Flash's 66 Mustang

[Flash]

Anyone who has attended a car show or coffee run will have come across them. I’m talking about the 3 or 4 crusty old farts collectively referred to as Team Grumpy. They are usually grouped around a mid – last century American car, scowling at everyone who passes by and moaning about life in general and particularly the youth of today.

I’ve always had a quite chuckle to myself as I’ve passed them.

Well, life has now come around full circle and has bitten me well and truly on the arse as I officially joined their ranks today.

Let me introduce Flash’s latest acquisition, a 1966 Ford Mustang Coupe.

But before I delve into the detail, on our latest acquisition allow me to take a few steps back.

For a few years now I’ve wanted to add a two door coupe to our small collection of vehicles. I was originally leaning towards something either Japanese or British with an early 70s Toyota Celica, Corolla or Datsun coupe or a Ford Capri topping the list.

Unfortunately there is a lot of crap out there with relatively original and unmolested examples commanding asking prices well beyond my budget. They are also a bit of a niche market which makes it easy to over capitalise and if you have dropped some serious coin on one, they can be hard to offload when it comes time to sell them on.

Sourcing reasonably priced replacement body, interior and trim parts is also becoming harder for some of these models.

I’d almost given up hope of finding anything suitable and then one day I came across a listing for a mid 60s Mustang coupe. I’d always shunned these cars, particularly due to their association with Team Grumpy, but something about this listing just rang a bell for me. After all it is the Mustang that was the original inspiration for a lot of the coupes that were on my short list, so I started to delve a bit deeper into the subject.

A bit more investigation revealed that the Mustang market is a pretty stable one with a steady demand for near original unmolested examples, parts are relatively cheap and readily available and they have some classic lines. And so the hunt began.

I’d set my sights on a 65 or 66 Blue on blue version. Why this particular model ?

Well I find the dashboard and in particular the 5 gauge instrument cluster of the 65/66 to be the most appealing.

Why blue on blue ? Well I previously owned and daily drove a 1982 blue on blue 911 SC coupe for almost 17 years and I absolutely loved the colour combination.

Anyway, now on to this particular car.

Born in April 1966 this car has spent the best part of its life in San Jose California. Nine years ago it was purchased from its second owner by an Aussie visiting the USA who ended up shipping the car back to Australia at the end of his holiday. After arriving down under it quickly passed on to its 4^th owner who owned it for 7 years. The sudden arrival of twin boys has increased his brood to four with the result that the family can no longer enjoy runs in the Mustang and custodianship has now moved across to me.

It is one of many that I have looked at over the past year or two, but there is something about the honesty of this particular car that appealed to me. It is by no means a show pony showing a few scrapes and dings, but the interior is immaculate and the engine bay presents very well.

I’m not a fan of the modern 17 inch diameter wheels and the LED headlight conversion gives me the shivers, but they are modifications that are easily reversible.

The paint is not factory but it is over 10 years old so I figured “what you see is what you get”. There are a few rust bubbles in both doors and the gaps are not that good, but apart from that the car is solid.

Well enough bloody chit chat Flash….. let’s see some bloody photos mate.

 

 

[Flash]

Spent a bit of quality time on the Mustang yesterday. Was my first opportunity to give the underside a good going over. Got to say I'm pleasantly surprised with how solid it is underneath.

First step was to remove the modern wheels to check offsets. It's currently running 8J x 18 wheels front and back, both with zero offset. These fit comfortably under the guards with no signs of rubbing so I'm assuming I should be able to replace these with a set of 15s in similar widths with no issues.

While I had the wheels off I took the opportunity to poke around underneath. Rear shocks and shackles have been recently replaced so that's good. Looking at the front suspension I was amazed to see that it is still running the factory original riveted in upper ball joints. The rubber boots are well shagged but the joints themselves still feel nice and tight. The boots on the outer tie rod ends are also shagged so I'll add those to my shopping list.

The front shocks also appear to be a recent replacement and someone has definitely been at the wheel bearings recently. They look a bit too dry to me so I might just repack them.

[Flash]

Pinched the sealed beams off the Thames van for a quick test fit. Looks much better in my opinion than the flat lens modern LED lights that it came with. Now that I know that the mounts haven't been butchered I'll order some semi sealed units as a permanent replacement.

I see you can now get LED globes in H4 format. Anyone had any experience with these ?

Before and after shots:

[Flash]

When we bought the Mustang I promised Mrs Flash that I would replace her garage spot with a secure and dry little nest for her Moke. So being a man of my word I've spent the last few weeks upgrading our back carport which now sports an automated garage door instead of the crappy old swing gates and a nice weatherproof outer wall. I scored the door and motor second hand so had to assemble it myself. Gotta say that in the past few days I've learnt more about balancing garage doors than anyone should have to know. But its all done now, so I can start playing with the Mustang again.

A few photos showing the transformation for anyone who is interested.

[Flash]

Yesterday was my first day back on the cars, so I spent the morning giving the Moke and the Mustang a good bath.

Over the past few weeks I've been gathering a few bits and pieces for the Mustang so this morning I thought I'd start off by fitting a new set of semi sealed beams and Narva LED bulbs up front. First off kudos to @raizer for pointing me in the direction of the Narva LED H4 globes. What a fine piece of kit they are. The box is marked "not ADR approved for off-road use only" but I'm going to pretend that I haven't read that.

Only mod I needed to make was to open up the hole in the rubber seals as the LED globes are a bit fatter than the standard H4 jobbies, but apart from that it was pretty much plug and play. 

Finished off the job by fine tuning the adjustment on the high beams. The light is nice and crisp and makes the old sealed beams look like candle light.

Thanks for looking. 

[Flash]

Next job on the list is to re-commission the factory fitted air-conditioning.

The previous owner had removed the compressor and its mounting bracket as well as the condenser that normally sits between the front grill and the radiator. 

Just before Christmas I got a short gap and managed to put the compressor back in place. The drive belt was AWOL so I measured up for a new one which I ordered online. The compressor is a newer style rotary job rather than the factory piston style, so someone has given it a birthday somewhere along the line.

Anyhoo, first up was to fit the new belt. Instant fail as its just too short, so I've cocked up somewhere along the line. Measured it again and I get the same measurement so obviously I'm doing something wrong. No matter as what I ordered is a match for the power steering belt, so at least I've now got a spare and I'll order in a longer belt for the a/c.

Thought I'd move on to re-fitting the condenser and this is where it gets interesting.

First thing that I noticed is that the PO has put a pusher electric fan in the spot where the condenser usually sits and even if I sandwich the condenser between the pusher fan and the radiator there is no way that I will have enough space to be able clear the bonnet catch panel.

 

[Flash]

So I turned my attention to the other side of the radiator.

Noticed there is a crappy looking conventional fan blade fitted with a ruddy long spacer and a cheap plastic radiator shroud that has been butchered somewhere along the line. Nice !

From factory the a/c had no helper fan and from what I've been able to ascertain from Uncle Google the setup just relied on the standard engine fan moving air through the condenser when stationary. Not ideal as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not a fan (excuse the pun) of the manual flex fans and still recall our maiden voyage in our Bedford van down to the Beach Hop when I first fitted the 350 small block. I just had a flex fan at the time and I started sweating bullets watching the temp gauge steadily rise into the red when we hit traffic on the way down. Upgraded to twin electric fans and never looked back. 

So what I'm thinking is to bin the manual fan blade, spacer and crappy shroud and to chuck in two electric pull fans. One I'll keep on the existing temperature switch and the other I'll connect up to the a/c. Here in Queensland we pretty much run a/c in our cars all year round, so its likely both fans will be running most of the time anyway.

So to prove my theory I started off by removing all of the manual stuff and just left the electric pusher fan in place. Took the Mustang for a quick spin to see if there was any difference in engine temp. Did my usual circuit and the temp gauge sat normal all the way, so I'm almost convinced that the manual fan and half arsed shroud were providing little to no benefit.

I've chucked a tape measure on my radiator and on my next trip into town I'll visit my local wreckers to see if I can source a set of dual fans and a matching shroud from some other vehicle. 

Thanks for reading.

[Flash]

In my last update I mentioned that I was heading off to my local wreckers to check out twin thermo fan options. Well whilst I enjoyed a good few sunny hours strolling around the wreckers and managed to dodge most of the cow patties left by the organic lawn mower, I failed to find a set of twin fans that were small enough to fit on the piddly little Mustang radiator. Most setups from the older generation Fords and Holdens measure around 600 mm wide, far larger than my 465 mm by 440 mm radiator core. There were a few dual speed single fan options, but these proved to be thicker than the space I have available between the radiator and my water pump pulley.

So I ended up going with plan B which is a 16 inch Spal puller fan that I will wire up with dual feeds, one from the existing thermo switch and an over ride feed triggered by the exciter wire for my a/c compressor.

Anyhoo, the fan pitched up late last week, so I thought I'd spend the morning sorting it out.

Now I'm not a huge fan of the usual attachments that push through the radiator core to hold the fan in place, so I decided to fabricate an aluminium mount that would double as a radiator shroud.

Managed to scrounge an aluminium off-cut from my mate Cameron and I did a bit of carving this morning.

I'm pretty happy with the end result.

Just need to chuck it in and give it a whirl.

Thanks for looking.

[Flash]

Fitted the new Spal and its custom shroud after morning smoko.

It's pretty snug, but I'm happy with the clearance.

I dug through a few old wiring looms that I have stashed in my shed and found a female electrical plug that matched the male plug on the Spal, which was good.

Fired her up and ran her up to temp.

Yikes that Spal sure moves a heap of air.

In other news my mixed batch of a/c line o rings pitched up so tomorrow I can chuck the a/c condenser back in.

Happy days.

 

 

[Flash]

I started off the morning by chucking some new o rings on the a/c condenser fittings which then allowed me to bolt in the condenser using simple mounting brackets that I cut out of some spare aluminium. Gave them a lick of black paint so that they don't stand out behind the grill.

According to the previous owner the a/c system has been in pieces since 2014, so that's a bit of a milestone. Just waiting for a diode to arrive so  I can then wire the thermo fan up to the a/c system. Then I should be ready for a re-gas. Fingers crossed that it all still works.

Treated myself to a few easy jobs for the rest of the morning.

Replaced the manky looking Ford lettering on the bonnet as well as a broken hand brake handle using some cheap and cheerful Scott Drake parts.

Tomorrow I'll tackle the stiff passenger side window regulator and the door latch on the same side that won't unlock with the key.

Thanks for looking.

[Flash]

The focus today was on the passenger door. 

I pulled it apart to sort out the stiff window winder and door lock.

First up was the window regulator. There are definite signs that someone has been here before as the rollers are not the factory original ones. Looks like whatever lubricant was slapped about the place  has gone hard and is jamming up the works. This coupled with one of the rollers that has seized on its pin seems to have been the cause of the issue.

I gave everything a damn good bath in some de-greaser and ran some sand paper over the crusty pin. Chucked in a fresh set of rollers while I was about it.

Mechanism is now smooth as silk.

 

[Flash]

Next up was the door lock. For some reason the key would not open the door from the outside and the interior pull up knob was stiff as hell.

Pulled the whole door latch out and discovered a badly worn retaining bush that was allowing the return spring to slip past it and jamb up the mechanism.

Luckily I had ordered in a pair with the window rollers, so it was an easy fix. I'll do the driver's side at some stage.

Photo of the new bush in place.

Thanks for looking.

 

[Flash]

As previously mentioned there is rust in the bottom front corner of both doors.

Up to now I've resisted the temptation to pick at the scabs as I know it's going to be ugly.

Here are some photos of the passenger door.

Too nasty.

 

[Flash]

So with the window regulator removed I figured I'd have a peek around the inside of the door to see how that looks.

Had to remove the main glass as well as the quarter window and frame to get a really good look.

You can just see the rust where the inner and outer door skins are sandwiched together.

And check out the factory original finish on the hinge panel. Nice !

Despite this, the rest of the door is really solid so its well worth saving.

While I've got the door pulled apart I may as well bite the bullet and deal with the rust.

Unlike the driver's side this door is pretty well aligned .......for a 60's Mustang, so over the next day or two I'll pull the front fender off and mark the hinge locations before I unbolt the door. Its a bit more work, but well worth the effort.

[Flash]

Before I pull it apart to tackle the rust I thought I'd get some paint color matched, so took the Mustang for a drive into town this morning to visit my local automotive paint shop and picked up 2 litres of base coat. Hopefully its a good match, but only time will tell.

That chewed up most of my morning so I spent the remaining time playing with the sound system.

Luckily the previous owner threw a good few dollars at a period looking modern head unit that has an aux output and some new kick panel speakers. Whilst I wish it was blue tooth enabled, beggars can't be choosers so I chucked a few dollars at a cheap and cheerful blue tooth USB thingy.

Plugged it all together and although it works like a charm it looks a bit untidy.

So my plan is to setup another ignition fed 12 volt socket that I will hide inside the ashtray together with the USB stick and the aux cable. Should make for a far neater look.

Anyhoo, plan for tomorrow is to pull the passenger door off so I can deal with the rust.

Over and out.

 

[Flash]

Got the passenger door off and stripped first thing this morning.

Started picking at the scabs with a flapper disk after morning smoko and I must say that I am pleasantly surprised.

The car was painted in the USA back in 2010 and they have a bit of a reputation for applying thick layers of bog to everything that they touch. Even although the car doesn't have that "bloated" look, I was still expecting to encounter my fair share of the stuff. Surprisingly not a bit of it. Who would have guessed ...

Anyway, after realising that I was dealing with factory original steel only I started to make small cuts around the rust holes and slowly progressed the size of the cut until I had mostly clean steel on the inner side of the cuts.

As suspected the internal skin was pretty crusty but I gave it a tickle with my dremel and it cleaned up okay. Its pretty solid so I just chucked some rust converter on the inner skin and I'll let that go off for a day or two before I apply some zinc paint.

Next up is the underside of the same door.

 

 

[Flash]

So the underside also looked pretty ugly.

Again, I slapped it with a flapper disk expecting to find bog, but again no bog in sight.

Cut out the nasty stuff and cleaned up as much of the inner as I could reach and applied a coat of rust converter.

I'm relatively happy with the outcome thus far.

I'll gut the driver's door tomorrow and then pull it off for some similar treatment.

Thanks for looking.

 

[Flash]

Hey, hey it's driver's door day.

Got the door disassembled before morning smoko which was good.

After smoko I unbolted it and chucked it on my stand for a better look.

Unlike the other door this one showed definite signs of bog in the rust bubbles and the lower door panel shows definite signs of bog bloat. Gotta love those Mericans !

Gave the rust bubbles a quick spank with a flapper disk and sure enough ..... heaps of mud. Ended up chasing it all the way along the lower panel. Luckily it only came up to just below the dip into the upper panel, so that was good.

No other rust apart from the front section, so that is positive. I'm thinking that the rust was showing back in 2010 when they painted the car, so they just did a quick bog job to cover it up. Nice !

With the bog all removed I cut an opening around the rust and yep, same as the other door, the small gap between the inner and outer skins was packed with dirt and debris. Got it all out and cleaned up the inner skin with my dremel. There are a few places where the inner skin has gone too, but that should be easy enough to deal with.

Chucked some rust converter on the inner bits and called it a day.

Plan for tomorrow is to tidy up the cuts and make some cardboard templates for the patches.

Thanks for looking. 

 

[Flash]

Spent the morning cleaning 50 year's worth of dirt, flaking paint and other crap out of both door shells. Once the patches are done I'll squirt a heap of rust converter at the bare internal bits and then give both shells a liberal coating of cavity wax. Hopefully that should keep things stable for a while longer.

Talking about patches I've made the cardboard templates, so cutting the panel steel should be fairly straight forward. I've also given the inner skins behind the patches a good few coats of zinc paint.

Took the opportunity to squirt some etch primer on the bare lower panel where I removed all of the bog. I'll chuck some epoxy primer on the new patches and this lower panel once the welding is done.

Just need to check when my mate Cameron has a gap in his schedule to tackle the welding for me.

Thanks for looking.

 

[Flash]

Yesterday my mate got a gap to glue in the door patches for me. 

A light skim of bog will be needed to get things mint, but I'm pretty chuffed with the results.

This morning I gave the new metal a quick spank with a flapper disk and then chucked some epoxy primer about the place.

I'll start the bog work over the weekend.