea I like knowing whats going on.

Mostly I don't know much about doing the fabric. Also I need ideas for the arm rest.

Here is what I have come up with in Solidworks so far. Tomorrow I plan to actually take some measurements, this is completely guesstamation. I don't know the size or location of the shifter, I don't know the height from the tunnel to the dash, and I don't know how long it should be if I want to be able to make an arm rest for it.

4 gauges, and 2 lighter adapters. Will probably fit in my rev limit set switch too, and leave space for more switches.

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More progress, but not nearly at the rate I would like to see. My painter hired a new body guy who seems to know his stuff. We will see. Anyways, I am happy to see something happening.

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I will keep you posted.