A woman's project: 1968 Mustang Fastback Eleanor

8

82firebird

My wife has always loved the 67-68 Fastback body style and decided to make her first into an Eleanor, her dream car. The car should have been crushed it was in such bad shape. We both have full time jobs so we work on the car when we can. This is our first project of this level in terms of replacing panels, etc. We have learned quite a bit and met many great people who have helped us along the way.

Day 1:
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40 year old tree growing in the cowl..
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After some vacuuming, Ford's rustproofing at its finest; actually it wasn't as bad as we were expecting! We may be able to get away with replacing each end, the middle seems solid but we'll decide after blasting.

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Grinding down the welds. (Forgive the outfit- it was 92!)

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Mostly finished out back.
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We decided to open up the torque box and coat the inside after blasting since we were digging so deep into things.
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Then we got the rear seat floor in place.
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And we fit the floor.
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And welded.
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First coat of epoxy primer.

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We had to fabricate some new brake line brackets, unfortunately the others were beyond repair, and they don't repro these.

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We used Tiger Seal here...

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Since we replaced the entire floor, we had to re-weld all of the brackets for seats and trim. We took the fold down out of our other fastback to measure and make sure each bracket was in the correct location. As tempting as it is to steal the fold down, we are planning on keeping it with the other car but our eyes are open for another.

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View from the inside of the wheel well:

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A couple last shots of what it looked like after the first coat of primer, along with the body filler and seam sealer.

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2nd coat of epoxy...

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Smooth seams..

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Here is a shot of one of the air duct all nice and primed:

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Since we're going with the Rod and Custom suspension in the front, they require the shock towers removed. These custom inner aprons from Mustangs to Fear are what we are going with instead of the small patch panels that R&C supply with the kit. Again, just mocking it up; cradle needs to be welded in before these get welded:

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View from underneath:

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Patched, clean and preped the frame rails for the cradle:

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Lauren cleaned and primed both lower and upper cowls. Next step was seam sealer and then paint:

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Lastly we replaced the driver's side, rear part of the drip rail. What a nightmare:

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IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v679/theaaronmilla/CIMG1849.jpg[/IMG]

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Now for the exciting part!

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We had quite a bit of work to do to get the gaps between the replacement trunk lid and new quarters just right. Basically lots of cutting, welding and grinding. It was well worth the extra time.

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For a little cleaner look we decided to weld the seam between quarter and filler panel in the trunk channel.

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We will probably end up going back and cutting the seam line into the filler/quarter from the outside.

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Also spent some more time on the taillight panel gaps.

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And we finally managed to get the valance gaps to look ok.

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With the exception of the bumper, the back end is pretty much done for now.

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After we trimmed our fender aprons to allow for better clearance of the upper control arms, we realized the panels were not as ridgid as we would have liked. . I think it really dressed up the openings and the panels are now much stronger.

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We also finshed up most of the rough stuff and cleaned up my ugly welds then Lauren shot some primer.

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We used U-Pol Raptor on the front end. We were very pleased with it but after seeing SPI Bedliner in person, we will give it a shot next time. We spent some serious hours on the engine bay, it feels very good to see it painted and completed.

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Rockers are bonded on. It was quite a bit of work to cut the rockers and get everything the way we wanted it but overall we are very happy with how it looks. To us it was definitely worth the extra effort.

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We worked quite a bit on getting our body lines just right. I give Lauren most of the credit here, she really worked her butt off. We shot some primer to see how things were looking all one color, it was nice to finally see the results of all the sweat and blood. We need to touch up a few spots but overall we are very pleased.

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We wanted to take the car to an All Mustang show at Summit Racing so Lauren primed the entire car. She spent some serious time getting the lines just right.

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The show was a success. We made this a goal so that it would get our butts in gear on this thing. Had we not done it, the car would be no where near the state it's in now. Here are such pics from the show:

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That looks great. I really like the gaps and the way everything lines up. I remember years ago when I was married, but my wife wouldn't help, so I had to divorce her.
 
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