Here are the original Ram Air hood, ‘new’ fenders, and front & rear valances in the Ram before taking them to the soda blaster.

The sucky part about this whole thing is that the ‘blasters kept my stuff for over a month, and it turned out the soda blasting didn’t really work very well. The hood was so etched I needed to spend an afternoon sanding it down anyway, and the fenders suffered the usual front end damage these cars are famous for (the hood’s longer than you think, people). Didn’t get a lot done during that time except nit noids that I didn’t get pics of (mostly wasted time).

Today, we got him fired up, and so far so good. The engine sounds AWESOME and revs Very freely. After some ‘fiddlin’ with the timing and carb, things got even better. Then, I noticed a little bit of a stumble and decided to RTFM. Once I discovered that the needle valves worked a little differently than I’d thought, I made a few more adjustments, along with advancing the timing to where my friends at 7173Mustangs indicated that Clevelands prefer, and Wow – whatta difference! Even got a “Holy Sh!t” out of Jim when he blipped the throttle a few times. I can’t wait – this is going to be a fun car!