Lost Motivation

So much for this being a fun up-to-date blog. We have not been out to the garage for a long time. As I said in the last post... life gets in the way. My Mother passed away on November 9th. Since then I have lost all motivation for getting the car done. I hate to say it but right now I don't care the slightest if it gets done. I actually am having a hard time caring about much of anything right now. I am hoping that given some time I will once again want to work on the car.

One of the things I was really looking forward to was letting my dad take my mom for a ride in the restored car. My parents both lived in the same neighborhood prior to getting married. My dad was actually friends with my moms older brother. Anyways my mom always remember seeing my dad sitting in the Mustang listening to music parked in front of his house. She had a crush on him and always wanted to take a ride in the Mustang. Sadly he had moved on to another vehicle before they started dating so my mom never got to ride in it. I was so excited that she would someday get to go for a ride in it... but that is never to be. I was too late getting the car done.

I keep telling myself that I need to get it done before its too late for my dad to take it for a drive... but motivation is lacking. Hopefully soon we can get back on track, I just don't know when that will be. Until then... this blog is going to be rather boring. Sorry.

Life gets in the way...

So we haven't made it out to the garage for awhile. Between vacations, Mike qualifying for Boston, and my mom getting sick, we just haven't had time at all to get out there. I imagine with the holidays coming up the chances of us getting anything done are slim. I still dream about the car being all finished... but it will have to wait. Hopefully someday it will be done though. But for now... we have a lot on our plate we are dealing with. So until things get better, the car will just have to wait.

Nothing to Post

So I feel bad that there hasn't been any posts for a few weeks. Life got crazy again. We haven't forgotten about the Mustang... we just haven't had time to head out to the garage. We have had other projects we have been working on as well as vacations. As anxious as I am to get the car done... we probably still won't make it out to the garage for a few weeks. We are in Yellowstone now, and next weekend we will be in St. George for the Marathon. So hopefully we can get out there before it gets too cold. I am anxious to get back on track with the restoration!

Another 5 Hour Day (Day 18)

Mike was sweet enough to work on my car again today. We are still in the process of stripping off the paint. He managed to get a fair amount done today.

Notice his face mask? We bought a better mask for him. He was just using a cheap little mask but it wasn't keeping out the paint particles as well as we may have liked. So we upgraded. Now he is thinking he needs to get an upgrade on the safety goggles also. I figure its a small price to pay to keep him out in the garage working on my car. We also wouldn't want an eye injury down the road.

He was in the garage for about 5 hours today while I was inside working on other things. I don't have the patience for paint stripping. So I have been letting him do it. Besides... he does a much better job than I ever could.

He got inside the Trunk Jamb area, half the roof, the Filler Panel behind the rear window, and part of the Passenger side Door Jamb. There are a few minor places left on the passenger side of the car he has yet to strip. Then he will start on the driver side of the car. It amazes me how fast he is at stripping the paint. It seems the small portion I did took forever!

The game plan is to strip as much paint as we can with the wire wheels. We are then going to tackle all the nooks and crannies with a Media Blaster. We have decided that we will use walnut shells in the blaster instead of sand. The pace car was blasted with Walnut Shells. Whats good enough for the Pace Car, is good enough for my car! We are also trying to get to the point of Media Blasting before it starts to get cold. Hopefully the nice weather will hold out for a little while longer.

Meanwhile... the blog restoration book is coming along great! I am very pleased with how it looks thus far and cannot wait to get it printed. Sadly.... I wont be able to print it until the car is done...which is not going to be any time soon. Oh, and just a little side note... My sister came over yesterday and looked at the car in the garage. Her reaction was what you would expect from someone who hasn't seen a mustang restoration. She took one look at it, turned to me and gave me a sympathetic look and told me it looks horrible! I am glad that I am at a point where I can find humor in that. I do realize it looks horrible right now, but I also know the potential it has and can picture what it will someday become.

Back out to the Garage (Day 17)

It has been awhile since we have worked on the car. Mike wanted to get the shelves done... and then life got a little crazy. Mike was out there most of the day today stripping paint. I was out there for about a half hour stripping as well.... but It is a hard job and takes muscles I do not have. So I don't last very long out there when stripping paint... but oh well. At least I helped.

This is a before picture... meaning this was how we left the car last time. I had previously gotten a fair amount of paint off the front fender and had just started on the door.

This is an after picture. Well it was after I was done for the day. I know there isn't a huge difference... but at least there is some noticeable progress.

This is what Mike got done. Notice the whole side of the car is pretty well done. He is Amazing! I was so excited to go out and see that much progress had been made on the car. It is nice to see things getting done again. I can't thank Mike enough for all his hard work. I believe this was about 5 hrs in the garage for him today.

Anyways... Mike did find a couple of holes in the back fender where it had rusted thru. They aren't too big so it shouldn't be a big deal to fix. There were some other places he was pleasantly surprised to see that they didn't have any rust... like he expected. Lets just hope the other side is in good shape also.

Shelves..Woohoo!

We finally have more storage space in the garage. Mike refused to work on the Mustang until we got things organized. We had mustang parts everywhere! It was getting too hard trying to work on the Mustang with the parts laying around. As you will recall, the last post was about the plans for some shelves. I am happy to say they are finished!!

We headed off to home depot and bought some wood. Mike spent the day in the garage building the shelves (while I spent the day making and canning Salsa). This is while he was still building them.

This is after with a bunch of parts on them.

The garage looks much better with things more organized. The inside of the Mustang is no longer housing a bunch of parts... and nothing is sitting on the ground under the car anymore. I am glad to have at least this problem solved. Now we can get back to working on the Mustang.

It has been awhile...

It is crazy how life can sneak up on you and before you know it it has been a full month since last working on the car. I guess it was a busy month. We had a vacation in the middle of the month and some other things going on. I am hoping we can get back out there soon. The only problem is how hot it is outside. We bought a box fan but I don't know how much help it is going to be in the garage with keeping us cool.


Before we get back to tearing into the car... we need to do a little clean-up. We have car parts coming out of our ears and nowhere to put them. Mike decided he is going to build some shelves on the other side of the garage door at the front of the garage. He drew himself a nice little diagram which I of course had to take a picture of.

That, my friends, is my brilliant husbands mind at work. If it doesn't make sense to you, don't worry, it doesn't make sense to me either.... but it looks good. I trust that Mikal can turn this lovely picture into some real nice selves thereby saving us from being taken over by car parts.

Anyways... that is the most I can say we are doing towards the restoration. Hopefully we can get our storage problem solved soon so we can get back to tearing the car apart.

More Front End Stuff (Day 16)

We managed to make it out to the garage again on Monday. It is rather pathetic that it took me 2 days before blogging about it. I was too tired by the time we went back in the house on Monday night, and yesterday I was dealing with a massive headache and didn't want to do ANYTHING but lay in bed.

Mike stripped more off the front end. He used a spring compressor and got the front springs off. That was a pretty nifty tool. Although I was a bit nervous since he told me before hand that if it slipped off... it could be dangerous because of all the pressure the spring would be under. Luckily no one got hurt and it didn't slip off.

This is the nifty spring compressor tool.

I told him to hold the spring up like a trophy but apparently he wasn't very amused.

He also got the steering column out. I once again told him to hold it like a trophy but this was as close as I could get to a smile. My assumption is smiling while working on a car is just not manly... but swearing and throwing tools is.

This is just a collection of stuff he took off the front of the car

So we have everything off the front of the car in the way of suspension and steering. Mike got a lot done... I actually parked myself out in the garage with my laptop and ended up not even working on my book (like I originally planned). I ended up on facebook chatting with two of my sisters and my niece. At least one of us got some work done.

We are getting to the point where we are running out of space. We are trying to figure out where to put all the car parts that have come off the car. All our storage seems to be full of car parts and there are still more to come. Once we get past the space crisis... we will then start stripping the paint. Hopefully that will be soon!

Another Mustang Purchase.. and no we didn't buy another Mustang

Today we manged to purchase wheels and tires for the '67. Mike was doing his usual KSL browse for Mustang Parts and noticed some Crager wheels and tires listed for $500. Cragers are popular styled wheels which usually sell for much more than $500. Long story short, we ended up not being able to pass up that good of a deal. In fact... we were able to buy them for only $440.

As you all recall, a previous entry showed pictures of the wheels I was planning on putting on my car... well not anymore. It is amazing how quickly things can change in a restoration. Maybe someday I will change the wheels out and go with the ones I was originally planning on... but for now we are going with Cragers.

We actually bought them from a guy in American Fork who knows Mike's parents. We didn't discover that till later in our conversation. He was talking about some people he knows who restored a pace car. W didn't realize at the time that he was talking about Mike's parents pace car. It was funny once we realized who he was talking about. Once he knew we were Eppersons, he could finally understand how we have so many mustangs.

The wheels are in really good shape and the tires are almost new. I think they have like 500 miles on them. The tread is very good. So now for the moment you have been all waiting for... Pictures!!

This next picture is of a '67 with my tires. This will give you somewhat of an idea as to what my car will look like. Except there will be a white stripe down the side... and the chances of me ever getting a picture of it in front of a palm tree is slim. Either way... you get the point.

Front Suspension (Day 15)

We headed out to the garage for a little bit tonight. It wasn't as long as we usually are out in the garage... but we made the best of what little time we had. Mike worked on taking off the front suspension. There is still more front end suspension to come off... but we will have to save that for another night. Here are some pictures from his excursion. The driver's side front stabilizer bar's bushings bolt (That is what Mike said it was called, I was ready just to call it the suspension thingy) was bent. The passenger side was fine. Luckily, the suspension kit I bought has a replacement of this.

Mike had a hard time getting the passenger side strut rod off. It took a torque wrench, a few bad words, and some broken tools to get it off. Actually only one tool broke... a screw driver. He was very relieved when he finally got that part off.

He was also able to get the steering all taken apart tonight. A fair amount got done, but we didn't get out to the garage until 8 pm to start working. Next time we will hopefully get out here sooner and have more time to get things done. I guess we will see.

Inspiration for my car

We went to Steamboat Springs Colorado this weekend for a car show. It was a ton of fun. While at the show I spent a fair amount of time among the 1967 Mustangs looking for ideas for my car. Here are my thoughts...

Steering Wheels....the 1967 steering wheels are not very cute. The picture below is the steering wheel that my car had. I am not a fan of the big center cushion thing. It just looks odd. I was hoping to find an after market steering wheel... preferably a black one. I am not having any luck. I actually really like the '64-'66 steering wheels but I don't think I would chance putting one of those on. The reason being that people will look at my car at shows and comment about how big of an idiot the owner was because they put the wrong year steering wheel on. I honestly don't want to have to explain to everyone that it was something done on purpose. So I am still keeping an eye out for steering wheels but there is a good chance I will end up sticking to the original steering wheel in my car.

The next thing I looked at was the rear valance. My car was originally single exhaust, but we will be putting duel exhaust so the car can breath better. There are a few options for the rear valance and where the exhaust comes out. The top picture is a car with the exhaust pipes hidden. The bottom picture is the pipes pointing down and sticking out ever so slightly. I am thinking of going with the bottom picture. I like being able to see the exhaust pipes, but I don't like them to dominate the rear of the car.

The next thing I paid attention to is the wheels. My car came with hubcaps but we all know how the frustrations of losing the darn things. So Mike convinced me to go with styled steel wheels. This was an upgrade option for this year so I don't feel too bad putting them on. The middle of the style steel wheels for '67 was blue. I am actually going to put red centers so it matches the car better. Below is a picture of the wheels I will be putting on my car.

The other thing I paid attention to were stripes on the sides of cars. My car had stripes down the side which was something the dealer put on before selling it. I took a couple pictures of different cars with different stripes... but I think this picture is the best match for what my stripes will be like. The top picture is the car at the show that I believe matches the stripes on my car (the bottom picture). Its hard to tell... but I call this a match! Another interesting thing to note is that the top car is Candy Apple Red... the same color as my car in the bottom picture. Interesting to compare the color quality of pictures in the late '60's to today's quality. My car looks more orange in the picture but it was the same color.

That was the majority of what I looked at... and what I took pictures of. It was good being able to go out and get some ideas. It helped me make up my mind on a few things. It also got me very excited for my car to get done.

Finally on the Cart (Day 14)

So Mike went out and worked in the garage tonight. I spent most of the night getting some things ready for our Steamboat Springs trip we are taking in a couple days. I eventually headed out to the garage with my laptop and worked on my book while Mike worked on the car. Mike's goal tonight was to get the car onto the cart.
This is the cart. It is like the cart the factory would have had the car on going down the assembly line. With the car on this, Mike was able to take off all the suspension and the axles and all that fun stuff. We didn't have a jack that would lift the car high enough to allow this to roll under (Of course it couldn't be that easy) so we decided to take the wheels off it, which my ingenious plan :-)This is how Mike improvised and was able to get more clearance. I didn't think it looked very safe but no one died or got seriously hurt so I guess it worked out.This is once we got the car onto the cart. The next step was to jack the car back up and put the wheels back onto the cart.Finally we got the wheels back on the cart and the car set down on it. This will make life a lot easier from here on out.And last but not least, this has been our setup the past couple times in the garage. Mike does all the dirty work and I setup my computer out there and work on my restoration book. Mike is glad not to have to keep finding little projects for me, and I am glad not to be getting all greasy. It works out well.

Continuing Tear-Down Day 13

We were out in the garage again. Mike did all the work today. I took my computer out and worked on the book I am making out of this blog. It was nice being out there to keep him company but knowing I was not in the way. I will probably end up out there with the computer more often. It is going to take awhile to get all the blog entries converted into a book.

Mike first removed the quarter panel extensions. We found some huge bee hives in there.

Mike removed the rest of the wiring. He also got the gas tank disconnected and unbolted, the driver side interior air vent removed, as well as the windshield washer pedal out.

Mike removing the Emergency Brake handle

Last but not least, he started getting things ready so he can removed the rear axle

We are taking a couple days break due to Mike running the Utah Valley Marathon tomorrow. Come Sunday we plan to get back out to the garage to get more done.

Day 12 Back to work!

So we finally made it back out to the garage to work on the car again. I am just getting anxious to get it done. Plus I figure we needed to take advantage of it being cooler in the garage and get as much done. Soon it will be very hot and stuffy in there.

Mike started out by taking off the trim around the door. Luckily the trim came off nice and easy and didn't get hurt. Apparently it is very expensive to replace.
Next he took out the back side windows and the side paneling. In the back passenger side we found a little green plastic ruler and also a folded up piece of paper. We are hoping it is the broadcast sheet from the factory. I made Mike leave it in the bathroom while he took a hot shower hoping the steam would help be able to unfold it. Mike is in there working on it right now.

Mike also took the side scoops out. I guess those have to be painted separate from the car.

Then Mike started taking apart the dash. This is when he first got started on it.

This is the after picture. He took out all the wiring and everything in the dash. We were able to save a middle pad in the dash which they don't reproduce. Lucky for me, that piece was still in very good shape. We also discovered the dash pad was maroon... not red. Good to know!
We got a decent bit done tonight. I am happy to be back to working on the car. Hopefully we can stick to it and get it done. I ordered a bunch of mustang parts catalogs and have been comparing prices on parts. I made a spread sheet and listed all the parts we need and the prices from different places. That way when we go to buy the parts... we will be sure we are getting the best deal possible. Plus I have been working on getting financing together to afford the rest of the restoration. So far things are looking pretty good.

Update: Mike just came out and said the paper is not the broadsheet. Not sure what exactly it is because it is too far gone to tell... but there was a flower design on it which you wouldn't find on a broadsheet. Oh well. It would have been neat to find that.

The Donor Car

Not much has been going on with the Mustang lately. We are kind of on hold trying to get money situated. I think my credit should be in order so the 2nd week of June I will probably go in to get the loan for the restoration. I don't have any idea how big of a loan I will be able to get... but hopefully a big enough one to do the whole car. I am nervous about taking out a loan but it will just replace the car payment that I use to have. It will be nice to be able to get going on the mustang again.

Today I got more Mustang parts. Mike and his dad picked up a 1967 coupe from Payson. This car was owned by a Mustang Friend by the name of Larry. Sadly, he passed away in December. His wife Grace was trying to clean things up and asked Mike and his dad to sort thru all the mustang parts. They spent a few hours in Payson sorting thru things. She also was nice enough to let them buy this car off of her. They were able to take all the parts they wanted off of it and then sold what was left to another friend. So I now have the Disc breaks for my car. They even ended up being power disc brakes. I also have replacement front seats, and a rear view mirror. I feel honored that I get to have parts of Larry's car in my car.

Mike also picked up the carpet underlining (sound deadner) last weekend. He went to a car show while I was babysitting Jenny's kids. I guess some guy won the underlining in the raffle but he didn't have a car that it would work on so he asked if anyone else could use it. Mike spoke up so the man gave it to him. It was nice getting the underlining for free.

There have been a bunch of parts given to us. Mike's parents gave us a bunch of stuff they had for stored away. Then the random guy at the car show. It is good to see parts coming in without all the money going out. I am getting to the expensive part though. We have done about all we can without money.

I am working on getting back into the mustang again. I ordered a bunch of catalogs from Mustang Parts stores. I already have a spreadsheet of parts I need. Once I get the catalogs I will compare and make sure I am getting the best deal possible on these parts. I am excited to get going on that. Anyways... I am hoping that within the next couple of months things will pick up and I will be able to leave more posts. I guess we will see what happens.

The UPS Man is going to know us by name...

We got more parts today. The door panels arrived. Looks like we now have all the parts that we ordered in that kit. We still have plenty more parts to buy for the car though... we are far from done.

This is one of the new door panels.

It is fun getting car parts. I never thought I would find joy in that. I can't wait for the next shipment to come in. It is going to be a little while though.

Mike's dad came and looked at the floors of the car. They aren't as bad as he was thinking. It looks like we wont be replacing all of the floor on the passenger side. There are parts of the floor that are fine. The Drivers side is not so good though. I am surprised because I thought the passenger side would be worse. When we picked up the car we could see a hole on the passenger side but not the driver side. Surprise... the driver side has an even bigger hole! I have faith they will be all patched up some day... hopefully soon.

We haven't really been doing much on the car lately. We are discussing having it bead blasted so the grinding is at a stand still until we can get that figured out. Hopefully things will start picking up on it though. I am anxious to put the interior pieces together.

Day 11 and the Big Brown Sleigh

I guess I should start off with the Big Brown Sleigh. It came again on Friday. As you may recall... some of the Mustang parts we got were for the wrong year. So they had to send us out the right year. We now have to send back the wrong parts. Anyways we have the upholstery and the correct arm rests. The door panels are wrong. They are white instead of red. So those have to be sent back out and the correct ones sent back. Eventually we will get this all correct. I was a little nervous about the color of the upholstery but I looked at the old back seat and it matches the non-faded parts. So that will be good.

Mike went out to the garage today. We haven't really been out there much. We are waiting for Gary (the guy who will be painting the car) to come and look at it and give us an idea of what the cost will be for paint. We also are trying to decide if we want to continue grinding off the paint the hard way... or just have it bead blasted (which would be quicker but more expensive). So we have put the grinding on hold for now until we can figure out what we want to do.

Mike wanted to at least get the seat platforms cut out of the car. We plan on reusing those... although Mike is now not so sure. They are a little rusty on the bottom of them. I am hoping we can sandblast the rust off and be able to reuse them.

Before

After

Mike working on getting the passenger platform out.

The rusty underside of the platform

Both platforms out of the car

Jackpot!!!

I am now in sunny St. George. It is great! Mike and I got here late last night. One of the things on my agenda was to look for pictures of the '67 from back in the day. Rumor has it that there is a picture of my dad standing next to the Mustang. That was what I was hoping to find.

Well I didn't find that picture but we did find a couple slides of the Mustang taken April of 1967. We were very excited to find these. We then went to Colorland Photo and they were able to print them into 4x6 and 8x10's. I was happy they were able to do it while we waited. I was thinking it would take a couple days... but nope!

One of the things we learned.... was that there were white stripes down the side. That was not something listed on the Marty Report which means it was something the dealer had put on. Now that we know it had the white stripes... we will be sure to put them back on when restoring it. I am happy to see it has those. Just one more thing to set this mustang apart. It also makes me very excited to get working on the restoration now that I have seen what it once looked like... and know what it will look like when we are done.

Another thing is the plates. We called the DMV and no one has those plates. So we are going to have replicas made of the original plates and have them registered to the car. It will make it more like the original. I am very excited!! I am glad we took the two hours of digging thru pictures to come up with these incredible finds.

Now for the moment you all are waiting for....

The big Brown Sliegh Arrived...

I used my tax return to buy Mustang parts. So today the "Big Brown Sleigh" as Mike and his family refer to it... arrived with lots of boxes of car parts. We purchased a kit that had all the suspension and interior for my car. Sadly some of the items were for the wrong year so they have to be sent back... but soon we will get the correct parts. I never thought I could get so excited over car parts.I never blogged about our night in the garage. We went out and worked on the car on the 9th (Monday). I was a bit discouraged that night and didn't feel like blogging much. I didn't feel like I got much done. I almost have the full fender done and I am starting to move into sanding the passenger door.

Mike worked on the Cowl. Translated into English... that is the part at the bottom of the windshield where you would find the little vent and the wiper fluid spouts. He got a lot more done than I did. He is speedy! I am glad I have him working on this restoration. In fact it wouldn't be happening if not for him.

'95 headgasket replacement...

I decided I should post some pictures of all the work Mike did on my '95. It is up and running again and working great! I have heat again....which is very nice. I am so glad I have a husband that is willing to dig into a mustang and fix it up rather than trade it in for another vehicle.

This is one of the head gaskets. Both of them were blown... but this one was the worst.

The engine all torn apart.

One of the new head gaskets. We used '99 gaskets because they were built better.Getting ready to install the intake manifold
Almost all back together!