Front End Work (Day 2)

Mike and I went out and worked on the car yesterday. We of course went and bought a heater so we wouldn't freeze in the uninsulated garage. Mike put me to work taking off the visors and the rear view mirror.
Notice the Sun Visors and Rear View Mirror are missing??


While I did the visors and such, Mike worked on removing the trim (very carefully since we will be cleaning it up and reusing it). As you can guess... I was not allowed to take part in the trim removing. Mike knows me too well and knows I would probably ruin it. Anyways after the Trim was done, he took out the windshield. He then so kindly let me help scrape off the goopy sealant stuff that holds the windshield in place.

Notice I am covered almost from head to toe? The bandanna keeps the old car smell and grim from getting to my hair. The Sweatshirt is because our garage is cold... and I have an extra layer of protection from the grease. The of course the gloves were to keep my hands from Smelling like old car for the next week. I go out to the garage well prepared.

Next Mike took off the front bumper. We took the License plate and hung it on the garage wall as a memento. Mike working on taking the bumper off.

The car missing its bumper.

That was about where we stopped for the night. It is sad to see the car being torn apart. As Mike put is "The car is going to look a lot worse before it looks better." Luckily I have been privileged to see a car torn down to the bare bones and then restored to its original beauty. It is still sad to see the car torn down but I know it is necessary to get it back to what it was the day it came out of the factory. I want the car to be as original as possible... but we will be making some modifications so the car is safer and easier to drive. It is exciting to go out and start wrenching away on the car. I never thought I would be in the garage working on this car... but i like knowing that I am a part of it being restored. Its all so exciting!

Decoding my Mustang

I had a ton of fun decoding the Door tag and Vin#. Some of it was stuff I already knew... and some was just some interesting little details. So lets start with the Vin#. I had use of Mike's Mustang book for help in decoding the numbers I was not real sure on.

The Vin# is 7R01C170145

7 is the last digit of the year. So it is specifying that it is a '67.

R is the plant it was built at. R stands for San Jose, CA

01 is the body style of the car. 01 stands for Hardtop (coupe)

C is the engine type. This car has a 289 Engine with a 2 barrel carburetor.

170145 is the number my car was built at the plant. They start with the first car built as 100,000 and go from there. So my car was the 70,145th 1967 Mustang built at the San Jose Plant.

Now for the rest of the door tag which reads like so:

65 A T 2D 18A 73 C W

Body Color Trim Date D.S.O. Axle Trans

65 A stands for Hardtop, Standard, Bucket Seats

T is the exterior paint color. T stands for Candyapple Red

2D is the interior. It stands for Red standard interior, with bucket seats

18A This is the date the car was completed at the factory. 18 is the day of the month, and A stands for January. So my car was completed being built on 1/18/1967

73 is the location the car was delivered. Each major city was given a number for the city the car was ordered from. 73 is Salt Lake City, so it was ordered by a Salt Lake Dealer.

C is the Axel ratios 3:20:1 with a Locking Differential.

W is the transmission. This car has a C-4 automatic transmission.

Luckily this car has not gone from one owner to the next and been changed and painted numerous times. These numbers would really come in handy if you had a car with numerous former owners. You would be able to go back and find out everything your car was equipped with from the factory, as well as the original color. Who would have thought the door tag could contain so much info.

Finally!! (Day 1)

We are finally REALLY starting to restore the car. Except before you can restore it, you have to take it all apart. So that's what we started on today. Mike jumped in there and first took off the hood... and then starting taking apart the engine and all those fun things.


This is right after Mike took off the hood, before he really started doing much.



This is when he was done for the day.




This is a closer look at the engine bay. Notice the big gap where he removed a ton of stuff?

Mike was saying he could have the engine out in an hour but we ran out of time to work on it today. Plus his dad has the engine hoist in use so we have to wait for his dad to finish using it on the Mustang he is working on.

Anyways I am excited to finally get going on this. I am hoping progress continues. I also would like to eventually do a post with the door tag and Vin number and decode it all. It is interesting what you can find out from tags.