The hood is back on!! This is the first time the hood has been on the car (as in, “properly installed”) since I first took it off in August 2010.

A few weeks ago, a painter who’d been recommended by the paint store came by to check it out. He liked what he saw (for the most part) and said that he could indeed make Frank shiny again. He had some projects and jobs ahead of us, but he’d give a call when he’s ready… probably in a few weeks.

I CAN’T WAIT!!! HE’S GOING TO BE A CAR AGAIN SOON!!

Here’s the hood after soda blasting – it took care of pretty much everything but the surface rust under the factory color – I guess the flat black held its own after all.

After spending pretty much half the day with 80-grit sanding discs and the DA, here’s what I came up with. Now it’s almost ready for primer.

And after spending half a day hard sanding the hood, I decided to use some chemical stripper to get the rest of the old factory paint off. MUCH faster!

The paint stood no chance against the stripper – it cooked for about a half hour, then I unceremoniously scraped it off into the trash bag.

Even though [to my surprise] the shop was open today, I managed to get the areas I stripped paint from yesterday sanded down to bare metal. All that’s left to strip off is the trunk opening surround and door jambs.

Here’s the new quarter skin on after test-fitting and major tweaking. Man, I should’ve gone the route of 3M Panel Adhesive from the beginning. This is a WAY better fit than my first attempt.

New quarter skin on and ready to glue it all down. All I gotta do now is pull it back off, apply the 3M Panel Adhesive, and match up the screw holes.

OK – pretty much got the passenger quarter panel back off (since I’d messed it up during installation, and messed it up worse trying to “un-mess it up”). Still need to get the last bits and repair the metal underneath.

Here’s the top of the driver side windshield frame (“A-pillar”). The factory used lead to fill the seam and I’m guessing it popped out when the car was hit (when the previous owners had it). Gotta fix it, and I’m hoping to get some advice from my 7173Mustangs friends – rather that just slop in a big wad of Bondo and hope for the best.

Driver side rocker panel rust damage.

More driver side rocker panel rust damage.

I made patches to bond from the backside with 3M Panel Adhesive – then I’ll make some more to fill the holes – because I suck at butt-welding sheet metal.

Didn’t have a lot of time today, but I was able to test-fit the new fenders – I just hung them on with the top bolts for now. Lots of adjustment to do, but they look GREAT! It’s almost looking like an actual car again.

Since my soda-blasting efforts on the fenders from the parts car went South, I caved and ordered from reproduction fenders from Ohio Mustang Supply because, why not? They’ll work just fine.

Finally got the urethane bumper apart (using a cut-off wheel and air chisel) managing to not mess up the bumper core itself.

Bumper core in the ‘blaster – just barely fits. This is officially the last rusty piece from the car. Say “buh-bye” to the rust. Hopefully, there’s enough hose on the gun to reach everything.

Two hours later, the bumper core is ‘blasted and ready for Rust Bullet Black Shell. Gotta get some urethane body filler and primer to rehab the cover, then it all goes back together with new hardware and bumper brackets.

Got the bumper sanded down and the steel bumper core coated with Rust Bullet Black Shell. Hopefully, I’ll get the bad spots filled next weekend, primed and all back together.

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!

Built my new fuse box today. Started with a waterproof ‘bait box’ (of all things), added two fuse panels and a relay (for keyed ‘On’ power to light up the panel on the right for keyed accessories).

So far, so good – everything fits and it closes up tight. Now to mount it up.

The original place I had picked was taken up by the hood hinge (imagine that). Bummer. Next best thing – front of the shock tower. I might swap places with the Duraspark module and the fuse box – purely for aesthetic purposes.

I had to combine the AOD’s reverse light/neutral safety switch harness with the same from the Mach 1’s original wiring harness. I also decided instead of using crimp connectors, to solder and ‘shrink the connections between the AOD harness and Mach 1 harness. Much stronger and longer lasting splices.

Here’s the “hybrid” AOD/Mach 1 reverse lights/neutral safety switch harness, all cleaned up, spliced, and loomed.