New sound for our Mustang

Even Santa helps out with the project

Santa has come and gone, but he didn't leave without dropping a little something off for Daniel. In this case, it was a new stereo system for the little Mustang.
Daniel's brother, T.J., is visiting this week. T.J. is a sound engineer by trade, so it seemed like a good fit to have him help Daniel and I get the stereo components installed. With my head full of visions of making huge progress with a pair of extra hands, we went down to the shop today to make things happen!
I know this is jumping ahead a little in the process, but I feel it's important and helpful to keep Daniel's motivation to see some tangible progress. The interior of the car will be sealed off from dust and paint spray, so our work shouldn't suffer any damage as we continue to massage the sheetmetal.

Looks like some serious supervision

As usual, things never go as planned. About the only thing that did happen as expected was T.J. getting a taste of how frustrating this project can be sometimes. We first had a bit of difficulty fitting our new package tray in. Once that was positioned, we marked where our speaker holes needed to be, and, using the supplied template for the speakers, cut our holes. Of course, our screw holes didn't line up with the factory ones, so I crawled into the trunk with my handy Dremel to rout out some new holes for the mounting screws. After getting two done quickly and cleanly, the Dremel bit bound up and snapped off, leaving that portion of the installation incomplete.
On to the front, where we unpacked our new dash pad and tried a

Some finish work

test fit. It dropped in perfectly, so with renewed vigor we began to bolt it in place. Again the gremlins appeared, this time in the form of one of the studs on the new dash pad pulling out because we overtightened it. Back out with the dash pad, to set it up and re-glue the stud in place.

New dash pad going in

The new stereo is a modern reproduction of the original radio, with electronic innards and modern conveniences like USB ports and bluetooth compatibility. Unfortunately, our dash suffered some "surgery" in the past and the opening is no longer "original". Even though it was cut, the sheetmetal was merely bent back instead of completely cut out, so it seems like I may be able to straighten out the cut sheetmetal in the dash and make it work properly, but the jury is still out.
T.J. is leaving tomorrow, so he won't get the satisfaction of seeing the final installation. However, with the way things go on a car restoration, that could be months from now!

Little by little, piece by piece

Quarter windows in and on track

After last weekend, Daniel asked me if we would be able to drive his car to the Spring swap meet here in Daytona, held on the last weekend in March. I pointed out to him that it was 120 days or so until then, and if we worked diligently it might be a possibility. He then boldly stated "100 days!" which caught me by surprise and gave me a chuckle. Hey, I'd be happy to have him prove me wrong!
Progress was slow this week, but we did get a good afternoon's work in one day this past week and got some sandblasting done (yes, there's still more of that to come) and had a chance to poke around on the little motor. We also began reinstalling the rear side windows. It continues to surprise me as to how beat up this poor car was. Even the window regulators were bent up! Not to be discuraged, I spent the day today straightening and tweaking until the windows seem to operate pretty darned good. At least I'm sure they won't be falling out of the tracks!

Looks pretty good from this angle

We also have started working on the front fenders. Today I shot a good coat of undercoating on each of them, and even got to hang the passenger side on temporarily. It was immediately apparent that our amatuerish repair of the fender well and radiator support is going to cause us fit problems. I'm not getting too worked up about it yet, though. At least not until we make a concerted effort at fitting the fender properly. For now, it's just fun to see a major body part on the car.

Not so good from this angle

We're going to try and start up the motor sometime this week--maybe
tomorrow. I've taken the plugs out and they don't look half bad. The plan is to just fire it up for a few seconds, and if no parts or pieces come flying out of the exhaust manifold, it's going to get a paint job and dropped back into the car.