Dreamr's City Car Registry

[dreamr]

Well if only money truly grew on trees, well other than marijuana plants.

Slowly the project moves along. In August I ordered a reproduction trunk lid through American Muscle. I was concerned about having large body parts shipped, and my concern proved to be justified as it got pretty buggered up during shipping. Fortunately when I contacted American Muscle they were great about facilitating the repair of the lid. The work was done by a local Maaco.... I know... but they actually did well. Though they neglected to finish the underside and mount it as I had asked..... didnt bill me for it either though so whatever. Anyway onto the poor damage photos.

As I said American Muscle had excellent customer support throughout this. I decided to have them just give me store credit for the amount of repairs rather than coordinating a payback, and in turn ordered a wing for the back with that money. This piece shipped well and had no damage to the wing. Unfortunately the brake light housing did not weather as well, but it was easily repaired so I didn't bother them with it.

The scary part came when I realized I had to drill all the hinge holes and allignment bolt holes for the trunk... eeek lets just say I loligagged quite a lot and ended up refinishing the interior trunk pan, water channels, and also painting the underside of the trunk before I got around to drilling Needless to say I measured and remeasured a couple dozen times and hit every hole perfectly and it lined up almost right... here is where maaco's body work failed... one edge was about 1/2 low ..bent down.. and the back edge is a bit wavy... Most of this I corrected with some careful sheet metal bending the wavy part can be fixed as it hits final prep for paint.

Now to mount a wing.. I hate wings these days... they are all so styled and fugly as hell.... or they have 3 veins or are 20 feet tall. I searched and the only ones I could find that were simple were oem or cervini's boring one... lucky for me American Muscle carried a cheaper fiberglass one that was relatively unique while still tasteful and also moved the third break light into the wing which is a nice touch to update the car look... the trunk mounted thingy was welll 80's : Again I measured a half a dozen times and popped my holes through almost perfect... one had to be widened a hair. then from underneath I opened up access holes as conveniently as possible to facilitate easy removal for the full car painting to come. All in all things worked out well. the fin was pre prepped without any flaws in the glass .... kinda amazing actually for fiberglass.

Enough of my chatter.. y'all want the pictues if anyone actually reads my threads anymore Paint to come one day in the semi near future, but first the hood and a few details.

 

[dreamr]

Well damn another month has come and gone... wish someone would give me a no -limit credit card that I did not have to ever pay back.

So Late September and early October brought a long if rather boring project.
My second heater core in this car went pop (my fault lol ) so for the last couple months I have been running around without any heat in the car. Suddenly the tail end of september it got cold and I had to drive the truck for the city vehicle... /yawn ....

The dash and all interior pretty much has to come out of this car to do it right, so I pulled everything, did a lot of painting rewrapping of harnesses etc. while I was at it... and of course changed the heater core and the speedometer cable.

While everything was apart I figured what better time to install a security system so I can hide the wiring in all the factory harnesses The system I went with was a viper 350HV. A relatively basic kit, wired to both doors, trunk, hood with pins triggers. Shock detection, starter disable, automated locks etc... Wiring is always a head ache for me but it all turned out very well.

And that brought us to the fifteenth... I'll do a seperate post for the 22nd's delivery.

 

[dreamr]

Woot my hood finally arrived!.. A few words and then pictures lol. I went with a reproduction steel hood as ... well ... I wanted steel rather than fiberglass. They tend to look better, and once painted stay looking better longer. Weight to me is not a big deal as I am not trying to shave tenths and when I want faster I'll supercharge it 400 hp is enough to get her moving. I ordered from Auto Parts Wharehouse and received it mostly undamaged... I will have to post up in a day or so with the finished underhood but here it is from the outside... hopefully the whole car goes into paint with the new year.

 

[dreamr]

Hmm I should update this thread one day...

She finally headed off to the house of paint on new years....well the day after. Dropped her off at 10:30 and was back to the shop by 12:30. Why you ask...well if anyone reads my mustangs thread they may ask . Seems some random dude decided to turn his motor home around in their parking lot.......................................guess what was in the way.

Sooo I got some new sheet metal and the work began... All in all the body damage was concentrated to the passenger rear quarter which was simply taken off and thrown out...due to the less than 3 mph impact there was no other structural damage found under laser measurement.

Currently the work is nearing completion.
I had them take the car all the way down and remove glass trim etc before doing anything, then seal and primer. Base Coat is the ford factory paint
( how I agonized over wanting to go purple ) When we got to clear I told em to lay it very very thick. There are over a dozen coats on their...specifically I am unsure I left it at the painters discretion. As she sits today, thir were some minor touch ups to be done with trim paint, and she has been being wetsanded all week. early next or late this week she should get polished out and re-assembled.

I am sooo excited lol... love my car, and from a distance or when in a picture from the right angle she was in great shape...up close the oxidation, scratches, dings, chips, etc.. were overwhelming

Photos of the process are limited and on my phone...i'll try to get them uploaded later. They have been cool about me stopping by, but only the boss man will take me out in the shop if he is not busy.

 

[dreamr]

Ohh dear... where is that guy dreamr?


I assure you Brenda the Mustang has seen a lot of him since his cryptic painting post a year ago... hmm that paint is shiny.. i should show it .... then again it was soooo very long ago and I have done so verry much since XD

hmmm one day I'll take time to do a photo shoot.. and write for a minute..

Anyway hello everyone

By the way your toy has outgrown my explorer Phil. Good work

 

[Albino 94LTD]

Wow, will wonders ever cease??

Glad to hear you're still around. I have occasionally thought about stopping by Shoreline when working projects in MLT or Edmonds but never got around to it.

Are you still there or have you moved?

Brenda is looking sharp as usual.

 

[dreamr]

We are up in edmonds not too far from Richmond Beach really.

I have prowled and watched you guys playing in the hills but life is well busy...

Doesn't stop 3a.m car projects however

 

[dreamr]

Well then, I keep saying I have been working on my car but then I dissapear for a while. I can't attempt to capture all of the loving she has gotten over the last couple of years so lets just hit a few points along the path... Starting in January of 2011.


Jan-April 2011

Well the time had finally come. The project had moved along nicely but every time I got her out in the sun I shuddered. She was looking like exactly what she was, a twenty year old car. I could clean her up and hide it, but the truth be told it would only last till the first water hit it and I was back to ****ty paint... and well the hood and all other top surfaces were far beyond my ability to clean up.

That being said 2010 closed with several parts coming in the door. 2" cowl Hood, Smooth deck lid, Low rise sport wing, Cobra grill, and replacements for every messed up piece of molding on the exterior of the car. She spent nearly two months at the paint shop as they tried to meet my demands. In the end they tried but never succeeded. I was looking for a 10 grand paint job but only paying 4 . I had them lay a ton of extra clear realizing I needed to do a lot of the final cut and polish myself if I wanted to be happy.... There goes march.

I also sanded down all the trim that they did poorly, did a little putty work on it and painted it with my favorite Krylon Flat black (that **** is great). Of course all the new stuff went on at the same time. Still undecided on emblems.. It would be missing the 5.0 ones if some dipshit hadn't glued them on without reading the work order. I even took them away thinking they might do that... They went and found some in the back......and used glue not tape.... Anyway, the end result is sexy shiny paint

Now as you may have noticed I tend to play with my toy when it is nice and work on her when it is not. In the end I didn;t work on her again untill close to Christmas.

11-2011 through 1-2012

Well now I had this nice pretty car ....untill you got inside. Over the years I have done a lot of work everywhere and the interior has seen a bit. However not enough. I had already replaced all the carpet with black, and all the interior cloth with black micro fiber. We decided to redo the front seats... (well the headrests will come one day). Anyway the issue I had was a 21 year old car with very rough plastic inside.. It was mostly in good shape, just faded and icky. When I got all of it a part we counted 7 different shades of grey ranging to almost pink. All of this was cleaned prepped and dyed using SEM products. The color I went with for the grey was form the 89 model year and called smoke grey.. alltogether so much better than the pinkish grey (titanium...).

This turned out to be one hell of a project and took a couple months to make sure I got a perfect color match on the different types of plastic and vinyl. And of course a couple forever backordered panels. End result turned out very nice I think. And truly it all matches perfectly. Just hard to get a good photo to show it as it is a wee bit glossy and reflects whatever color is around it. Seattle - especially my yard tends to have a lot of color lol. As I went a long I had a very hard time not taking custom routes. I wanted something that looked like it could have been stock but better . Of course some details I just couldn't resist. I'll show ya one you find the rest. Hard to find in the limited photos You'll have to come ride in it.

March 2012

I hate having to get money before I can spend it. Or credit for that matter.
That being said I started collecting parts in March for what I hoped would be a May project. The goal was to remove the rear axle and replace anything that had not already been done, do some chassis welding for reinforcement and do a brake conversion...... Well I kept ordering parts but I also got distracted along the way lol.

First I was tired of overheating everytime I sat in traffic. She was fine at speed just not sitting. The solution, a Black Magic Extreme fan. This isn't their original crappy one but the big boy... Install was easy and the damn thing cools extremely well... almost too well. The problem was that it draws 18 amps and my charging system has always been a bit weak what with the underdrive pulleys and all. I had upgraded to a 130 amp 3g alternator but never did the all the wiring... Sooo I removed the whole damn harness and rebuilt it using 4 gauge wire for the primary. also did a ton of other wiring clean up work and hid the e-fan stuff to where it looked like a factory install... at least in the wiring department, need to figure out how to lose the top mount bracket. Charging issues and cooling issues finally solved

April 2012

Lalalala back ordered **** is crimping my flow and the weather is getting nicer by the day. Well since I am sitting around might as well get some projects going ehh. I had no need for a cold air intake, and in fact it does not flow as well as a modified stock airbox in this car (already CAI in most ways) buttt I am sick of taking the air filter box out for every little thing i have to do on that side of the engine bay. BBK fenderwell CAI installed.....and its blue (so do we change all the red to blue or do we find some red tube sleeve stuff? Around this time I also noted a front end problem... basically a loose wheel bearing got ignored a bit too long. This resulted in new rotors and Hawk ceramic pads up front in addition to the bearings getting replaced... and while I was at it I figured I should finish with the available aftrermarket chassis stiffeners and finally put the strut brace in instead of letting it continue to collect dust in the top of the garage.

May 2012..

About damn time... the axle moved to the driveway while the Mustang got to sit on jack stands for 2 weeks. What did I do in all? Well thats a long story so we'll be brief and use the bullet point style in a minute. Generally speaking I have replaced added to and reinforced all suspension and chassis on this car....up to the back axle. I have cleaned, primed, and painted all of the undercarriage, frame, and suspension...up to the rear axle. It is as pretty underneath as it is anywhere else, I just can't seem to get any decent pictures without a lift. So for this project

- All rear end chassis and suspension components cleaned sealed and painted
- Torque boxes welded
- Steeda spherical Upper control arm bushing installed
- BBK boxed upper control arms installed (already had lowers in)
- Axle degreased, sealed, painted and made to look new
- new dif cover
- Replaced all hard brake lines on axle
- replaced Y brakeline hub with braided stainless lines
- replaced u-joints... one was a stocker lol
- converted to disc brakes

And for the last. My braking system sucks... always has. Part of the issue is the engine does not build enough vacuum. The other part is well inadequate brakes. I decided to start down the path to solving this. At some point in the near future A vacuum pump is going in to completely solve it (i hope). But for now the rear brakes get addressed. I debated a long time on the kit. I have had a lot of issues on other projects when it comes time to replace parts from an aftermarket kit. I desperately wanted to avoid this. I had a couple choices if I wanted to go junk yard route. Or two kits if I wanted to be able to get replacement parts at the local parts house. I took the cheaper path with an SSBC kit. Basically it uses parts from 3-4 different ford vehicles to give me what is basically the T-Bird rear discs. I was not pleased with this kit and ended up modifying it as well as the axle housing a touch to make it work as I wanted without having either clearance issues or general inconvenience issues. In the end it worked out pretty well. I still need to modify the e-brake handle to deal with rear calipers, but it is in. How does it stop? Honestly about the same. I have more pedal travel which is hard to get used to, but she stops no quicker. I do notice however that she does not nose dive with the brakes anymore but rather squats down. I choose to modify the stock distributiobn block and think I may be able to leave the proportioning valve off.

Alrighty then... Now you are all mostly up to speed. Though I have left out a few things like her new stereo head unit and such. But in the end they are minor things. Areas already modified or upgrade, but well new tech is available where electronics are concerned.

 

[dreamr]

Gotta have a Russel moment.. I went down to a park today after I finished cleaning her up. Even in my garage she turned yellow from pollen after 2 weeks on jack stands.

Anyway Enjoy, I did untill the cops ran me out for using 4 parking spaces lol

 

[jrgaylor]

Your stang is looking great, I have always liked the fox body mustangs.

 

[dreamr]

Your stang is looking great, I have always liked the fox body mustangs.

Thank you sir

Sure has been a long project, but at least I am getting to where I can see the end coming one day lol.