Got the cowl opened up, and the metal looks pretty good (aside from the ‘normal’ damage around the air hats). Also pulled the windshield – which came out all cracked (which is typical as well).

Test fitting the passenger side cowl patch. Just gotta ‘blast it, clean the edges a bit more, finish cutting out the bad stuff, then zap it down.

Test fitting the driver side cowl patch. I cut this one a little too long – oh well, better than too short. The ‘yard dawgs chunked it out a bit with their Sawz-All taking the front clip off. Gotta repair that before I get it in there for good.

After ‘blasting, repairing the bad spots from where the ‘yard dawgs cut through, and adjusting everything to fit, here we are just about ready to weld in. Just gotta grind smooth the assembly welds and glob on the seam sealer and we’re all set.

Finally got back to the battery tray apron. I had intended on just replacing the whole panel, but one of my friends at 7173 Mustangs.com convinced me to just patch the bad stuff… so here we are. I’ve since ground down the crappy welds on the bottom

Lots going on here over Christmas Break, so here we go:

Tore open the cowl and found this. It’s typical for the cowls on these cars to rust out… but this one’s a little worse than I was expecting. Oh well – got plans to repair it soon, and easier than I originally thought.

Passenger side cowl damage – the air horn was mostly gone, and the latex coating in the shape of an air horn was pretty much what was left. Also got a way to fix this as well.

Here’s my Christmas Present all bolted down and ready for a carb. Edelbrock 2750 Dual-Plane Performer intake manifold. SWEET! The stickers that came with it alone are worth 5 horsepower each – LOL!

Valve covers on after re-checking the adjustment on the roller rockers. Also picked up a Mr. Gasket ported breather, and an Edelbrock breather for the driver side (which will double as the ‘710’ cap. (LOL!)

My pal Jim noticed I didn’t have a fan for it yet, and generously gave me the cut-out from the box for the flex fan he bought for his 1963 1/2 Galaxie 500 XL. I don’t know – doesn’t look like the ‘blade pitch’ is aggressive enough.

Noticed that I had one more heater hose outlet on the water pump than I needed. Gonna hafta figure out what to do about that.

It ain’t cool if the chrome don’t shine. It’s all about the details. I took a page from Jim’s book and polished the emblems for a little extra bling on the cool new intake manifold I got for Christmas.

My Master Mechanic pal Jim hooked me up with the old fan and fan clutch from his 1963 1/2 Galaxie 500 XL after getting a flex fan, and the Holley Black electric fuel pump he had stashed in his garage. Thanks Jim!

After I finished the battery apron, I prepped the floor pans to receive the seat platforms. This is after cleaning the black paint away and spraying down some weld-thru primer.

Got the seat platforms in. I had to modify them to sit lower, since they weren’t the correct platforms, but they work after test fitting the seats. Also, moved ’em back a few inches for more legroom. This picture is skewed a little – because they really are in line.

In another picture, I showed the Redneck Engineered air shocks (because the previous owner bashed through the stock shock mounts). Here’s my solution – took a piece of angle stock, trimmed one side off to make it flat stock, and bent it to mostly fit the contour of the cross-member. Gonna weld it in-place tomorrow

Since the outer edge is just hanging out there with no support, I chopped off a small piece of the left over battery apron and made a support bracket to weld on. Sorry for my crappy old 3.2Megapixel camera’s crappy auto focus.

Here’s the passenger side shock mocked up in-place with the new mount I made. Looks like it should work.

This is the driver side shock mocked up in the bashed-in stock shock mount location. So far, so good.

Moved to the trunk area and this is what we have after removing all the trim and tail lights. Not so bad, but still needs to be removed to fit the trunk pan in there.

Passenger side is a little more damaged, but repairable. I have the junkyard guys cutting the trunk surround out of the same car I stole the front clip from, so it shouldn’t be too bad.

Here’s the damage to the passenger side tail light area. Looks pretty bad, but I have a new piece to replace the bad stuff with.

Here’s yet another piece from the poor ’72 ‘donor’ car at the junkyard. The yard dawg cut it off a little short on the trunk surround (toward the left), so I’ll have to use the other side to graft in more of the weatherstripping channel. It’s all good.

Got the suspension apart and after a little bit of picking, discovered that these old school Lakewood traction bars came in Yellow! (and right now, they’re actually a blah shade of rust)

OK – after ‘blasting for almost two hours (as my back has been so good about reminding me), here we are with a fresh coat of black Duplicolor High Temp Engine Enamel. Painted both so the surface rust doesn’t start coming back before I get them installed next weekend. Gonna run some Rust Bullet through the insides when I get the chance. The picture of the other one didn’t come out so well… but they both look like this.

Here’s the trunk with a better view of the ‘Redneck Gas Tank Hammock’ I’ve been talking about. Yee-hah, Y’all!

Here we are at the end of the day after cutting out the rest of the nasty trunk pan. I decided not to waste my time with the spot-weld removal drill bit and just took the air chisel to the whole thing and separated all the spot welds the hard way. Quite therapeutic, actually.

Here we are after the cam sprocket, crank gear, timing chain, timing cover, and water pump were installed. Having all the right bolts in little tiny baggies is way cool – no more guessing which ones go where.

After chasing the threads with a tap (thanks for the tip, Jim), I got the heads on and torqued down. Man, this thing’s gettin’ heavy on the stand. Also got the harmonic balancer zapped on along with the timing indicator (which Tony ‘blasted and Jim painted for me – ya really do get by with a little help from your friends).

After chasing the threads for the rocker studs, and getting the push-rod guides installed, it was getting close to clean-up time, so I dropped in the push rods, test-fitted a couple of the rocker arms and set the valve covers on (to check for rocker clearance).

One more shot before cleaning up for the day and tossing a sheet over it for the next couple days. Man, this is turning out to be a good-lookin’ engine. Couldn’t really make out the chrome oil pan in the other pictures – but there’s no missing it here.

I had to take the block back to Winger’s Machine Shop to get the holes bored and tapped for the roller lifter keeper “spider.” I’m loving this!

I’m still waiting on the head bolts and engine fastener kit, but I was able to get the crank, cam, lifters, and pistons stuffed in there and torqued down. Gotta love shiny Keith Black 9.5:1 flat-tops.

Here’s the other side – huge difference from the pictures I took after I pulled it out… as in, “this is the same engine that came out of the Rustang shortly after I bought it.”

Sometime in September, I got the engine back from the machine shop. Bored, balanced, blueprinted, 3-angle valve job, hardened valve seats, and the cam bearings installed. Now just gotta put it all back together. Here we are after a thorough degreasing, scraping, rinse, and a nice coat of Ford Blue.

OK – so I have no idea what happened to August. Suffice it to say, I’m guessing it was hot as Hades and stuff from work came up. Oh well.

Here’s me before today’s round of prepping for the new floor pans. I’m still 6′-5″, and the lift is approximately 3 feet off the ground. Look at the goofy grin – you’d think I was actually enjoying this. LOL!

This is the hole the original torque box left when I cut it out. Now I need to clean the sheet metal and fabricate a patch.

Here’s the left kick panel all patched up. I was able to find some good sheet metal still left on the seat platforms for this job.

This is the hole in the firewall I had to make when cutting out the rusty old torque box. You can see the new torque box and frame rail quite well.

When I got the new front clip, I had to remove all the ‘extra’ sheet metal piece they cut around – fortunately, they gave me quite a bit of the left firewall to work with. I don’t think I would’ve ever gotten this panel right if I’d had to fabricate it. As it was, I wasn’t too kind to it when I pulled it off, and had to spend about a hour bashing it back into shape to fit this well.

The hole the passenger side torque box took with it. I think they parked this car in a river for several years.

All patched up – now just gotta clean the rest of the funk and apply some Rust Bullet

Here’s the hole the right torque box made when it came out. I wasn’t able to salvage the right torque box or the piece of firewall attached to it (don’t worry – I will trim up the rough edges and get rid of the really bad spot on the left)…

… so I found an old 486 laying in the scrap trailer and swiped the pristine sheet metal from its lid. The little spiral things are a neat by-product of the pneumatic metal shear.

Thank you, old 486 – your legacy will live on in my car. I just kinda tossed it in there to make sure it would cover the hole more than anything.

Here’s the shot from the driver side to the intermediate panel – essentially the “butt-plate” for the rear seat I also had to replace. Also had to clean and reshape the bottom cushion hook and the little bracket that the inner quarter trim panel fastens to.

Both floors are finally in. Now, I just gotta go back in for some light grinding, clean the metal of the left over paint and other crap, and apply the Rust Bullet and seam sealer. Still waiting on my seat platforms, but hopefully they’ll be here soon.

Got the passenger side pan in on Saturday, and finished up the rest on Sunday. Seems kinda weird having to actually duck under the car now (before… not so much). All things considered – I think I’ll just be happy ducking.

OK – here’s the floor on the driver side. Part of the big hole was self-induced by cutting the bad metal around the torque box and frame rail. But there’s plenty of rusty stuff as well.

Here’s the part behind the seat platform – it’s in bad shape – rusted through in places. Yeah – it’s outta here.

Passenger side front floor. It was in worse shape the driver side… but I cut a lot out around the torque box to make getting the front clip on a lot easier.

And this is the really bad spot behind the passenger seat. I didn’t have to do a thing to this side to achieve this look. Well, except take what was left of the carpet out.

After I got all the bad stuff seen in the above pictures out of there, I dropped in the new floor pans… just to see what it would look like. So far – so good! I still got a long way to go before I can drop them in for real, but it’s looking good so far. Should be done by the end of the weekend if all goes well.

So here’s the new steering gearbox. Most of them are painted black, but I actually like this color. It’s appropriate for the color scheme planned for the car. Too bad we’ll never see it again once the engine, headers, master cylinder, and everything else gets back in there.

Here’s how today started – all the suspension and steering system installed waiting for the spindles so I could get the rest of it all back together.

Here’s the whole suspension/steering system back together again… finally. I’m not going to worry about the brakes just yet, since I don’t even have brake lines yet to connect up. It’s not ready to drive yet anyway… just gonna roll it around for now.

And finally… back on its wheels with the new front clip! The whole front end is quite literally new (with the exception of several nuts and bolts I ‘blasted and reused). Those front springs and new bushings are quite stiff – once the engine and everything goes back in things should settle down and look normal.

This is looking a lot better – the wheels are actually straight up and down (camber-wise), which is a huge improvement over how it was when I pulled it in to begin the front-end swap. I wish we could’ve gotten a picture with Jim and I sitting on the front end with Gonzo pushing down on each side just to get the upper shock studs bolted down – would’ve been hilarious. Next up should be the floor pans.

Not much changed since the last pics, except for some really crappy lookin’ welds where they needed to go. They’re plenty strong, just not pretty. I’ll spare the gory details.

Got the driver side suspension on – except for the spindle, that is. Turns out the originals were toast, so I had to order some new ones. Still waiting for the steering gearbox as well – then the whole front end will be close to done.

Here’s the passenger side. Once I get the new spindle and steering gearbox, and get it back on its wheels, I’ll work on the battery tray apron and get going on the floor pans.

After cleaning the Rust Bullet off the places where metal meets metal, I grabbed my pals Jim and Jason to help me get the front clip loaded onto the power train jack and slide it into place.

I had to get the power train jack out of the way so I could lower the lift. Once it was balanced on the lift’s center jack, I finally (hopefully) got it into place with some minor tweaking and liberal application of the big rubber mallet.

Everything looks pretty close – I’ll know more tomorrow with the laser levels and tape measures.

Almost looking like most of a car again. Just gotta weld it all back together now.