Donor teardown started

I got the second coat of paint on the frame and it's been drying for a few days. It's supposed to cure for 14 days so I've moved Morton the donor Mustang into the garage to begin the teardown.

BTW, here are a couple of pictures of the trusty steed since I never posted any previously.






Before I brought it inside I did a radiator flush. While running the engine to circulate the flush, the car finally ran out of gas. Let me explain - the gas gauge has not worked since I got the car and I had no idea of how much gas was in the tank or what the driving range was. I'd been cruising around in the car the night before so I guess I'm lucky it didn't run out then. After adding about 3/4 gallon of gas, it started right up and I finished the radiator flush and backed it into the garage.

I collected all of the antifreeze and flushed goo into plastic bottles and hauled them to the hazardous waste area at the local dump. This allowed the engine plenty of time to cool.

Upon returning I started as per the FFR manual and removed the radiator and fan. The manual then says to remove the steering rack.



I'm looking into the engine bay and wondering why I should fight my way around and under the engine to get to the steering when the engine will be coming out later anyway. So, as is my habit, I skipped ahead in the manual and started working on the wiring harnesses instead.

I never realized just how much wire was in a car. I've got the ECU out and the engine harness removed from under the dash but it's all still connected to the engine. At this point I don't see a need to unwire everything.

The front light harness is completely out. The rear light harness is mostly out to where it goes along the rocker panel. To get to this point, most of the rear interior has been loosened, removed and carelessly tossed back inside. :-D

Here's what the inside of the hatch looks like right now.



I still have to remove the front seats and dash to get that wiring out but that should be about it.

My lovely bride has said she's going to help me pull the engine on Friday night. That will be a MAJOR step in the right direction. Once that's out, I can loosen all of the connections for the lower front control arms and rear axle and then move the car outside to it's final resting place before I strip them out. I haven't figured out how to move it with no wheels so that's why the final dis-assembly will happen outside.

Where I live, I'm allowed one inoperable car on my property and the Mustang will be it. To try to minimize the impact on home values, it will be stored behind another car and covered in tarps. Once the FFR is complete and titled, I can get rid of the carcass, but I've heard horror stories of titling hassles if the Police Inspector can't examine the donor vehicle. I just don't want to take a chance so I'll keep it for a while. Maybe I'll put up some fence to hide it.

So that's it for this update. Hopefully I'll have pictures of the engine and transmission out by this weekend.

Painting begun

After the drilling and mods I started prepping the frame for paint.

This entailed numerous wipedowns with Xylene to clean off all of the mill scale and oil. It also allowed me to find some places where I'd missed welding slag and other sharp edges (OUCH!) and take care of those.

Xylene is nasty stuff. Make sure you're working in a WELL VENTILATED area. I had all of my garage doors open and a fan blowing from behind me towards the open doors the whole time.

I went through several pairs of nitrile gloves, rubber gloves and supposedly "chemical resistant" gloves (they weren't) during this process. I finally found some truly chemical resistant gloves that stood up to the xylene.

I bought a pack of white shop rags to use for this. The process was to soak the rag with xylene and wipe a tube. When the rag got dirty (1-2 passes) I would turn it to a clean side and continue. Once the whole thing was dirty it got tossed into a dedicated trash bag and I started with another clean rag. I went through at least 50 rags doing this and I probably went over the frame 4 times in total before the rags came out clean.

Once the rags showed no more residue I sanded the shinier metal bits to give a bit of tooth for the paint to hold. Looking back I should probably have used a more aggressive paper but I didn't have any. One more wipedown to clean the sanding residue and I was ready to begin.

Let me state for the record that this frame is really well built. It appears to contain somewhere around 17 miles of tubing in total. And I've painted every single mile of it.


Once.

And it needs two coats.

I'm using Hammerite Rust Cap hammered silver paint for the frame. I like the looks of the hammered finish and it hides a lot of imperfections.

It also, as I subsequently found out, requires repainting in either under 4 hours or after 14 days. Since it took me about 10 hours to apply the first coat, I missed that "under 4 hours" window. So now I'm waiting 14 days for the paint to fully cure so I can put on a second coat.

The biggest challenge is to make sure that every side of every tube and every joint is painted. I missed a couple of places initially and had to go back and touch them up later. But I've come up with a more organized approach for the second coat.

I'm going to place a small tape marker on every single tube and bracket. When I get to that part I'll remove the marker and paint all sides of that particular piece. In another week I'll be able to see how that works out.

The other concern (excluding standing on my head painting upside down) is painting the underside of the main 4" round tubes. Those will be painted everywhere but where they're sitting on the jackstands. Once I get the suspension on the car and it's sitting on its wheels, I'll get under it and touch up those 4 spots. They already have one coat of paint on them so the second one will just be added protection and to blend in.

Wish me luck.

My wife suggested that I just go for the powdercoat and deal with the color next time.

Next time?!?!