Day of Days.........

Actually, it was two days.
Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 29-30, was a landmark weekend in the restoration of the car.
Endless sanding occupied two full days for Benjamin. When the morning began Saturday, the car looked bad, with the remains of seven coats of paint and primer layered in different stages.
At the end of the day Sunday, all of the layers of paint were gone and a new coat of self-etching primer had been applied to the body.
Benjamin and his dad made great efforts in this project, while Uncle Dan once again provided little to no measurable assistance.
Through all of this effort we now know more about the condition of the overall body in terms of rust, bondo and other imperfections. This will give our body shop man a chance to cut and weld and hammer to form a body for this car that will be solid and straight.

This picture shows the car after priming. This primer is only a protective coat to help prevent rust. After the body shop repair the car will eventually make its way to the painter where the final efforts of primer and paint will take place.

We have used many, many tools to get to this point, but none more symbolic than the Binks Model 69 paint gun. This gun belonged to Benjamin's late grandfather, James "Moon" Smith, and father and Dan and Ben. Moon and Coot Smith were the owners of Smith Brothers Body Works, and during the '50's, '60's and '70's, offered stellar body shop services in Troy.
While Papa could not be here for this project, there is no question he is here in spirit and is constantly thought of as he would be so proud of Benjamin of his project car.

In between football games, more car work

Autumn Saturday's in Alabama are reserved for college football, thus, we have not turned many wrenches on the Mustang in a long time, but this morning was excellent.

This morning Benjamin pulled the heater box from under the glove box/dash, ripped and cut out the ratty overhead headliner, removed the brake fluid reservoir from the engine compartment, removed the break line assembly from the engine compartment, removed an old battery tray, removed the interior automatic transmission shifter and assembly, removed all heater hoses and cables from under the dash, removed the cigarette lighter from the dash, and rode with Uncle Dan to Zaxby's to get some most excellent chicken, although the drive-through attendant was obviously texting or not familiar with the English language or possibly both as placing the order was more of something off of Jeopardy......"Alex, I will try 'What is Chicken Finger Meal?' for $500 please"....."

With the stripped down 'Stang resting in the garage, there is now time for Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening college football.

This Monday we will try to remove some paint and get to the bare metal. That is the plan. Benjamin is to be commended for his interest, enthusiasm and love for this car at the age of 13, and it is certain he will be proud of it when it is ready and he has his license.

Days remaining to have this car ready!

Everyone should pull an engine at least once in their lifetime

The picture alone is a conversation.
In many ways it is like every picture ever taken of a UFO - blurred, out of focus, and not quite sure if what you are looking at is real or really happened.
Then again it looks like the picture you see of the three fishermen standing next to a trophy fish caught in a four hour battle before it gave up and was taken to land, only to be hung from a pulley on the dock and the subject of many photos and legendary tall tales.
Yes, this is the 302 Ford engine and transmission of the 1965 Mustang, which through the efforts of Ben, Benjamin, Uncle Steve and Uncle Dan, fought for four hours before it eventually lost its grip from the car and was loaded onto the back of a trailer to be taken one day soon to a reputable mechanic that can give it a second life.
No, it should not have taken that long, but the greater part of the battle was removing the cables and hoses and clamps and nuts and bolts and screws associated with the engine compartment.
We elected to remove the engine and transmission as one unit because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Additional efforts included separating the two headers from the exhaust pipes, removing the radiator, removing the transmission mount, supporting the trans with a floor jack and removing the two engine mount bolts.
We then took the better part of an hour trying to get our chains and hooking plan together, as we wanted it to be strong and safe, so really this hour did not count.
Once we got started with the pull it began to move but we had to loosen one header from the engine as it was binding. We still felt great resistance and learned that the two lines that run from the bottom of the radiator to the transmission were disconnected from the radiator, but not from the transmission, and this was a major problem. We disconnected those two lines and our battle was over.
This was without question a major advancement in our efforts to fully restore this ride. We have three years until Benjamin's 16th birthday, so we are off to a great start with plenty of time.
For now, we have a great fish tale to tell.

Hot and greasy, and I'm not talkin' about fried chicken.......

Saturday morning, Aug. 20, good progress was made in the first steps of removing the engine and transmission.
Thanks to Randall Hayes, we were able to borrow a good jack and two of his good jack stands. I already had two medium sized stands. Randall also lent a good-lookin' engine hoist.
The car was raised as high as the jack would go, which gave about 12 inches of clearance, and the stands were placed.
Unfortunately we do not have a dolly/creeper yet, so I got to scoot and slide on a blue tarp under the car, which was not too bad until the grit and transmission oil made things a great mess in no time.
Either way, within a couple of hours the driveshaft was removed, a majority of the transmission fluid drained into pans, the transmission oil pan was removed to drain the rest of the oil, the automatic transmission lever was disconnected from the trans, the speedometer cable was removed, the battery was removed and the starter was disconnected and backed out of the engine.
By this point - it was about 96 degrees outside - I was about as nasty as I wanted to get on a Saturday morning, so I cleaned up everything the best I could and called it a day.
Hopefully in our next attempt we can complete the removal of the transmission and engine.

Benjamin speedy in Wednesday work

Benjamin made great progress in a short amount of time on Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2011, as he removed the speedometer cluster, the trim around the rear windshield and also the rear windshield. His Uncle Dan was present but provided little to no measurable assistance.

Remaining disassembly includes removal of remaining seat belts from the interior, all wiring harnesses behind the dash, removal of the engine, removal of the transmission and driveshaft, and removal of the rear left and right rollup windows. The car should be ready for body work by this point.

Ben and Ben Ben have been busy.....

Video of Benjamin and Ben gettin' it done

Ben and Benjamin were busy Sunday working on the 'Stang, removing a front brace that supports the hood latch system when it closes, removing two windshield wiper arms, which was not as easy as it sounds, and removing all the trim that surrounds the front windshield.

Benjamin also did a great job of tagging and ID'ing all the pieces.

Almost done with disassembly

Video of the work in progress

Tuesday and Wednesday, August 2-3, 2011, were two of the hottest days since the creation of earth. I was able to bend wrenches and various other large pieces of steel with my bare hands but that served no useful purpose, so I stopped.
I was able to remove a great deal of the interior and exterior parts, and continued to photograph and tag and bag everything I could.
If I had to say what remains of deconstruction, it would include:

Removal of front and rear windshields and all left and right door glass.
Removal of engine, transmission, gas tank and related items.
Removal of speedometer cluster and minimal knobs on the front dash.

I'm sure there is more, but that is 99.99 percent of the major stuff.

At that point, it will then be:
Removal of all paint
Repair of body rust by welding in new plates
Prime car and prepare for paint

There will be no work on the car on Thursday and Friday. We are having a cookout on Thursday night in honor of our good friend Brandon Stephens, who is moving, and on Friday I am going to hit a golf ball.

Coats of many colors

As mentioned earlier, we have found many colors on this 46 year old car, depending on what part of the car you look at. We know the original color was Wimbledon White, and including in no particular order, Yellow, Orange, Red, Green and Blue.
In conversations some people have advised the project will go much quicker if we just paint over everything, but we want to know that we have done it right, in taking it down to the bare metal, having all proper body work done, and having a professional apply the primer and paint.

How many hours does it take to remove five bolts?

With the proper equipment and skill, it should take less than a minute to remove one bolt. Unfortunately this afternoon, I had neither :)
The left front fender has a number of 1/2 inch bolts holding it in from top to bottom, front to back, and there were five in particular that have not moved in the 46 years since this car was built, and they reminded me of that every time I tried to turn one. Two of the bolts had a rounded head, but thanks to a rounded-bolt head-remover, I got two of them off.
The main problem was it would have been easier if I could have flipped the car over on its back but unfortunately that was not going to happen. Imagine lying on your back with a socket wrench in one hand, a box-end wrench in the other hand, and Hulk Hogan executing a textbook Figure 4 Leg Lock or the Boston Crab submission hold on you, as you try to remove the bolt. That would have been more conformable without a doubt.
I did successfully remove the right front fender and only one bolt now holds the left front fender, which hopefully I will remove tomorrow night if I can find a deep well socket and all goes well.
In an effort to make putting it back together easier, I began a new technique today that I wish I had done when the project began. On the very first day Benjamin and I put every nut and bolt in a zip-lock bag and Benjamin wrote on the outside where they went, but today, in addition to the zip-lock bag technique, I also took a picture with my camera phone and on the outside of the bag numbered today's projects, 1-11. I plan to print out each picture and put it in the plastic bag so it will show exactly where the bolts go. That way if I am eaten by a pack of wild dingos, which is not really how I want to go, everyone will know where each bolt goes exactly.
So far so good........

More about the car.......

We want to know more about the history about this car, and the tag above does tell us a lot. It is a 1965, the original color was Wimbledon White, it had a red and white interior, and that is about all I am certain of at this point. There are websites that explain what the codes mean, but I am not 100-percent certain on all of it now.

We do know it has been painted multiple times, including, but not limited to, Wimbledon White, Red, Yellow, Black, Green and Blue. We will definitely get all of these old coats of paint off and after all body work is done, apply a shiny new coat of red.

My brother, Dr. Ben Smith of Troy, Alabama, purchased a slightly used (for some reason you can't buy a new 1965 model) Mustang coupe, that we will restore over the next three years before his son Benjamin turns 16. I am Ben's older brother Dan.
Yes, it has some rust damage, but we believe it was a great buy and has great potential.

This is our plan:
We want to completely strip the car down, removing every nut, bolt, wire and all paint and build a great car that will also be a daily driver.
On Monday, July 25, 2011, my brother Ben, his brother-in-law Steve Stokes, Benjamin and I began the project. Steve and Ben got the car to actually crank and we drove the car down the Shellhorn Road and was amazed at a number of things.
First of all, it has no power steering and no disc brakes, so that got our attention in a hurry. Next, the 302 automatic had some good power.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Benjamin and I began the deconstruction project. we removed the rear bumper, the front bumper, the front headlights and related housings, we removed the front hood and the rear trunk lid. We both broke a very good sweat and called it a day.

Thursday, July 28, 2011
I removed both doors and began removing bolts to the front left and right fenders, and assorted trim.

Saturday, July 30, 2011
On this date I removed more trim including a plate below the rear bumper that includes the two backup taillights, what remained of a melted-beyond-recognition plastic dash, and worked hard to remove the final bolts on the right front fender.