[TPR] Mach I update

[Asa Jay Laughton]

Today saw both joy, and depression.

Sam and I picked up a rudimentary car rotisserie from a long-time 
Mustang friend.  He's restored several early Mustangs, all pre-69.  He 
currently has four in his garage and they look as if they just came off 
the showroom floor, they are immaculate.

Unfortunately, this rotisserie is made for the early cars, which are a 
little narrower than the 1971, 2 and 3.  I'll have to mod the front 
frame attachment by widening it about three inches.  I might also mode 
the whole thing to be easier to work with.  He picked up a new one a few 
years ago that is the cat's meow, wish I could have borrowed -that- one 
but it's on a 1967 Shelby GT350 (or was it 500, I forget), so it's not 
available.

Sam helped some today to get the front bumper off, the rear bumper off, 
and the rear valence.  After that he helped hand me tools under the car 
as I disconnected everything on the transmission (except for the coolant 
lines, need fare-nut wrenches and didn't have them), the drive-shaft, 
left header and left exhaust system.

Next time I need to bring something to drain the gas tank into (it feel 
like it has about 10 gallons), then I can pull the tank.  I need to 
bring a good board or a transmission jack to get the trans out.  There 
is still a lot of little stuff to pull in addition to all the front 
suspension.  I keep shooting bolts with PB Blaster until the day I 
decide to tackle them.

So... the depressing part...
The more I take apart, the more rust I find.  The front floor pan was 
replaced at some time in the past with a straight piece of sheet metal 
(not properly stamped or shaped).  It's still solid but looks weird.  
The passenger side floor pan at the front is rusting through in some 
places, not a lot but it's gotta go.  The driver's side rear floor pan 
is rusted through just ahead of the rear seat.  It too needs to go and 
get replaced.

When we took the front bumper off, the driver's side attach pretty much 
came off with it.  The rust was so thick and popped off easily with a 
fingernail.  I'm not sure how I'll get that fixed, but I'm certainly in 
for some metal work.

The more I get into this, the more I can see this car will probably 
never be "restored" like most folks like to restore cars.  There are a 
lot of places around the car that have been hammered, beat up, and in 
general, used abused, rode hard and put away wet.  It's going to be 
quite the job just to get the unibody straightened away with new metal, 
cleaned up and prepped, without worrying about thinks like carpet.

Costs are going up.

Asa  Jay

-- 
Asa Jay Laughton - W7TSC, MSgt, USAFR, Retired
Spokane County ARES-RACES Net Manager
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http://w7tsc.org
http://www.teampanteraracing.com