realmongo.realmongo
Then pulled up and parked in front of the ramp that leads to Dan’s upper portion of his shop.
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Next the car was unloaded from the trailer by Dan and one of his techs, and Dan then towed it up into the shop with his Ford 2N Tractor.
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Okay, finally in the shop!
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And a view from the other side.
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vbob
realmongo
realmongo
While there, we looked at other cars in for maintenance. They have both an upper and lower shop, plus a large storage building and their own junkyard.
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And finally, this is how we left it to await its turn on the rotisserie.
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With the car in the shop, there’s still much to do.
One of the first side projects was to strip the seats down for their restoration.
The previous owner had started a restoration and had new covers put on the seats, but the shop cut corners and installed the new covers over the old materials and rusty frames. Plus the driver’s side seat back had split and was hastily welded during its prior life and deemed unusable. Luckily I was able to get a good used replacement for it.
Nothing beats the smell of 50 year old rotting burlap! 😉
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With the seat frames free of upholstery, we were back off for another visit to Gene at Central Connecticut Coatings in East Hartford.
There they were media blasted and powder coated in semi gloss black.
I would have loved to have taken a photo of them in the after state, but I had to load up the truck and pick them up during the storm on this past Friday. I then took the freshly coated frames plus all the new upholstery, rods, burlap, cotton, etc. down to Mark at Dave’s Auto Upholstery in Watertown, CT. Mark I’m happy to say, has a steady work flow, so he said to come on back in about 6 weeks.
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tomatohead
WOW really starting to go forward ,love the update with the seats and address of the places that offer that type of work needed by so many of us , I need my seats done also look at the seat my daughter is sitting in you can see the cover has come apart at the seems right now I have a Dover Drag Strip tee shirt on it 😀 ❗ thanks ❗
realmongo
realmongo
Pam drove me down to New England Chrome Plating in East Hartford to pick up the bumpers. That’s when I realized I had forgot the front and rear bumperettes. So I dropped those off when we picked up the bumpers. Probably another 6-8 weeks until they come back.
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Car is now on the rotisserie, all factory undercoating was scraped off, and then media blasted and primed to assess the extent of work required (it’s amazing how many sins can be hidden under paint :o). The dreaded Mustang Cowl Leak was the first observed problem to be addressed, as the cowl was immediately cut out. Sometime in the past, someone had tried to repair it with the plastic ring kit method, but as we all know, that never works. While the cowl is out, the gaping hole in the dash will be welded up to restore the original radio location because it is so easy to get to from both sides now.
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Other problems to address, are the interior floor and trunk floor. They looked good, but in addition to the toe board area rusted through due to the cowl leaks, both are pretty perforated with pin holes. Decision here is to replace with a 1-piece floor pan. The original passenger side fender can be saved and the driver’s side fender is a maybe (not because of rust, but because of a sizable crease due to an accident that was hiding beneath that was full of body filler). The passenger side front apron needs to go due to the typical battery acid damage. One original door is salvageable, while the other is not (looks like it may have filled with water and rusted through to the car’s interior). The quarters and wheel houses can all be saved with just some tweaking, but the taillight panel will need replacement due to a previously installed poor quality reproduction that has the fuel tank filler off center. One area that was unexpected is internal rust damage to the C pillar on the driver’s side due to mice having lived in there (it had come out of a barn in Middlebury, VT), so that will be attended to also. That’s probably the worst of it. Amazingly all 4 frame rails and the shock towers are in incredible shape. Speaking of the shock tower area, note that I had already drilled the holes to relocate the upper control arms the way Shelby did on his cars.
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