Out comes the engine (day 5)

Yesterday Mike spent the day in the garage taking the engine out of the car. First he had to climb under the car and cut the exhaust pipes. He took a picture of the under side of the car where the weeds grew up into the car.

Mike unhooked a few things, cut a few bolts... then then started lifting out the engine.

It took a few hours, a couple thrown tools, and some colorful language... but the engine is out. This is the engine sitting on the engine stand. Notice the fluid all over the ground under the car? We had to use some of Lily's litter to soak it up. Removing an engine is dirty work.

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There were some interesting facts Mike spewed out. He could tell that the transmission has been out of the car before. He Also could tell the starter had been changed out at one point as well. It is interesting that he could look at the part numbers and know if they were original to the car or not. It is always fun being in the garage when he is working on the car. I never know what little fact I will learn about the car each day.

I am excited the engine is out. It seems like a milestone to me. Things are coming along nicely, but there is still tons left to do. Someday it will be all pretty and shiny new.

Interior (Day 4)

We were out in the garage again tonight for a little while. We tackled the interior of the car. Mike had me take off the door panel and the handles. After that Mike climbed under the car and took off the bolts holding the seats down and tore those out.

Under the passenger seat we found a parking pass for the Salt Palace. There is no date, but it was in really good shape.

Then under the Drivers seat we found the best item of all.... The keys to the car!!! Beverly had lost them so we thought they were never to be found... but they were under the drivers seat. We then pulled up the back seat and pulled up the carpet. There was the skeleton of a mouse that met its demise in the carpet. Anyways... it was an eventful night. I figured it would be good to show a before and after picture so you can get a better idea as to what was done tonight. It is always nice seeing progress made.

Rear end work (Day 3)

We managed to make it out to the garage last night and work on the car again. I was already exhausted from a full day of work. I spent all morning taking down the Halloween decorations. We then spent all afternoon bagging up the leaf pile in the back yard.

Mike headed out to the garage ahead of me. I told him I would join him in a half hour but got a bit busy on the computer and didn't make it out there until about an hour later. In that time he was able to get the headlights and grill off the front of the car.

We then decided it was time to start taking things apart on the back end of the car. I took off one of the tail lights while he took the other one out. Then I got the fun task of taking the lettering off of the car. I was good until I got to the side of the car and ended up breaking two letters and the horse decal. I got frustrated and told Mike he would have to take out the rest of them. I am annoyed that I broke them because I wanted to keep as much original stuff on the car as possible. Looks like we will have to replace a few letters though.

Next we went to work on taking out the back window. I unscrewed the trim and then let Mike remove it since the trim is very expensive to buy. He was able to get the trim off the window without too many problems. Once that was off... I went to town scrapping out the goop that holds the window into place. Soon we were able to take the window out. We will be keeping the window because it is still in really good shape.

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.

Pony Trails

I know this post isn't specifically about my mustang.. but it is mustang related. Since I haven't had much to post on here lately...I decided I would slip this story in. so today we went on a Pony Trails. Basically what that is is just a cruise the Mustangers all go on. Today I think we had about 15 - 20 Mustangs on the cruise.

We did the Alpine loop. It was fun. We then stopped in Heber for lunch and then went thru Tabiona and stopped for dinner in Oakley. We made a few other stops within that time. The last stop for dinner was at a really neat Diner. It is called Road Island. It is a diner that was brought across the country and restored and placed in Oakley Utah. It was originally in operation starting in 1939. It was a really neat place.

It was a fun cruise. It lasted all day, but was well worth it.

A line of Mustangs headed up the mountain.


Mustangs lined up waiting to make left turn.


I was experimenting with my camera at one of the stops. I like how this picture turned out.


another spot where the cars all lined up.


The Diner we ate at.

Down time

Sadly there is not much to say about my Mustang right now. Life has gotten a bit crazy so there hasn't been much done to it. There will probably be times like this with long stretches of nothingness on this blog. thats ok though. One of these days Mike is going to take me over the an empty parking lot and teach me how to drive the Mustang. I want to learn before it gets all restored so that maybe I will dare drive it all fixed up.

I had an interesting thought though. There is video footage of Mike driving the car around the neighborhood; it occured to me that he was driving the Mustang in its old stomping grounds. We were driving it a couple blocks away from Wesley road (Where it lived for awhile). I guaruntee it had been on a few (if not all) of the roads we drove it on... at one point in its life. Another fun thought, is that when I learn to drive it, I plan on going to the church on Wesley Road and using their parking lot to learn in. The Mustang will be right where it once called home. I think its fun that Mike and I live in the area and will have the opportunity to get pictures of it in front of its old house and just enjoy it in areas it knows well.

I know this is a blog about the restoration... but I just have to put a note in here about my daily driver Mustang. I got this mustang when my Saturn got totaled. The insurance paid me enough for the Saturn that I was able to buy my 1995 Mustang outright (only using $150 out of my own pocket). So in the time I have had this mustang... I Managed to crack the windsheild. I wasnt just driving along and had a rock flipped up at me like most cases... nope this had to be worse. all I was doing, was washing the car. apparently a cold garden hose on a hot day is enough to crack a windsheild. I didnt know that. So if anyone gets ambitious and decided to go out with a bucket of soapy water and a hose in the middle of the day... DONT DO IT! That is my word of advice to everyone. Anyways... just a warning... especially for you St. George people.

So yeah....

So I was so excited to start this blog so I can brag about the process of having my car restored, but just realized one of the most exciting parts is over. It was very exciting to get it driving again. It is good to know the engine is still good in it. Now comes the not so fun part. Mike has to start taking it all apart.
- His first plan of action is to take out the engine. He will go thru it and detail it. He will also clean up the transmission and all the other parts under the hood.
- Next he will start taking the whole car apart. Everything will come off. everything in the interior, the doors, trunk lid, hood, gas tank etc... The car will pretty much be reduced to the shell.
- Then comes a little welding. There are some rusty spots in the engine bay that will have to be cut out and new pieces of metal welded in. There is also a nice size hole in the floor on the passenger side that will need to be fixed. We will cut out the old floor and weld in a new floor.
- Then the car will go off to be sand blasted. The point of that is to get all of the paint off the car so it will be ready for its new paint job.
- We also will have to take it to a body shop to take care of small dents. Mike was able to get most of the big dent on the passenger rear quarter panel out. All that remains are a few little ripples in the metal. We are trying to save as much of the car as we can so we hope to get the ripples out versus replacing the quarter panel.
- Then we will haul it up to Hooper to a family friend who paints cars at his home. He is very talented and has done nice work on a few of the cars in the Epperson Family. We will leave the car with him for a month or so and let him do his thing.
- Then comes more exciting things. Once we bring the car home, we can start putting it back together. I hope to have stock piled a bunch of parts for it by that time. I am planning on spending a couple hundred a month on car parts and stock piling them so that when the car is done being painted... we will have everything we need to put it all back together. Luckily Mike's dad has a ton of parts for a 67 already so we have started our stock pile. It is nice having some parts for it already.
----Well that's the general plan. I am sure things will change as we go... but its exciting. It wont be a quick restoration by any means. I am sure it will be a couple years before this is done. I just have to keep telling myself that we are making progress no matter how slow of progress it is. Someday I will have a cute restored Mustang that will look almost completely how it did the day my dad bought it. Then I can take it to car shows and do a couple canyon drives in it. I cant wait!

Progress Thus Far...

So I was so excited about the progress we have been making on my Mustang... that I wanted a place where I could brag about it! My Mustang is a one family Mustang. It was my dad's first car. It then ended up with my aunt who held onto it. I was able to buy it from her and bring it home in May of this year (2008). Here are some pictures of us dragging it home: It was an uneventful trip hauling it back from St. George. I was happy to get it into its new home (our garage). We started our restoration project by cleaning out the car. There were all kinds of interesting things to be found in it. We even happened to find an old toy car worth a whopping $50!! The next big exciting event was when we hooked up a battery and got to see what lights came on. The horn halfway works... but the poor car sounds sick. I had to get video of the horn.
We then got the car started. We replaced the gas tank and put more fluids into the car... and it started right up. I was rather nervous and made sure to have a fire extinguisher at hand. We found a gas leak so we quickly cut the engine and replaced all the gas hoses. Soon we got the car started again. It sounds really good!

Today we actually got the car driving. Mike had to put TONS of transmission Fluid in... but it finally moved. I was so excited to see it moving. He drove it forward and backwards in the driveway a couple times. Of course I had the video camera ready.
Mike than drove it around the block with me following behind in my car. We didn't want anyone to notice the plates expired in 1981. We drove it to the gas station and sprayed down the engine compartment a bit before bringing it home and tucking it back into the garage. I must warn you that I am not talented with driving and recording... so this video may cause minor motion sickness.
The next step is to start tearing into the car. Mike will take out the engine and detail it and clean it up. I will be sure to get some good pictures and video.