new headliner

I told my Dad that I wanted him to do something to the Mustang for Christmas. I knew in his mind the next step was the headliner, but didn't think he'd spend that kind of money on a Christmas present. I was pleasantly surprised when he told me he had a new headliner put in the Mustang. (my wonderful wife chipped in as well!) He also got new windshield molding (they had to remove the front glass), new door molding, new sun visors, and a new rearview mirror mount. We found out the rearview mirror that was in my car was off of a 65 or 66 and it wouldn't work on the correct 67 mount, so now we have to get a new mirror. Thankfully they're only about $35.

My Dad also told me that he got a ring and pinion from his brother for selling a van for him. He's going to take the rear end out and take it to my uncle's shop to have him rebuild it soon. Additionally, he got a set of rear wheels that match the front wheels but can take a wider tire. With the little tires that it has on it now it'd be really hard to keep it in the road when they break traction and the wider tire will look much better. He's currently waiting on a guy to give him a quote for recovering the two front seats. The driver's seat has a couple of damaged spots on it. The material is just over $100 for just the front seats and I have no idea what the labor would be to put them on, but hopefully that will be something we can do after the first of the year. Lastly, he mentioned he took all the spark plugs out and replaced the ones that were fouled and it got rid of the skip. So we were right, the racing carb was just giving it too much gas and had fouled the plugs. My Dad has a nice set of Accel Yellow Jacket racing plugs that he said he's going to put in it.

At this pace we won't have the car on the road by the end of year, but it won't be too much longer, and it will certainly be done before some other people even start on their projects!

A New Carb

We got a new carb. While this is a pretty small step, I'm hoping that it will launch the beginning of the restore process. The carb is a Holley and it was only used for a few hours when the previous owner realized it was too small for his motor. It should be perfect for this car. As you can see the plastic is chipped on the electric choke, but hopefully that won't cause any problems. My dad put the carb on and it seems to be running great. Somehow the motor has developed a skip as it's been sitting so long. My dad noticed one of the plug wires was loose and that helped a lot, but something's still not right. The next step is to check all the plugs and make sure they look ok. Chances are the racing carb fouled them out because it was giving the engine way too much gas.

The next step is to get the headliner replaced. Seems like that would be a cosmetic thing that could wait, but it's fallen down over the years and you can't sit in the car without the insulation hanging on top of your head.

Then we have the brakes and the rear end to worry about. For now we're just going to fix the drum brakes and then maybe down the road convert to disc. As for the rear end, we're hoping we can just take it out and have my uncle set everything back up with new bearings. Hopefully that won't be too expensive.

Things are looking up!

We'll See

The goal here is to use this blog to show the status and progress of restoring my Dad's '67 Mustang fastback. There are a lot of skeptics that say I'll never get it done, and they might be right. Hopefully I can post a picture or two soon a long with the current status of the car.