pics from last Thursday

Don't have much to add that CG didn't already say. But here are some pics from this awesome sessions. I am fueled to press on by visions of tearing around cones at an autocross with the finished product.


The intake manifold off and set aside. No one step on the throttle body!


Engine bay now. All the wires are off and we plugged up the block.


A shot down into the engine bay. You can see the troublesome steering shaft in the very middle of the picture, to the right of the trouble light.


Front sway bar. Note: we're missing a nylock bolt for the top of one of the endlinks. The bolts to the sway bar mounts are also really rusted and rounded.


Steering rack. You shoulda seen how bad the power steering fluid is.


The Foxbody front suspension is the devil. We have yet to get the springs off. At least we have the right tool now.


The rear springs, howewer, are down and out.


You can see the quad shock finally unhooked in the center of the picture there. The rear is coming apart fast.

Back in the shop again...

Winter in New England means snow, cold, bad roads, bad drivers (ok that's a constant), cold, and snow.  And did I mention cold?  The garage has been freezing cold all winter, and it's been difficult to get enthusiastic about working on the car.  Whacking your knuckles on hard metal is painful, with code hands it's far worse.  Whine, whine, whine...

So finally on Feb 12 we got together to work on the car.  We're still tearing down the Mustang, and in November it felt like we had 8 things 40% done.  After wrapping up Thursday night we're a whole lot further down the road and it feels like we're finally making some progress.

The wiring harness is nearly completely disconnected from all things in the engine compartment.  The intake manifold is off the engine in preparation for removing the engine.  The hard lines are off the power steering pump, and the rack is out of the car.  The front and rear sway bars are removed.  The rear springs are out of the car.  The quad shocks are disconnected.  Most of the panhard bar is disassembled in place.  The rear end is almost out of the car.  We need to disconnect the driveshaft and a few remaining pieces of the panhard bar and then the rear will be separate. 

Looking at the current status, it would seem after one more good session like this we'll be able to remove the engine fro the car and get it on a stand for inspection and possible tear-down.  Once the rear-end is out I can start cleaning it up and getting it ready for paint.  I'm personally looking forward to getting on to the actual build of the new car, and will be happy when we can get the Mustang chassis out of the garge and sold.

So all-in-all, a great night working in the garage.  The 4 of us got a mountain of work done in less than 5 hours, and it was a lot of fun to get my head out of the office and computers and into the shop.