So here we are a the 2nd Annual Joe’s Bar & Grill car show, still missing Jim. Lots of cool cars and cool people, too. Grabbed a couple of pics after having an OK day.

I call this one, “Irony.”

So, today’s a bittersweet day. We’re here once again for the Goodfellow AFB Rec Camp Car Show, now called ‘The Ruckus at the Rec Camp,’ and once again, Horny Mike was invited to show up. We had a blast, he’s a cool guy, and it was a great time for everybody… except the Wing Commander wasn’t very impressed with Mike, and I don’t think will be inviting him back. So, that sucks.

The really sucky part of the day is that my pal Jim Eimer is missing from the festivities. He lost his battle with sepsis in August, and now I’m pretty much sittin’ around this car show by myself that’s been one of our favorite annual events for the past 14 or 15 years. I miss Jim, and even though I’m surrounded by friends and even making new ones, it’s just not the same not having he and his Jeep parked in the next slot. Gonna miss ya, Man… but I’m still coming out every year as long as I can to keep the tradition going. Hopefully, we’ll get your Jeep healthy again to win some more awards in the future.

For now though, here are a few shots of the Mustang from the day.

This one was a cool guy who actually bought the awesome 1970 Boss 347 restomod (not a real Boss ‘anything,’ actually) that’s been seen around town for the past several years. Jim would’ve loved that car.

Got a pic with Horny Mike as he was making his rounds.

Despite the heat, I decided to head over to the car show today.  It was in the parking lot of the San Angelo Stadium/Glenn Middle School football field… and there was zero shade to be had.  The Hot Air Balloon Fest was basically cancelled because the winds were blowing too hard to fly, so they were grounded… but we were sure thankful for the breeze.  Frank didn’t win an award this time out, but there were a LOT of cool cars.

Here’s the obligatory poser pic:

And here’s my view for the day (I never get tired of looking at this car).

** Edit:  Something that took about a day to notice after posting on Facebook (and after around 14 months following the initial installation), but apparently my wife was the first and only person to notice that the plates don’t match – they’re consecutive numbers, back to font.  I’m just glad nobody “official” happened to notice… especially, since the current registration sticker (renewal) was still at home (since I’d failed to swap it out when I got it).  Wow.  Livin’ on the Edge!

OK – so I’ve started this blog several times over the years.  I tend to do things to my cars, and even though Facebook is a quick and easy way to update your friends on what’s been going on, the blog is a more permanent record that won’t suffer the fate of Facebook antics.  The reason I’ve gone through so many iterations of this, is because I’ve had a few different hosts, and had to change them a few times.  The first was on my personal webserver when I had a static IP address… which was awesome because I was in complete control.  Then I uploaded to an online host located in Canada, and when they changed their payment methods, it made keeping the automated payments working without hassle too much of a PITA to continue with them.  So, I have recently relocated my website to the current host, which checks off all the blocks for me… except that now I have to backfill everything to repopulate the blog.

Bear with me – this will take awhile… but hopefully I’ll get it all back together so the record of the restoration of my Mustang is once again complete.

Meanwhile, here’s the most current pic of the Mustang taken at the Joe’s Bar & Grill car show in October 2016 – won a Best In Class award.

After the new parts arrived and I finished up getting the clusters back together, I took a few weeks off due to weather and other various things.  Then we got a nice day in December, so I decided to put everything back together.  I’d also managed to trash the interior even further in the course of wiring up the new tach (which is independent of the factory non-tach harness, along with trying to tidy up some of the wiring behind the panel.  I still haven’t gotten the speedometer cable to stay put on the backside of the cluster, so I’ll need to pull the cluster one more time to fix that issue.  I also managed to mess my back up through this process by over-doing it, and now I’m living with some new issues of sciatica and lower back pain.  Yay.

The new RCCI tach works GREAT! Also looks WAY cooler than the factory clock… which there’s a factory clock in the center console, as well as on the stereo’s display – so I think we’re covered.

Today, we’re performing a bit of surgery on the clusters.  The Rocketman Custom Cougar Innovations conversion tachometer (new life for a non-function factory clock), is being swapped into the cluster, along with a set of LEDs to replace the factory incandescent dash lights.  I also removed the factory ammeter from the center gauge cluster and swapped in a Bosch voltmeter (I picked that one because the of the downward sweeping needle).  During the course of the procedure, I wound up smoking the printed circuit on the backside and had to order a new one to get things back in shape.  Also decided to remove the blue bulb covers which gave the gauges the green glow… white LEDs are MUCH brighter, will take less power and make less heat.  While I was at it, and since I had to order a new printed circuit anyway, I grabbed a new lens kit for the cluster… MUCH better.

So today I decided to take on swapping the tachometer for an RCCI conversion unit, change the factory incandescent bulbs to LEDs, and replace the factory ammeter with an aftermarket Bosch voltmeter. Here’s the original non-functional clock/speedometer cluster, and the carnage required to remove both instrument clusters from the dashboard.

Ran out of daylight, so I pulled the car back into the garage.

I still have some minor little ‘detail’ things to finish up on the Mustang, and today was a great day to knock a few of them out.  Went to the Auto Hobby Shop for the first time since being unceremoniously kicked out back in April 2014.  I put it up on a lift and tackled a couple of small items: swapped out stock for 1″ extended rear shackles, installed the Pypes polished stainless slash tips on the exhaust, and ran the new speedometer cable from the transmission up through the firewall (I’ll connect it up to the speedometer later when I swap out the dash lights and tachometer).  Here are the pics – in no particular order.