Car projects

Some of you reading the mag or stuff on this website might have followed the original Modified Mustangs mag and of course, the saga revolving around our 1989 Mustang GT project car. Check out the blog for more...

Well, we've got an update in the mag shortly and we are moving forward, but having just been at the shop, I thought I'd provide a scenario for anybody who doesn't know the deal and has got nothing better to do than read this. We deliberately bought this car, because we thought it would be a good idea to combine restoration and modification and actually use a rust belt car to begin with, hey; these Fox cars are now 20 years old (sobering that thought). But after over a year of sterling on road service (which did surprise yours truly in a good way - I would have been happy if it had just been able to motor under its own power from the sellers place to mine), we found yet more surprises (in a bad way) when we started taking her apart, proving that even those who've been around these cars for a while can still discover some alarming things.

On the outside it wasn't too bad, but when we pulled off the fenders and took out the carpet it was a different story. In the floors there were two holes as big as my feet in the driver's foot well, but you couldn't see it before, because the insulation had comfortably molded itself to what was left of the floor pan. So of course when we pulled out the carpet, the insulation came with it and we could see the ground. When we pulled the fender splash shields out we found circular holes in both inner fenders. But the thing was, the corrosion wasn't uniform - the rocker panels were in good shape and the floors from the footwells back were good too, as was the rad support and the front part of the frame rails. So it goes to show, you just never know what may be lurking beneath the service, even if you've given the car what you think is a good going over. We managed to find ourselves a donor car with a more solid body so our restification has turned into a major transplant between two cars as well. So for anybody out there who has been through a similar situation we totally feel your pain. In fact we'd love to hear your stories, so if you've got any experiences like ours feel free to get in touch - hey, not all of us live in the sunny Southern US right? (Sorry Mark, I just had to throw that in there). Well because it's a Saturday and I've got nothing better to do I'm now going back to the shop to clean up some parts.