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.

The annual Rec Camp Car Show took a different twist this year.  They rescheduled the date to coincide with the Armed Forces Chili Cook-Off and combined the events to be renamed “Ruckus at the Rec Camp.”  Not sure I care for the new title, but having the events combined isn’t necessarily a bad idea.

Unfortunately, that pissed off the San Angelo Car Club, who traditionally had sponsored and ran the event… so they decided to hold their own car show on the ‘normal’ weekend.  This 1st annual Ruckus has mixed results: it wasn’t well-organized, so things kind of happened hap-hazardly… but it was cool because they had a concert and got Horny Mike and Ryan Evans from Count’s Kustoms to show up as car show celebrities.  The car show started later than it should’ve, and the awards were given out as it was getting dark (which can be bad news for folks driving home to other towns).  All-in-all, not a bad turn-out.  Hopefully, with some better planning, next year’s event will be better.

The Mustang did GREAT!  Won Best In Class – ’70-’79 Modified, and also People’s Choice!  Here are the pics:

Here’s the Mustang as it sat all day for the car show.

Right after the awards presentation, getting ready to take off and ‘feel my way home,’ since the headlights aren’t exactly aimed properly.

Here’s the “hardware” take from the awards ceremony

Horny Mike and Ryan presenting me with the People’s Choice award!  Those guys are as cool as they look, and are exactly how they are on TV – coolest celebrity car guys ever!

Since the rear wheels were sticking out just enough to ‘buzz’ the wheel well openings when the suspension cycled (as in, going through dips and stuff), I decided to get some new wheels with a bit better back spacing.  The originals were ‘off-the-shelf’ Cragar S/S 15x10s with 4 1/4″ back spacing.  Here are a couple of shots with the original wheels:

I called up Summit Racing and ordered a set of custom back spaced wheels from Cragar (15×10 S/S with 5 1/4″ back spacing), which cost the same and only took a week for Cragar to make and ship to me. Took the ‘old’ ones to Discount Tire and had them swap the Cobras onto the new rims, then stuck ’em back on. Much better:

Well, much better for driving, but I lost a bit of the ‘deep dish’ look I’d wanted. Oh well… still looks cool.

Here are a few things I shared with the 7173Mustangs forums when asked about how I’d done them differently from ‘factory.’

I replaced the woodgrain vinyl with 3M Di-Noc black carbon fiber vinyl – MUCH better!

Here’s the Pyle Audio monitor for the back-up camera sitting on the rear view mirror – as designed. I couldn’t find the flip-down bracket I bought a few months ago, so I’ll mount it up later.

Center gauge pod with 3M Di-Noc black carbon fiber vinyl instead of the woodgrain. Still need to make a bezel for the AOD shifter.

Cut-Pile Lloyd’s Mach 1 floor mats over the ACC cut-pile carpet – WAY better than the old “loop-style” carpet that came stock with these cars.

Retrosound 6x9s in Retrosound risers (rather than cut the package tray sheet metal). Added some cut-pile carpet to the cheesy painted masonite package tray cover that came stock. How about that “gun-turret” rear window, eh?

Installed some rear window louvers a few months ago – I think they’re cool. The back-up camera is in the license plate frame.

The louvers makes it look mean! They don’t really hamper visibility… not that there is much to begin with.

Today we replaced the Holley “Black” (rotary vane) fuel pump my pal Jim Eimer provided to get it all running… it was just too loud and took up a lot more space. Here’s a new solenoid style in-line Holley fuel pump. Fired right up, no leaks, and is very quiet.

This is a rock guard/cover I made from a plastic undercarriage panel someone took off when changing oil at the Auto Hobby Shop [and just left there – griping because it was in the way or something].