New Wheels!

Pretty soon after getting my car, I decided to switch out the spoke-y hubcaps for some cooler looking wheels. Looking through an old Mustang II brochure, I saw a white with red stripe Cobra II with white lacy wheels and liked the look. Matching wheels to paint is not a look that appeals to everyone, but I thought that white wheels would be unique and add some personality to my otherwise ho-hum coupe.

I bought a set of 4 vintage white lacy spoke wheels from another II owner, along with four chrome center caps. As you can see from the pic, above, the wheels needed a lot of work. They'd been sitting in someone's garage for years! I had them stripped down to the metal and powdercoated white. The picture below shows the powdercoated wheels and new tires mounted on the car. They look SO weird without the pinstripe! At this point I was thinking, hm, maybe this wasn't such a great idea.

Locating someone to paint the pinstripes was more challenging than I thought. Apparently pinstripe painting by hand is a dying art. But I did eventually find a guy who owned a sign business (Shane's Signs) in Manassas, VA who could do it. When I saw the final product I knew I had made the right decision about the wheels.

I might change them down the road but for now, I think they add a lot to the overall look of my coupe.

Carlisle All Ford Nationals 2010

My Mustang II is the only one in my town that I know of, so that's why I love going to the annual All Ford Nationals in Carlisle, PA. There is always a great turnout of 74-78 Mustangs. I was actually registered to show my 77 there in 2005, but my car broke down on the way. :( Fortunately I wasn't too far from home when it happened.

Even though my car wasn't up to the trip again this year, I had a great time checking out the incredible lineup of Mustang IIs--there were 14 of them! It was so amazing to see that many Mustang IIs all in one place. I've met a lot of owners on Mustang II Net and it's fun to put names with faces. My boys had a great time looking at all the cars and even got permission from one owner to sit in his Cobra II. I would love to take my car one day--it's a goal of mine, especially since there aren't that many coupes that show up. Maybe in 2011...

Engine Work--Part I

When I first got the car, it had to warm up forever or it would stall. At stop lights, I had to be careful to feather the gas pedal to keep it from quitting on me. I enjoy an occasional adrenaline rush, but not at every intersection!

Anyway, our first order of business was to get the car running better. This would end up taking a while as we troubleshooted/fixed/replaced/fiddled with different parts of the engine over several months.

First, we ordered a rebuilt carburetor and my dad and I installed it. With the new carb, the car ran strong on straightaways with no hesitation but ran rough at slow speeds. After that, we did a tune up, replacing the spark plugs and wires, distributor cap and rotor.

Next, I drove the car to my brother's place and he adjusted the fuel/air mixture, fiddled with the vacuum advance tubing, and reconnected the kickdown rod. The hesitation was 99 percent gone after all that. When I drove home I got stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic and the car never stalled or overheated. Yay!

The last piece of the puzzle was the fuel pump, which was going bad. As soon as we replaced that (only $30), the car ran better than ever. Now I can drive it without worrying about being stranded (although I do have roadside assistance through my insurance so I can get a tow home if that happens).

Update: Even though the car is more reliable and runs smoothly now, the engine leaks oil, and could use a reseal. I'm hoping to get this done in September/October 2010 (more on this later).

Trunk Before & After

My first major project was the trunk area. The weatherstripping as you can see from the picture (left) was dry rotted and peeling and I didn't like how the backs of the tailights were exposed. I found out that standard coupes didn't come with anything but a simple gray trunk carpet and a round piece of wood covering the spare tire. I wanted a cleaner look, so I purchased a plastic panel that came out of a 1978 Ghia to cover the taillight assemblies.

There was some rust around the trunk lid, so after removing the old weatherstrip (a nightmare!) I used rust treatment on the visible rust, and painted around the trunk lid and in the weatherstrip channel with white Rustoleum.

The next job was to install new weatherstripping, which I got from SSC Enterprises, but it did not go as planned. The weatherstrip dried all twisted in the corners and sticking out of the channel. I was so disappointed because I'd spent forever prepping and painting areas of the trunk and channel only to have the weatherstrip installation botched. I had to pull up the ruined weatherstrip, which thankfully did not cost a lot, but still, and scrape the adhesive off (again!) & repaint. Grr. Fortunately, around that time, I'd picked up a dremel tool with a wire brush and that made it a little easier than the first time.

After this setback I decided not to make a second attempt. Plus the next job would have been to replace the roof rail weatherstrip, which was supposed to be even trickier. So after ordering another package of trunk weatherstripping, I took the car to a body shop nearby and they did the trunk and roof rail for $95.

The last step was to find a jack assembly. The car's original assembly was missing, so I bought a used one from another II owner and the jack assembly is now complete and correct. Plus I bought a new reproduction jack instructions decal and affixed it in the right spot next to the spare tire.

Here are the after shots:

Now for Some Tunes

My car came with the standard AM radio, but around here, there aren't any music stations on AM, just talk shows, so I needed to upgrade.

I wanted a 70s look and feel, so I bought a working 8-track AM/FM from another Mustang II owner. I also bought a new antenna off eBay because the one I had was all rusty.

My dad and brother weren't available to help on this project and back then I wasn't confident enough to attempt it myself, so I took everything to Best Buy and asked if they could do it. You can imagine their reaction when I showed up with a 77 Mustang and an 8-track player and one in-dash speaker! But they were up to the challenge (and promised to be careful) and they did an awesome job. Looking back, I can't believe I want to BEST BUY, but it all turned out OK. Whew!

Eventually I was able to track down on eBay a sealed Ford demo 8-track from 1977 that came with the new models for that year that showed people how 8-tracks worked. It's a neat piece to have with the radio.

Update: The one speaker in the dash has started to go out on me, so I'm hoping to replace it this summer (2010). I'll try this project myself, so if you have any tips for me, let me know!

Sun Visors

My first project was to fix the sun visors. It seemed easy. Hah! One thing I've learned--when it comes to my car, it is never as easy as it looks.

The visors themselves were in great shape, but the little plastic rods that kept them snapped into place by the dome light had broken off. Fortunately reproduction rods are available through SSC Enterprises (my go-to shop for reproduction Mustang II parts--owner Scott is a great guy who has really helped me out with parts and advice).

Here's where I ran into problems: after so many years of baking in the sun, the plastic had melted inside the visor sleeve so it was not so simple as slipping the visors off and installing new rods. The rods were stuck in there! I tried to remove them with needle nose pliers but they didn't budge and I couldn't get a grip on them with larger pliers without ripping the vinyl on the visors. I got my solution on Mustang II Net. A member suggested that I drill a small hole in the end of the broken plastic rod, insert a screw, and pull on that with pliers. It worked! After that I was able to replace both rods--without damaging anything! :) This was a huge boost to my confidence & I felt like I could move on to more involved projects.

After fixing my visors I bought a paper visor sleeve (seen above) that is a reproduction of the one that came from the factory that shows how to start the car in cold and warm weather, and how to use the seatbelts.

Around this time, I formulated my goal for the car. Lack of funds meant that I couldn't turn my car into a show car, so I decided to just make it as presentable as I could and enjoy driving it. I decided to use reproduction and original parts and stick to options that were available through Ford at the time, so keeping a stock look. My car was missing some parts, so I also decided that I would try and find these parts so that my car would be complete.

With that goal in mind, and a small budget, I moved on to the next project: the radio.

A Heavy Dose of Reality

The first thing I did was clean my new Mustang from top to bottom. I saw little areas of rust, especially around the trunk area. The window weatherstripping was dry rotted and the carpet was old and ripped. The exterior paint was chipped in places. The sun visors were broken and the steering wheel was cracked. There were parts missing. Worse, the engine kept stalling on me. Not good.

A condition of me getting the car was that it would not become a money pit, which meant that I had to get creative, do a lot of work myself, and that this would be a long term project.

Fortunately, my dad and brother are excellent mechanics. Plus I had other Mustang II owners to help me. I would have been lost without Mustang II Net. So many people there helped me, not only with advice and tutorials, but with hard-to-find parts and encouragement.

Obviously, my first order of business was just getting the engine to run better so I could drive the car without worrying about being stranded on the side of the road.

A lot of experts will say to work on the motor first, then the body, then the interior. The thinking goes that if your motor is in top shape, you can justify expensive body work and paint. But I had no clue how to fix my car's engine, so in between sessions with my dad and brother to work on the motor, I began tackling little projects that I knew I could do myself, starting with the trunk and interior.

18 years later...

Here's my Mustang II being delivered a week before Thanksgiving 2004. It was shipped all the way from Arizona to Virginia. Here's what I know about it's history: It was originally sold in South Florida before going to Texas and then Arizona. I have nearly all service records from the first owner--an elderly lady--and the third and fourth owners (but not the second...I learned more about them later).

If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't buy a car sight unseen on eBay. When it rolled off the carrier I was disappointed that it had some rust bubbling up under the paint and the motor kept stalling. That was when I realized that I was really in over my head.

Actually, it could have been worse. A LOT worse. The red and white interior, which I adored, was in great shape. The tires were good, there weren't any rust holes, and it did run. And it only had 68,927 miles on the odometer--really low for a nearly 30 year old car.

So yeah, I had some work ahead of me, but the car wasn't a basket case.

This new Mustang II wasn't as fast as my old one (it has a V6 engine instead of a V8) and it needed a lot of TLC, but I'll never forget how excited I was when the car carrier come down the street and I saw my new/old Mustang for the first time. The carrier caused quite a commotion on the street with the neighbors coming out to see it. One woman said, "I didn't know you could get a car delivered right to your front door!"

I Didn't Choose my II, It Chose Me

As far back as I remember I've loved Ford Mustangs, especially the classic ones.

My first car was a 1967 coupe. I took my driver's test in it--try parallel parking with no power steering! The car cost $575 (paid for in $25 weekly installments) and it was so rusted a friend put his foot through the floorboard.

On July 9, 1985, I bought this 1977 Mustang coupe with a 302 V8 for $900. Compared to the 67, it was a major upgrade. The interior smelled new (not like an attic), rust particles did not fall to the ground when I opened the door, and it was FAST. It even had a tape deck! I was in love.

I loved cruising around in my Mustang II. At the time, I had no idea that some Mustang "purists" didn't consider Mustang IIs to be real Mustangs. Actually, when I was away at college, my brother raced my 77 (without my knowledge!) and was only beaten once! Boys would come up to me at convenience stores and ask to see under the hood. I thought my 77 was the coolest Mustang ever!

Sadly, my 77 was damaged in an accident, so I traded it in for a 1979 4-cylinder Mustang, a move I regretted later. I've often thought about that 77 and wish I knew what happened to it. The VIN is 7F02F198840. If anyone sees it, let me know!