Happy Birthday Ol' Rusty!!

Ol' Rusty was first purchased on Feb 28, 1968 from Rye Ford, Inc. in Rye, NY from some folks that gave her a full, well-used life in the rust belt.   She was "restored" in 1984 and then pressed into service for another couple of decades until she finally was placed in storage until I answered an ad for a 1968 Ford Mustang convertible in January of 2008 and purchased her from her original owners and the rest, as they say, is blogged.

So, happy 44th birthday Ol' Rusty.  I hope to give you at least another 44.

The original invoice. February 1968

January 2008

November 2008

May 2011

Today

You've come a long way, baby.

Status Update

Update 2/23/2012:
Steve (my painter) emailed me some pics last night.  Things are looking colorful.  More to come...

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 2/15/2012:
I haven't done any updates for a couple of months.  This is mostly because after I finished the carb, there wasn't much else to report.  Well, now my buddy Steve, the poor chap who I managed to rope into doing the paint, has made some progress on the paint/body and I went to his shop and helped do some of the more menial tasks such as scuffing the new hood, trunk area, fender extensions, etc.  Oh yeah!  I forgot to mention that I bought a new Ford tooling hood on Steve's advice.  He felt that there is a low spot in the middle of the hood and attempting to keep applying filler would result in problems down the road plus would generally be noticeably crappy looking.  Buying a new hood solves several issues and saves a little on labor costs.  I could have saved some pretty good cash by buying a Dynacorn hood instead but decided to that a Ford Tooling hood would be less risky fit-wise although I have nothing against Dynacorn at this point.

Rather than post a wordy description of everything here, I'll just move on to the captioned pictures.

Driver's side before blocking primer.

Passenger side before blocking primer

Driver's side after blocking with 180

Passenger side after blocking with 180

Fender after blocking with 180

Tail panel after blocking with 180

New Ford Tooling hood.  Ain't she purty?

Underside of the new hood after scuffing by yours truly to prepare for primer.  Notice the old hood in the background looking lonely and dejected.

The deck lid after blocking with 180

Blinker inserts after bead blast and primer.

Top of the new hood after block with 180.

Front rear new Ford Tooling valances after prime and block with 180.

While Ol' Rusty was away at Steve's and after the carb was done, I cleaned up some more engine parts like the old dizzy and put them on the engine.

Ugly old dizzy

Cleaned up and re-beautified dizzy

Carb and dizzy on the engine.  Carb now has the choke cover and kick-down actuator.

Oh... right... this this thing was lurking behind my house.  Time to show it some love.

Tranny codes.  I'm not sure this thing is original to the car as it didn't come with a tag but maybe casting codes can lend a clue?

Started cleaning up the beast.

Cleaned up a bit more, painted (Duplicolor Engine Cast Aluminum), and disemboweled.

I was going to just replace the major gaskets and seals and then decided that as long as I had it this far, I just as well rebuild it.  I had peaked inside the reverse servo housing and found that the reverse servo seal was hardened and that there was black crud in there.  I have ordered a master rebuild kit from a place called Oregon Performance Transmission for a reasonable price along with a new reverse servo piston.  So, I think you can guess what the next posting will be about.