1968 Mustang Convertible Restoration

Status Update

2012-02-15T22:11:00.000-08:00

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.

This Old Carb

2011-11-20T12:11:00.000-08:00

This car started out as C code with a two-barrel carburetor. However, when I rebuilt the engine, I had installed a four-barrel intake manifold which, without something to put on it, leaves a rather evident empty spot right there on the top of the engine where everybody can see it. I had to find a way to remedy this problem... a way to breathe new life into this old engine. There are many many options out there but very few fit my particular... shall we say... frugal... requirements. There are also more opinions than.. well, lot's of opinions on which carbs are the "best". In 1968 the four barrel carb came on the "J" code engine. A Ford 302 with an Autolite 4300 on top. As far as I know, all Mustangs that came with a 289 in 1968 were 2-barrel Autolite 2100 "C" code cars like mine and even then, the 289 only lasted to about mid year. So, if I wanted to simulate a J code, I'd have to A) get a different engine, and B) get a 4300 carb, neither of which appeal to me for this car. Why not the 4300 on a 289? Honestly, I have no idea other than it doesn't seem to be a popular carb and I wanted one with a lot of end-user support and the winner of the "end-user support" award appears to go to the Autolite 4100 based on forum responses regarding "which carb is best?" type of posts (not to mention at least one recommendation on a prior post in this blog).

So, I'd made up my mind and how much can a beat-up old 40+ year old carb cost anyway? Can't be more than... what? 60 bucks? Well, like everything else I get into, it seems, the prices skyrocket for one reason or another. In this case, I think one or more of the Mustang rags wrote a glowing article regarding the 4100 and how to adjust it a few years ago and now you'd think these things were cast out of gold instead of aluminum and brass. One company even restores them to better than new for just under 800 clams. Well, I have to admit, they ARE beautiful. They even go to the trouble of re-plating the carb and updating it for modern fuels and such. However, for me, this is not a show car. I just need the carb to atomize gas and feed it into the intake manifold. I don't need a work of art.

So, I watched eBay for awhile to get a feel for how the market is for these cores and it looks like I could get a "this was working when I pulled it" carb for around $250-$300 or a core for around $100. My research shows that if the most popular carb is the 4100, then the most popular year for the 4100 is the last year that it was put on a 289 Mustang, 1966. Hi-Po versions of the carb beat out the competition due to their rarity and the price of a core reflected that. For me the, best flavor of 4100 would be a 1966, 1:08 venturi. Since I'm not in "concours" mode, I'm more concerned with functionality (and price!) than correctness. So, I pulled the trigger on this C6PF-H that I found on eBay for $125. It looked complete from the pics, had the desired "short snout" pump, and met the 1966 1.08 venturi requirement. Although the actual number C6PF-H stands for 1966 Ford Service Replacement (not original to a particular Mustang), it's 480 CFM rating would still probably be good for my mild 289 engine.

The pic that was on eBay

There were a couple of 4100 rebuild kits on eBay and various Mustang vendors that cost $50. The vendor excuse for charging $50 was that THEIR kit included the secondary diaphragm that is rumored to be missing from the everybody elses kits. I decided to search some more and found THIS kit from Mustangs Unlimited for $27 that plainly shows the secondary diaphragm and otherwise looks complete so I bought that one instead. Well, I got it and the contents are complete but not exactly like the picture on the MU web site. For instance, there was only 1 horn-to-body gasket instead of the two shown and completely different needle valve assemblies than shown. The kit is good though so don't let those details deter your decision. I laid out some paper on the bench and starting disassembling the carb marking the paper where I laid the parts with their sequence in disassembly so I could just reassemble in the opposite sequence. Also, I took many reference pictures.

Completely disassembled

Not the kind of dirty body I like to see.

I poured my can of carb cleaner into a small plastic trash basket and put the carb body in. Since I only had one gallon, I had to soak one end for an hour and then turn it over and soak the other side. I then rinsed and dried the body, shot compressed air through all of the tiny jets and orifices and then took steel wool to it. Despite all of my efforts, I could not clean up the secondary bowl any better than that. I think they call that "carb cancer". Basically, the coating is gone and oxidation has taken over. I'm hoping it's not fatal in the short term and that this carb still has some years left.

Dunking the carb in cleaner.

As clean as I could get it. Nasty oxidation in the secondary bowl.

While I was cleaning the venturi clusters, I noticed that one of the emulsion tubes of the primary cluster was cracked. I read up on this a bit and found it to be a fairly common problem. Some guys leave it alone, others solder the crack. I decided to try to remake the tube. The tubes are .2175" inches outside diameter with a flare on the end of .279". I found that 7/32" brass tube from the hobby shop is only 125 thousandths too large and 9/32" tube is 225 thousandths too large. After a few failures, I figured out how to accurately solder the large tube over the small tube to kind of simulate a properly expanded flare. The emulsion holes in the tubes are right at .040" and I had some .040 drill bits handy (1mm) so I laid a piece of transparent tape over the holes of a good tube and transferred them to the fabricated tube. Finally, I chucked up the tube into my drill press and sanded the "flared" end down to .279". I then pressed the tube into the venturi cluster making sure to aim the holes in the same direction as the originals were. By the way, I did try to find an old carb, venturi cluster, or even replacement tubes but came up empty (for less than $25). Otherwise, I wouldn't have bothered.

Cracked!

Newly fabricated tube next to original that took some damage being removed.

Flared end comparison.

New emulsion tube installed.

Now came time to assemble the carb:

Venturi cluster gaskets on primary with ball and weight (center hole).

The secondary diaphragm assembled compared to the original.

Secondary diaphragm and lever in position.

Secondary pump cover with lever and pin in place.

The "economizer valve" installed with gasket.

Economizer valve cover.

Primary pump sitting on it's spring.

Primary pump lever and cover ready for business.

The new kit came with some slightly different needle valve assemblies. The new "needle" valves aren't needle valves at all but still function like a needle valve. I didn't ask questions, I just followed the instructions and installed them followed by the primary and secondary jets which just screw back into their seats.

Funky new needle valve compared to original valve seat.

Float assembly for the new valve.

Float mounted in the bowl on the new valve.

The float levels had to be adjusted for the new valves. Basically the same procedure as with the old style valves, Hold the valve end of the float against the valve and measure from the end of the float to the top of the bowl. The specification is 1/2".

Adjusting the float. Just bend the tang up or down.

Floats, venturies, and pumps installed.

Time to turn it over and work on the other side installing the primary and secondary throttle levers and plates which consisted of just sliding the shafts into the holes and aligning and fastening the plates into the bores. After doing this, I had to screw "legs" onto the carb so I could set it level on the bench without the levers getting in the way.

Bottoms up!

Throttle levers installed.

Getting a leg up.

The lever linkages were installed next along with the choke housing. I hooked all this stuff up so I wouldn't have to work around the bowl cover later. The bowl cover gasket was then installed which just kind of lays over the body. Note the two holes in the gasket positioned over the secondary bowl. The screws WILL install with the gasket in the wrong position.

Choke, linkages, and bowl cover gasket in place.

Bowl cover bolted down.

Finally, the choke plate was installed and it's levers were hooked up.

There are quite a few steps in the adjustment of the 4100. All of these adjustments are listed and described in the instructions that came with the kit. One of the weird adjustments was the "choke valve pull-down adjustment". This involved sticking an 1/8 gauge in the choke piston hole, clamping the lever in that position (gently), and then measuring the gap between the choke plate and "air horn wall". In this case, it had to 1/8". The choke plate adjust nut was turned to get the correct gap.

Gauge inserted into the choke piston.

Checking and adjusting the choke plate gap.

I performed several of the required adjustments but have decided that I will wait until the day that I'm about to install the carb on the engine (after the engine is back in the car) to make sure that all adjustments are double-checked and correct.

Done! Choke side. There's still a heat shield that goes over the choke but I'll put that back on later.

Done! Throttle side.

Think it'll run? I guess I'll just have to wait to find out. By the way, I took the liberty of scanning the instructions. Keep in mind that these are the kit manufacturer instructions, not the factory instructions. They will assist in making basic adjustments though I think. Enjoy:

Autolite 4100 Adjustment Instructions

Engine Odds n Ends

2011-11-05T09:01:00.000-07:00

At the end of my last blog entry I had just completed the major part of the rebuild of the engine. However, a few parts were still missing, including the exhaust manifolds, the fuel pump, and a couple of other bits. So my first problem was what to do with the manifolds. I could just put them on the engine but man, I just put all this work into the engine and I just couldn't do it. The next option was to paint them with high temperature paint. This is a very realistic option. I read quite a bit on the subject and found a paint called VHT that many people seemed to like. However, in order to apply it correctly, you need to heat it in an oven up to around 600 degrees. My wife was NOT agreeable to this option at all and I don't have room for a garage oven nor do I yet have a 220 outlet. The second option is to pay for a high temp powder-coat. From what I've read, this would have probably worked fine for cast iron manifolds (but supposedly not so great for headers). I found a guy that would do both for $100 but his shop is an hour away, one way. I called around some more and found a guy that agreed to do option #3, ceramic coat, for $50 more who's shop is only 30 minutes away so that's what I chose to do. He agreed to cut some of the cost down by me cleaning up the manifolds myself first and then he'd just give them a quick going-over in his blaster cabinet. I cleaned them up with wire wheel first and then a run through my cabinet. After they were cleaned up a bit, I noticed that some of the bolt flanges were cracked and/or broken. I tossed around the idea of buying a new pair of repro manifolds but then I'd be out about $150 for the manifolds and then another $150 for the ceramic coat that I'd have to do anyway. I decided to attempt to weld the cracks in the cast iron. Now cast iron is bit of a hassle to weld correctly and I did a fairly mediocre job but I think I managed to improve it a bit. I guess time will tell if an exhaust leak shows up and I wind up buying a new set of manifolds in the future. I took them to the powder-coater and while awaiting their return, I ordered a new set of exhaust manifold bolts and spent my time cleaning up the other parts such as fuel pump, thermostat housing, etc.

When we last left off...

The left side is "before" and the right side is "after" cleanup.

Ouch. Quite the crack there.

Welded up

About a week later, the manifolds were returned and they looked great. I knew I had missed a step before taking the manifolds to the coater in that the exhaust studs were in really bad, rusty shape. As in, the threads toward the ends of the studs were rusted away to nothing. I skipped this step because new studs were on order from NPD and the coater had cut some of my cost because he was already doing a job for a large client and I had to get the manifolds to him before I had a chance to put on new studs. The bottom line is that I had to replace the studs AFTER the coating was already done and I was seriously stressing about damaging the coating. I wrapped the manifolds in a clean rag and clamped it in my bench vice with some jaw covers. Now, how to get the old studs out without cracking the manifold? I read up on the subject and found that if the studs are in good shape, you can just thread two nuts against each other and unscrew them like a regular bolt with a socket wrench. These studs though... they didn't have much for nuts to grab onto. I opted for a pipe wrench and it worked great. The first manifold that had the most rusted studs, I soaked with penetrating oil and worked them out slowly. The other side didn't require that much finesse. I then coated the ends of the new studs with anti-seize and used the two-bolts-torqued-against-each-other trick to torque the studs to spec.

Worn out old studs (like Ron Jeremy)

New studs with a coat of anti-seize.

Not too shabby. Ready for service.

Finally, the manifolds could be bolted to the heads. These engines have a pair of studs that stick out on each side so I referenced my old pre-disassembly pics to see which holes these stud-bolts went into and duplicated it. You don't want to torque these bolts past spec because they may crack from heat expansion while being run.

All bolted on.

After I cleaned up the thermostat housing and installed it with the vacuum switch that sits on top and installed it with the thermostat, I cleaned up and painted the engine mounts, fuel pump, oil pressure sender, main pulley, and oil cap. The bolts were given the usual phosphate and oil treatment.

The miscellaneous parts were then bolted onto the engine with their specified torques.

Parts is parts

Motor mounts mounted.

Side view of newly installed parts

Front view of newly installed parts.

So then I noticed that huge empty space on top of the intake manifold so I figured I should find something to go there. I found a 4100 carb in need of some love on eBay for $125. I also bought a carb rebuilt kit from Mustangs Unlimited for an additional $26 that seemed to be as complete as the eBay kits that are selling for $50.

C6PF-H. A 1966 service replacement 1.08.

Check back in a couple of weeks for the 4100 rebuild.

Seeking Motorvation Part 5

2011-09-26T22:27:00.000-07:00

I left off with the heads shipped off to the machine shop for inspection. The base fee for both heads was $115. It included cleaning, inspection, grinding the seats and valves, replacement of the seals, and paint. However, the machinist said that if the valves were recessed much, bent, etc., the tasks for correction would increase the price incrementally. He called me back the day after I dropped them off and informed me that several of the exhaust valves were slightly recessed into their seats. For you see, the valve seats in these old heads are soft. They relied on lead in the ancient fossil fuels of yesteryear to keep them lubricated and prevented recession (squishing the valve into the seat). Well, as Frankenstein once said, "Lead Baaaaaad"... I don't know maybe I'm thinking of Woodsy Owl or something but the point is that "they" took it out of our gas around 1996 so these old engines started beating themselves to death. Modern engines have hardened valve seats to deal with unleaded gas. Long story short, I had them go ahead and install hardened exhaust valve seats. Three days and $250 later I had my heads back all spick-n-span.

OMG, they're beautiful.

And thus came my first experience installing cylinder heads on a V8. So, I cracked open my favorite, aforementioned "How to Rebuild Small Block Ford Engines" by Tom Monroe, and sought the page on installing the cylinder heads. Well, to paraphrase, it said something like, "put the gaskets on and then put the heads on and then bolt them suckers down". I looked at the page and looked at the heads, and looked at the engine block and noted several things not mentioned in this tome of higher knowledge which I'm going to share with you so that you can avoid making an ass of yourself on a public Mustang forum like yours truly. The basic premise is this; both heads are identical and don't have "sides". If they don't have "thermactor" holes, just put them on. Don't ask me what a "thermactor" is, I have no idea. Now here's the second gem of head-installation-lore; the edge of the gasket with the water jacket holes in the middle go to the back of the engine. The gaskets are identical and are usually marked with "Front" somewhere on them and can be flipped either way to fit their respective side. If the head gaskets are not made of metal, you don't need any kind of sealer on them. Finally, the head bolts ARE reusable. These are not "torque to yield" head bolts which are the type that aren't reusable. However, they do need to be cleaned to prevent binding and ensure a consistent torque. So, I cleaned my bolts with a wire wheel on my bench grinder making sure to get the threads cleared. I also chased the threads in the bolt holes in the block. Each bolt's threads were coated with Permatex Teflon Thread Sealer. I chose this because it not only seals the threads, it lubricates them to allow for consistent and accurate bolt torque. Of course, the bolts had to be torqued in a particular order and in stages.

The heads are identical castings.

Head bolts all cleaned up with wire wheel.

Head gasket installed. Note the water passage holes at the back of the block.

Threads sealed before insertion.

Both heads are on and torqued!

After the heads were on, it came time to insert the hydraulic valve lifters in their holes to contact the cam lobes. Before they can be tossed in a hole, they need to be primed by squiring oil into the side hole until it bubbles out the top hole. I just used a squeeze bottle with a red WD40 straw tucked into it's nozzle. The WD40 straw fit nearly perfect into the side hole but you really have to use a bit of constant force to inject oil into the passages of the lifter. Eventually, a little pool of oil will form in the top indention and you'll know the job is done. The lifter can then be lubed with oil (I used cam lube) and inserted in its hole.

A box of 16 new lifters.

Primed with a fresh pool of oil on the top indention.

All lifters primed, lubed, and inserted.

Next, the push rods need to be inserted into the top of the head and down onto the lifters. I dug my set of rods out of the plastic tote and inspected them to ensure they were straight. Four of them were bent and needed to be replaced ($3.99 each at Baxters). The other twelve I cleaned up with lacquer thinner and then soaked them in a can of carb cleaner for about 30 minutes. When I removed them and wiped them down, and blew them out with my air compressor, they looked good as new. Better than the repros from Baxters even. Each rod was inserted into its hole and the cast rocker arms were placed on their pivots with a nut on top. I lubed each rod lobe and the tops of the valve stems at the contact points of the rocker arms first. "The book" has a great diagram and procedure for adjusting the rockers using 3 timing points on the harmonic balancer. I followed the procedure a couple of times checking and double-checking the rockers to make sure they were set right. The last thing I wanted to do was damage a valve or bend a rod the first time the engine is turned over. During about the 3rd time around, I noticed that the nuts on a few of the rockers were several threads lower on the stud than the others. I also noted that the plunger in the lifters of those were recessed further than the others so I pulled the respective lifters and re-primed them. Sure enough, bubbles came up through the holes in the top as though they were only half-full. After re-priming and reinstalling them, the rockers tightened to a more consistent position as the others so it's something to watch for I guess. I then squirted some lube around each of the lifter holes (can't hurt right?) and turned my attention to the intake manifold.

12 old push rods all cleaned up.. the other 4 were bent.

Push rods all snug in their lifters.

The rocker nut on the right is much further down the stud?

The plunger is depressed further on that one. I re-primed it.

I used Permatex Ultra-Black RTV around the water jacket holes on the gaskets and across the front and back of the block instead of using the factory style cork gaskets that are notorious for leaking. I also cleaned up the bolts and gave them the phosphate and oil treatment. Although the original engine came with a 2 barrel carburetor, I did some math and was shocked to discover that 4 is greater than 2 so I bought a 68 4 barrel manifold from a guy off Craigslist for $50. The new manifold had some rust but looked like the underside had been blasted. However I was boggled as to why the heat shield on the bottom of the manifold seemed askew. There was a large gap to one side that wasn't present on my old (dirty) manifold. Somebody had actually gone to the trouble of removing the spiral rivets to take off the heat shield and then put it back on backwards. !?? I was boggled by this. What type of mental state would one have to be in to know how to remove and reinstall spiral rivets but not notice that the shield was backwards? So, I removed said shield, cleaned the rivets and their holes, used some loctite on them, replaced the shield (correctly), and carefully hammered the rivets back into place. I cleaned up the top of the manifold with wire wheels and some ospho, repainted it, cleaned the mating surfaces thoroughly, and mounted it on the engine. Somehow, I positioned it perfectly over the bolt holes the first time, sealed the bolt threads, and torqued them down in stages and in torque sequence.

Intake gaskets and RTV in place.

Old manifold compared to the "new" $50 4-barrel.

Bottom side comparison. Notice that gap in the heat shield of the top one?

Heat shield removed

Turned it around correctly and re-riveted.

Starting cleanup.

Cleaned, painted, and torqued.

After that minor victory, I stood back to admire my shiny new engine. Except for one problem. My valves were showing and we can't have that in polite society. My valve covers though, let's just say that they've done a LOT of covering during their lives. Filled with sludge and topped with rust, I actually considered buying new ones. The little accountant that sits on my shoulder calculating stuff all day took his stogy out of his goblin-like scowl, and screamed in my ear, "NO WAY!" so I grudgingly went to my tool cabinet, retrieved my scraper, and set to work. After literally hours with a scraper, wire wheel, degreaser, ospho, and lacquer thinner, I cleaned them up enough to repaint.

Finally, with much pomp and ceremony, I set them down upon the heads like royal blue crowns, bolted them down with shiny new valve cover bolts, and deemed the lions share of the rebuild, "Complete".

Inside "before"

Outside "before"

New valve cover gaskets "after"

Dun Dun DONE! Now just little stuff.

Remember me?

This all literally would not have been possible if not for This little blue book. I highly recommend it to anybody that's never seen the inside of a 289 before.

So, that pretty much sums up the "Seeking Motorvation" series. Now all that's left are the little engine bits. I'll probably update this entry with a couple more pics later.

Seeking Motorvation Part 4

2011-09-18T20:45:00.000-07:00

Last I left off, I didn't have the proper fuel pump eccentric cam. The one I had was too wide and would rub against the timing cover. The following Tuesday I called around and no auto parts stores carried such things. I called my machine shop and he was able to get me a used 2 piece eccentric so I jumped on it and picked it up. The 2 part eccentrics are .011 inches narrower and provide plenty of clearance for the double roller timing chain sprocket.

I installed the eccentric bolt with a dab of thread locker, lubed the chain and set to installing the timing cover.

Timing sprockets, chain, and eccentric all ready to go.

The timing cover was a mess with 2 broken bolts in it. I was able to remove those with creative application of a torch and clean up the cover with my angle grinder spinning a wire wheel plus some time in the blast cabinet. After cleaning it up, a new seal was pressed in, the outside of the cover was painted Duplicolor 1606 (Ford Dark Blue), and the gasket was sealed on. I also took some extra time to media blast the cover bolts and give them the phosphate and oil treatment. Finally, the cover was mounted to the block. I used Permatex Ultra Black RTV for all gasket surfaces. My primary concern was for zero leaks but if it needs to be disassembled while the engine is on the car, I might be in for some hard times. I tried to paint the gasket with very thin coats of the RTV, not just squishing beads between the gasket and surface. I don't know if anybody should follow my lead on this tactic but it feels right. Also, the bolts that passed into the block had their threads coated with a teflon paste type of thread sealer.

New gasket and oil seal.

Phosphated bolts and primered timing pointer.

Timing cover installed. The odd bolts with the plastic bits are temporary to allow gasket sealer to cure while awaiting the water pump

Next comes the oil pump. I got a new one in my master engine rebuild kit but I had to clean up the oil pickup and buy a new oil pump drive shaft. The new assembly was installed and torqued down.

The new with the old.

Pump installed.

Now that the oil pump and timing cover are on the block, the oil pan could go on. My oil pan was pretty ugly so I spent a few hours cleaning it up with degreaser, wire wheel, lacquer thinner, and phosphoric acid, and then painted with Duplicolor Ford Dark Blue. Also, I did the phosphate and oil thing for the pan bolts as well. The pan gaskets were stuck onto the block with my Permatex Ultra Black method. Although I chose to use sealer between the pan gasket and the block, that may have not been the best idea if ever the pan has to be removed while in the car. Should have researched this more before doing it.

The inside of the pan before cleanup.

The outside of the pan before cleanup.

Cleaned up the inside.

Cleaned up the outside.

Painted Duplicolor Ford Dark Blue

Gaskets and seals on the block.

All the pan bolts torqued down.

Next up is the water pump. I seriously considered just buying a new one but upon inspection, although the exterior looks pretty nasty, the impeller turns smooth with no play in the bushings and shaft so I chose instead to clean it up and reuse it. Also, the part number on the housing "P68" lead me to believe that it was an original pump but now I'm thinking it's an aftermarket of some kind. Oh well, it still cleaned up nicely after wire brush, blast cabinet, and phosphoric acid (pump interior was masked off). The back plate was removed to scrape away the old gasket and to inspect and clean the interior. The gaskets were replaced and the pump was bolted onto the engine. The old bolts couldn't be restored like the timing cover since they were pretty badly rusted so I had to buy some Grade 5's from NAPA. I blasted off the nickle coating though, and gave them the phosphate treatment.

Before clean up.

Removed the back plate to inspect interior.

Cleaned up somewhat before phosphoric acid treatment.

Painted.

Interior cleaned up and gasket attached.

Backing plate bolted back on with fresh gasket.

Pump installed on timing cover.

I was originally going to clean up the harmonic dampener but I really didn't like the look of the rubber ring that separates the hub and outer ring. If it were simply cracked and dried out, I would probably reuse it but I felt better buying a new one. The one I got is a Scott Drake and was $99. I probably could have gotten away with reusing the old one. One guy told me that he throws them away when they can't hold the correct timing marks anymore. The outside ring will eventually spin freely making the timing marks on the edge useless! Since I went as far as blowing 100 clams on this one I wasn't going to just let it rust away like the old one. I gave it a couple of coats of clear coat and torqued it onto the crank shaft.

The old with the new. Check out the rubber ring on the old one... yuck.

The engine as far as I got as of this blog entry.

The heads are up next. I'm going to take them to my machinist for inspection and cleanup. More to come.

Seeking Motorvation Part 3

2011-09-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I finished tearing down the engine. Since then, I've been working on gathering funds enough to get some machine work done starting with having the block cleaned and the cam bearings removed. I found a local shop just a couple of miles from my house that agreed to do it for $100. He did, I picked up the block, nicely wrapped in plastic sheet and then went into stasis while I gathered yet more cash to have the machine work done. I decided that even though this wasn't going to be a performance build, I was going to splurge and have the cylinders bored .030 over, have the crank re-machined, replace the cam, install new pistons on the rods, and have the cam bearings installed. I called the shop where I had the block cleaned and he was in an emergency mode since his computer had just crashed and he was trying to get caught up. I told him what I needed and he hastily gave me some numbers that were about 50% higher than previously discussed and then he went on to tell me that he couldn't start for a week or two. I shrugged and called the next closest shop and the owner quoted me $385 for the work (I swear I said the words "short block" a couple of times during the conversation). I also asked him for a master rebuild kit for which he quoted another $375 and that I could drop the engine off at any time. Friday, I dropped the block off where his assistant informed me that $385 for the work I wanted done seemed really low and I told him to just talk to his boss and call me if there are any issues. Also, the assistant went on to tell me that my block had been bead blasted, not hot tanked as I was led to believe by the other shop. *sigh*

Later, they confirmed the price and set to work. I picked up the block on Wednesday of the following week. However, the block was not assembled to "short block" but it had been painted and the freeze plugs were in. I guess that explains the low price but I'll do what it takes to save a buck. I loaded the block and rebuild kit parts into the car and unloaded.

The freshly bored and painted block.

On the stand. Cylinders bored .030 over.

The new "RV-2" cam, cam lube, and re-machined crank. Journals machined .010 under.

Cam installed and lubed. Crank journal bearings in place.

I had previously purchased "How to rebuild small-block Ford engines" by Tom Monroe. This book tells it all step by step. One of the things he suggests is to double-check the crank journals to confirm the specifications. One method is to use Plastigage which consists of a wax string that you place on the journal surface and then torque down the bearing cap and remove it again. You look at the smear left by the wax string and measure the width using a gauge provided with the Plastigage. The width represents distance between the journal and the bearing surface.

The smooshed Plastigage.

This journal was within specs. 15 thousandths clearance. All other journals were also deemed "good to go".

Plenty of engine assembly lube. The rear main seal is in place with some RTV on the cap to prevent leaking. This is the kind of stuff Monroe's book covers.

All of the caps are torqued down.

Engine turned over to start popping in the pistons.

A box of new hypereutectic .030 over pistons.

Installing the rings on the pistons is fairly time-consuming. It can be even more-so if your cylinders have not been bored identically since you would have to "gap" each ring for each cylinder individually. I checked all of my cylinders and found them all to be within 1 or 2 thousandths of exactly 4.030 inches so I felt confident that once I confirmed the ring gap in the first cylinder, the rest should be fine as well.

Rings, ring expander, and ring compressor. Note the box top indicates the correct channel for the ring.

The compression rings had gaps of .014".

Here's how you use a ring expander. This one was $5.99 at Harbor Freight and I'm damned glad I got it after doing 16 compression rings.

Rings installed (with gaps staggered according to Monroe's book), piston and cylinder lubed.

The $9.99 Harbor Freight ring compressor. After the first 4 or 5 cylinders, this started not working so great. I think I would buy a better one if I were to do this agian.

First piston in. Seven to go.

Journal and rod bearings lubed.

First rod is torqued.

All pistons are in!

From the top.

Timing gear test fit.

The master rebuild kit included a set of later-style double roller timing sprockets and a chain. Unfortunately, they didn't include the later-style fuel pump eccentric cam that's supposed to go onto this side of the big cam sprocket. The original won't work because A) the cam dowel pin is too short to extend all the way through the sprocket like the old one did, and B) the new sprocket is thicker so, if I mount the old eccentric on it, it will rub against the timing cover. Unfortunately, I can't find any parts stores locally that carry any style of eccentric so I'm going to have to either get the part from the engine shop that did the work or order it online. Double-unfortunately, it's Labor Day weekend here in the states and the machine shop is closed. So, more later.

Seeking Motorvation Part 2

2011-07-17T16:07:00.000-07:00

So, last I left off, I was about to remove the pistons from the engine block.

I started with the front cylinders and worked to the back alternately removing one side and then the other. Each and every piston easily cleared the ridge at the top of the cylinder and then had to be carefully worked over the ridge for the second compression ring and the oil ring. Unsurprisingly, the top compression ring on each and every cylinder (except #8) was broken. I questioned the VMF as to how this happened and the consensus was that I likely broke them when I "forced" them over the ridge. The problem with this is that I didn't force the first ring at all but the 2nd and oil rings (neither of which broke on any cylinder). So, my current belief is that the PO had the engine "rebuilt" with new rings but didn't bother to ream the ridge from the top of the cylinder. I think that the top rings, having no chance to conform to the ridges slowly as when the ridges were formed, snapped under the stress of slamming into the ridge upon each cycle while running. This would also explain why every cylinder was leaking during the leak-down test discussed in Part 1 of Seeking Motorvation.

Well, there's your problem!

The next step was to remove the crank bearing caps. This involved removing 10 tightly torqued bolts and then tapping them each lightly with a rubber mallet until they come loose.

Loosen the bolts

Note the caps are sequentially numbered. Don't mix them up!

The crank is ready to be removed. Tip: Remove the backing plate first.

After removing the caps, the backing plate had to be removed which actually required me to hoist the block off the engine stand, remove the plate, and then replace it back onto the stand. The crank could then be removed and set aside.

Feeling... cranky?

The next step was to remove the cam shaft nestled deep within the safety of the block. This involves removing two bolts from the front retainer plate, removing the plate, and then sliding the cam shaft forward out of the block.

All safely nestled in it's block.

Remove that retainer plate and the cam is yours.

Slide it out.

After I removed the cam shaft, I knocked the freeze plugs out. Originally, I started with a pecking body hammer but soon discovered that putting a large flat bladed screw driver against the inside edge of a plug and giving it a whack, would cause the plug to rotate such that it could be pulled out with pliers by one edge.

One way to do it.

Finally, I had a block ready to take to the machine shop for cleanup in a hot tank for a start. I'm going to break the block prep into phases starting with clean-up, then hone/bore, cam bearing install, and crank machining as a minimum.

Ready for the machine shop.

This last Friday I took the block to a machine shop. I may also have the block magnafluxed and/or machined based on findings by the machinist. More to come.

Seeking Motorvation.

2011-06-13T22:15:00.000-07:00

Okay so the car is out of the shop so out of sight, out of mind. Then there remained this rusty, grease-caked hunk of cast iron that Ford so affectionately calls a "289". This 460 pound sludge-bucket has been occupying prime real estate in the corner of my garage for the past 3 years and its day of reckoning is upon us. When last driven, I swore that this motor, despite it's overt ugliness, ran fine. I don't recall it burning any oil, missing, or any other indication that it was anything other than a perfect specimen of engineering. Therefore, my goal was to scrub it down, grind the rust away, paint it, and toss it back in the car. Oh those happy dreams of the ignorant newbie.

Here's what we started with. The quintessential "before" pic.

I first plugged all of the ports with old socks so water and other non-engine-friendly fluids and particles could not get in. Then I sprayed the engine down with a can of EZ-Off HD oven cleaner since it was heavily touted in the VMF discussions as the cure-all for cleaning up an engine and waited for about 30 minutes for it to work it's magic. I cranked up my power spray and rinsed off the remaining goo, flipped the engine upside down, sprayed on some more oven cleaner and hit it with the power spray again.

All foamed up with EZ-Off HD oven cleaner.

I let the engine dry and rolled it back into the garage.

Well, it's still rusty but it looks like the grease is gone.

In my undying confidence in the perfection that is my 289, I opted to confirm my good fortune by constructing a device called a "Leak Down Tester". This thing can be made from about $30 in hardware store air compressor parts. Instructions to build an operate one can be had from various source on the net such as this and this. This thing basically works opposite the way a compression tester works only instead of reading air that is compressed by the engine, it reads air that compresses within the cylinder of an engine from an air compressor source. I chose this instead of a regular compression tester because it can be used without cranking the engine and, as you can see, my engine is not crankable at the moment.

$30 of parts put together just right = A Leak Down Tester

The business end of the tester consists of a spark plug that I gutted and welded a 1/4" air compressor air hose barb to which is screwed into the cylinder spark plug hole. The other end of the hose connects to the tester which is connected to the air compressor.

A gutted spark plug welded to a hose barb.

Testing is begun on cylinder #1 which is set to TDC on the compression stroke.

TDC on the compression stroke.

The tester is calibrated to 100 PSI on the gauge, engine side hose detached. The engine hose is then attached and you can see the resulting pressure difference on the regulator. A good cylinder will show about 80-90 lbs PSI on the gauge indicating that very little air is being lost. Mine showed... a bit less. 20 lbs, indicating that either I'm on an exhaust stroke or I have some serious cylinder problems. The latter proved to be true. Oh the disappointment of a newbie brought to a hard realization. All cylinders indicated a massive loss, by the way. Not just #1. Only two cylinders maintained 40 pounds of pressure which still fails the test badly. At this point, I'm thinking stuck rings and/or stuck valves so I came to the decision to do a complete rebuild of the engine.

Bad news.

Fortunately, I had bought a book about a year ago called How to Rebuild Small-Block Ford Engines by Tom Monroe. It can be had from Amazon for about 15 bucks. It comes highly recommended by Ford enthusiasts on the various Mustang forums. It's really easy to read and follow and I recommend it as well.

I started the disassembly with the water pump.

Several well-placed rusty old bolts hold the pump to the timing cover.

Unfortunately, I broke off two bolts in the process. Oh well, I'll get them out of the timing cover housing later with the creative application of heat from a torch. The cover came off next... but not really. It turns out that I needed to pull the harmonic balancer/main pulley first.. doh.

Um... the harmonic balancer needs to come off first genius.

I had already pulled the valve covers to confirm that the valves were set correctly during the leak down test so next I moved on to the intake manifold. About 12 bolts later and it lifts off. This particular part is going to be replaced with a four barrel version.

Yanking the intake manifold

Okay so I inspected the valley and found not only nasty sludge but something just wasn't right about the push rods on the cylinder #8.

Sludge Valley, OR

Upon closer inspection, it appeared that the rod is... bent? Wow, that can't be good.

WTF?

I loosened all of the rocker arms and pulled the rods and examined them. Actually, they all look a little "not straight".

One of these things is not like the others.

I then pulled the heads. I was sure that the valves would be all boogered up but, to my uneducated eye, they look fine. I'm still going to rebuild them though.

Next, I inspected the cylinder expecting to see all kinds of horrible scoring, melted piston tops, carbon build up and... well, they don't look all that bad to me either.

Not seeing horrible disfigurement.

Examining the cylinder walls. No scoring but could be considered worn anyway? By the way, I'm noticing the pretty red color within the water jacket. Yet more rust! I'm thinking this block is gonna get a good dipping.

Don't know if this is bad or not.

Next came time to pull the harmonic balancer and main pulley. I needed a way to block the engine from rotating so I clamped a clamp on each side of the flex plate. The sock is to protect the threads of the clamp when butting up against the engine stand arms.

Clamped down.

I used a 1/2" breaker bar and a jack handle extension. It was a good fight but the better man won.

Pulled the main crank bolt.

Okay so now the bolt is off but the harmonic balancer doesn't quite just pop off does it? Well, I didn't have a puller large enough so I... improvised... with a slide hammer. I'm pretty sure this is a no-no because of the stresses it would place on the crank bearings. I was pretty proud of my ingenuity at the time but as I thought about it in bed that night, I came to regret it.

Got it off and NOW the timing cover can be removed.

Here's the timing assembly. It came off next.

Timing assembly. Looks like a lot of play to me.

I turned the engine over to pull the oil pan and was greeted with a large puddle of coolant on the floor of my garage. Nice. After I cleaned it up, I decided to enlist precautions.

Still a lot of fluids in there.

Here's how the crank assembly looks. Hmm.. what's up with the oil pump pickup screen?

Cranky engine crank

Yuck! The pickup screen was packed with all kinds of crap.

Not picking up much oil these days by the looks of it.

I noticed there were some plastic thingy's stuck in among the debris there too.

Any idea what this stuff was?

I got as far as removing piston #1. The piston rod bearing surface looks a bit scored.

Needs machining me thinks

After removing the piston rod cap, I pushed the #1 piston out of the cylinder. Monroe's book indicates that I should need to ream the ridge from the top of the cylinder sleeve first but the piston just came right out. And then the top compression ring fell to the floor. That explains why the compression wasn't so great (on that cylinder anyway).

#1 piston with it's broken ring.

It looks like the #1 cylinder walls are scored a little bit by the broken ring. The ring itself is kind of smooshed on the outside edge.

The cylinder and broken ring.

That's all I got done to this point. I still need to remove the remaining pistons, the crank, the cam shaft, the flex plate, and the freeze plugs.

This is what the block looked like after this entry.

To be continued in Seeking Motorvation Part 2.

Away She Goes!

2011-05-07T01:26:00.000-07:00

Wow, my second blog entry is in May. The year is nearly half gone already and I've only done TWO blog entries?! What is the world coming to?

Well, better late than never I always say. So.... what have I been up to all this time? Oh LOADS of stuff. Well not really. In my infinite wisdom, I went skeet shooting with some friends and we had a great time. We fired off about 600 rounds at various insurgent flying targets during the three or so hours of our little "war on clay" but the only shock and awe I got out of the deal about 3 days later was a bum shoulder since none of the shotguns had any kind of recoil pad, nor did my T-Shirt.

Fast forward 2 months of my whining and visits to my favorite physical therapist and chiropractor to around the middle of March when I decided to get the heck back in the shop. I had already welded a rod into the passenger side door to close the gap and so continued on with the driver side door which got the same treatment:

1/8" welding rod welded in place.

Ground down the welds

The new gap.

Next I decided to take some of the advice by SteveA from the VMF. He had previously come over and showed me how to feel the metal and described that the only way to really make the flat spots from the indents disappear is by skinning the entire rear quarter:

In the beginning

First application of filler.

Sanded down with "idiot board".

Using some guide coat.

Sanded and low areas filled until guide coat is gone and then do it again a few more times.

In actuality it feels like it would be fine with a couple of coats of glazing putty. However, just doing this small section of the car made me realize A) I don't have enough room in my shop to comfortably be able to get in the positions I needed to do a good job sanding. B) I have horrible lighting and have trouble seeing details of what I'm doing. C) The dust is overwhelming and all the stuff stored in all the nooks and crannies of my garage were getting a coat of powdered polyester filler. And D) the smell of the polyester resin lingered in the house for a couple of days after doing a job. All of these things gave me pause so I called SteveA to ask him for his help and he was kind enough to agree to ready the car for paint for me. He had some other cars already in his shop so I waited about another month until just this week, he called me and said he was ready. WooHoo! So, I hooked a tow strap between Ol' Rusty and my Honda Pilot and towed it up out of the hole I call a garage. I then rented a UHaul auto transport and my brother was a trooper and provided the service of his pristine 1970 Ford F150 to pull it. Finally, we hauled it over to SteveA's shop about 30 miles away.

Ready to load.

Loaded up behind a workin' man's truck.

Unloading into her new home for the next few weeks.

I should note that she's only getting prepped for paint since I don't have the budget for paint yet. Paint will be in another 6 months or so. SteveA has graciously agreed to do the job in two phases.

Now I once again have an empty garage bay. Well, relatively empty. Hmm... what should I do now? That big rusty hunk of cast iron on the orange engine stand might provide a project or two...

An empty nest.

The Indentectomy.

2011-01-16T21:38:00.000-08:00

Update 1/30/2011: A fellow VMFer (thanks Steve!) from a neighboring town was kind enough to take time to come over and examine my work. He has an exceptional amount of hands-on auto body experience and showed me how far off these patches are from being flush with the body among many other tips and tidbits of knowledge. His recommendation for cutting the patches out were to make much smaller patches. He recommended cutting out the indents right at the edges of the indention instead of an inch out like I did. The resulting patches would have been much easier to blend with the quarter than these that I did are. The result is that to blend these patches into the quarter will take quite a bit of filler over the entire rear section of the quarter which pretty much nullifies my purpose of doing this in the first place.

Sometime back in the 80's Ol' Rusty had endured a "restoration". This involved riveting thin sheet-metal patches over rust holes, welding reinforcement plate in the rusted-out inner rocker, slathering bondo all over the torque boxes, screwing aluminum and fiberglass sheets over the holes in the floor pans, and replacing the rear quarters. Well, at least they actually replaced the rear quarters but they used the incorrent panels from 68. It seems like a really minor thing but prior to 2/15 in 1968, the rear quarter reflectors were installed in indentions. After 2/15, the indentions were deleted in favor of flush-mounted side markers. Well Ol' Rusty was built on the 28th of February and should have the later flush-mounted markers. The restorers must have known that this was the case because they simply filled the indentions with body filler.

When I had the car media blasted, I had the blaster leave the filler in the indentions with the intentions to "top it off" so to speak and be done with it. I did this just before Christmas as evident in my blog entry from 12/14/2010. The more I thought about it, the more of a bad taste it left in my mouth. The filler was upwards of 1/4" thick in the indentions. What if it cracked? What if it simply popped out because I didn't replace it with completely fresh filler? What if it caused the paint over it to bubble or peal? Then one day a fellow VMFer posted a request for indention patches for a 68 Mustang. Although such a patch doesn't exist for sale, I felt that I could be of assistance and solve my indention problem as well so I went down to my local hardware store and bought a sheet of 20 gauge sheet. I had decided to perform an indentectomy.

Now THAT's gotta go.

The first step was to clean out the indentions. I started on the passenger side and used my angle grinder with a knotted wire wheel. What a MESS!

All cleaned up

I then measured the area about an inch around the indention and came up with a patch size of 11" x 4" and marked two patch blanks on my sheet metal plate. I used my new Harbor Freight electric sheet metal shear and cut out the patches. I recommend this shear by the way. It works as advertised.

11" x 4" squares. Just enough to overlap the indentions by about an inch.

Ready for forming

I marked out the area to be cut away with masking tape for visibility.

Before cutting, I had to put a slight bow in the patches to conform to the curve in the rear quarter. This was accomplished by using a section of my heavy floor jack's handle and a 1/8" bar stock to roll a slight curve in the 20 gauge sheet. After I got the curve started, I could use my hands to adjust the curve of the patch to match the indention area of the quarter.

My high-tech sheet-metal roller.

Using thin cut-off wheels on my 4 1/2" angle grinder, I carefully cut out the indention out as best I could. My brain was screaming at me during this phase to just put the grinder down and step AWAY from the car. I had to just grit my teeth and have faith.

What the hell am I doing?

Ack! Did I just cut a huge hole in my quarter panel!?!

After many many minutes of fine-tuning the patch to the hole came the tedious job of stitch welding the patch into the quarter. I think a pro with a good heat-sink could have welded this patch in with a steady bead but the most reliable method for me personally is to just stitch it in one tack at a time alternating tacks about an inch or more apart to keep the heat dissipated in this way. Another way to weld in a patch like this is to use a heat-sink behind the weld like a copper or aluminum plate or even a wet rag but I didn't have a good way to hold such a thing up against the back of the joint.

Welded in. Phew!

Finally, I ground the seam down with a grinding wheel and flap disk Something I've learned along the way is that grinding down welds will heat and warp sheet metal as surely as seam welding so I try to do the grinding lightly. Just letting the grinding wheel do the work and do not try to force it. If I see the metal turn blue under the wheel/flap disc, I back off.

Done.

I followed the same procedure on the drivers side except instead of using a wire wheel to clean out the indention, I used my air chisel which proved to be the way to do it. The old filler literally popped out of the hole which also confirmed my fears of what might have happened had I left it the way it was.
The indentions were cleaned up to be reused and shipped to Maryland to start their new life as part of a father/son restore project.

So, that concludes Ol' Rusty's indentectomy and now she's not an "inney" any more.

Santa Stopped By

2010-12-25T11:28:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas! I didn't do any actual work on the Mustang this week but when I went into my garage this morning to see if Santa picked up his motor oil and spark plugs (I always leave Santa a little something before I go to bed on Christmas Eve) I found some things sitting under the tool tree. Ol' Rusty must have been a really good car this year for you see, he left her a set of valances! Note to self: Don't rush down to the garage with .45 in hand when you hear strange noises on Christmas Eve.

The front is an Original Ford Tooling and the rear is a Dynacorn repro. Notice anything different between the old rear valance and the new one? Hmm... what are those little cut-outs for?

New Valances!

There also laid a bag full of wires but not just any old wires, engine compartment wires!

There was discussion on the VMF about the repro rear valances. Folks claiming that they were too short. I did a comparison between the new and the old and if they're any different, it's fairly unnoticeable.

Overall comparison

Right edge closeup. Might be 1/8" difference?

Left edge closeup. Not a huge difference.

So I hope everybody had as good a Christmas as Ol' Rusty did. Have a happy and safe New Year!

Playing In the Mud Again

2010-12-14T22:47:00.000-08:00

Update 1/30/2011: A fellow VMFer with a LOT more experience than me (Thanks Steve!) in body work came over to give me a realistic estimate of what it would take to get the body of this car ready for paint and in addition, I received a free course on Basic Auto Body 101. He showed me how to feel the metal (something you just can't learn from internet media) and gave me many good tips on how to apply and sand filler correctly. So, this blog entry is a lesson on what NOT to do. This is not a good example of auto body correction so please don't stop here for any kind of example other than for an example of the wrong way. He did, however, feel that the top of the hood and deck lid were adequate which made me feel better. The bad news was that even with what I did here (in spite of perhaps) there's still about 60 hours of filler work to do on the body before it's ready for blocking primer.

I've pretty much got the body panels repaired and test fitted so now I'm ready to begin the REAL work, preparing the car for primer and paint. The body is pretty darned straight for the massive project it's been but there are still a few little dings here and there not to mention the various patches I've made in the doors, the bottoms of the rear quarters, and the fenders. I tried to weld them in the best I could but compared to the panel skins they're welded into, they're noticeable. I could just start filling any and all low spots in the body, but as I was searching the net for body-working tips, I came across this YouTube video entitled Car Dent Repair Training - No Filler by Restolad. He demonstrates the use of a home made "slapper". I thought to myself, "Hey self, I'd like to give that a try!" So, I set out to make a tool similar to that used in the video. I borrowed an old bastard file from a coworker (thanks Mark!) but files are hardened steel and I don't have a torch so what to do? Well, I DO have a home-made hobby metal melting furnace and it has a home-made burner that can get stuff up to a couple thousand degrees. Out in the open air it's considerably less capable but will at least get the file cherry hot so it can be bent. I clamped the file to one jack stand and the burner to another and fired it up. Pretty soon the file was ready to bend. I'd heat up a section, bend it in my vice with a 5 pound sledge and then heat up the next section and bend it again:

That's one hot bastard.. file

Until it looked like a "Z". The wide end of the file with the rat tail became the beating end of the slapper and the narrow end of the file became the handle after some smoothing. After I was done shaping the file, I reheated it and quenched it in a bucket of water.

My newly forged tool

If you didn't watch the video I linked to above the process pretty much involves slapping the dent evenly from the outside with a dolly on the backside of the panel shrinking the metal back into shape.

I decided to do just the passenger side first. I started at the rear quarter and ran over it completely with an 80 grit sanding block to find uneven spots that needed repaired. I found two dings that I could beat out, the others were very small and shallow so I just marked them for filler. You can see where I exercised my new slapper on the two shiny spots in the picture below. I'm not good enough to get it perfectly level yet so the spots will still require a skim of filler.

Scuffed, beaten, and ready for filler

The rear quarter was followed by the passenger door which I scuffed and marked the locations of the flaws. The flaws are the shiny spots that the sanding block wasn't able to scuff. I had attempted to use my slapper on those door dings by the upper ridge of the scoop intention but the door was too awkward to get my hand inside and hold a dolly in the right spot. Also, the contour would have required a rounded slapper which I don't have yet so I gave up on the idea here and felt it safer to just use filler.

Then I got a bit sidetracked. I decided I didn't like the wide gap between the rear quarter and the rear of the door.

Pretty big gap

So I went and bought some 1/8" welding rods, knocked the flux off them, and welded a couple to the edge of the door. I've seen this mentioned on various car restoration forums such as the VMF and also recently on Spiderman's Blog.

Starting at the middle and working out

Tack, bend, tack bend, rinse, repeat

Ground down and ready for filler

After patching up the door gap, I decided to revisit the B-Pillar. Yet more shoddy work by yours truly. On recommendation by a VMF friend (thanks again Pete), I cleaned the seam sealer out of the quarter skin flange, layered several layers of masking tape along the flange as thick as the flange sheet metal and then applied filler to the flange and sanded it level. The tape was then removed and the flange was wet sanded level.

Yuck! Who made THAT mess?

I can't believe I was going to leave it that way

Masking tape was built up next to the flange to form the new edge.

Filler applied and sanded level.

Finally, it was time to play in the mud... well, play WITH mud anyway. This is the same Evercoat filler I used on the hood and deck lid. I laid down a good thick layer over the old mud in the tail reflector indention that isn't supposed to be there. The previous owner replaced the quarter skins sometime in the 80's with the wrong type. I hope this filler doesn't crack on me 5 years down the road. I also applied filler to the quarter panel patch behind the rear wheel.

Lay down a moderately thick layer of mud.

Level it with a 40 grit "idiot board"

Same here

Glazing putty applied to fill scratches

Same treatment for the back edge of the door.

New improved door gap

I then pulled the fender and started working on it as well. When the time came to sand it down, however, the filler started peeling away. WTF!?

WTF!?

I scraped the new mud off the fender and determined that the problem was that I had initially sprayed the fender patch with etching primer and then sprayed over that with DP40LF. Well, that didn't fly at all as the DP de-laminated from the etching primer. I took my 80 grit sanding disk to it, cleaned it up with wax and grease remover and applied the mud directly to the bare metal.

Strip it clean and start over

Idiot board work done.

Glazing putty awaiting wet sanding.

As I'd done with the hood and deck lid, I applied a thin skim of polyester glazing putty across anywhere that I'd worked with my 40 grit idiot board to fill the scratches and then wet sanded that with 220. Just to be clear this is 2 Part Polyester filler. Not the traditional lacquer glazing putty. The only difference between this and regular filler is the ultra-fine size of the talc that fills the sanding scratches quite nicely.

Rear quarter done and wet sanded.

Door done and wet sanded.

Front fender wet sanded and temporarily stuck on the car to get it out of the way.

While I had the fender off, I thought I'd take a shot at closing the gap between the fender extension and the front of the fender. It took me about 1.5 hours to get it as close as I did with much difficulty. I drilled the mounting holes a tad larger to allow more play but even then I noticed that the very front inch or so where the most pointed part of the fender is was tweaked out of alignment ever so slightly so I massaged it a bit.

Before

After

I need to touch up a couple of spots along the passenger side of the car but I think I got a majority of the damage repaired such that running a hand over the repairs, it feels nice and level with the exception of some missed scratches that I need to run another skim coat of glazing putty over and re-sand and then it's on to the driver side.

Panel Alignment Part 3

2010-11-28T11:45:00.000-08:00

After stripping, repairing, and painting the fender extensions, with associated parts, I can now mount them on the fenders and finish test-aligning the sheet metal panels I've worked so long and hard on de-rusting.

Before I do that, I decided to install the headlight buckets into the fender extensions. The old headlight aiming hardware was pretty much deteriorated beyond use but thankfully, reproduction adjusting kits are produced and sold by the various parts houses for about $5 a side.

The new adjusting assemblys just directly replace the old

The slots in the tabs on the headlight bucket are aligned with the groove in the screw heads and the spring is inserted as shown below:

This is how the hardware fits into the bucket

The buckets for left and right are unique to each side. Note how the three tabs align with the openings in the side of the pot metal fender extension. The adjusting screws are threaded into their nylon nuts, and the spring is pulled down and hooked onto the spring protrusion of the fender extension.

It's ready to have a headlight installed

New repro rubber extension seals are also available. They need to be cut to fit the fender extension and slide into the slot around the perimeter of the housing. Special attention needs to be paid to the area around the stud seen at the lower right corner of the picture below:

A view from the back side. Notice where the spring hooks onto.

The fender extension is then attached to the front of the fender by 3 studs and associated nuts.

The fender has been extended

The fenders can then be remounted and realigned. Also, I bolted on the hood latch striker bracket and the hood latch. Adjustment of those parts involved centering the latch to the striker and then setting the latch all the way down and tightening it. Then I noted how "too far up" the hood was in comparison to the fender tops and adjusted the hood latch up the corresponding distance. I also mounted the front hood bumpers to their brackets and, after closing the hood, reached in and screwed them up until they barely touched the bottom of the hood and set the set nuts.

OMG, it has eyes again!

The whole point of this exercise is summed up in the following images. The hood front lines have to align with the front edge of the fender extension. Somehow, it just happened to align with no further need for adjustment. If it had needed to be adjusted, it would be performed by moving the hood further forward or back as needed.

Passenger side

Driver side

Driver side overall panel alignment

Passenger side overall panel alignment

I went ahead and test-fitted the grill parts to remind me what she used to look like and hopefully will again someday.

Hey, I remember you.

Now I get to take it all apart again and start doing minor body filler work. Lots of little dings and such to fix before the body is ready for blocking and leveling.

Prepping the Fender Extensions

2010-11-24T20:14:00.000-08:00

After seeing my Panel Alignment Part 2 post, a friend from the VMFsuggested that I test-fit the headlight fender extensions to ensure that the position of the front of the hood aligns correctly with the front of the fender extension (thanks Pete!). What he didn't know was that I had been slacking in my paint-stripping duties and that the fender extensions were in a box and had never been so much as scrutinized after having removed them from the fenders.

Pristine unrestored fender extensions sporting a Maaco paint job

Back side. Rust was provided free of charge.

The fender extensions disassemble fairly easily. First you remove the outer, painted pot metal ring followed by the inner chrome (stainless?) ring.

Rings. Remove them and the headlight pops out.

Each extension body has two adjusting screws and a spring that need to be removed. The adjusting screws can just be unscrewed all the way out and then the spring will be loose enough to just remove. The nuts through which the adjusting screws thread can also be removed by removing two small screws in the plate on which the nylon nuts are mounted.

The headlight adjust tensioning spring.

There are a couple of trim studs that need to be removed along with some J-Nuts and soon, I was rewarded with a pile of rusty crap and a pot metal housing.

Rusty crap

This is why I've been putting this job off for so long. There are a lot of little nooks and crannies that need to be cleaned out. Well, sometimes lazy trumps cheap for me so I gathered the fender extensions along with the quarter extensions and a few other odds and ends to take to my favorite media blaster, Tony, to be cleaned up. I gave him a call to set an appointment and during that fateful call, my world was torn asunder. For you see, my media blaster... Tony... sold his business. I know, right? I'm choking up a little right now just thinking about it. I'm here to tell you, don't ever take your media blaster for granted. If you find one worth holding on to, respect him and cherish him today because he may retire tomorrow. Let's have a moment of silence.

Okay, so why not just go to the new guy? Well, he was still learning the ropes and not ready to open doors yet so now what? Well, I just had to suck it up and strip that paint by hand that's what. I spread paint remover all over it and waited.

Burn baby, burn!

Like the hood, the paint stripper got through the newer paint and primer but all it did for the original lacquer paint underneath was soften it. At this point, it starts taking multiple applications of the paint stripper at which point I gave up in favor of one of those composite paint stripping wheels.

Frustratingly ineffective paint stripper

That composite stripping wheel makes fast work of the paint but you have to be careful, it will also chew through the pot metal if you're not careful.

And so it went that I stripped the remaining parts in this manner. First taking off as much paint as possible with chemical stripper and then finishing up with the disk.

I thought they were ready for primer until I looked closely at the driver side extension and noticed a crack at the valance mounting point. It's always something isn't it?

Awwww MAN!

Well, I couldn't just leave it, it had to be repaired so I did some online research and found that there's a pot metal repair system from Muggy Weld. Looks awesome doesn't it? Well, it's also $50 for the minimal kit and that just wouldn't do, for me anyway. I could buy a new fender extension I guess but that's $120. So after more research, I found some references to headlight bucket repair kits and some suggestions by people on the VMF that indicated that JB Weld sticks to pot metal and was the method of choice for repairing fender extensions. So, I made a couple of sheet metal reinforcements and roughed them up on one side and roughed up the repair area:

Prepared for the repair

I then mixed up some JB Weld, spread it liberally on the contact surfaces and clamped them into place over night:

Clamps on.. now we wait

The next morning, the reinforcements were secured in place. Prior to the fix, the fender extension could be flexed with little effort around the area of the crack. Now it can't be flexed at all and seems to be good to go.

Fixed!

I also used the JB Weld to fill the crack and sanded it smooth:

Filled crack

Finally, I could apply the primer! I cleaned up all of the parts with wax and grease remover, hung them up to be painted and... was out of primer. *sigh* Fast forward to the next day and I had picked up a fresh quart of DP40LF and catalyst. No matter how often I go buy this stuff I never fail to suffer sticker shock. I'm getting better at keeping my hair from popping off my head and my eyes from bugging out when the guy at the register tells me what to pay though.

While I was at the paint shop getting the DP, I picked up some handy-dandy mixing cups. DP40LF mixes 2:1 with it's catalyst (DP402LF) and it's pretty easy to just figure out in my head how much of each needs to be mixed but these mixing cups, although they look complicated with all of the little lines and numbers, are pretty simple to use once you figure out what they're trying to tell you.

The cup has various columns indicated with the headers 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, etc so you use the column that pertains to your primer, 2:1 in this case. Just choose a number that pertains to how much you want to make. The numbers are unit measurements and don't necessarily pertain to ounces or such so just pick a number and fill the cup with your DP under the 2 heading (I used the number 5).

DP poured up to the 5 under the 2 heading of the 2:1 column

Then pour the catalyst to the same number under the 1 heading and BAM! You have a properly mixed ratio.

catalyst poured up to the 5 under the 1 heading of the 2:1 column

I hung the various parts that I had prepared from the garage door for some quality time with the HVLP gun.

Like a scene from "Predator"

I like to batch my painting because I really hate cleaning my guns. My grill, hood latch striker bracket, and stone guard brackets were going to be painted with the same PPG paint I had painted my engine compartment with so they each needed a couple coats of DP40LF in preparation.

After the primer cured, I sprayed the grill, hood latch striker bracket, and stone guard brackets with black PPG DBC paint and now I can finally mount the front fender extensions to the fenders for further hood alignment.

Panel Alignment Part 2

2010-11-10T21:38:00.000-08:00

I finally felt that I had everything ready to go for phase two of panel alignment. Matching the doors up with the fenders and the fenders to the cowl and hood and the hood to the cowl.

The first step was to physically mount the fenders to the car. One of the attach points is a captive nut in the bottom of the front section of the outer rocker. Mine were rusted away so I bought a new Scott Drake "Fender to Cowl Nut Kit". I've read stories where people have had serious trouble with these nuts staying in the rocker while they install the fender screws but either Scott Drake redesigned them or my rocker nut cut outs were in better shape than most because they went right in and stayed put. For those who have had problems with these staying in, people recommend tack welding the little tabs to the rocker so the nut doesn't move while you screw in the bolts.

Scott Drake captive rocker nut behaving itself

Well, the nut was one thing, the fender mounting hole was quite another. When set to match the door contour, the rocker mounting hole was definitely drilled in the wrong place.

Fender mounting hole not behaving itself

Of course, a certain amount of violence ensued resulting in me cutting open the mounting hole.

Oooops.. did I do that?

I actually cut it away on purpose to weld in a patch that filled the hole and lengthened the tab by a quarter inch.

Patch welded in

Then ground the welds flush and drilled a new hole 1/4" further out than the old hole. I didn't just wing it this time, I remounted the fender and marked the new location before drilling the hole.

Ready to try again

This time the hole lined up with the rocker captive nut so I could get back to the task of aligning the panels.

It works!

Like most of the rubber parts on this car, the hood bumpers were no exception so I bought another set.

New hood bumpers

I then bolted the hood to the freshly phosphated hinges with the help of my lovely wife. Thanks hon!

Open wide

Of course, that was just the beginning as the hood looked impossibly out of alignment. The lower hinge mounting points on the fender aprons were as low as they could go so was something out of whack with the car? How could I possibly close those gaps?

Now that's a panel gap!

After fiddling around with the hinge adjustment for awhile, it occured to me that there's more than one way to drop the relative height of the back of the hood and the secret is to rock the hinges back, that drops the height of the cowl edge of the hood and then the play in the hinges allows the the hood to close as far as you need to to bring the side edges in alignment with the top of the fenders. The main variables for the hood to fender-top alignment are the fender to hood bumpers and the core support to hood bumpers and latch. After dropping the height of the rear edge of the hood, it can be slid back/forth to close/open the cowl to hood gap by the hinge to hood mounting holes. This is one of those "open the hood, adjust, close the hood, open the hood, adjust, close the hood, repeat" affairs.

Not completely horrible

The fender to hood panel gap is set by adjusting the fenders in and out using the top fender to apron bolts.

Driver side fender to hood gap

The tricky part is at the nexus of the cowl, the fender, and the door. Really tricky for me anyway. The problem is that you can pull the fender out to match the door but then the cowl to fender gap is way too wide and vice versa. Here's where the doors might need some further tweaking. Really the best I could do is split the difference between all the gaps and try to get them as close as possible.

May not be good enough

Same deal on the passenger side. Here's the resulting passenger to hood gap.

Passenger side hood to fender gap

The passenger side was actually worse than the driver side. The gap wasn't just too wide, the fender/door plane was off too far to simply split the distance of the gaps.

Side view

I could give up a little more gap at the cowl but that still wouldn't be enough. Here you can also see why moving the doors way back will mess with the fender-to-door gap. You can only move the fenders back so far before that curved section at the back of the fender that butts up against the bottom of the windshield A pillar frame gets in the way. This is why I wasn't very gung-ho about shifting the doors as far back as they could go to close the door-to-quarter panel gap.

Top view.

The solution was to adjust the door inward and increase the cowl to fender gap a bit. There's also a bit of adjustment to play with at the bottoms of the fenders to bring the fenders flush with the doors. It's better but I don't think I'm ready to put panel alignment behind me just yet.

Closer

I haven't installed the hood latch or front hood bumpers but it's a good start I think. I'll probably do some more fiddling with the doors and the contour of the bottoms of the fenders.

Hmm... looking more like a car every day

My Fate Hinges On Phosphate.

2010-11-03T22:47:00.000-07:00

Okay so the fenders are ready to be fitted on the car but their alignment is dependent upon the position of the hood. The hood is ready to go on but the hinges were a rusty, grimy mess.

Dirty nasty hinges and spring guards.

I worked the old paint, grease, sound deadener, and what-not off of them (and other parts) with a wire wheel.

Various parts after being cleaned with wire wheel

It would be nice if I could just flit on down to the local Mustang supply store and pick up a load of new fasteners but, as we've established in previous posts, I'm a cheap b*****d.

Rusty bolts

A little time in the blast cabinet and they're as good as new... well, except for any kind of rust protection. To date, I've been hitting them with a coat of etching primer and then stainless steel or flat black paint.

Media blasting does wonders

That's all fine until I started imagining how the freshly blasted hinges would look with black paint. I could imagine that the hinge pivot points would eventually wear back to bare metal and start looking pretty bad.

I had known for some time that the hinges were supposed to be coated with that magical, ancient, lost coating called "phosphate and oil" last seen by some old guy in the basement of Ford factories sometime back in the 1800's or so. But how could I return to the days of old? Would I have to divine the spirit of some ancient alchemist? Journey a thousand days to the monasterys of the far Himalayas in search of a sect of monks that have held onto the lost art of phosphating car parts? Nope! Google! Like pretty much any recipe you look for on the Internet, I stumbled across dozens of recipes for the re-creation of Phosphate and Oil but the most information was not provided by car restorers but rather gunsmiths. The process is also called "Parkerizing". I'm not going into the who explanation of Parkerizing here because there are literally dozens of web sites that do just that including some Wiki pages where you can get all of the technical ugliness on some cold winter night when you're trying to get to sleep and warm milk just isn't doing it for you anymore. That's not to say I won't link out to some helpful threads and sites starting with a VMF Thread, a Caswell Plating thread, a Yahoo Tip, a BladeForums thread, an AKFiles thread, and a Northwest Firearms thread with pictures, and many more threads and pages of varying quality. Of course, if you want to see how the military originally employed the phosphate and oil process check out the Military Handbook of Phosphate and Black Oxide Coating of Ferrous Metals. I found their usage of Manganese Dihydrogen rather than Manganese Dioxide quite riveting. Update: Looks like Mustang Monthly wrote a howto in March of 2011.

One of the unifying concepts in all of these pages is that Parkerizing solutions consist of at least two components, the first being phosphoric acid, the second being either Zinc Oxide for a lighter finish or Manganese Dioxide for a darker finish. Thus the solution is either Zinc Phosphate or Manganese Phosphate.

We have two options for getting our calloused, welder-burned fingers on this mysterious potion. The first is to buy a gallon of concentrate from a retailer on the net for somewhere around $30 a gallon (plus shipping). The other option is to make it ourselves. Being the frugal consumer I am, I opted to go with door #2. The problem is where to get phosphoric acid and where to get zinc oxide or manganese dioxide? The phosphoric acid is the easiest, as it's also known as my old friend, Ospho which is 85% acid. Another option for the Ospho impaired is Jasco Prep-n-Prime. Now the manganese dioxide is not quite as easy but also not out of reach. It's widely used in ceramics and is thus available for about $4 a pound from a pottery supply store. But wait, that's not all, for a limited time only, it's available as the black stuff in your average C and D cell batteries if you're feeling that $4 is worth way more than your time. Zinc Oxide is the other possible component but many of the Parkerizing experimenters on the net have decided that the core of a US penny minted after 1984 is a good source for zinc. Ceramic supply stores also carry Zinc Oxide in powdered form though.

So how much of each component makes the optimal solution? Who the heck knows, I just went with my gut for my first experiment. I had noted that retail concentrates mix with water at a ratio of 8:1 so that's what I shot for as well. Since I didn't have any dead batteries laying around, I opted to go with the zinc phosphate version because I did have zinc in the form of a roll of Moss Out roof strip which the label indicates is 100% zinc. I decided to make up 24 oz of water with 3 oz of home-brew zinc phosphate (there's that 8:1 ratio). The amount of zinc I chose was just... well... for no good reason. I just cut 3 small strips and attempted to dissolve them in "pure" Ospho at room temp. First mistake, you pretty much have to heat the Ospho to get it to dissolve anything with any speed.

Ospho (left) and Moss Out Zinc Strip

Not to be beaten though, I just tossed the strips on the water/acid mix and brought it to 185 degrees F in hopes that the zinc would dissolve "on the fly". It never did. I used a regular candy thermometer to monitor the temperature, a camp stove, and an aluminum bread pan with non-stick coating. Most of the web sites you'll find out there indicate that you must use a stainless steel pot/pan to do this but I didn't find this to be true at all. The acid did not attack the pan or it's coating in any way.

Ospho and water at 160 degrees F

So I (carefully) tossed a handful of bolts and J nuts into the hot solution and watched it fizz for about 20 minutes. Stirring occasionally with a scrap of new brake line (no brake fluid residue in it). Just a short time in the heated solution was enough to turn the end of it black so it was looking promising.

This piece of brake line blackened within seconds when used to stir the solution

After 20 minutes, I took one of the bolts out and snapped a picture

An example of a freshly parkerized bolt

Here's the setup I was using.

Small scale setup

After about 20 minutes, I fished the contents out of the pan, rinsed them and hit them with WD40.

These parts just came out of the bath. The latch striker is bare metal for comparison.

The camera flash does funny things in these pictures but the bolt on the left is one that I had just parkerized and the bolt on the right is from a new bolt kit that had been professionally phosphate and oiled.

A comparison of a professionally phosphate and oil bolt (right) with an experimental one (left)

Here are the nuts and bolts (and hood latch striker) after the process. Again, the camera does weird things to the shades of the parts but some were lighter than others but when looking at them in regular lighting, the lighter colored parts including the hood latch striker were more of a dark gray to light black shade. One thing I had learned is that if the solution is set below 185 degrees, the black coating actually rubs off, over 185-200 degrees F, the coating is fixed and won't come off. As a side note, I had experimented with soaking parts in Ospho over night at room temperature and they certainly turned black BUT! the black coating rubbed off of them. The parts have to be brought over 185 degrees if you want your color to stay and actual Parkerization to take place. The amount of time to leave them in the cooker is another factor. Many web references suggest leaving them in until the fizzing stops but I got impatient at about 20 minutes and removed the parts. Now here's a question, I still haven't answered for myself yet. If the manganese oxide is supposed to do the blackening of the parts and this batch didn't contain any, why do the parts turn black in Ospho instead of zinc colored? I think that it's the sodium dichromate additive in the Ospho. Both sodium dichromate and manganese dioxide are oxidizing agents for other purposes so could it be this that's forcing the oxidation of the steel of the part itself and has nothing to do with the actual color of the manganese dioxide itself that makes steel parts turn black? I asked Ospho's tech support this question via email but have received no response. If it's as I suspect, Ospho probably needs no additives at all to get a dark parkerized finish.

A collection of freshly coated parts

Here's the pan after I finished just to show that the aluminum pan nor it's non-stick coating took any damage from the acid at all. Stainless steel is simply not justified IMHO.

This aluminum pan was none the worse for wear afterward

So, now that I've run a single experiment, I'm an expert now and decided to ramp up for production. I bought an enamelware canning pot for $10, 4 gallons of distilled water at a buck each, a gallon of Ospho for $20 (hmm.. that's not much less expensive than a gallon of commercial solution), and a pound of manganese dioxide for $4 from the only pottery supply, Georgies, about 20 miles away. My neighbors now think I'm running a meth lab... great.

The neighborhood meth lab?

First thing was to make a proper solution of manganese phosphate by adding about 2 oz (by volume) of manganese dioxide to 48 oz of Ospho.

Preparing to make manganese phosphate

First I brought the Ospho up to 160 degrees or so...

Hot acid

... and then added the manganese dioxide. The solution turned black. I continued to stir until it seemed to be dissolved.

Manganse Phosphate?

I then broke the #1 rule of acid/water solutions but adding 3 gallons of water to the acid. Chemistry people are facepalming about now but I survived, no splashes, flame-ups, death, nor destruction but now I'm obligated to regurgitate that old cliche, "don't try this at home". The chemist rule of thumb is, "add acid to water, not water to acid".

The solution ready to go.

The hinge was thoroughly cleaned and degreased and fitted into the canning basket.

The hinge ready to go

The solution was brought to 200 degrees. Note the oily film on the surface. I think it's because I forgot to clean and degrease the canning pot itself before I started.

200 degrees. An oil slick?

The hinge was lowered into the bath where it fizzed and gurgled and popped and buzzed for about 25 minutes. The fizzing decreased a lot but didn't actually stop. I'm just afraid to let it go until it stops fizzing as instructed on the net but I'm going to have to try that during my next experiment with a part not so expensive as hood hinges. When approaching the cooker, I wore my respirator, rubber gloves, and my coveralls.

Fizzing phosphate

I finally pulled the hinge out of the bath and let the solution evaporate from it at which point I gave it a soaking with WD40 which is supposed to stop the parkerization. It's not the oil part of the phosphate and oil process.

Phosphate and.. WD40?

Finally, I rubbed oil onto the hinge. I could feel a new texture in the metal which I can only assume is a crystalline matrix that is intended to absorb and retain the oil. I just used some compressor oil I had. Other guys use motor oil.

Done!

After I had finished both hinges, I turned the heat to the stove off and let the solution cool to about 180 degrees. I had read that if you overheat the hinge springs, they'll be damaged by parkerization.

Freshly media blasted springs

I decided to take a chance and attempt to avoid this by treating them while the solution cooled and to reduce the time they are left in the pot. So, I let them fizz in the pot while the solution cooled from 180 to 160 degrees. They came out blacker than the hinges but some of the black came off on the rag while wiping with WD40. Enough remained though such that the hinges still look okay. I really need to read more on how to properly treat the hinge springs.

Freshly treated springs

The assembled springs. They have light and dark streaks in places. I'm fairly sure this is from passing them through the oil and contamination floating on the surface of the solution.

Hinges are done!

Mounted on the car.

How do they look?

Great! I'm done! You're probably wondering what I'm going to do with the solution now aren't you? Am I going to pour it into the sewer? Down the toilet? Throw it in the river? Get off my case ya damned hippy, I'm as environmentally friendly as Al Gore! I'm going to reuse it so cleanup consisted of letting the solution cool to about 100 degrees and then filtering it into individual gallon jugs. 2.5 gallons remained which means that more than 1/2 gallon evaporated during the process.

Storing the solution

This is the residue that remained in the bottom of the pot. I think it's what's left of the manganese dioxide. I don't think it was ever fully dissolved into the solution which means I probably didn't make actual manganese phosphate. Update: It appears that sludge (scale) is a normal result of the Manganese Phosphate reaction.

What the hell?

After cleaning the pan with an wire brush, it's good as new. Again, stainless steel is proven to be an unnecessary expense as the enamelware canning pot is none the worse for wear.

Good to go again

I think the reason the hinges turned dark at all was due to the oxidizing agents in the Ospho and had nothing to do with anything I added to it. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that whatever people add to the Ospho to try to make a proper parkerizing solution is really making no difference at all. I honestly think that the sodium dichromate in the Ospho is all that's needed to do a dark gray parkerization but that it's more of an iron phosphate rather than anything else. In fact, I think that if any of the online recipes have any merit, it will be the ones that call for a biscuit of steel wool in the pot. That at least makes a bit of sense for an iron phospate solution. Update: This assumption may be only partially correct as I was under that assumption that the scale left over on the bottom of the pot was a failed attempt to dissolve manganese dioxide in the acid but may actually just be a normal byproduct of the process. I now intend to do more experiments on a small scale with a higher concentration of manganese dioxide. Will post results here.

The results of this method of parkerization are good enough for me though. The parts really look darker in person than they do with my camera. I think that even though I've already painted my hood latch, I'll blast it and do it over as a more correct phosphate and oil as well as the shock tower caps and any other nuts and bolts I might recondition.

Update: After doing a bit more research, I stumbled upon a thread on natscience.com containing info on the chemistry of making manganese phosphate. One post in the thread confirmed my suspicions:

The "kitchen" methods circulating on the Internet about Parkerizing seem to be repetitions of untried recipes from chemically ignorant hobbyists. Those that report actual trials and results from these recipes wouldn't know the difference between a manganese coating and an ordinary iron phosphate coating that the acid will produce without the manganese dioxide.

So I suspect all that these hobbyists have been achieving in their kitchens is a simple iron phosphatizing process, and they are kidding themselves with the manganese.

Ouch! The truth hurts. Still, there's a "legit" method of making Manganese Phosphate out there but I'm going to content myself with Iron Phosphate for now.

Update 11/19/2010: I have received a response from Ospho:

My original question:

What is the purpose of the Sodium Dichromate in Ospho? I ask because some people use Ospho as a Parkerizing" solution to darken steel gun and car parts. It appears that even if unheated, Ospho will blacken these parts and leave a blackish residue which can sometimes be wiped off if a freshly sand blasted part is left to soak long enough. What is this black residue? Iron Oxide or some residue left from a chemical reaction between the steel, phosphoric acid, and Sodium Dichromate? I'd really love to nail down the perfect balance of Ospho and other components to make a "do it yourself" parkerizing solution (for my own personal use, not resale, although I'd post the recipe online for other do it yourselfers. Thanks for any insight you can provide.

Their response:

Dear Mr. Olshove,

The exact purpose of the Sodium Dichromate is proprietary information. However, as an old competition shooter myself I have used Ospho as a cheap form of "cold bluing". It doesn't last nearly as long as the heated solution of sodium hydroxide method - but, it works.

The black residue you mention is a combination of ferric and ferrous phosphate produced by the reduction reaction between the iron oxide (rust) and the strong phosphoric acid solution of the Ospho. These iron phosphates are much more chemically stable and therefore resistant to oxidation - extending the lifespan of your paint job.

Technical Director

Update 11/26/2010: After a couple more small-scale batches of fasteners, the solution is leaving a heavy gelatious sludge behind but the fasteners are coming out darker. I think it's either because of the water evaporating leaving a stronger solution or the acid is starting to attack the teflon coating of the aluminum pan. Best stick to stainless steel as recommended.

Making A Splash (Shield)

2010-10-26T21:52:00.000-07:00

Okay so I've got a body shell, deck lid, doors, fenders, and a hood. Time to put it all together right? Not so fast gimpy, there's more to a fender than just a big round hunk of sheet metal and as such, we have a couple more things to do before we go stampeding off and trying to align the panels. For you see, fenders do more than just keeping the sunshine off your sick 25's, they also protect the tender nether regions of the A pillar and headlight bucket from all the muck and slime we wallow around in on the roads on a daily basis. So let's show some love to those thankless little sheet metal minions of the fenders, the splash shields. Like it or not, they affect the way the fender fits onto the car and probably shouldn't be overlooked until after paint is on the car.

There are four splash shields on a Mustang, one ahead of the front tire (protecting the headlight bucket) and one behind (protecting the A pillar) on each side. My original front shields were pretty much destroyed as I had chipped away what was left of them when I had disassembled the fenders for media blasting. The rear ones weren't as bad but still in seriously poor condition so I opted for new repros from NPD.

Here's a comparison of old to new:

You might notice the conspicuous lack of rubber strips along the edges of the new ones. I wish I could say that I bought them this way on purpose but then you'd suspect that I'm a complete idiot rather than just an ignorant newbie (take your pick). I say this because these splash guards are available completely assembled and ready to go. Unfortunately, I bought these months ago and ferreted them away and now I'm stuck with them. So I just had to suck it up and figure out how to attach the rubber strips to the shields.

Enough whining and on to the task. The first thing I did was to compare the old to the new for the placement of the staples that had come with the shield rubber kit.

After I marked the staple locations with white grease pencil, I positioned the rubber strip on the shield with clamps placing one on each side of a staple position. I started out with clamps all along the rubber strip to hold it completely in place but soon found it wasn't necessary and resorted to simply using two clamps. Also, I had initially just marked the staple positions with lines but after clamped, I drew one perpendicular line to represent one side of the staple and then held a staple against that mark and used it to make the second mark. The two marks are where the staple holes need to go.

I used a spring punch to pop dents into the metal behind the rubber. These spring punches are powerful enough to completely ignore the rubber and sufficiently peen the sheet metal behind at each staple hole:

I then simply drilled through the rubber and the sheet metal. Because of the spring punch, the drill didn't wander around on the sheet metal and drilled through nice and fast.

The staple is then placed through the holes.

And a pair of dikes is used to bend the ends of the staple over so it doesn't pop out.

Then pressure is placed on the staple from the other side by pressing it up against an anvil at which time it's ends are tapped down with a hammer or such. Pressing it like this ensures the staple is tight when it's crimped down.

Here's the finished product. This process really didn't take all that long. Probably 30 seconds per staple.

That was just half the job. Let's not forget their little brothers from the front. Passenger side:

Passenger side assembled:

And the driver side (note the longer edge):

Driver side done:

The front shields needed to be installed directly onto the fender headlight bucket (excuse the dusty parts). First the position is determined by aligning the rubber strip plastic clip holes with the headlight bucket and then the sheet metal screw holes are marked:

The marked holes (white) are then center punched and drilled:

Finally, the sheet metal screws are driven in and the plastic clips are inserted and locked. Regarding these little plastic clips, they aren't available as repro items from the regular Mustang parts suppliers. In fact, I called NPD and the guy acted like I was crazy for asking. I started a thread on the VMF though and got some sources for the actual original style clips. Check that thread here. I had originally planned to buy the original clips but put it off and then didn't remember that I'd needed them until I got to this point so I ran to NAPA with a caliper and found the clips shown below as Balkamp part number 665-1388 (Push Type Rivets) that matched the holes perfectly:

Now, came time to install the rear splash guards. These don't actually go on the fender itself but on the side cowl of the car. I had to trim the shields in a couple of places to get them to fit where they were designed to go. The lower fender mount brackets were no exception. This is how I understand they are to be installed between the shield and the torque box flange. Note how the hole doesn't line up. I had to trim about 3/32 from the side of the shield to make room for that vertical bend in the bracket:

Here's how I'm 95% sure it's supposed to be mounted between the shield and the torque box flange. The problem is that the lower horizontal portion of the L bracket is about 1/2" away from the lower rocker flange and my fender edge wants to sit right up against the rocker flange:

The "correct" mounting of the bracket from the mounting side. Note that a notch had to be cut in the bottom 1" or so of the torque box flange to allow the bottom of this bracket to come through.

I always have to be different though so I hammered the little bend out of the driver side bracket which allowed it to be screwed right up next to the lower flange of the rocker so it would fit my fender better:

From the business side showing the hammered out bend sticking out to the side:

This is a side-view of the installation of the rear splash shield. There are two sheet metal screws from the side cowl. Screws are driven out through the cowl side/firewall flange. There's another sheet metal screw that is driven down through the top of the rear apron into the top of the shield "Z" bend. The shield mounts to the front of the torque box flange and the fender bracket is sandwiched between the shield and torque box with a single screw driven through all three:

Here's a picture from the inside of the mounted fender looking back toward the top of the rear splash shield:

The bottom of the rear splash shield from inside the fender:

A shot towards the front splash shield from inside the fender:

The Fifty Dollar Hood

2010-10-09T14:50:00.000-07:00

Several months ago, I answered an ad on Craigslist advertising a 1968 turn signal hood for fifty bucks. I drove the 25 odd miles to the neighboring town to meet the guy. I noticed it had some issues such as some minor dings, a rusted-out front reinforcement, and hood pin holes. I decided that the price was still right so I loaded it on top of my SUV, drove home, leaned it up against the house and forgot about it for the remainder of the summer.

Fast forward to this week. I need to get a hood on the car so I can align the fenders and doors so, it was time to dust off the new hood and set to work. First thing I did was to compare it against my original hood. One thing immediately noticeable was that the new hood was way lighter than my old hood. Either the new one is a cheap repro or my old one has a ton of bondo on it. Now, new repro hoods aren't really that expensive but the freight shipping charges double the price so, being a cheap b*****d, I decided that since I'm going to upgrade to Shelby glass in a few years, I could live with a cheap hood. Besides, I like the turn-signal hoods. Here it is... beauty ain't she?

Red is the wrong color plus I needed to get it down to bare metal. I could media blast but I've heard horror stories about blasting hoods plus, see the previous paragraph where I'm a cheap b*****d. I bought this paint stripper at Home Depot. The aircraft stripper stuff at NAPA was nearly $50 a gallon! This stuff was around $20.

I thought I'd go ahead and make the stripper's job easier by breaking up the surface of the paint with a sanding disc.

Then I liberally brushed on a heavy layer of stripper:

I let it work for about 20 minutes and then scraped it off with a wide bladed putty knife.

I applied it a couple more times to get a layer of gray primer but then it stopped working at this point (would the fifty dollar stuff have gone all the way to metal?). I think this is original paint (Lime Gold) and red oxide primer. Could this be an original hood?

I decided to strip the rest of the way with the angle grinder and flap disc.

That's all good and fine but the real work is underneath. I lightly did a little stripping to try to expose any part numbers. I found a couple of codes but they were unreadable after I... kind of... made them unreadable with my 46 grit flap disc.

Here's what the next few evenings of work looks like. See the rust holes along the front support?

I started on the passenger side by just cutting away the rusted portion. While this was off, I took the opportunity to hammer and dolly out a dent that was in the hood at the front that the PO had filled with bondo.

I then (poorly) welded in a patch. The problem is that I welded the support frame member edge before I tacked the front flanges together. I'll let you know why this was a problem further on.

For the driver side, I did things differently, hey! this is all experimental to a newby like me! This time I made a flange in a patch first and then clamped that flange to the front edge of the hood and then hammered the patch down over the existing, rusty metal to form it.

Then I marked around the new patch edges to determine where to cut.

I cut out the bad metal and then etched and primed the inside surfaces.

This time, however, I tacked the front flange first and then finished bending the patch down to accurately meet up with the reinforcement member. See the passenger side patch sticking up there? If I had forced that patch back down in the front to weld the flange, the top of the hood wanted to warp. So, back to the drawing board for the passenger side as I cut the patch back out again.

The problem is that I couldn't make a patch the same way as I had done the driver side (soooo much faster and cleaner than hand-forming the patch) because I had cut away the metal already that I would use to form the patch. Old hood to the rescue! I clamped a pre-flanged sheet to the target area of the other hood...

... and then hammered out another patch.

This time, I welded it in like I had done to the driver side. Flange side first.

Here's the complete repair.

I ground down the welds...

... and leveled it with some polyester glazing putty and sanded it smooth with 220.

I originally was going to leave underside of the hood as-is and just primer over the old paint but decided that I'd give one of these 4.5" composite stripping discs a try. I'd used the ones made for drills but never for an angle grinder before.

It did a pretty fast job of taking off most of the remaining paint and primer.

But you need to watch that little bugger near sheet metal edges. A sheet metal edge will cut into the soft composite stripping pad and then the angle grinder will twist up edge. I had to carefully hammer this down by inserting a wide bladed putty knife between the hood skin and the damaged edge to keep from dinging the hood.

Those hood pin holes had to be welded shut and ground smooth.

The entire bottom side was etched with Ospho, rinsed, and then cleaned with metal prep (giving the metal that white, chalky look). Also, new seam sealer had to be injected between the support and hood skin because the old had pulled away causing the top of the hood to "oil can".

Finally, I can get to resurfacing the top of the hood. I scratched it up good first with a course sanding disk and then cleaned the metal with metal prep.

I laid down a thin layer of skimming filler like I'd done with the deck lid.

And then I sanded... and sanded.... and sanded.... and filled some more... and sanded... and sanded some more. By the way if you see this kind of sand paper at Harbor Freight RUN AWAY! This is the worst crap I've ever used. Besides being completely worthless as sand paper, the glue is actually water soluble. A little bit of sweat or water on the paper makes it dissolve and fall apart. However, if you get the black crud on your hands then nothing will clean it off. Ack! I tossed the whole bag in the trash.

Fortunately, I had good 3M paper on hand as well and was able to finish the sanding. As I'd done with the deck lid, I roughed the skimming putty with a 46 grit 17 inch idiot board, getting it as level as possible and then skimmed the whole thing again with a microscopically thin layer polyester glazing putty. Just enough to fill the 46 grit sanding scratches. I wet sanded that directly with 220 (NOTE: I found out later that it is bad to wet sand filler as it can absorb moisture and cause problems with paint later), wiped it down, dried it, checked for imperfections, filled those as I found them, sanded again, rinse, repeat until done.

When I was finally ready to primer with DP40LF epoxy primer, rain was on the way so it was now or wait for another four days or so. It was getting dark out so I opted to hang the hood from the garage door and spray it from inside the garage. Top first.

And then bottom.

Yeah, the straps got in the way at times but I worked around them and got the job done with a couple of flaws that I still need to fix but I got it done. Now, on to cleaning up the hood hardware for test mounting to the car for panel alignment.

The Doorway to Panel Alignment Part 1

2010-10-02T12:08:00.000-07:00

After passing by Ol' Rusty in the garage several dozen times a day and seeing the doors laying there on the floor of the car, I had decided that the best place for the doors is on the car. I kind of put this off because I was slightly afraid of alignment issues that I might encounter after all of the sheet metal work. I was subconsciously afraid that my inner rockers were crooked, or that I had permanently welded in some kind of bow in the middle of the car and that the doors wouldn't fit. Neurotic, I know, but it came time to find out sooner than later. Anyway, all future panel alignment was dependent upon the doors. Actually, they're dependant upon the rear quarters and outer rockers and how they form the door openings so the doors are actually the second most important but also one of the most adjustable which is what makes hanging the doors such a hassle.

I had found several references on hanging doors. One of the most helpful was from Average Joe Restoration. Another site is HotRod Magazine's guide to paint and body Part 5 - Panel Alignment.

Those two sites give excellent step by step panel alignment instructions so my purpose here is to simply relay my personal experiences with door alignment. First things first, I was doing this solo and needed a helper to hold the door while I put the screws in the hinges. The door striker seemed like a likely candidate so I cleaned it up and screwed it loosely to the B pillar.

But to hang a door you need hinges. On a previous evening, I had media blasted all of the hinges, screws, and hardware and gave them all coats of primer and paint. Flat black for the hinges and stainless steel for the mounting plates and screws.

I then bolted the hinges to the doors loosely. Alignment of the hinges doesn't matter at this point.

Also, the doors need something to hold onto the striker with so I dug around my parts until I found the old door latch

And then cleaned it up a bit.

And mounted it in the door.

The inner door hinge mounting plates were positioned in the A pillar and then the door could be lifted (it's not too heavy since the windows aren't in it) into position and latched onto the door striker. This supports the door on the rocker until you can get the bolts through the hinges into the mounting plates.

I think there are a dozen ways to do the next steps but I just left all of the hinge bolts slightly loose and let the door hang.

The lower door gap needs to be set first and many people swear by using paint stirrer sticks. I went with some 3/16 panel I had laying around and cut a couple of strips and carefully lifted the doors weight off the hinges and set it on the sticks to see where the door sat.

After some fiddling around with it a few times, I had to use some popsicle sticks on top of the main shims and taped them all to the rocker to help keep them in place while I adjust the door forward and back. The gap between the door and the rocker has to be a happy medium between the lower door gap being uniform all the way across and the outer rocker and the top of the door aligns with the top of the rear quarter and the accent lines at the top and bottom of the scoop line up.

After I got the height of the doors set, I adjusted the striker post on the B pillar up and down until it was centered on the door latch at which point I adjusted it in or out on the B pillar until the back of the door was flush with the rear quarter.

This is pretty close but the door is adjusted all the way back as far as it can go and there's still about a 1/4" gap between it and the B pillar. Some have suggested wallowing out the hole for the hinges on the A pillar to allow it to move back further but since the front of the door also has to align with the back of the front fender I think I'm going to weld a 1/8" rod along the back of the door (and possibly the bottom) to reduce the gaps. Either that or I'm just going to get impatient and leave it like it is. We'll see.

Now, an aligned door isn't any good without fenders to align to and those can't be aligned without a hood and both of those need work so it will be awhile before I finish the alignment of the panels.

The Deck Lid from Hell

2010-09-07T22:39:00.000-07:00

Waaaayyyy back in October, I had the car media blasted including the deck lid. Well, as you may also recall, I had some "concerns" regarding the quality of the deck lid. To be honest, my concerns with the deck lid have been giving me pause these past few months. I simply haven't wanted to deal with it as I knew it would either cost me more time or money, neither of which I've been wanting to give up for the past couple of months what with summer constantly pestering me with it's beautiful, warm, sunny days and constantly hounding me to do something other than sweat it out in a hot garage. Well, like all good things, the days of summer have gone and the day of reckoning has come.

So there I was, back where I had started, pondering the fate of the deck lid. I could just forgo the steel deck and buy a fiberglass Shelby style deck lid. Well, that would mean that I would also need the matching quarter extensions and as long as I had gone to the trouble of doing THAT, I would also go ahead and buy the Shelby style tail panel and lights. As appealing as that all is, it's just not in the current budget and I would not be happy just getting the deck lid without the tail panel/lights. Another option would have been to buy a repro deck lid. I did some research on the various Mustang forums and the consensus was that the repro deck lids are a crap shoot for fitment and quality. I could also buy a used original deck lid but the chances of getting the same as I already have are pretty high after it's been media blasted. So, I had already had mine blasted and if I were to buy anything, it would eventually be replaced by a full Shelby style back end so that would be money out the window. I think you can see where this is going by now. The only true option left to me was to fix that which I already had. If I screwed up too badly, I could still go the other routes and not be out much other than time and some supplies.

So, first things first. The top of the lid was in serious need of attention but nothing is easy in an old rusty car like Ol' Rusty as the rear inside edge was as holey as the Pope:

I started by grinding away the surface rust with a knotted wire wheel. The wire wheel also does a good job of chewing through the thin sheet metal and exposing places where rust had just almost eaten through the metal from the inside. I then set to cutting away the rusted metal and making and welding in patches of new 20ga metal like I did for the corner as seen here.

And again along the center:

I then ground down the welds and did a lot of pinhole filling and more grinding until the area was generally level:

I then treated the area with Ospho to stabilize the remaining surface rust. During this phase I also poured Ospho inside the reinforcement braces and sloshed it around to stabilize the rust inside the deck lid as well:

Body filler was then applied to the repaired areas and sanded:

Finally, the underside of the deck lid could be primered with DP40LF:

Well, I'd like to say that's all there was to it but that was only HALF the job! I ran a 17 inch sanding board over the top of the lid with 46 grit paper just to see what I was dealing with and this was the answer... holy crap! I honestly considered bailing on the project at this point but instead, as the Brits say, I put on a stiff upper lip and set to work. I might also mention here that to this point I'd never worked with body filler to this extent so this whole thing was going to be a learning experience. I don't know if this particular task was the best learning experience for a newbie but let's just chalk it up to "trial by fire".

First I ran 80 grit with a disk sander over the lid to give the filler something to "bite" onto:

This is the filler I used. I didn't choose it for any particular reason other than it was on sale at the paint/body supply shop I go to. I think Evercoat RAGE is the filler of choice.

The mixing directions said to lay down a line of hardener across the diameter of a 4" puddle of filler. It might have been too much hardener for the 80 degree day that I did this on because it set up FAST. I must have lost at least half of the first 2 or 3 batches I mixed before I figured out that I needed to reduce the hardener a bit.

This is the color after mixing. A consistent blue.

I laid the first coat down pretty heavy (about 1/16th - 1/8th inch).

Before the filler fully hardened, I was able to go over it with a cheese grater type of file. After it hardened, I went to work in a cross-hatch pattern with a 17" sanding board and 46 grit paper while keeping the board parallel to the front and back edges of the lid. I knew I was "done" when metal started peeking through the filler.

I then layed down a second, thinner coat.

And sanded that down with the same 17" sanding board with 46 grit paper. I'm not sure how I figured that the deck lid was smooth and level other than the sanding board was cutting consistently across the whole surface with no low spots (or very shallow low spots) because there were 46 grit scratches across the entire surface:

I then decided to use a guide coat to see how close I was. Just a black spray paint I had laying around:

Sand that away and see what black spots remain. Hmm... maybe it wasn't so level after all:

I had read about people doing a layer of regular polyester filler, sanding that and then filling the scratches and finishing leveling with a polyester glazing putty. So, I went down to NAPA and picked their least expensive two-part putty. $18 a tube:

For that one it was a 1.5" long strip of hardener to a 4" puddle:

First I filled the low spots as indicated by the guide coat. Put putty where the black spots are:

I sanded it level with the 46 grit board again and then applied a layer of glazing putty over the entire surface to fill in the 46 grit scratches and to level up any remaining low spots and wet sanded it with 220 grit. Just a side note on the experience of wet sanding such a large surface, there was some suction! I lost grip on the block several because the sanding block would just stop. Pretty soon I learned to do slower strokes and just let the suction help and keep the block flat against the surface. (NOTE: I found out later that it is bad to wet sand filler as it can absorb moisture and cause problems with paint later).

In no time, the top of the deck lid was smooth as a baby's butt and I couldn't feel any low/high/rough spots over the surface so I deemed it ready for primer:

This is the pile of material I had sanded off the deck lid next to my Harbor Freight 17" sanding board. Speaking of this board, when I was sanding my first coat of filler with it, I noticed that there were gouges being ground into the filler with each stroke of the board. I examined the paper thinking it was a loaded spot but there was nothing there. Then I noticed that the paper was bulged in middle... WTF? Upon closer inspection, I had discovered that nearly all of the (rather tiny) wood screws holding the handle to the board had ripped out! After I replaced them with #10 1" wood screws, I didn't have the problem again. So, watch out if you buy one of these:

Again, I employed the ubiquitous engine hoist to support the deck lid for primer:

Here's the first coat of primer. Besides being inconsistent from my spraying all the primer I had in the gun until empty resulting in the random dry spots, I also noticed a few spots where the 46 grit scratches hadn't been filled and a couple of poorly sanded spots:

So, I sanded the questionable areas with 80 grit and then applied some glazing putty to fill the scratches and resulting low spots and then wet sanded the whole deck lid again with 220:

I applied the DP40LF again but am much happier with the results. I think I'll call this good for now:

I needed a place to keep my fresh deck lid so I media blasted the clips and painted them and put them back in the lid and bolted it back on the car!

It's not perfect. Not a show-car quality job by any means but it's good-nuff for this car until I can get a Shelby rear-end on her and anyway, I learned a lot more about body filler than I knew when I started. I think a pro would have hammered the high spots (bare metal exposed after sanding the filler) down to ensure a perfectly level surface but because of the extent of the damage to the top of the deck lid, I was afraid that pounding down on one spot would raise up another or just generally cause more problems forcing me to remove the filler and start over and frankly, this deck lid doesn't mean THAT much to me to do this again.

The new baby.

2010-07-31T11:10:00.000-07:00

At the end of May I went back to my home town in Colorado where I grew up and went to school for my "Century" high school reunion. Okay, it wasn't a century but it felt like it. Everybody else was SO old! :-)

So after the festivities, I poked around some of the old storage buildings on the old man's farm and found something... well... old. Our 1965 Honda CB160 Sport that my brother and I rode around the ol' stomping grounds back in the day. Later, I rode a 72 Yamaha 250 MX but the old Hondas always held a place in my heart. What's not to love? The 160cc's don't exactly invoke dreams of "Easy Rider" but it was the rice rocket of it's day. With a top speed of around 80 it was a fun little twin. However, my dad replaced the 38T rear sprocket with a 60T so the top speed wasn't so... top.
Well, I'd made the trip with my brother and sister (ah yes, the long sibling road trip). My brother picked up a serviceable aluminum fishing boat for feeding some salmon with on the Columbia so we hoisted the beast up into the back and strapped her down for the 1000 mile trip home:

We towed the boat/motorcycle back home over the next 20 hours straight without incident. We're pretty beat from the trip but we still have a 300 pound motorcycle up in the middle of a boat. How the heck were we going to get it OUT? Our old buddy Darrel to the rescue. He has a pretty large shop so we gave him a call and headed straight to his place, backed the boat up into his shop, rigged a chain hoist to the rafters and... flying motorcycle (try not to let the posters on the wall distract you.. the motorcycle man, the motorcycle!)

From there, we loaded it into the back of a cargo van and hauled it back to my garage where the real work was about to begin. Yeah that's Ol' Rusty sitting back there. Like any spoiled only child that's suddenly introduced to a new baby brother, she wasn't too thrilled about the new addition to the family.

With some pangs of guilt from the neglect of my other project(s), I set to work employing the tricks I'd learned working on the Mustang. Bagging and labeling parts and doing a complete strip down immediately although I'd already replaced the rear tire so I can move the bike around between work days. I had also already purchased some parts off the net that I was missing such as those side covers on the floor.

Here it is stripped down to the frame. Not much to these bikes. They use the engine as a "stressed member" of the frame. In other words, the engine is part of the frame's structural integrity.

Here's the engine. Pretty simple.. and pretty dirty:

I keep finding uses for the engine hoist. Besides pulling engines, I've used it to paint parts, pull trees, put the floor in the mustang, support car doors, pulling the pumpkin off the rear diff, and now a motorcycle lift!

Here are all the metal parts ready to be stripped. I took the largest and most difficult items to my media blaster, Tony. The frame, tank, fenders, and swing arm (the thing the rear wheel is bolted to).

$125 later and I had the parts back. The fenders had some dents that I was able to mostly bang out with a body hammer but were still rough enough to require some body filler:

The tank also had a couple of small dents that I had to fill since I couldn't pound or work them out from the inside. All of the parts were then coated with etching primer.

After reading several forums on restoration of these bikes, I found that one of the close-matching spray paints is Rustoleum Apple Red so each part got 3 coats. The engine case got shot with AlumaBlast spray paint. I think if this were going to be a heavily used bike or a show bike, I'd have had the parts powder coated but my wife put a strict budget on this project so I kept it cheap.

The frame reassembled:

Further along:

And here it is mostly complete. I say "mostly" because there are some odds and ends such as emblems, some rubber pieces, and seat work. The tank emblems were stolen and I soon found out why. Originals cost around $150 a pair! I'm holding out for some good repros that I have my eye on.

I've done some engine work by this point as well. Rebuilt both carbs, adjusted the valves, adjusted the timing, new points, and new spark plugs.

Also, I've restored the air filters, new speedo, front brake, and throttle cables, new headlight bulb, new battery and battery cable ends, front brake perch, side covers, new tires, new tubes, new speedo pod status light bulbs, engine sprocket cover, driven sprocket, chain, and chain guard. I've also registered and insured it in the state of Oregon. This is the almost finished product:

So that's what's kept me from doing anything productive during the past couple of months. Hope anybody that regularly checks this blog can forgive my straying from the goal but now I can get back to work on Ol' Rusty... if she'll forgive me.

Priming Doors and Fenders

2010-06-14T22:11:00.000-07:00

Is it Summer yet!? It is? Could have fooled me considering that today is the first sunny day we've had here in Oregon for the past 3 weeks. Well, not only Sunny but somebody handed me my own personal 80° F (26° C) day to do with as I wished. Well, I wished to finally primer my doors and fenders. "Normal" people were going camping, fishing, hiking, the beach, etc. They have no idea of the fun they were missing. Fools.

So anyway, I had these doors. They looked okay now on the outside except I had to remove the gooey adhesive that held the vapor barriers on the inner door panels. I also worked the area over with a knotted wire wheel to remove some of the old paint that was left by the media blaster.

I could have just ignored the evil lurking within the doors but I chose instead to expose it to the world (evil hates when you do that). "Evil" in this case was our old buddy "surface rust". Well, I was joking around with another Mustang ~~victim~~ owner, James regarding sticking my hand in there with an angry angle grinder. I was... apprehensive... upon recalling my experience doing something similar up under the dashboard awhile ago. I decided to toss caution to the wind and risk one of my most favorite appendages by screwing the 3" cup brush onto the angle grinder, dipping my arm into the access holes, and going to town on the surface rust I could reach. I came out of it with everything I needed to do my day job with both hands but I couldn't get enough force on the rust to truly grind it off. I did successfully remove most of the flakes and loose oxidation, however.

I then bombed the area with a good coating of Ospho to convert the remaining surface rust after which the innards looked like this:

I then scrubbed the area with water, lacquer thinner, and metal prep. I finished it off by spreading ZeroRust with a sawed-off paintbrush and repeated the process on the other door.

I was then left with two doors and two fenders with bare, media blasted metal. Now, this metal has been sitting in the relative dryness of my garage which truly doesn't harbor much humidity since the furnace is in there but still, there was some very light surface rust starting to form. It was very subtle but I could tell it was there. Also, there were little rust spots where I had sweated on the metal during the prior prep and repair work so all of the metal was treated with a very light coating of Ospho. The Opsho was then rinsed off using water, then lacquer thinner, and then metal prep. The parts were laid out in the sun between coatings to allow evaporation.

The doors were hung from the engine hoist such that all surfaces could be reached.

The DP40LF primer was mixed 2:1 with the DP402LF hardener, filtered into my good old Harbor Freight 20 oz sprayer and the first door was sprayed with 2 thin coats. If you spray too much primer on the interior door panels, you run the risk of filling in the texture. I was trying not to do this.

While the primer on the first door was curing, I laid the fenders on a table and sprayed the outside surfaces of both. I then moved them back outside to cure, took the first door off the hoist, mounted up the second door, sprayed it, and let it cure.

This is what the fenders look like after they were sprayed with DP40LF.

Door Patches

2010-05-16T22:25:00.000-07:00

So, I decided to go with the media blaster for the doors because 1) It cost half of what dipping would have, 2) The media blaster could fit me in quickly whereas the dipper had no idea when he could get me in and, 3) The media blaster shop is half the distance from my house than the dipper is. So, $55 per door and about three days later, I had my doors back:

When I dropped them off the blaster asked me, "Do you want just the outside blasted or the entire door. Off the cuff, I said, "Uh, just the outsides". My immediate consideration was the fact that there is factory sound deadener applied to the inside of the door skins that I didn't want messed up and also figured it would double the price of each door. Also, I was in a hurry to go pick up my child from her appointment so off I went confident in my snap decision-making skills. Then I got the doors back and found that when I said "just the outsides" they took the cautious route so as to not accidentally overblast any interior portion of the door so that left the inner panel mostly unblasted. I later discovered that the sound deadener inside the doors was chpping away anyway with surface rust underneath it so I have to clean and treat it anyway. I think I'll see if I can take them back to see if they would be able to do the interior very well.

The good news is that the doors were in very good condition with the exception of a rust hole on the front lower corner of each door. This is the damage to the driver side door.

I didn't show it here but I precut a patch and used it as a template to cut around the rust. Yikes! That heavy chunk of rusty metal in there is the bottom of the bracket that holds the hinge plates in place.

This might be a good example in favor of dipping a set of doors. The dip chemical would have gotten this but I think it would have also turned the bottom edge of the door into swiss cheese and I might have had to completely replace it if I had the doors dipped instead. Guess I'll never know. Anyway, I did what I could to grind away as much rust as possible and treated it with Ospho rust converter. I then used my Dremel to grind the pinholes back to good metal:

I then welded up the pinholes from the inside.

I brushed a coat of ZeroRust into the door as car as I could reach under the metal with a brush and also coated the inner side of the patch.

And then stitch welded the patch in.

This is the what was left on the interior panel of the door after filling the pinholes.

I carefully ground the welds down with the edge of a 1.5" Dremel cutting wheel trying to damage as little of the original grain pattern as possible. An angle grinder or even a die grinder would have wiped away a lot of the texture. Finally, a coat of primer on both sides.

The same basic procedure was repeated on the passenger side door. Here's how the PO's restorer opted to handle the rust problem in the doors back in the 80s. Well, at least it didn't get much worse.

I made a patch and used it as a template to cut away the cancer hole.

I then ground away the surface rust, treated it with Ospho, and cut a small patch for the interior panel.

Welded in the small interior patch and the pinholes.

Coated the inner side of the patch and the inside of the door with ZeroRust.

Stitch welded in the patch.

Ground it level and a coat of metal etch primer.

Same treatment to the interior panel. Ground with edge of 1.5" Dremel cutting disk and primered.

I still need to deal with the interior of the doors. Whether I do it myself of have it blasted yet remains to be determined. It bothered me a bit to know how much rust is likely still hiding inside the doors around the areas that I patched. I'm going to just have to soak the area with Ospho and hope I get enough in there to stave off future pinholes. I think a majority of untreatable rust is around the door hinge brackets. Maybe if I pour some Ospho in there and slosh it around...

Show Time!

2010-04-17T21:04:00.000-07:00

The past couple of weekends, I've been going to shows. Last weekend it was the huge Portland Swap Meet and this week is the Portland Roadster Show. So, obviously, I'm not getting any real work done on the Mustang but today was turned out be kind of special so I thought I'd share. I'd like to apologize for the poor quality of the images but I forgot my camera and all I had was my cell phone. Bleh!

There were some really sweet rides like this 68 GT-350 resto-mod. This car was amazing in the details and quality of workmanship. Things like the Cobra emblem that's embossed into the sheet metal on the side of the car, the pearlescent white with metallic blue rally stripes, and many other touches. It was while looking at this car that I met one of the members of The Mustang Wranglers Mustang club, a regional chapter of the Mustang Club of America of which I'm also a member. I've always intended to join a local club but meeting this guy kind of solidified it. I'll be checking it out next week.

There were many many awesome show cars there but this is one of my favorite super cars. The Ford GT.

And, of course, the ubiquitous "Eleanor".

I found "The Wolfman" signing autographs. Back from the grave?

Next I found a really long line so I did the only natural thing a person in the big city can do when they encounter a line... stand in it.

At the end of the line I found this guy. Yeah that's me on the right. I'm the blonde guy... no wait, that's Chip Foose from a show called OverHaulin. The other guy must be me.

There's a little side story here. You see, Chip is a really nice guy. He was quiet, and just busy jamming out signatures and pictures as fast as possible but he still took the time to cut ALL the kids into the front of the line first so they came and grabbed my daughter and my wife went along to be with her and I continued to stay in line because we really weren't sure what was going on. About 20 minutes later, my wife and daughter came back with signed posters and told me that Chip had already signed a poster for me and that I was supposed to go on up and get it and meet him. Well, I hummed and hawed, feeling really uncomfortable about it and then finally went up with my daughter to see if they'd let me in and the security guys around him pretty much told me to get back in line so I did. 3 hours later I got up and the gal that was taking pictures for him said, That's ALEX and I was all like... what? Who? Me? She recognized my wife and daughter and remembered my name and said "Come on up!" and I said, "Ha! I'm good, I'm almost there... thanks!". I waited another 20 mins or so and got up there and she and the manager said, "It's Alex!" and I was pretty much just floored to be singled out. The manager said, "Since you were such a patient guy and waited in line for 3 hours after Chip told you to come up, what size are you?". I said "XL" and they whipped out a sweet jacket and Chip did a drawing and signed the back and I was completely in shock like I'd won the Lotto.

Here's the front of the jacket.

And the back with a Foose pickup truck that he sketched while I was standing there. I wasn't about to request a Mustang at this point. LOL!

He also signed the Roadster Show program.

And a poster. Plus a poster for my wife and one for my daughter. Awesome guy!

So, it was a great day and this is NOT an April Fools joke.

Breaking Down the Doors

2010-04-08T22:32:00.000-07:00

Like the fenders, the doors were out under a tarp and were also in need of attention. I want to have them stripped and repainted with the rest of the car, of course. However, before I could do anything with them, they needed to be broken down to the shells. This is to protect the glass as well as to open up my options about how to strip and/or mend them. Not only that but the guts add considerable weight to the doors making them very heavy and cumbersom to move and work on.

Here's how they sat for the past 3 years.

I'm going to go through the disassembly of a door step by step. My best pictures are of the passenger side but the first few pics are of the drivers side door so don't let that trip you up. Here's the business side of the door. The majority of disassembly involves this side but first we have to get past the arm rest, door handle, and window crank.

Those two holes in the top of the arm rest give access to two 3/8" screws. Remove those and the arm rest pops off. The door latch handle and window crank are both held on by one philips machine screw. Remove them and you're rewarded with this.

The door panel itself is held on by 16 clips that can be popped by a flat screwdriver or such using upward pressure. I found that I needed to keep the tool right at the clip to keep the clip from ripping out of the cardboard backing of the door panel.

Beneath the door panel is a vapor barrier. It's held in place by a soft, gooey seam sealer. It's just made of paper with a slick backing so it's easy to rip through if your not careful. I used a putty knife to scrape it away from the door as carefully as possible.

Here's the vapor barrier when removed as viewed from the inside surface. I'm not sure what the backing is. Possibly a thin plastic membrane? It might just be paint too.

Here's the door ready for tear-down. Something interesting about how the doors were painted. It looks like the primary exterior color was applied to the entire door and then the interior color was sprayed just around the outside edges. If you're going to color-match your interior paint for originality, this is a good place to see a sample of perfect interior paint.

I chose to start my work by first removing the window from the three screws holding it onto the regulator channel. For such little things, these three screws were a bear to remove. I think between the 6 screws removed from both doors, I saved two screws total. The others had to be removed by an extractor. The arrows in the picture below show the location of the screws. The window has to be in this position to access them. Note: From here on out, I'll have several such pictures with arrows in them. Click the pictures to zoom the image.

There are several window stops that need to be removed. The first is shown in the picture below. The small sheet metal part to the left of the hole with the screw in it was removed from the opening to it's right. The part went on the other side of the window base mounting plate (the metal part seen through the hole) and the small bolt held it on.

The rubber seal on the latch end of the door must be removed to access some other important bolts to be removed. It's just held on my five small philips screws.

Beneath that seal you see the two bolts with the arrows pointing at them. The one on the left holds a window stop that need to be removed. The one on the right holds the right-side window channel up against the inside panel of the door. This has to be removed to allow the channel to flop down so the window can be pulled out.

See that black strip of the tape on the right side of the door panel? That has to be removed.

After removing the tape, you can access the third and last window stop (the top-right arrow). Remove the bolt and the window stop block will drop down into the door where you can fish it out. This also might be a good time to remove the second window channel support nut (the lower left arrow). You can see this nut in place in the above picture.

Now, before the window can actually be removed, the side wing window needs to be removed first to allow the main window to move all the way up the left side channel. The wing window is removed by removing the two bolts at the top arrows and the two adjusting nuts at the lower arrows.

The wing window assembly actually contains the left side main window channel. Just moving this assembly to the left should allow enough clearance for the main window to be removed. To completely remove the wing window, the two adjusting studs (lower arrows above) need to be dropped down and the whole assembly positioned such that the adjusting studs can be unscrewed from the frame with a hex driver to allow the frame assembly to be slid upwards out of the door. Now that all of these parts are out of the way, the main window should come up out of the door with a little effort. I found that removing the top, fuzzy window seal in the window opening allowed more clearance for the channel rollers attached to the window mounting brackets to pass through the window opening. Remember to allow the right-side window channel to drop down away from the inside panel and allow the rollers to clear the window opening.

This is what the window looks like when removed.

Now removing the regulator mechanism is easy-breazy. Just remove the four bolts indicated by the arrows below.

Here's a shot of the regulator from inside the door. The long channel on the left is attached to the lower window mounting bracket. You can see the skinny arm on the far right (back) of the picture is inserted into the short channel mentioned above.

There's an arm on the regulator with a roller that inserts into the small channel seen above. When you remove the regulator, slide that arm back and it will drop out of the channel. You can then snake the regulator assembly out of the large access hole.

You can then remove the small channel by removing the two nuts at the locations indicated by arrows in the below picture.

The door seal rubber can just be pulled away from the door. It helps to work along it with a putty knife. Also, there's a hard section at both ends of the seal. One uses two small rubber plugs inserted into holes near where the seal contacts the side wing window and the other is a hard strip glued to the door above seal that covered the right-side channel mounting bolts (see the 10th image from the top of this post).

Here's the removed seal.

There are two weather strips attached to the inside of the window opening in the door. The inside one is fuzzy and the outside one is flat rubber. They are both held on with clips that insert through the holes indicated by arrows in the picture below. These are a real pain to remove. I had to slide a scraper blade between the seal and door next to each clip and rock the tool downward hard to pop them. A guy more experienced with trim than me would likely have a much easier time. By the way, the fuzzy inside seal is the one that may have to be removed prior to getting the window out.

The hinges can pretty much be removed any time but I did them here. Just six bolts that are screwed into moveable plates captured inside the door.

Here's what the removed hinges look like. The rust under each hinge also kind of gives us insight into how the cars were painted. With doors on.

Now the best for last. The removal of the door latch/lock mechanisms. I started with the outside door handle. To get it off, I first had to remove the latch pull-rod. All latch rods are removed the same way, by popping the clip indicated by the arrow away from the rod and then lifting the rods 90 degree bend out of its hole. The lower arrow is pointing at one of the door handle mounting screws. Remove that one and a single 3/8" nut inside the door and the door handle is removed.

Here's a shot of the removed door handle. Like the overspray from the prior "restoration"? Maaco anyone?

From the inside of the door, you can see the door latch in the middle with a rod running toward the top of the picture to the inside door handle. The rod at the top that runs to the right goes to the door lock knob. The short rod that runs from the lower left side of the latch to the lower right side of the door goes to the door key lock and the rod from the lower right side of the latch goes to the outside door handle.

To remove the inside door latch, the rod clip can be accessed by rotating the spindle a few degrees. Pop it open and remove the rod from the inside door handle mechanism. Remove the three screws indicated by the red arrows after removing the handle from the spindle, and the mechanism drops down into the door.

To remove the door key lock, remove the clip indicated by the red arrow to the right and remove the rod from the hole. Next use pliers to pull the retainer clip indicated by the arrow on the left straight towards you and the lock mechanism will drop out of the door with the rod attached to it.

Here's the removed lock and clip.

Finally, the latch assembly can be removed. Just take out the three philips screws indicated by the arrows below and the mechanism drops into the inside of the door.

Here's the various latch, handle, and lock mechanisms as one assembly.

In the bottom of the door, there's a big rubber stopper that stops the window just about where the top of the window is level with the door opening.

Here's the completely disassembled door from the outside.

And a shot from the inside.

The other door was disassembled the same way. Now I just need to decide whether to media blast the door shells or have them dipped.

Dipping:

Would clean the inside and outside surfaces of the shells and will not damage the texturing on the interior panels
May leach out after painting and damage the paint.
Twice as expensive as media blast
Possibility of "cooking" the chemical out of the seams with a torch

Media Blast:

Walnut shells are unlikely to damage the texture but could still be risky.
Can't clean the inside surfaces of the shells leaving rust to do its job
Half the price of dipping
Leaves a mess of media in the doors that would have to be cleaned out.
Possibility of treating the inner surfaces with Ospho and ZeroRust.