[Greg-J]

It's been a loooooong time coming and I've decided to gather my pictures and post what I have so far.


History:
Like most, my parents had a Mustang when I was just a kid and I've always wanted one. Last summer I came across a 67' Mustang Sport Sprint Edition that appeared to be in great shape. The body was straight and the interior all fairly new. The paint needed help, but overall it was a good deal at $4,500.

I bought wheels and tires and drove it around for a month or two. Then I ordered new carpet and Scott Drake sill plates. I pulled the car in to the shop to install them and some time during that day the decision came to paint it. This was about 7 months ago. That's the last time the car has driven further than the road our shop is on...

I can't find the "when I first bought it" pics so I'll post these, which were taken a couple days after I pulled the car in. By this point we had started sanding and ripped the interior out almost entirely.

I'll find the original pictures and post them later.


More posts to come (separating stages by posts)

[Greg-J]

I noticed the car sat crooked (higher in the rear right, lower in the front right), especially when I put the new wheels and tires on it. I assumed it was an issue with the suspension just being worn, so I ordered drop springs for the front and reverse eye leafs for the rear. After installation I was both surprised and disappointed that it did not level the car out. This is when I started to think perhaps the unit body was bent. Not much of the car had been sanded by this point so I could only guess.

Then we started sanding. Really sanding. Every moment with DA revealed more of the horrifying truth. All-in-all we took about 3 gallons of filler off the car (the entire thing was skim coated and a lot of it was unecessary), but it wasn't until we got to the rear scoops that we realized what had happened. After stripping all the bondo it was obvious the car had been sandwiched so bad that it buckled the car at the lower scoops. A substantial amount of body work was done to hide it, but with the car in naked steel, let's just say she looked awful. Surprisingly, I don't have any pictures of that stage. I think I was just too bummed to want to take pictures.

We stripped her down and before throwing a coat of primer on to see how bad she was, I took this opportunity to shave a few things. The standard stuff, door handles, locks, badging and runners, mirror, etc. During this process we also shaved the drop rails. I'll take this time to suggest that unless you're fairly experienced with a welder and have a solid understanding of the way the roof is attached to the car, don't do this yourself. Fortunately we're all quite handy with the MIG and TIG and I had armed myself with the Reactor build book from Ring Brothers which outlines the process of shaving the drip rails enough so that you know what you're getting in to. It's a lot of welding, and lot of grinding.

We sprayed some primer on one side to see where we were at.

[Greg-J]

Things looked good so far, so off came the primer and began the body work. A lot of body work.

I also took this opportunity to sound deaden the entire car with 30 mil sound mat from Fat Mat. It's not quite as good as say what you might get from Scosche or Dynamat, but at $1.25/ft²it's a great deal. Double layered I ended up putting in somewhere between 100-150 square feet. Front to back, top to bottom. It's amazing what a 60 mil layer of sound mat will do to silence a car this old. Where before pounding anywhere on the sheet metal sounded like an empty tin can, it now sounds like a full tin can

[Greg-J]

Since I'm still a bit undecided on what's going on with the body modifications I focused my attention on the interior and the trunk. My family enjoys music a lot and I knew I wanted to integrate a nice stereo into the car. I also knew I hate the stock trunk in these things and wanted something that displayed the custom stereo while maintaining a usable amount of space. I did not want any sheet metal showing in the trunk and I wanted all the custom panels to be removable. This winter comes the motor transplant and I don't want to ruin my trunk when changing out the fuel cell.

I knew I needed to accommodate 3 amps (1 for the front separates, 1 for the rear separates (both Polk Momo) and 1 for the Infinity Perfect 10's. I chose MB Quart because they have a series of amps that will look well with my paint scheme and aren't all flashy. They're also perfectly rectangular and mount from the inside so I could start working with the specifications and didn't need to order them to begin.

The trunk is of cours elined with sound mat and all the panels are constructed with 1/4" MDF. Anywhere wood touches wood or the body felt has been applied to one edge to weed out any noise from movement. All verticle panels have had 1/4" upholstery foam applied to them to give it a nice finished look when it's upholstered. The large cutout you see in the pictures is now covered in black grill cloth. It's larger than the box so the preassure from the subs can escape forward without killing the separates in the rear deck and let the bass travel forward. The 2 smaller amps are inset into the sidewalls and the floor has been reinforced. At 200 lbs. I can stand in the trunk.

All panels either bolt to the body or snap into panels that are bolted to the body using a combination of 1/2" grommets and Chrysler panel clips. The torsion bars for the trunk lid have been removed and have been replaced by newer gas-filled shocks. I considered going with air rams or worm-driven rams so I could get rid of the latch assembly all-together but I just couldn't justify the cost. Maybe it'll be a future project.

[Greg-J]

The rear deck is a little too boring for me so I fabricated one. Using the original — or rather the one that the last owner made which was nothing more than a piece of plywood cut to shape with black carpet glued to it — I made a template. I then mounted rings I had cut out with a router and the surface-mount tweeter cups to the deck.

Using yellow fleece (the kind you can pick up at any sewing store for $5 a year) I wrapped the rear deck using spray adhesive to hold the fleece to the underside. I like using yellow because it gives great visual indicators when applying the fiberglass resin. If you use enough resin (for the rear deck about a quart and a half is about right) you won't need to use any filler. Unfortunately because this was the first thing I had glassed in about a decade I made a mistake during the fabrication process.

Once the resin set I had a lot of body work to do. If you're going to do any custom fiberglass and find yourself needing to use body filler, do not use standard body filler. Get duraglass (or something like it) which is essentially fiberglass body filler. It's hell to work with, does not set nearly as forgiving (resin/hardener ration and heat play a huge role with this stuff) as normal body filler and gums up pads unbelievably fast. But it flexes a lot when it's dry and you don't want these things cracking down the road.

In the end though, it turned out well. It's not too gawdy and plays well with the rest of the car.

[Greg-J]

Most recently I did the kick panels. In order to get there though I need to back up a little bit.

I made the decision to go with a custom dash modeled after the 05' Shelby concept car and in doing so I get to take a lot of liberties in what I need and don't need.

The kick stock kick panels are brittle and aftermarket ones that have speaker options look terrible in my opinion. The problem is that there really isn't any room on the drivers side for a nice speaker without relocating a few things.

First was the floor switch. I'll be putting it in the dash anyway, so that was gone. Then there's that giant windshield wiper pump. That's getting an electrical upgrade, so that was gone too. Third was the rather giant air duct that diverts wind from the cowl into the car. I'm putting A/C back in so I have no use for this. I removed and cut a circle of ABS plastic and bolted it in its place.

I now had room for kick panels.

Using cardboard as a template I cut the kick panel out of 1/4" MDF. Rather than cut it off at the sill plate like the stock ones I chose to run it along the sidewall all the way to the seat riser. It's just a personal preference thing but I think it looks more complete. Using a router and a very large bit for cutting cabinet insets I took quite a bit of material off the edges that meet the door seals and door sill. 1/4" MDF with another 1/8" of fiberglass/fleece is just too much to cram in there.

Then I cut rings with a router that allow the speaker to be flush mounted with the grill on it. With the kick panel and speaker in the car I figured out where I wanted the pod to be. It needed to be high enough to rest my foot under it comfortably (I'm off the belief that any custom work should not get in the way of function) but not so high that the driver would be directed toward the underside of the dash.

When I found the sweet spot I used a couple 1/4" MDF tabs and some hot glue to secure the rings in place. Then proceeded to wrap it in yellow fleece. Because the drivers on most higher-ish quality speakers are so deep, the angle of the ring is fairly dramatic. Any time this happens you're going to be dealing with complex curves and that's going to require a seem. Fortunately the back of the kick panels almost rest on the floorboard, so that's where I put my seam. Then on to the resin. It takes about a quart for a single panel this size.

Here's a helpful hint for anyone doing this for the first time. You can also use speaker grill cloth which stretches better, but absolutely has to be covered with matting or roaving. I like fleece becaue it's a thick enough fabric that you don't need anything but a lot of resin to get it rock solid and paint-ready. The problem with fleece is that (just like when you wash it) when the resin hardens it produces heat and a lot of it. When you saturate fleece and then apply heat, it shrinks. Just like washing it. You will end up with bowed panels if you don't leave plenty of slack. They're going to end up warped regardless though. Fortunately this stuff is really flexible and if you reinforce it during this process it will cut down on the warpage a lot.

When the resin has completely hardened, sand a lot. I mean a lot. fleece isn't exactly a smooth material and you want it perfectly smooth if you're painting or upholstering it. If you're carpeting though, you can just knock down the high spots. Use 40 grit then move on to 80. Because there isn't a lot of room between the verticle wall of the car and the dash I had to sand all the fleece off the backside of the kick panel to get it to fit. I also had to cut 3/8" releifs in the side dash brackets to get it to fit.

I decided to apply a skim coat of resin after sanding instead of going straight to duraglass because with 2 or 3 skim coats of resin, you won't need to do any more sanding. I just did this tonight so I can get any pictures of them in the car yet. Even though they look rather large, they're very comfortably sized when in the car and don't get in the way of your foot at all.

[crittermustany]

sweet build i cant wait to see the finished product all the way around please keep us posted!!

[Greg-J]

Thanks critter.

I don't consider myself an expert on any of this, but I do enjoy a great deal of experience. I'll try to post little tidbits of info here and there without trying to go the full - blown tutorial route.


I did find pictures of when I first brought her home though. It's so strange to me that it used to be all one color and complete... Seems like a lifetime ago.

[Greg-J]

Kick panel fabrication is complete and they're mounted. You can see with the relocation of the high-beam switch and the washer pump there is plenty of room on the drivers side.

Some of the angles make them look like they stick out further than they actually do so I've included pictures from several different angles.

Why didn't I put the tweeters in the panels? Well, optimal placement for a tweeter from the midrange componenet is within 1" or further than 18". I couldn't get within an inch do the complex curves of the kick panel and still get the simple look I was going for so the tweeters will either be in the top of the dash, on the A pillars, or on the door panels themselves, I haven't decided yet.


I also started her up today and let her run for a bit. It feels good to know that I could drive it if I wanted to. Perhaps not legally, but still


Next on my todo list is the dash or the door panels. Because I'm strongly considering ditching my wing windows and going with a single solid window in each door or putting in power wing windows (You can get the motors from around the same year Lincoln Continental) I don't feel comfortable fabricating the door panels quite yet. So perhaps on to the dash.