May 26

I took the Mustang to my friend, Gerry, so we can get more work done on making the car fully operational. Gerry has a garage that blew me away when I first saw it. He has so many mustang parts it's like walking into a mustang store, he has more tools then I'd know what to do with, and he's got some pretty sweet cars.
The daily driver is a 1966 Galaxie 500.
The Sunday driver: although not quite finished, 1969 Mustang Mach 1 with 428 Cobra Jet (one of the biggest baddest engines Ford ever produced)
Projects: Another 1969 Mustang Mach 1 with 428CJ (not anywhere near complete)

When I arrived, Gerry was very impressed with my Mustang and he was really excited to get to work on the car. We had some serious work to do:
Rebuilt the carb
Reconnected the rear brake lines (after we were done with this, I felt much safer driving the car)
Relocated the ignition coil to its right location
Tightened the steering since it was a bit wobbly
Made the connection between the solenoid and battery better

He tells me that he has some headers he would like to sell and I would really like to get those when the time's right. He also had a full set of wheel and tires that he wants to get rid of as well, so those might be a purchase in the near future.

May 24

Last summer I promised my cousin, Mallory, that when (or if) I got a project car she could come help me out. So I invited her down to help me out with the car.
The project I asked her to work on was the taillights. The right taillight was out so I wanted her to replace the bulb.

Unfortunately after changing the bulb nothing changed. After that I asked her to look in the repair book to see if she could diagnose the problem.

 She tells me that the diagram looks simple enough but the wiring on the car is so backwards that we could not solve this problem.

While my cousin was working on the electrical components, I decided that I would try to clean the engine compartment a bit. I think it turned out pretty well but I know that more work is needed. A can of engine degreaser can really do some work.

May 17 Fords Only

I brought the Mustang to my friend's shop called Ford's Only. He used to help me on my first Mustang, 1966 Mustang. From two years to now, a lot has changed for Fords Only: moved to a new location, his garage has grown to accommodate more cars, and it's busier than ever.
With all these things combined, I couldn't get direct help or guidance when I brought the new Mustang there but he was able to order the parts for me for a better price. So I had to do all these repairs by myself:
Replace spark plugs and spark plug wires (I discovered that one of the spark plug wires was not connected at all, so when I first started the car I was only running on 7 cylinders)
Replace the rotor
Replace the distributor
Install a new engine mount
Fresh oil change

I also had the privilege of driving the Mustang to my parent's warehouse.

May 15 She lives!

After properly removing all of that bad gasoline and replacing the fuel filter it was finally time to see if starts.

If you couldn't tell I was pretty excited that it started. One of my neighbors told me that when it started a big cloud of blue smoke came out of the car.

May 15

Now that I finally arrived back home in California, it was time to get to work.
The first thing to do: let's see if it starts.
I was told that in order for this car to start I am going to need 3 things: air, gas, and spark.
Air: well that's a given.
Gas: My friend, Gerry, told me that since the car has been sitting for so long it would be best for me to drain the gas tank in case there might be dirty gasoline or sediment.
Spark: Didn't really check that one out, really hoping that it would work.

Gasoline is not supposed to be brown! It turns out that Gerry was right and I'm glad that I listened. If I didn't drain the gas tank then all of that dirty gas would have been sucked in by the carb and that would be a world of trouble.

April 24

After a basic car wash the car looks a little better and we took a lot of pine needles out of the engine compartment.

 The car had a trailer hitch attached (obviously). It's removal was one of the first things done to the car.

Since the car hasn't been running for so long we decided to have it towed back to the homebase. The car would have to sit in front of the house until I could come from school and begin my work.

New Blog

John and I just created this blog so I could share all the successes, accomplishments, and "challenges".
This is my first blog and I wanted to show how the car will progress from start to finish.

The car: 1968 Fastback Mustang. My aunt and parents discovered this old Mustang in Lake Arrowhead, CA. The owner wanted to get rid of this car since it was taking up space and my family jumped on the deal. When they first discovered the car it was an absolute mess! The pine needles were everywhere! Inside, outside, and even today I'm still finding pine needles. After negotiating with the owner the car was turned over to us. This car was not operational and they had to have it towed down to Newport Beach.

The kid: While my family was securing this car, I was still in school and had no idea that any of this was happening. When I came home for Easter, the car was revealed to me and it was a huge surprise! I have always wanted a car like this: a car that I can work on and build to make it my own and it was not a total rust bucket. Sadly, I had to go back to school for finals and it was quite difficult to concentrate during those tests.

Now that I'm back in California, I'm going to do everything I can to make this car into a real muscle car.

Photos are from: 4/23/11