Suspension, Steering and Brakes

It's great to have the car looking good, but it has to be a good runner, too.  I've been working on and off this past week on replacing all the components of the front suspension, steering and brakes.  I did one side at a time so I could use the other side for reference in putting things back together. 

The one part of the job that worried me was replacing the coil springs.  Brian had bought new springs, so the old ones had to come out.   In my research of this on the Internet I came on numerous posts warning about what a potentially dangerous job this is, where the spring under tension can get loose and cause damage and injury.  There is a specially made spring compressor for the vintage Mustangs, but it costs a lot of money for a one-time use.  We had asked the paint and body shop to replace the springs, but he declined on the basis of not having the proper tool.  I finally discovered that O'Reilley (Oh, Really?) Auto Parts had a compressor that would work, and they rented it out.  Actually, you pay a deposit and get the whole amount back when you return the tool.  So, after removing the brake, lower control arm, strut, stabilizer bar link and wheel spindle, I got to this point, where the spring compressor is installed and ready to start compressing the spring:

Notice the bump stop is broken.  I had to get another one of those and replace it after I got the spring out. 

Next step is to ratchet the spring compressor nut, which draws the fingers holding the coils upwards:

 After the spring is lifted off the lower spring perch far enough, the upper control arm can be removed, and then the spring compressor relaxed and the spring removed:

There were a bunch of wheel alignment shims behind the upper control arm and they all fell out.  That's probably OK, though, because the wheel alignment is certainly going to be changed with all the new parts and will have to be done over. 

Here is the new spring ready to be compressed.  It takes a lot of turns on the compressor screw to get enough clearance to put the new upper control arm with the spring perch back in.  I finally got smart and used my air wrench to turn the nut. 

In taking all the old parts off, I discovered that every bushing was completely worn out, and sometimes even missing.  The car must have been a real evil handling devil towards the end of it's last life. 

Here is a pic I took after I got it all back together.  I'm also practicing labeling parts of a photo, so click on the picture to see this clearly.  These are just some of the parts replaced.  All the steering linkage was also made new.  The shocks go down through the middle of the spring and attach to the spring perch at the bottom, but we don't have new shocks yet. 

Here is a picture Carolyn took with her camera last weekend, just to document that I was there too.

Next, I'm thinking of taking on the side window and door window and latch installation.  This is scary. 

Mike's New Bike

Big Mike has a new Dual Sport bike:

No, it's not an XR 80, Mike just makes it look like one.  It's an 86 Honda XR600.....a big motorcycle.

Yesterday we did a little test ride to see how it worked.  Since it was sold as a pure dirt bike, Mike will have to modify it to make it street legal, so yesterday we had to stay on state forest roads which do not require street legal motorcycles.  We rode in the local dirt bike riding area of Jones Creek, where I spent many hours riding and working on trails.  I'm amazed at how much the area has changed due to the extensive logging going on.  Here are some examples:

After we rode about 35 miles and pretty much exhausted all the roads he could legally ride on, Mike decided to call it a day.  It was a really nice day, though, so on my way home I did a little exploring of some of the forest roads I hadn't been on yet.  Having my Garmin Zumo on the bike really helps when doing this because you can always find your way back out of an area by following your track back.  Without the Zumo and with my fading short term memory, I have a tendency to forget which way to turn at intersections I come to.  I ended the day with almost exactly 100 miles. 

I took the obligatory mountain view pics on the way:

Mt St. Helens

I think this will be my winter schedule:   If it's a nice day, get out and ride.  If it's raining, work on the Mustang.  God, I love retirement. 





Great Progress

Brian came down Friday around noon and we had almost two full days of working on the Mustang.  We first concentrated on the back and installed the quarter panel extensions and the valance (piece under the bumper location).

A lot of effort was spent in the two days in getting body parts to fit as good as possible.  Gaps like the one you see here between the quarter panel and quarter panel extension were adjusted to be even and minimal......sometimes requiring shims.  We had been warned that reproduction parts often did not fit well due to the stamping or casting dies getting worn out over the years. 

Then the bumper, the trunk latch and lock, the taillight bezels and one of the taillight lenses (the other lens was cracked and broke when I was cleaning it).

The order in which things were put together is sequential in this blog, but was not always that way when we were working.  Sometimes I would be working on one end of the car while Brian was working on the other.  Also, we made a trip to a local parts supplier looking for some missing parts, and this turned out to be a goldmine of things we needed.  So we could continue on working in places that we had been stopped. 

Moving to the front, we installed the headlight buckets, front valance, stone deflector, and grill

You can see that the bumper guards are installed in this picture, but they had to be removed because it turned out the bumper had to go on before the guards.  This happened fairly often, as we had no instructions for assembly sequence and sometimes guessed wrong.  Same kind of thing happened with the rear bumper.  At first we installed the bumper brackets to the frame, and then found out we needed to first install the brackets to the bumper, and then the brackets to the frame.....just part of the fun. 

Then the bumper itself:

Then the interior grill parts including the Mustang in it's "corral", and the new rallypac fog lights:

The final steps for this weekend were installation of the remainder of the grill and one of the headlight bulb buckets and the headlight itself. 

Brian found the horns in the bin of parts that had not been cleaned and painted, so he got to use the bead blaster to clean them up. For some reason he really likes that bead blaster.

The car is starting to look real good:

Mustang Comes Back, Work Begins

In early October the Mustang came back from the paint and body shop.  Our guy did an excellent job and included a lot of body work that he hadn't expected to have to do.  For example, the car had been in an accident and was hit from the left front, pushing the entire front end out of alignment.  This was pulled back.

Some cracks were revealed  in the body where the roof meets the rear fender on both sides, and these cracks were welded up and smoothed out.  This is apparently a common weak spot on the Mustang coupes.  The floor pan on the passenger side was also rusted out and a new section welded in. 

We temporarily stored it in the shed and covered it with moving blankets while Brian and I started cleaning and repainting parts

My friend Orv loaned me a bead blaster which made the process much easier.



After blasting old paint and rust off, parts are primered and painted:

Most of the above parts are from under the dash.

After I had cleaned and painted all the parts I could, Carolyn pulled the car over from the shed to the shop:



While I steered:

To make it easier to work on the suspension and install body parts (less bend over work), I decided to put the car up on jack stands.

At the recommendation of the body shop guy, and to protect the new paint from getting chipped I taped all the horizontal edges:

Brian and his family are coming down over the Thanksgiving weekend  and we will install headlight and taillight shells, and front and rear valances plus some grill components.  The car should start looking less like a hulk.