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.