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'66 Coupe - Making my dreams come true

gotstang

Member
Well sorta.

PART ONE: Beginnings

There is no real way to figure out when my “car story� started. My dad has pictures of me right after I'd learned to walk, sticking a screwdriver into the push mower. :rofl At a very early age, I started begging for an old car, and my dad, much to my surprise, actually started looking with me. I didn't really care what it was, so long as it was old, and to this day, I really don't care. I like old stuff.

There are a couple stories I'll leave out so I don't feel like I'm writing a novel, so we'll skip forward to 2001, when I found out that my uncle's hunting buddy was moving and needed to sell his Mustangs. I bought the whole ball of wax after seeing a VCR tape of it all and spent June 10-12, 2002 getting the first one in a little town right outside of Bloomington, Illinois.

PART TWO: The Long Haul

That's where the story really kicks off, and the whole trip there and back was a T_R_I_P, if you know what I mean. We were driving an old Suburban with a 20ft “lightwieght� trailer and a pile of Quadrajunks in the back. For the trip, we suggested the “high-HP� Quadrajunk out of the pile, and it got 8.8mpg empty and 8mpg loaded, but hey, it ran like a raped ape. LOL. My mom was running chase in her Nissan, and we were keeping in touch with a pair of Motorola-knockoff handheld radios.

It was never a dull trip. For one thing, the temp tag on the (rented) trailer blew off at 70mph 100 miles from home. Oh well, write the license number on some cardboard and duct tape the sucker on there, and we're off. All the weatherstripping is shot and the wind is screaming at 70mph? Duct tape that sucker! The truck is noisy because we're doing 70 with no O/D, no insulation, and the axle whines? Headphones to the rescue!

We had left home at something like 6pm, knowing might not make it at a decent hour, so we finally decided to get a fleabag motel room at around midnight. Didn't sleep (who does in those places?) so we got up at 5am and headed out. The rest of the day is a little blurry after this long, but the sight I saw when I rolled the barn door back is something I'll never forget. Two Mustangs, side by side, surrounded by parts...looked like something out of a picture. Spent some time washing my car and exploring the giant pile of “junk� I'd bought and never seen.

Then I had to take a leak, so I walked over to the other section of the barn and rolled open the front door. Damn, there has to be two dozen T-birds in here, from 1958 to 1966. Oh well, I'll pee in the corner anyway. LOL Turns out the PO's brother is a T-bird nut. Who would have guessed? :rofl

So, we slapped the doors on my car, put a couple bolts and some bailing twine on the fenders, dropped the engine and trans back in and winched the sucker onto the trailer. While looking through a bucket for the door backing plates, I remember realizing how shot I was because it was a 16 hour day at that point. Who cares, the parts weren't loaded up yet! Loaded up the ~$20k in new parts, and plumb filled up both cars. Then we made a custom car cover and tied it on tight, before collapsing for the night.


PART TWO & 1/2: It Gets Interestinger and Interestinger

We hit the road for home the next morning, and things were OK until it was time for lunch...parking a rig ain't fun. Hit the road again after lunch and all was well until we got close to the Indiana-Ohio line. By now, we all realized that the "2 mile" rated walky talkies reached a 1/2 mile on a good day, so keeping in touch was *interesting* and filled with static, but we didn't really have too much to say, so it wasn't THAT big of a deal.

Then we hit the tire.

That's right, tire. Semi truck recap to be precise. The Nissan's oil filter hangs low, and it caught that sucker at 70mph. Of course, I didn't know it at the time, and my blood started running cold as soon as the idiot lights started going off. Luckily, I immediately got on the radio for help. Too bad I barely got out "We're ***ed" before they proved just how shitty the radios were and cut out completely.

We sat alongside I70 in Indiana and I swore for 5 minutes straight before I had the courage to hang myself out the window and look. When I saw the oil slick underneath the car and saw it still dripping, I started swearing again. Finally, unable to get anything on the radio, I dug a couple mouse-piss stained Mustang Monthlys out of the "stuff" in the back and read for probably half an hour, before my dad reappeared with the rig.

Apparently, he knew all about the tire, since he hit it too; it had just taken THAT long to get going the other way to find us. I remember getting out of the car and walking towards him before he was even parked, and the first words out of my mouth were "we knocked a hole in the *** oil pan, oh ***". So, we took a look, and damn if it didn't look like it, but it turns out the oil filter bent and unsealed itself, emptying the oil pan at full pressure.

{insert pic of oil filter that i haven't taken yet, the filter is in the broken chit hall of fame in the shop}

So, we went to the next town up the road and bought 5 quarts and a cheapo filter. Sounds cheap and easy right? Well that town was probably 45mins away and the oil change cost $30, but it beats being stuck 250 miles from home. Changed the oil and fired it up, and there was nary a rattle or tap to be heard. Thank you Mobil One for clinging!

So, fast forward to our usual fuel stop at Octa, Ohio and some guy comes up to me and says "hey, what's on the trailer". With a mile wide shit eatin grin on my face, I replied "66 Mustang". He goes "Oh, a secretary's car? Uhh, I mean, not that they're bad, it's just I like my Torino more, its way less common". To date, that's the most interesting comment I've gotten on it. :rofl

Getting the other car
This involved so much less drama it ain't funny. Spring of 2003, my uncle was visiting. Dad took that opportunity to load my uncle's car on the car dolly, hook it to the 'ole Chevy Diesel pickup, and drive out to IL. He came back with coupe #2 hooked to the back of the truck and got 16mpg at 65mph in the process. The only drama there was getting the tires on the car to hold air (new valvestems) and giving it a good wash. :rofl

Anyway, that novel gets us to my house with both cars, which should be enough for now.
 
Part Three: Homecoming: 2002-2006
Once it was home, I bagged, boxed, labelled and catalogued the parts in Excel and put them in storage, which took a looong time, but it's been verry helpful in finding stuff 5 years later.

I didn't do diddly with it until 2006, when we replaced the rad core support and patched the front framerails.

Spring 2006
The driver's side rail and HD Improved core support went in one night, with some help as in me not doing diddly past spinning wrenches. It ended up at my cousin's FIL's shop, which is probably better equipped than most bodyshops or dealerships Fred, the FIL, ended up doing all the welding, and it turned out great.

The new driver's side rail went on well, the remainder of the rail got POR'ed and the new part weld-thru coated, with the welds sprayed afterwards too.

Then came the new NPD HD radiator support. The curves on the pass. side edge matched OK with some tweaking of both parts this way and that. The driver's side curves matched very well as is and are nearly perfect now, thanks to some careful tweaks. We had to bend and whack the crap out of it to get it to slide over the ends of the rails, then beat it down a litte so it's tight and fitted over the rails.

Getting it centered and the tabs to match up to the end-tabs on the rails was the biggest challenge as it looks like it's a teeny bit shy widthwise, but we were able with very little force and some carefui measurement, to get it close enough that a little tweaking of the tabs on the support had everything together fine.

The other frame rail went in and the car was out of the shop in 4-5 days. Personally, I was surprised that the 25 year old radials hadn't exploded on the tow down the highway to the shop, but it made it there and back OK and it sat at home untouched for a while.

Summer 2007
In June of 2007, my best friend took it over to his garage and we patched the infamous shocktower holes and filled in the holes for the rocker moldings. Didn't get much else done before it had to come home, but we were looking forward to 2008.

2008
2008 rolled around and my buddy moved across the state and I was busy with all sorts of stuff, so it barely got a sideways glance, much less worked on.

Summer 2009
Sometime during the summer of 2009, I decided that it was on like Donkey Kong, but I decided about a month too late. I managed to get the front suspension off, sandblast most of the parts, ruin the control arms, start on a set of roller perches, and strip most of the undercoating. Then, I built a BOSS 302 engine crossmember. About the time I got the "new" springs and LCAs in primer, I ran out of time, good weather and mojo, and there she sits.

I promise, I'll update with pics of what has been done so far. This text crap is boring.
 
Good reading. Can't say how many adventures I have had like you posted when going after something special........again, good reading.
 
The 1990s: Resurrection and Burn Out:
From 1994 until 1996, the previous owner tore into the car like a man possessed, then promptly quit after 2 years or so, apparently burnt out. This left him with a solid, half-painted car, ~$25k in NPD receipts, and a gigantic pile of new parts. The car changed owners once or twice before ending up in the barn where I "found" it.

The pile of 35mm negatives I found in a box in the trunk tell the story. There are a metric ton of pics and I'm wayyy too lazy to scan them all, so this will have to do for the moment (note: I said that back in 2004 when I scanned these! LOL)

Before: Very original, mostly untouched, "gayer than GO" '70s green paint job. Pics do not do it justice...consider yourself lucky.

black_car.jpg


interior2.JPG


Cut the car in half and start welding
black_car_trunk_rehab_1.jpg


back_done_%20together.jpg


Not the Cowl! Anything but the Cowl!
new_cowl_2.JPG


new_ds_cowl.jpg


Dah Flinstones!
ds_floor_cut_out.JPG


It needed new pans on both sides, and then some!

old_ds_door_skin_off.jpg


new_ds_door_skin.jpg


rear_out_grimy.JPG


redone_rear_in.jpg


There are a lot more pictures, and I even have most of them on a computer, but these were handy at the moment.
 
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