1964 1/2 Mustang Convertible

Owner: Dr. Stephen Mackey

Unfortunately I neglected to take a picture prior to the start of dismantling the car but it was purchased in project form where apparently someone began the project and gave up. We will start with an initial overview of the car and visible issues. This car was originally a red w/ black interior, power top, 260, 3spd car. In the above picture you can see the coil spring spacer in the front coil spring indicating that these are well worn and were sagging.

The shackles and flat leaf springs show us the typical attempts to fix vintage Mutangs with worn out leaf springs.

The replacement quarter panels are early reproductions and aside from being thin were installed poorly...they are not supposed to be welded here where you can see the welds. These will be removed and replaced with high quality Dynacorn replacements.

Again here we find poor quality workmanship with improper welds and visible grinder marks.

More poor quality work in welding. The taillight panel is also the early grade offshore thin reproduction which will be removed and replaced with a Dynacorn replacement.

Rust....this is the RH rocker panel and front floor which is the worst side. All will have to be cut out and replaced.

Evidence of very poor repair/cover up attempts under the car.

above the cover up underneath....this is the rear passenger side rocker/floor area. This is a structural part of the car and extremely important....all too often backyard "repairs" like this have been made, covered up and passed on to unsuspecting buyers.

This is the rusted inner rocker from underneath on the RH side.

This is the LH side floor/rocker after our hand pushed right through the blistered area.

Here you can also see that the RH torque box has rust issues as well.

LH floor pan and rocker.

Here the rocker has a dent and evidence of repair attempt only to end up filled with body filler. This doesn't matter as we will be replacing the entire rocker assemblies on both sides.

A wrinkled LH front apron is evidence of accident damage. The brown is from the cooling system showing years of neglect.

The original 260 V8. Again the radiator shows the mud that was serving as coolant. This car was running when dropped off but shortly after the starter failed.

Apparent floor jack damage to the oil pan....there isn't much clearance between the bottom of the oil pan and oil pump pickup on an undamaged pan....I imagine that there is even less now and had it continued running probably would starve the engine of enough oil flow. This pan will be replaced during the restoration.

The fuel tank has been crushed at the back....probably from a lift boom on a tow truck. This will also be replaced.

A typical problem with Vintage Mustangs....in the quest for a better radio most Mustangs had the dash cut up to fit an aftermarket radio. This will be cut out and a replacement patch panel installed.

In the past people drilled holes in panels for a slide hammer to pull dents....this process is obsolete now but still happens in many back yards. This is NOT the correct way to repair a panel or pull dents today....we use a stud gun that welds a stud to the panel and then is removed leaving no holes. In this case we will be replacing the trunk lid though...it's just not worth repairing this part...especially after this was done to it previously.

Both end caps on the car are damaged... I suspect they were put on the car just to sell it as they are completely unuseable. These will be discarded and replaced.

The battery tray is not as bad as you would expect. The car is from the Northeast and while it has rust it is not nearly as bad as most cars that spend most of their lives in that part of the country. I suspect the car probably just sat idle for many years.

Here we discovered some rust in the passenger rear frame rail.

Here is the original 3 speed manual transmission. This will not go back in the car....a 4 speed toploader will replace it.

Here we have removed the original 260. We noticed that all the freeze plugs had been replaced....this indicates that the engine possible froze during a winter at some point which means we will have to magnaflux the engine block before proceeding any further to make sure there are no cracks in the block.

From underneath....you can see the strut rod mounting brackets have had a hard life....These will be replaced.

We start dismantling the engine by removing a valve cover.....Yuck! This is a sign of neglect in the past...and not a good sign as to the condition of the engine. Good thing we were rebuilding it anyway!

The underneath of the valve cover...typically the driver side cover is in better shape as far as buildup so this doesn't look good at all....however we have seen worse!

Someone had an oil pressure gauge hooked up at one time and this was their way of disconnecting it....just cut the line and tie it in knots! Notice the clean looking freeze plugs on the block....this is a concern as it is evidence that the engine has frozen in the past and often when that happens the water expands and pops the freeze plugs(as they are designed to do). We hope that the block is not cracked so we will have it magnufluxed to check it.

Removal of the intake manifold showed further sludge and the rust in the coolant passages tells us that there was indeed water in the cooling system and not antifreeze.

Remember the jack damage where the oil pan was caved in? This is what we found....you can see the evidence where the oil pump pickup was contacting the bottom of the pan and has left an impression in the sludge.

Here you can see the leading edge lip of the oil pump pickup bent and the entire pickup bent upward...it is supposed to be flat and level!

More sludge buildup...this engine did run! Due to the sludge the camshaft and lifter removal was difficult. When we removed the pistons the bearings were completely copper colored which shows they were worn badly. This engine had very little life left in it as far as running goes...the timing was right to tear it down.

Currently the Engine is at our machine shop. We magnufluxed the block and heads and they came back with a clean bill of health which is good considering how difficult it would be to locate another 5 bolt 260 engine block and/or heads. The block needs to be bored .030 over and the crank needs to be turned .010/.010 under...this is the first time this engine has been apart so it is perfect for a rebuild.

Our frame table is also just about to be vacant as our '67 Convertible project moves back to the rotisserie so we will proceed to mount the chassis to our table and begin work on replacing rusted sheetmetal.

More to come as we remove the suspension and mount it to our frame table where we will start replacing sheetmetal.