67 Mustang heart transplant surgery in progress...

Here are the new goodies. Sorry for the blurry pic.

Everyones favorite, lolspringz along with the 1" sway bar and hardware and new upper arms

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1" lowering front coil springs, Grab-a-Trak rear shocks, KYB front shocks, roller spring perches, roller idler arm, inner and outer tie rods, tie rod adjusting sleeves, and shelby drop template.

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If you don't feel like dealing with the cowl, there's always repo body shells.

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Expensive, but it's all new sheet metal.
 
My new woe. The crack on the driver's side fender which looked bad looks even worse today after more cleaning.

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Shock tower replacement looks imminent.
 
Looking good! My neighbor just put a brand new 302 (bored out to 306) Ford Racing motor in his Cobra, it's making about 500hp at the crank and well over 400hp at the wheels.
 
Looking good! My neighbor just put a brand new 302 (bored out to 306) Ford Racing motor in his Cobra, it's making about 500hp at the crank and well over 400hp at the wheels.

I can't wait until I get to that point. 400 whp is what I'm hoping for in the end.

My latest work over the weekend was to tear apart the passenger fender and start cleaning it up.

I completely removed the front end of the car

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This is what awaited me after getting the fender off.

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Cleaned up the frame rail some

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Overall I'm pretty pleased with the condition of the frame rail on each side. There is a bit of rust in the seams but its not too bad. I'll clean it up as best I can and POR-15 on top.

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One thing I'm not too pleased about with Ford

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Large possibility of rust from the inside out on the frame rails with stuff like this. From what I can feel and see it just looks like surface rust on the inside. Luckily my frame rails are solid so I don't really need to worry too much about it. I'll try and clean them and then spray POR-15 in there and hope for the best. The other side looks much better, I can't even see surface rust.
 
I don't think there's much cleaning you can do. That product seems to be a rust converter and protectant, so you should be fine to just spray it on- the picture there even shows they sprayed it on over whatever was there. How grungy are yours anyway?
 
Its kind of hard to tell. From what I can feel and see it just seems like surface rust. Although there is bound to be a good bit of dirt in there.
 
I just did a bit of research on cleaning these out. Unbolt what you can to get as many access holes as possible, take a wire coat hanger and stretch it out, stick it in and flail it all around to scratch off whatever you can. Then get yourself an air compressor and air gun, and/or a shop vac. Stick the air gun in a hole on one end and let it blow, you should get all sorts of dust and crap flying out of the holes. Do this with different holes until you stop getting crap coming out. You may need to go back to the coat hanger and break up any bigger pieces that wouldn't fly out. Shop vac with a tube or hose attached stuck in there can also work.

Once you've got that done, you should be fine to hit it with rust converter through one of those 360? sprayers. An alternate is to pick up a garden sprayer and fill it with rust converter and spray the living crap out of the inside.

Also: Cowl cleaning anyone?

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I've got loads of pictures to post but keep running out of time at the end of the day to post them. Basically I finished stripping the passenger side and got it painted yesterday. I also started reassembling the suspension in preparation to trailer it to a buddies house. I'm only going to be putting the upper control arms, spring saddles and springs back on just to make my life easier. No shocks, should be ok for trailering duty.

A couple of weird things I notice yesterday. The thread on the upper arms that connects to the shock tower is completely different on each arm. I think the diameter is the same but one is a very fine pitch thread while the other is coarse. :blink: I was trying to install a fine threaded nut onto the coarse stud before I realized this.

Also, I was looking at the driver's shock tower from the engine bay and noticed that where the upper control arm mounts the metal surrounding is just....broken I don't have another way of putting it. It must of been there the whole time but I don't ever remember seeing before. I'll see if I can find a picture.
 
Is the shock tower not weldable?
 
It should be. You can also order entire replacement shock towers for ~$110. Odd that it would be broken though. Do you know the history on the car? Seems like it had some not insubstantial damage previously with all that you're finding.
 
Is the shock tower not weldable?

Someone already tried:

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It didn't work out too well. It looks like some kind of Frankenstein creation. Plus both have identical 12" long thru cracks. Welding will only make it worse by creating heat affected zones. It's best just to replace them.
 
It should be. You can also order entire replacement shock towers for ~$110. Odd that it would be broken though. Do you know the history on the car? Seems like it had some not insubstantial damage previously with all that you're finding.

Don't know the complete history but the body is straight. Haven't seen any weird frame damage or signs that it had been on a puller. This problem is actually pretty common with 67/68 Mustangs. From what I understand it is the result of running positive offset wheels plus really worn suspension components. I also may have accidently jumped it 1 or 2 times :mrgreen:
 
That was in the back of my mind as well. Old car, worn components, stress :lol:

They weren't made to last this long anyway.

Good luck with it, don't let this all turn you off of it, it's so worth it once you get it done.
 
That was in the back of my mind as well. Old car, worn components, stress :lol:

They weren't made to last this long anyway.

Good luck with it, don't let this all turn you off of it, it's so worth it once you get it done.

It scared me at first but after looking into it I found that it is common and it really isn't very difficult to replace either. Plus I will get a lesson in welding which will be good. I don't plan on ever stopping on this :)

Also I found a picture that better describes the damage I was talking about earlier:

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That is from a fellow shock tower sufferer from stangnet who is actually in Germany.
 
Yikes.

My motor mounts are slightly cracked, but those will be replaced when the motor is dealt with. Glad I don't have these problems. Though I can relate to the vacuum line, coolant line, wire harness and aircon line all ziptied together :lol:
 
Been a pretty hellish few days getting the car ready to head over to my friend's for shock tower replacement. Plus, the car attempted seppuku on the way. When I finally got it loaded on the trailer and left my spotter saw a puff of smoke from either the truck, trailer, car or other. I pulled over later down the road and got in the car. Hmm no power...Then I get this lovely burning smell. I pop the hood to find my entire headlight wiring harness burned to a crisp. I'm lucky the damn car didn't burn to the ground.

My guess as to what happened: One of the tow straps I was using was pinching an unused wire from the headlight harness against the frame. I guess it short circuited and burned out the entire harness. My only hope is that that was the extent of the damage.

In other news, the car looks damn apocalyptically awesome right now. No hood, no fenders, no front fascia, no radiator. It's just sitting with the engine in the open for all the world to see with 4 meaty tires all the way around.

I'll take some pictures tomorrow.
 
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