1966 Mustang Fastback

Owner: Darrell Sanderson

This is Darrell's 1966 Mustang Fastback. Overall a pretty solid car. It was originally Ivy Green and will be repainted that color. It has had one paint job but a VERY thick single stage one...we will soda blast this car to remove the paint.

Typical quarter panel rust on the LH quarter but really not bad for a Mustang.

Laziness of the previous owner that painted the car shows through here with the taillight buckets being painted right over. I am sure these taillights were not very bright! There are also visible wrinkles on the RH side showing sign of accident damage.

Overall not a bad looking car....but soda blasting it will reveal anything that is hidden.

Here we have what we expected....we will install a lower repair panel here.

Here is the car after being soda blasted. One neat thing about the soda blast process over sandblasting is how cleanly it removes the paint...all the grinder marks you see here are from the previous owner's attempt to repair the car prior to paint. Sandblasting etches the metal so you would not see all of this. Sandblasting also creates heat and can warp sheetmetal...soda does not do this and is a much safer method to strip a car. Also the car was washed and will not rust after being blasted...the soda leaves a film that protects the bare metal from flash rusting. You must wash the car with a mild dishwashing soap prior to primer or paint work but as it sits once rinsed to remove the baking soda the car can sit without any worries of flash rusting.

The RH door has a bullet hole in it! Looking over the car once blasted though and seeing the dent in the rocker(lower left is barely visible here) we can tell the car was hit on this side damaging the rocker and the door was replaced. This door was rusted in the frame and will be replaced.

This area was filled with body filler as well....A skin could have fixed the door if the frame had not been rusted out. Notice all the grind marks...that is what was revealed after the soda blast process and is what was under the paint. Overall this car had been worked over in a lot of areas.

The driver door has typical rust in the front lower corner. This will be cut out and patched as the rest of the door is in good condition.

Here is the dent in the rocker panel. This is pretty thick metal and difficult to work with so the prior owner just packed it full of body filler. The rocker is also pushed down and you can see a good 3/4"-1" gap to the outside from inside the car. There had to be one heck of a wind noise here!

Here we have repaired the rocker panel by removing the dent...no more filler here to cover up a large dent and no longer pushed down.

Here we have an area where someone used an old school dent puller...despite the fact that you could get to the back of it by simply removing the interior trim panel.

Here we have reworked the metal and welded up the holes left previously.

After blasting you can see here where something impacted the roof at the LF above the windshield. They ground it down and just filled it with body filler.

Here we have reworked the metal to remove most of the damage. We have also removed the lead from the factory attaching point...Rust is often hidden under the lead and shows through with a crack in the paint. If you do not remove the lead you will never see that hidden rust and it will come back to haunt you.

Here you can see more evidence of a dent puller that left a LOT of little holes.

We reworked the area and welded up all the holes....again, this area can be reached from behind so it was unnecessary to drill holes in the panel.

Here is another factory leaded seam that had hidden rust under the lead. This would come back to haunt you later down the road if not cleaned out. Fortunately modern techniques give us better material to fill these areas which makes lead working a nearly lost art.

Here is a lower lead seam...you can see the original ping marks and the top of the quarter panel is sunken in where the original assembly worker installed the quarter and filled it with lead.

We removed the damaged original taillight panel.

We found more damage...when the car was previously hit in an accident and was pulled on a frame rack they pulled the end of the RH frame rail completely off the car and just left it that way.

This area was sunken in and to cover it up they just filled it with filler and caulking as you can see the pieces laying in front of the still damaged area.

Here you can see how thick the filler was that was used to cover up the damage inside the trunk. This is NEVER an acceptable "repair".

More updates coming soon.