Project thread intro: After watching me troll Craigslist for many hours, and listening to me talk about needing a project, my wife opened Pandora's box by buying me this for our first anniversary: As the title suggests, it's a 72 with a 351w in with with a C4. With much gusto, and no forethought I went and pulled the engine and trans immediately.... The engine is now at the machine shop getting fitted for a 4" stroker crank, and I just sold the C4 and bought a 4 speed toploader to replace it. Unfortunately with the engine at the machine shop, I'm forced to concentrate on the bulk of the restoration effort; the body work, small rust spots, welding up trim holes, etc. I must say I'm overwhelmed and not really sure how to tackle such a large project. At this point I'm just trying to get everything disassembled to the point where I can do the body work and then get it painted. Once it's painted I can start reassembling. I'm trying to break it up into small pieces, so here's what I've done so far: Pulled the engine and trans Removed everything from the engine bay so it can be coated/painted Removed inner door panels/components
So right now I'm working on getting the doors pulled apart, and I have some questions on how to proceed. I pulled the handle, arm rest, and window crank off, and then the door panel. One of the things I'm curious about is the area outside of the vinyl door panel (arrows below). What is it? It feels like a pieces of plastic was stretched over the door metal and glued in place from the factory, or maybe it's textured paint? Do I paint over it, or peel it off and replace it? Also, to what extent would you take apart the door to get it ready for paint? Everything except the sheet metal itself, i.e. door panel, window mechanism, lock/latch mechanism, window track, trim, etc.?
It is metal with a textured finish. I took a wire brush in my drill and ran it at a low speed to clean out all of the dirt in the texture and it brought it right back to life, then had a light coat of epoxy primer put over it. Too heavy of a coat and the texture will disappear
"a 72 with a 351w in with with a C4. With much gusto, and no forethought I went and pulled the engine and trans immediately." what was it's problem (s)?
Were you able to get a good coating inside the door? Mine has a nice thick layer of what appears to be tar that I'll have to remove first. Should be fun. 71gold, the lack of forethought was just is just because I will have an engine ready long before I have the car ready. But the engine was shot; main bearings and crank main journals were really rough, so it needed rebuilt.
It all depends on what kind of resto you want to do. In most cases...complete disassembly of the door is not required for a simple paint job.
I didn't have the painter do anything with the inside of the door because I am going to coat the inside of both doors with Rust Bullet Black Shell before they go back together
So I need a little help. I'm trying to decide what direction I want to take the car, and how crazy I want to get with it. The machine shop should be finished with my 351W block in the next week or so, so I can get the 408 short block put together soon. That being said, I think I'm going to sell the assembled short block on craigslist because the car is nowhere near needing an engine, and I need the money to fund the next part of the project: the RC-107 Mustang II conversion. With the MII suspension I have a lot of available engine options. I keep scheming on what kind of engine I want to put in, and how much power I want to make and blah blah blah. I need someone to bring me back down to Earth. At some point if I get too crazy with the engine I will have to put some serious time/energy/money into the suspension and chassis to make it hold up/hook up. That begs the obvious question, "how much power do I want/need"? The answer to that is, I don't know.... Obviously it would be sweet to put a 545ci stroker in making 700-800 hp, but what needs to be done to a car to make that work? Will leaf springs and Caltracs hold up to something like that? Do I need to put in all kinds of crazy bracing? If I ever want to run it at the drags then I need a roll cage. Anyway, I need some thoughts/help here. Where is the line; at what hp levels do you start having to put in new rear ends, and subframe connectors, etc? Thanks all. -Eric
Made a little more progress today on pulling the interior out. I think I've done a pretty good job of taking pictures of everything and labeling/boxing things up, but all the vacuum hoses running to the heating/air makes me a little nervous. Hopefully I can get that put back together someday.... Can anyone tell me where to get replacement insulation (or whatever that black tar fabric stuff is against the firewall)? Also, there is a bunch of tar/sealant where the door frame meets the floorboards, and in the pans under where the seats sit. What's the best way to remove all of this? Should I remove it? I don't think painting over it is a good idea, but I want to make sure that I can seal those seams up with something to prevent rust in the future.
