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65 Fastback Build

N

nymustang

Member
Now that I have the other project sold, I have a little bit of space an cash to build what I hope will be a better project.



This is how I picked her up in Central New York this summer. Originally a 6cyl, the PO (one of our VMF friends) did a lot of the hard work towards getting her back on the road. He replaced the floors, cowls, aprons.. all the usual rusty areas. he also installed a full V8 suspension. The car came with a lot of new stuff including some of the rear metal that still needs to be addressed and an almost complete new interior. I have the 5.0/T5 out of my 68 coupe that will be going in once I finish the engine bay. Currently the car is just about entirely apart in lots of boxes. I'm hoping to have it able to move under its own power by the summer. (I need to set goals for myself or I'll never get anything done)

I started last weekend stripping the front end off the car. There was a lot of metal replaced but as I posted previously, I need to do some work to clean up the welds. That meant taking it all apart first of course. Here are some pics, in no particular order.

Empty engine bay, lots of flash rust on bare metal


It's buried in a very cluttered garage






Suspension off and front end ready for some cleaning!


I was hoping to get home this Sunday to do some more work but the NYC marathon will have all my routes blocked to get to the car.... maybe one day after work next week if I get lucky.
 
Looking good.
Don't forget to bag and tag !!!!
Create room around your project so you don't have to haule things around before tackling any job on your car.
Create a nice workspace as possible.
Good luck and keep things posted.
 
Thanks Bruno. There's lots of bagging and tagging going on though I'm thinking I'll probably be going with a lot of new suspension components judging by the look of the old A arms. The PO did a great job keeping track of everything as he was removing things. I definitely need to do some garage cleaning though. It's still full of a lot of stuff that had been in the basement. We haven't finished cleaning up from the flood in September yet. Hopefully soon so I can focus my attention on the fastback.
 
Had some small progress yesterday. Started the morning with fellow stangfixer Mike (mcfly) come by with his buddy to pick up an I6 I was looking to get rid of. Always great to meet some more Mustang folks. Later in the day I finally had free time to start cleaning up the ugly welds on the front end. I didn't make it too far though since my welding skillz are non-existent. Did I mention the temp topped out at 33 and I don't have a heated garage? It wasn't much but it felt good to do something. Here is what I started with:


I was hoping to get some better results with my new mig welder so I started off by wire wheeling the welds to get rid of all the corrosion I could see then hitting them with the grinder to smooth out what was there. Next I tried filling in the old welds as best I could. That left me with this:


Hmmm, doesn't look much better than I started with. So I ground them all smooth hoping it might look a little better:


I think its a slight improvement but I still need a lot more practice until I'll be happy. Maybe I'll get lucky this week and it will warm up a little so I can work a little longer before my a$$ freezes off.
 
Are you using flux core wire, or Gas? Anyway looks like maybe your gas was set too low, or your tank is empty or low?
 
I'm using gas. Its a brand new bottle. Maybe I didn't open the valve enough? There's no gauge so I'm not sure how much I was getting through it. I'll try opening it up more next time.
 
Glad to see you back in the garage working away. Dude, a high of 30 degrees? Did they declare a state emergency. I had to turn up my heater just reading your post.

Glad to see you welding. I can't really see the welds too well, but the only wisdom I will impart that was handed down to me from opentracker and cmayna is "practice practice and when your done with that, practice some more".

Keep it up man, it might not feel like much is getting done but remember, every statue was made by chipping a little bit of material away at a time.
 
"nymustang" said:
I'm using gas. Its a brand new bottle. Maybe I didn't open the valve enough? There's no gauge so I'm not sure how much I was getting through it. I'll try opening it up more next time.
Click to expand...

You should have a regulator w/a gauge to maintain the correct flow of the gas. If you have just a hose from the tank to your welder that is probably unsafe also. :Katcof
 
I have a regulator that came with the welder but it doesn't have a gauge which I thought it should. I assume I can buy a new regulator separately? Time to head back to the welding supply store I think.
 
Get yourself a gauge. If you are going to a welding supply store, ask questions on set up, welder settings and anything else you are unsure of. I bought mine through a welding supply store, they were very helpful and would even let you test things out at the store. Get some scrap metal and start practicing on that. Weld some beads or plugs on scrap while playing with the settings till you get things where you want them. Also, make sure what you are welding is clean and bare. Welds come out much better when prepped correctly.
 
Got some scrap to practice on and heading back to the welding supply place to pick their brains. They were very helpful up to this point. Now I need to practice practice practice.
 
So here's a little update. I have spent a lot of days after work lately cleaning and grinding welds fro the PO. it looks like the welding has improved so there haven't been too many more that I need to work on other than grinding. I also have been scraping wire wheeling and cleaning the engine bay to get ready for some paint. I'm working on a budget here so nothing fancy for me. I'm using some krylon 1613 I had laying around. I used it in the engine bay of my 68 and it held up very well for the 10 years I owned it so I'm trying it again. Just hoping I don't run out before I'm finished. I managed to get a first coat on everything except the firewall on Sunday. I'm pretty happy with the results. I have a few small runs that will need to be sanded out but I think it looks so much better than it did. please excuse the crappy pic, the sun was setting so it was tough to get a good shot. Paint is still wet here.

 
Check :thu :thu Did you check the welded nuts in the rear appron ( where the hinges are bolted to )
Now is the time to reonforce them.( or maybe to late i see )
 
The nuts were looking just fine although a little reinforcement might have been a good idea. That's something I have never heard of. Ill have to think about doing that.
 
I posted this in the Paint and body section also but figured I'd update here too. I decided I didn't really like the finished product of the krylon engine bay. It was nice but I had a few runs and I didn't quite have enough paint to fix it. So I went and sanded everything down again an repainted the engine bay and fender aprons/rad support with SPI epoxy black. I have to say I'm really glad I did because the result is much better.

This was my first time spraying anything using my compressor. It is a little undersized but I took my time to let it not work itself out. I also went with an LVLP gun which was supposed to work with what my compressor can put out. Once everything was cleaned and degreased I was really surprised with how simple and fast the actual painting process was. No comparison to the old rattle can method. I might be hooked and need to get a bigger compressor.... except that this one isn't even a year old. Doh!

Anyway, now I can reassemble the front suspension and drop the engine/trans into place. Its starting to feel like real progress here.
 
Any progress is good right? I managed to get the car on 4 tires for the first time in about 10 months. Its was a royal PITA. I can now get the engine and trans back in the car and figure out my next step.

I'm kind of at the point of losing motivation unfortunately. I'm about to start a new job and I will have a lot less free time than I currently do. I really want to complete this car but I don't know when I'll have time to do it anymore. I don't want this to become one of those projects that sit for years and years. My father has been mentioning lately that he'd like his garage back also. I don't know how serious he is but I'm starting to wonder if I don't have the time and he wants the space back maybe I need to sell it. Lots to consider here. I'm going to sleep on it for a couple of weeks.
 
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