Is this a wrap up?

I realize that I haven't posted since August. Really, not much has gone on with the Mustang. Daniel drives it to school and work--truly a daily driver--and along the way we've had a few breakdowns and setbacks. Mostly, though, the car gets him around in style.
Recently, I was cruising Craigslist (always potential for trouble) and stumbled across--another '66 Mustang! It was misplaced in the parts category instead of the cars for sale, which I found odd, so over the next few weeks I continued to watch it to see if it would drop off. It never did.
During the Thanksgiving weekend, Daniel and I polished up his car and we took it to the annual Turkey Run here in Daytona Beach. It was a great moment for Daniel, because it was something he had vowed to do once his car was done. I was really proud of him as he enjoyed compliments from passers by.
After the weekend, I took another look on CL out of curiosity. The car was still there. I began to think that being misplaced meant that nobody could find it. I decided to give it one more week, and if it was still there, I would give the guy a call--just for fun (right!).
One week later, I called and he was excited to speak with me. So much so that I began to think I might be able to make a good deal on this car. So, a couple of days later I busted Daniel out of school and we took a two hour drive to Ocala. Along the way I gave Daniel the game plan. He would hold the cash ($2,500) and we would present him as the buyer.
When we got there, the guy eagerly showed us around the car for a bit, then I announced that Daniel was the buyer and I would step out and let them talk. Daniel presented our pre-planned story, that the $2500 was all he had and he was looking for a project. The guy wafled at first, and as I stepped back in the garage I respectfully thanked him, assured him we weren't trying to insult him, and bid him farewell. There was a brief pause, and then he gave in! He was unable to work on the car, and wanted it to go to someone who would fix it up and not just flip it. Deal!
So what did we get? It's an almost original '66 coupe. Original 289 V-8 an C4 tranny. Pony interior in passable condition. Solid floorpans. Dual exhaust. Headers. Weiand manifold and Edelbrock 4 barrel. A great starting point. It also came with a pair of replacement rear quarters and a new repro roof.
The car originally had a vinyl top, which allowed the sheet metal underneath to rust away. That's the major problem with the car. But, as Daniel says, nothing we can't handle!

Daniel's car done, so time for another one!

So, my Mustang days aren't over yet. My plan was--and still is--to park it in the back of the shop and let it sit. It won't depreciate, that's for sure. My '55 Chevy Belair has been siting back there for 15 years waiting to be worked on, so that moves to the front of the shop. Hopefully, Daniel will lend a hand occasionally on this next project.
Oh, and by the way, I explained to Daniel that this was to
be MY Mustang!

Third time is the charm (hopefully)

Well, our modified lower control arm braces lasted all of about one month before they broke again--for the second time. This time, after a quick glance at the tattered, twisted metal, I decided that the only way to solve this problem was to install new braces.
I did a search on the Internet and, much to my surprise, it seems that these brackets are some of the few that are not reproduced--at least not in the corners where I looked. So, I decided we had to make our own.
Fortunately, I have some sheet metal at the shop that matched, or it may have even been larger gauge than the originals. Without a second thought, we jacked the car up and proceeded to cut away all of

Out with the old and in with...our new cardboard brackets

the old bracketry. With a clean palette to work with, I then flatted out what was left of the old brackets and traced out their shape on an empty Cheez-it box. In hindsight, I should have traced only one, then made a copy of the other, because for some reason when I cut them out and shaped them, they were quite different from each other. However, they seemed to fit fairly well, so I forged ahead.
I used a jigsaw and a metal blade to cut out my sheet metal, then notched and formed the edges for more rigidity. A few tack welds at each joint, a little grinding and sandblasting, and I was left with a pair of not-too-bad-looking brackets.

Traced and ready for cutting

One thing we had struggled with on this side of the car, when we originally installed our new suspension components, was trying to get the lower control arm to align with the mounting bracket. It required a good bit of pushing and twisting to get it to go in place, which is what alerted me to the fact that our frame/suspension was most likely badly out of alignment. The shock towers had also been heavily welded back together at some point, probably due to a serious accident. I accepted the fact that we would probably never get the wheels aligned perfectly, but rather get it all as close as possible and live with it.

Not looking too bad...

Since I had these two new brackets detached from the frame, I decided to use the lower control arm iteslf to assist in positioning them. I ran the bolt through the brackets and the arm, and set the whole assembly up against the frame, Then, I took a couple of self-tapping screws and zipped the brackets up tight to the frame. So far, so good!
It was time to weld. My sloppy technique was to be put to the
ultimate test this time, especially since I had to work from below. The first side went pretty good, with the welder crackling along with some fairly satisfactory welds. When I moved to the other side, however, I suddenly could not find that sweet spot with the welder where it sizzles with the sound of a good solid weld. I adjusted and re-adjusted my settings, and finally crawled out and even tried running some beads on a scrap piece of metal.

Ready for welding

No luck. I couldn't get a good bead to save my life. The only thing I can think is perhaps I have a bad tank of gas. I had to refill our tank for this job and was forced to go to another dealer, as our only other local welding supply house has been swallowed up by a larger competitor and closed down. I was using this tank on the first bracket, though, so I'm not sure my theory holds water.
Anyway, after many minutes of popping welds and globbed metal, I at last got to a point that I thought would be sufficient. With my trusty (and overworked) grinder, I cleaned up my mess as best I could and covered the whole shebang with paint and undercoating. That low grade carbon steel will need all the help it can get for protection from the elements.
Yesterday, Daniel and I got up early and went to the shop to bolt the

Done! Hopefully for good

suspension back together. Our goal was to attend a local car show and swap meet that has recently started up here. Unfortunately, we were never able to get the front wheels to align in even a slightly satisfactory fashion before it got too late in the day, so we'll have to put that show off until next month.
We did finally get the wheels to track reasonably well without squealing or pulling too hard, so tomorrow we plan to find a shop in town that knows how to work with these old cars in getting the front end aligned. Hopefully, they won't laugh us off the property when they see what we have to work with!

Odds-n-ends

What car nut can resist a little chrome?

There hasn't been much work going on with the Mustang for the past few weeks. It's been terribly hot here in central Florida. My work has been keeping me busy. We've gone on a few trips. And Daniel has been driving all over town. He has done a little work--mainly installing a shiny chrome air cleaner to jazz up the engine bay.

This week, Daniel is away at a jazz camp. The Wise One is in Asheville tending to our daughter, which leaves me home by myself. So, I've been doing a little tinkering.

The grille without trim

A lot of what we have left is details, that are unfortunately easy to let slide once the car is on the road. One of the things that has bugged me is the lack of trim around our grille. The car didn't come with the trim, mainly because the car hardly came with much of a front end at all. I found a pair of trim pieces on eBay for a reasonable price a while back, and this week is the perfect week to clean them up and install them.
Since these pieces weren't on the car when we bought it, I didn't realize that there is a center piece that connects both sides, so it's back to eBay I go to find another good buy.

Left one clean, right one before cleaning

The pieces were in pretty bad shape when I got them, but they cleaned up fairly nicely. There's a few knicks and scratches on the anodized aluminum, and the paint strip in the middle was scratched up. I found a nice metallic enamel at Home Depot which is very close to the original matte gray. My only complaint is the can has one of those new-fangled triggers, which, I'm here to report, really stink. While I had the front grille apart, I took the extra time to clean

After cleaning and paint

up and repaint the pony emblem as well. I think it all turned out
pretty good.

Everything back together

Showin' off a little bit

The lack of posts isn't an indication of the lack of work on our little project.
Since we got the Mustang on the road back in the first if May, we've had a number of setbacks, both small and not so small. The biggest problem we've had to date has been the front lower control arm mount that I "welded" back in May to try and get the driver's side front wheel in some sort of alignment. I say "welded" because my handiwork lasted all of a month before it broke. Fortunately, Daniel was only a block away from home, and the control arm was still attached, somewhat, so there was no tragedy.
The car had to sit in the garage for a week before I had time to work on it. Finally, I got out there early on a relatively cool Sunday morning and took the whole assembly apart again. Taking my time this time around, I ground off all my sloppy welds and made sure all weld points were clean and in good alignment. I feel pretty confident that these welds are better and stronger than before, but only time and a (slightly) aggressive teenage driver will tell.
We've also had frustrations with our steering wheel assembly. After getting the turn signals to work, and the front parking lights to operate independent of the brake lights, we had a problem with the rear brake lights not working. Fortunately, it was a quick fix, as I remembered that I had left one wiring connector disconnected, thinking it wasn't related to the rear lights. It was, and once reconnected all was well.
We had to order new horns, because although ours cleaned up nice, the innards were obviously shot, because neither one worked. A bummer, because new horns were rather expensive, but definitely needed. When they arrived, we promptly installed them, looking forward to hearing the Mustang sing her own tune.
She indeed did sing, even without hitting the horn ring! Apparently, our used steering wheel (eBay purchase) is warped and out of round so that when the wheel is turned to certain positions, the horn contacts make a connection and the horn goes off. For now, we've disconnected the horns until we can pull the wheel and try to resolve the problem.

The proud owner at his first car show

In spite of all this, Daniel has been enjoying the car, and this past weekend he got to show off his hard work at his first car show. New Smyrna Beach hosts a monthly cruise night on the main drag downtown, so we made a plan to attend. The Wise One had yet to ride in the car, so it was a great honor to have her accompany us. I was a nervous wreck as we made the 20 minute drive, because it was the first time (to my knowledge) that the car was run over 55mph for an extended period.
She ran smooth and true though, and we arrived early enough to get a prime parking spot in the middle of the show.
Daniel spent the next two hours holding court with all the old timers who came up to him wanting to know "who belongs to this car". The Wise One and myself sat back a bit to give him space as he described all of the work he had done to the car. I may be prejudiced, but it seemed like his little car was one of the more popular of the show. It surely is an eye-catching paint scheme, even if it is a bit amateurish.
Even with the heat of the afternoon sun, Daniel had a great time and I'm sure there will be many more shows in his future. And hopefully, each one will show a little more progress on the car.

Ironing out the kinks

I had a feeling, as we got deeper into this project, that once we got it on the road there would be many more hours of tweaking to get the little Mustang right. And....I was right.
Lately, it's electrical issues that continue to haunt us. When I reconnected the heater many months ago and was surprised that it actually came on, I had a brief moment of hope that maybe, just maybe, the electrical system would be fairly intact. As it turns out, we've now replaced almost all of the major electrical components on the car in an attempt to make everything work.
Our latest, and ongoing, battle has been with the brake and turn signal lights. The brake lights work fine (which surprised me because I had read that the Ford brake switch was rather primitive) but when Daniel applied the brakes, the front parking lights came on as well. A minor issue, I felt, since at least people would know when he is stopping, both in the rear and in the front! Not something to address right away for sure. We also had a problem with the turn signals not working, with all four corners flashing rapidly when the lever was applied.
Yesterday, though, I decided to attack the problem head on. I spent quite a bit of time prior to the assault studying the Mustang's exterior wiring diagram, and felt pretty confident in a couple of possible solutions. Once again the steering wheel came off, as well as the gauge console, for better access to the wiring. I started by disconnecting the rear brake light pigtail, thinking there might be a short in the trunk wiring (which we hadn't replaced). The parking lights up front came on nice and bright when we hit the brakes. First dead end!
Then I pulled the main harness from the steering column apart, because all of these light circuits come together in the turn signal switch. We had replaced the turn signal mechanism, so I felt pretty sure that was good. With everything still energized, we applied the brakes and took readings off of various terminals, which ended up not telling us anything out of the ordinary. Another dead end.
Next, I began the final assault of pulling the harnesses out  from behind the dash and looking for any obvious knicked or damaged wires, thinking a back feed could be the only reason. I did find a connector that had three wires going out of it, and all three wires were skinned back and bare. A possible clue!
Scanning my diagram again, I could find nothing that resembled that connector on the exterior lighting schematic. This connector must be for some of the interior electrical.
Still thwarted, I retreated in for lunch and downloaded the interior wiring diagram. There are a number of circuits that power both interior and exterior, which was illustrated clearly. The parking and brake lights were identified on this diagram as well, so I backtracked from the parking lights until I came across...the emergency flashers toggle switch. There were three wires going to this switch: the two front parking lights and the rear brake lights. Eureka!
Eating a little quicker now, I surmised that the toggle switch must be defective and causing a short, effectively connecting the front and back lights. Opening up the glove box (where Ford conveniently located this switch) I found the toggle switch in the "on" position. Could it be as simple as that? Switching it off, I hit the brakes again and Daniel reported no lights in the front. I then hit the turn signal lever and...success again! All of that work to figure out it was simply a switch turned on. Ahh, life with a classic car!
Feeling pretty cocky, I reassembled the dash and steering wheel, checked the turn signals once more, and strutted in the house happy for a good days work.
Last night, Daniel came home from visiting friends to report that the rear tail lights are now not working. The battle continues...

Wax on, wax off

In spite of the lack of posts over the past couple of weeks, a lot has been going on with the project. Unfortunately, much of the work has been ironing out the hundreds of kinks that keep popping up. To name a few:

• Turn signals not working
• Horn not working
• (New) exhaust manifold leaking
• Oil drips on the floor
• Door latches and locks malfunctioning
• Wheels so far out of alignment that they can't be aligned

Of these, the alignment was one that I have worried about for a long time. As I've noted, the frame and whole underside of the car was beat up really bad, combined with our not-so-scientific approach to replacing frame pieces.

The "repaired" mounting bracket

The week after Daniel's prom, we took the car to the alignment shop. I should've made note of the red flag when the manager told me that, even though it was an old school alignment, he was sure they could do it. This is the regular shop where I take all of my trucks to have tires install, so I felt a little loyalty to him and decided to let them have a shot at it. Eight hours later they called to tell me it wasn't possible, because the driver's side lower control arm was so far out of position that they couldn't align it. The mechanic tried talking me into some adjustable control arms, but I declined. Back into our shop went the car, and up on blocks. We disassembled the whole front driver's side, and I cut the mounting brackets off from the frame. With our cut-off wheel, I took a quarter inch of metal off of each piece and welded them back on. It was sloppy, to be sure, but I think it should hold.
Back to the alignment shop, where, after another full day, they told me that while the driver's side was now perfect, the tech couldn't get the upper arm on the passenger side to loosen so he could shim it out. They said the whole
spring and control arm assembly would need to come off to get the shims in.
Politely, I told them thanks, bummed a pack of shims from them, and took the car home. I figured that they were trying to loosen the arm with the weight of the car loading it, and I was right. After jacking it up again and removing the wheel, It was a simple matter to loosen the control arm nuts and shim it out.
Based on their measurements, the driver's side needed to be shifted out from the bottom a quarter inch, and the passenger side needed the same amount shifted on the top. I feel like we're as close as we can be, so we're going to do the toe-in ourselves and take a pass on the tire shop.

Still gotta get that horn working

Electrically, I knew our luck wouldn't hold out and it didn't. All of the major things seem to work, such as starting, headlights, brakes and wipers, but we have some niggling minor things that are going to take time to troubleshoot.
Most notably are the turn signals. When we powered up the car, we noticed that the front parking lights come on when the brake pedal is applied. The turn signals also failed to operate, flashing rapidly together whenever the lever is pushed. Suspecting a bad turn signal mechanism, I replaced it with a new one that also included the wiring harness. The old harness was pretty chewed up under the dash, so I though this simple fix would eliminate any shorts. Wrong!
I then turned my attention to the turn signal relay, deciding that for a couple of buck we should at

Puttin on a little shine

least rule it out. Again, no luck, and that's where we've stopped. I need to be in the right frame of mind to start tracing indivdual wires looking for shorts. Definitely a job for next weekend!
The door latches have also snookered us. I've now had both doors completely trimmed out, and then completely disassembled at least twice on each side. Things keep getting jammed or fail, which necessitates yet another disassembly. This latest is the crappy clip that holds the driver's lock in place has come loose, so gain, next weekend I'll be taking that door panel off again.
In the meantime, Daniel and I try to do at least one or two things on the car each day. I'm adamant that he will not get it to a "functional" state and stop working. That's my own bad habit, so we're going to power forward. Today we finally got some time to start wet sanding our paint job. We tackled the trunk lid, and after about 45 minutes it wasn't looking half bad. The down side is that when it's nice and shiny, I can see all of the little divots and blems that I thought I had resolved after weeks of bondo and sanding. Frustrating! However, I continue to remind myself that it's a daily driver, and all done on a budget. Besides, it looks pretty damned good scooting down the road!

On the road again!

Home in our driveway

Well, the little Mustang is safely in her new home, which is our garage at home.
The morning after we painted her, we rolled her out on a cool early Sunday morning, took a deep breath, and pointed her to the house. It was only a mile and a half, but it was a long journey for Daniel and I. I had planned to bring it to the house for the day and just tinker and tune, but once we had it in the driveway Daniel asked me what reason did we have for taking it back to the shop. After all, it was registered, insured and, well, I could think of no reason. So....

Underlayment and carpet going in

This was one week before Daniel's prom, to which Daniel had set a goal of driving the Mustang. I asked him to commit to a week of hard work after school each day to get the interior installed and the car safe for driving his girlfriend, to which he agreed. And I have to say he came through. Every afternoon he came home ready to work.
The Wise One graciously allowed us all the time we needed in the evenings, so that by Thursday night things were looking pretty good.

Wrassling with the "molded" carpet

Then Daniel added a twist: could he drive it to school Friday morning? This was a moment that I had been looking forward to, but also dreading. All of our work, our mistakes, our learning curves, our sweat and pains came down to the moment when it was time to put it on the road. Thinking hard to come up with some reason not to, I could find no argument against, and said yes. I can tell you this was one nervous Dad all day Friday until he was safe at home again!
Of course, he was beaming after being the talk of campus that day, but that was what he had been looking forward to himself for a long time.
Saturday was spent with little details, tightening, shining and generally getting ready for prom. Just
like a doting mom with her daughter! It was all worth it, though, to see Daniel, all dressed up, slip behind the wheel and drive off into the setting sun to pick up his date.
The night brought one more check for Daniel's bucket list, as the prom was held inside the Daytona Speedway in the clubhouse. Each time we go to a swap meet at the track, Daniel has vowed to someday drive his own car through the famous tunnel into the infield. That night, dressed in a snappy black tux, his girlfriend seated next to him, he proudly cruised into the infield in the little Mustang.

Things are coming together

He had a chance to have fun with the sheriff's deputy who was keeping tabs on the kids. The deputy approached him as he parked and demanded to know who's car he was driving. At first he refused to believe it was Daniel's, but eventually he was convinced and gave him some nice compliments. I'm happy to see Daniel enjoy these accolades, because he really has
earned the right to them. From day one, I have said that if he wanted a car like this, he would have to earn it. And he has. As well as the compliments.

Time to enjoy the rewards!

We're far from done, but Daniel is driving it daily as we continue to tweak. There's the front end that is in bad need of alignment. There's still a good portion of the interior to install. We need to do some tuning on the motor. We have yet to wet sand and polish our paint job. And yesterday the passenger door suddenly decided it didn't want to open. Plenty of more posts to come, for sure!
Oh, and by the way, that's our car in the header now!