Oct. 23, 2010 Transmission and Sound Dampening

I started the day Saturday with the sound dampening project. Now, I hear you saying...Chris, it's a convertible, What are you thinking??? Well, the fact is that the low frequency noise that you get from the transmission and the overall road noise and be reduced with the deadening material. I started with the back seat ( no rhyme or reason) and worked my way to the front.

The area under and in front of the passengers was important to me. The material from Cascade was great. It was cheaper then Dynamat and did not have that terrible smell.



When it came to the seat brace, I used a different material from AcustiBlok. This mat did not have a sticky back so I used contact cement to hold it in place till the carpet was installed.

I did add a sheet to cover the rear back seat area to help with the noise from the rear and trunk.

I am using the old carpet for now. It will be replaced too.

Now it was time to move below. We painted the bottom with the bed-liner that I mentioned before. It gives a nice look and is pretty sturdy.
View from the back looking forward. That is , Flat-out-tough looking. A bit loud for a preschool teacher so we will have to get the rest of the exhaust too. :(


It is pretty tight in the engine compartment now. More picture of the Power Steering pump issue later.

Oct. 15, 2010 The Motor has arrived

So, before the re-assembly was possible we had a lot of cleaning and media blasting and painting to do.

Mark has been the best. He taught me how to do the media blasting and he has been taking great care to paint the parts and get this all back together again. I am going to love doing a side-by-side comparison with the old pictures.

So, here is what was done:

De-Grease the entire engine and parts
Machined the Block 30 over
New Pistons and Rings
New Freeze Plugs
Ground the Crank
Heads re-surfaced
New competition valves with Hardened seats
New mild cam
Cam Bearings
New lifters
New Rockers
New Gaskets
New Rods
New Spark Plugs
New Water Pump
New Fuel Pump
New Timing Chain
New Flex Plate
New Harmonic Balancer
New Dip Stick

Repaint with bright blue Ford engine paint
Trim and brackets Ford under hood semi gloss black

I have also started installing the sound dampening material. I chose Cascade instead of Dynamat. http://www.cascadeaudio.com/ the biggest reason is the lingering smell. I will have more pictures later. No...I have not replaced the door panel yet. We still need to work with the gas line. :)

The engine compartment really turned out nice. I am still planning to do a few more item replacements but we want to get it running so we can get it off to the paint shop for prep and paint. I did get the Heater Core Seal kit and replaced more of the seals.

October 2,2010 Fenders

The Fenders were in rough shape. It appears that the Mustangs are known for the rust that gets behind the fenders and eats them away...Big Surprise! Anyway, the passenger fender was the worse. Once we got to this part, we were accustom to seeing the rust but we still needed to improvise a few things. Mark is pointing to the bottom of the fender that attaches to the underside of the Outer Rocker. The bottom of the brace that allows the fender to be a bit rigid was gone. We needed to replace the bottom of the fender and that brace too.

We removed the fender emblems and fitted the fender patch. We marked the top of the patch and made sure it fit.

After marking the fender itself, We drilled guide holes through the patch and the fender to allow us to have a reference once we removed the patch to cut away the bad portion of the fender.

We dry fitted the fender to the car with the door back on. We wanted to check the alignment and the gaps. They looked good so we welded the patch on.

Next I moved to the interior of the fender. There are two partitions that serve to keep water and debris from getting to the headlight / front of the fender and one that is suppose to keep water and crud off the end of the Outer Rocker. Each of the partitions were rotten. I did not realize these parts even existed until we started on the fender repairs.

There are rubber seals that help with the job of keeping the two area mentioned clean but they had failed too. Since I did not want to wait and order these parts, I decided to make them. I am holding one of the shields in my hand and you can see some of the holes.

This is the one I made. As with all the parts I am putting back on, I have used a bed liner spray to seal and protect the internal body parts.

The wheel well after the bed liner spray.

This is the front of the fender before the shields were re-installed

And after

Now it was time to move to the front valance and grill area. I spent a bunch of time banging out the dents that had been gathered up over the last 40 + years of travel. It seemed as if there was some off-roading too!

The engine compartment was also coated with the bed liner and the new battery tray was ready to be installed.

We started reattaching the wires and getting the area ready for the motor. It was due to arrive next week. ( slight set back from when we first thought it might arrive)

So at the end of two days and about 21 hours with the car, we have a nice looking, unpainted fender and we are getting closer to the end. The birthday is quickly coming...will it be done???