Took the front bumper cover off...surprisingly easy but a guess since part of it is missing that helped. Headlights gone too as they were beat and busted. Starting to look better already.
Packing for Florida now. Time to get away from this miserable cold gray rain and its 80 in Orlando.
See you in a week.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Beginning the evaluation....
Well its been a good news bad news scenario for the old 'stang. I'll lead off with the bad news as to try to conclude on an up note. Bad news - the convertible top frame is broken on the passenger side and someone removed the pump and cut the lines. (choice words were spoken when I saw this) Good news - The electrical system isn't as buggered as I thought and so far I have not found any signifigant rust anywhere on the car.
Started to take out the interior...Wow...what a mess. There is some sort of greasy black goo that just is everywhere under the rear seats. Its all into the foam so I gotta toss those. I might be able to salvage some of the trim so Im setting that all aside. Clearly the last few P/O 's of this car had no clue as to how to take care of it properly. I guess its lucky I came along.
The engine actually turns over too which is something I surprised to see. Sure it doesnt start but that gives me hope. The ice in the cooling system doesnt appear to have caused any damage so perhaps there just wasn't enough water in the system to expand to the point of cracking anything. I have since been adding anti freeze to the system in order to melt the ice. The water pump is bad as I see water leaking from the top of it. That probably helped with the ice issue too.
Well no description is complete without pictures so I have managed to take a few this morning.
Monday, January 28, 2008
What could have been.
This what I could have purchased for 1800. Thought I'd share a pic the guy emailed me.Discovered something unfortunate today. The guy who had the car before me appears to have filled the cooling system with water only....Its been in the 20's for 2 weeks. This is probably a bad thing even though I was going to be doing an engine swap anyway. This probably seals the deal.
Off from work tomorrow going to Florida for a week will try to dig into the interior in between packing.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Project Ragtop...so it begins.
Well after much searching and consideration, I have found what I hope to turn into a road worthy mustang. I was not sure for awhile exactly what kind of car I wanted to build. I had previously built a VW which after a couple years I sold in May of 07.
I wanted to jump right into another car within a week but I took my time instead as I needed to be sure of exactly what I wanted. I knew no matter what I got that it was going to be a beater that needed to be brought back from the dead and I had already used the proceeds from the sale of the VW to pay off the bills that were generated from rebuilding it. So needless to my budget was weak like clock radio speakers.
Its a shame too since a month after the money was gone I found an 86 SVO that I probably could have picked up for 1800. Well theres not alot of SVO fans out there and part sourcing might have been problematic not to mention that money sourcing could have been even more of an issue. In retrospect I should have done it since it was a 1 of 70 produced with the a certain blue paint code. No sense crying about it now.
Well the summer passed into fall and I hadnt located anything I really wanted. Correction, there were a couple cars on Ebay that I found but none sold in my price range. Shelbys are not in my price range and neither was much of anything over 500. I did try to go after an LT1 firebird that needed a motor but that didnt pan out for me. So the search continued.
December started with me beginning to look on craigslist. Not sure why I didnt try there before as that is the perfect place to find a local beater in need of help. Came across a few S10 trucks that looked like they might be worth turning into straight drag cars but honestly whats the point. There isn't that reaction of "wow what a cool car" from people that you meet, so I figured pointless to try.
Mid December, I come across an 87 Mustang convertible LX with the awesome 2.3L lump under the hood. It had a GT body kit on it and the pictures showed it sitting on flats. It was advertised for sale in the title for 350 (What do you know....thats my price range.) I figured I'd keep an eye on it for a bit to see if it moves. A couple of weeks ago I decided to follow up with the guy who owned it as it appeared that it wasn't selling. He still had it. So, I made the time to go by and see the car this past Thursday and well it certainly was a project car.
I made him an offer of 300 for it and he took it. We transferred the title yesterday and I enlisted the help of my brother with his 2005 F250 Harley Davidson Edition truck and we towed it from Holmesburg in Philadelphia out to Willow Grove today.
So now it sits in my driveway under a car cover incase it rains since the top needs replacement (Among other things) I'm going to try to dig into it a little bit to see what I got myself into and post next week on it.
Wish me luck.
I wanted to jump right into another car within a week but I took my time instead as I needed to be sure of exactly what I wanted. I knew no matter what I got that it was going to be a beater that needed to be brought back from the dead and I had already used the proceeds from the sale of the VW to pay off the bills that were generated from rebuilding it. So needless to my budget was weak like clock radio speakers.
Its a shame too since a month after the money was gone I found an 86 SVO that I probably could have picked up for 1800. Well theres not alot of SVO fans out there and part sourcing might have been problematic not to mention that money sourcing could have been even more of an issue. In retrospect I should have done it since it was a 1 of 70 produced with the a certain blue paint code. No sense crying about it now.
Well the summer passed into fall and I hadnt located anything I really wanted. Correction, there were a couple cars on Ebay that I found but none sold in my price range. Shelbys are not in my price range and neither was much of anything over 500. I did try to go after an LT1 firebird that needed a motor but that didnt pan out for me. So the search continued.
December started with me beginning to look on craigslist. Not sure why I didnt try there before as that is the perfect place to find a local beater in need of help. Came across a few S10 trucks that looked like they might be worth turning into straight drag cars but honestly whats the point. There isn't that reaction of "wow what a cool car" from people that you meet, so I figured pointless to try.
Mid December, I come across an 87 Mustang convertible LX with the awesome 2.3L lump under the hood. It had a GT body kit on it and the pictures showed it sitting on flats. It was advertised for sale in the title for 350 (What do you know....thats my price range.) I figured I'd keep an eye on it for a bit to see if it moves. A couple of weeks ago I decided to follow up with the guy who owned it as it appeared that it wasn't selling. He still had it. So, I made the time to go by and see the car this past Thursday and well it certainly was a project car.
I made him an offer of 300 for it and he took it. We transferred the title yesterday and I enlisted the help of my brother with his 2005 F250 Harley Davidson Edition truck and we towed it from Holmesburg in Philadelphia out to Willow Grove today.
So now it sits in my driveway under a car cover incase it rains since the top needs replacement (Among other things) I'm going to try to dig into it a little bit to see what I got myself into and post next week on it.
Wish me luck.
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