Did Something About It…

I got more than a little emotional today.

Three years, six months and a day ago, I decided to do something about my growing regret about parting ways with my original Mustang. I found a broken down 69 Mustang parked in a field next to a chicken coop and decided to bring her home:

Why was I emotional today? Because today I finished the last item on my list that needed to be checked off before I considered myself done.

I’m actually finished.

Over the last month, I’ve worked on various odds and ends dialing in the Mustang to be as nice as I could possibly make it:

• I adjusted the windows so that they line up almost perfectly
• I tightened up the steering to give me better control of the car
• I installed floor mats
  
• I replaced the faulty fuel level sending unit and now no longer have to put up with a 3/4 tank reading when the car is full
  
• I fabricated a bracket for my fire extinguisher and mounted it in the car
  
• And the last job – today’s task – was to install carpeting in the trunk:
  

Over the course of the last one thousand two hundred seventy-eight days, the Mustang has been brought back to life:

If you’ll allow me a moment of self-congratulatory prose, I have to say I am very proud of what I’ve done. I still look at her from time to time in amazement at how she turned out. Never in my wildest dreams did I think this would be the end result of that long ride home towing a wreck of a car so long ago.

Of course, I didn’t do this alone and could never have accomplished what I did without the help of others. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to everyone in the list below:

• My beautiful wife, who supported me through the whole process and for some reason believed in me enough to approve the purchase of the Mustang in the first place.
• My Brother-In-Law, who not only hosted the Mustang at his house for much of the first year of the restoration but also worked with me nearly every weekend during the brake and engine restoration.
• Don Rush, owner of West Coast Classic Cougar. In many of my blog posts, I’ve linked to videos of how I learned to do what I had done that week. A very high percentage of these videos were produced by Don are can be found on his Youtube channel. I’ve also purchased a large number of quality parts from his store with excellent customer service.
• Eric Cook of Eric the Car Guy fame. I first started watching Eric’s Youtube channel when I was researching how to rebuild the brakes. I found that Eric’s presentation and teaching ability were outstanding and his videos gave me the confidence to actually tackle and complete the job. Since then, I’ve watched every one of his nearly-weekly videos and continue to learn and be entertained by his work.
• Fred Wilson of Southern Oregon Customs. I came to meet Fred after a disastrous first meeting with my initial choice of body and paint shops, Fred stepped in and won me over with his enthusiasm and obvious passion for restoring old cars. All during the process, Fred and his team were a pleasure to work with.

 

Lastly, I’d like to let everyone know that this will probably be the last post to this blog. I intended to document the process end-to-end of the Mustang’s restoration. I believe I have accomplished that. I hope the documentation and stories from my journey helps others in theirs.

With all endings, there are new beginnings. While I likely won’t be posting to this blog any longer, I will still be keeping myself busy:

Mystique needs a new roof and it’s time to begin anew.

The End

Awe…

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post. I hope you’ll forgive me. I’ve been, a little busy:

I’ll have a longer, more eloquent write-up sometime in the future but I just wanted to post that over the last two weeks, I finished installing the interior:

Installed the transmission gear selector bezel:

Installed the deck lid:

And finally, the steering wheel:

This last Monday (April 16th) the Mustang took her first drive as a restored family heirloom.

In the week since, I’ve put over a hundred miles on her, and made some new friends.

I’m in awe of how far she’s come. It doesn’t seem real, but it is.

Wow.

Wall To Wall…

While my Brother-In-Law and I didn’t quite get as far as I wanted, It’s real, yo:

Last weekend, the Mustang had her carpet installed. My Brother-In-Law and I worked for quite a while to get everything cut to size and fitted/glued into place. I ordered what’s called “Mass Backed” carpet which has a thick sound-insulative layer under the carpet that’s also semi-formed to fit the floor pans. This carpet is the third in a series of sound dampeners installed in the cabin that started with the laying of the Dynamat and continued with the carpet underlayment.

The carpet comes in two pieces which overlap each other along the front of the seat risers. The bottom piece goes in the front of the car, so we started with that. Using a thin cut in the form of an X, we slotted the gear selector through the carpet and then lined up the rest until we were satisfied with where it was sitting. We then cut out around the gear selector. We tried to have all four bezel studs poke through the carpet to help anchor it, but overenthusiastic cutting on my part only left us with three:

Along the way, we got out my restored kick panels:

…and got them installed into the car:

We then laid the rear carpet which was pretty much just a drop-into-place procedure.

The main things holding the carpet in place are the seat belts and the seat tracks themselves. In order to get those installed, we needed to cut holes in the carpet to expose the bolt holes. Any time you’re not making a straight cut, you run the risk of creating a run in your carpet that you can’t stop. To avoid this, we used a wood burner:

to melt the nylon carpet and backing into nice circular areas that were just the right size to expose the bolt holes:

With the seat belt bolt holes exposed, we secured the retractors and latches into their locations and cinched them down tight.

After much cutting:

…and gluing, we were left with some awesome wall to wall carpeting with fully-installed seat belt accessories:

Finally, it was time to install the seats. This presented a small problem because I couldn’t find the nuts used for the seat tracks. I looked for quite a while and didn’t find diddly. The local hardware store didn’t have exactly the right type of nut (which has an integrated spring washer) but did have a flange nut that would have worked in a pinch. Thankfully, as we were looking, another source of nuts was discovered. As it turns out, I own another Mustang that uses the same nuts:

Thanks Mystique!

Later that day as I was cleaning up, I naturally found the Mustang’s old seat track nuts. I vividly remembered leaving them on the seat tracks and was rather irritated that they weren’t there. As it turns out, I did exactly that – but with the Mustang’s original bench seat rather than the replacement bucket seats:

Oh well…

We only got one seat installed due to me not remembering exactly how to install the quarter trim panels which have to go in before the rear seats do. Because I really wanted to see an installed seat, the last thing my Brother-In-Law and I did was to carry the passenger side seat from where we’d set it on the workbench:

…set it down in the car, squeezed the bolts through the carpet and bolted it on:

Woohoo!!!

A little later in the weekend, I worked out how to install the quarter trim panels. It turns out that I’d covered up the section of the trunk divider that the quarter trim panel screws into. I needed to drill a couple of small holes:

And then I could install the panel:

I’m still not 100% sure I installed the panel correctly. The hardware fastener kit I purchased has more screws than the trim panel has holes. Additionally, there are holes in the quarter trim panel that don’t line up with any holes in the body of the car:

These holes are along the back on the wheel house (which lines up with a brace but no hole):

and on the bottom near the front of the panel:

I dunno… Mystique has screws in all of these locations, but there is *nothing* to screw to in the Mustang unless I drill holes. I’m not keen on doing that and the fasteners that I did use to attach the panel seem to be doing a fine job so for now I’m going to go with what I have and hope for the best.

With the quarter panel installed, I was able to finally install one of the last big pieces of bling – the rocker sill plate:

I was only able to install the driver’s side quarter trim panel and sill plate. This weekend I hope to do the other side and maaaaaybe get the rest of the interior finished.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s About To Get Real, Yo…

When the Mustang came home from getting painted, I pessimistically thought it would take me upwards of a year to get her all put back together.

That estimate has since been terrifyingly replaced with holy crap, I’m almost done here!

This last weekend saw the final bits of preparation for the carpet to be installed. I pulled out my carpet underlayment kit and got it all installed in the car:

The underlayment has two sides: a Jute padding like you see in the picture above and a black, tar-based side. The instructions say either side can go down, but in practice, you need to put the side down that corresponds with the cuts to fit the floor pan of the car. This meant that most of the padding went black-side down. The lone exception to this rule was the underlayment that went over the rear seat area.

To keep the underlayment in place, I used small pieces of strip caulk:

that attached to the Dynamat and held the underlayment in place.

With the underlayment installed, it was time to move on to dressing the doors:

I started with the water shield which is a moisture barrier between the door and the door panel. These are simple pieces of plastic with pre-marked areas to cut out for your window crank, arm rest brackets and so on.

The water shields are installed by applying strip caulk to the back side and then simply placing them directly onto the door and rear quarter trim panel areas:

Finished with that easy task, I moved on to the some-assembly-required door panel. As you can see in the image above, the vinyl on the door panel is pre-installed, but not pre-cut in any area except for the window crank. It’s left as an exercise for the installer to cut the vinyl in the areas indicated:

In some cases, the backer board itself needs to be cut out such as for the mirror adjustment bezel:

After careful cutting with a brand-new razor blade, I was ready to start dressing the quarter panel.

I started with the door panel cup:

This cup installed over the arm rest area in the area where your hand is when you’re using the door handle. It installs on to the door panel using two studs on the back of the cup that fit (sorta) into two pre-cut holes in the backer board:

Next, I installed the little Mustang emblems that go in the upper middle of the door panel:

These lined up perfectly and were an easy install.

The remote mirror bezel proved to be somewhat of a challenge:

Installing it into the door panel was easy…

…but when it was installed, I was unable to get the mirror wand and control cables aligned with the bezel for them to be attached. Eventually, I simply installed the bezel onto the car first and then squeezed the front of the bezel through the mounting hole and attached it after the fact:

In the picture above, you can see the mirror’s control wires coming down from the top of the door. The wires need to be routed from the mirror, around the front of the door and across the top of the door frame to avoid interfering with the window. Theres a spot on the inner structure of the door that has a hole used to attach a remote cable clip that holds these cables in place. Unfortunately, my car did not come with remote mirrors so I did not have that clip. I couldn’t find anywhere to buy one either.

What’s an engineer to do in situations like this? Raid the left-over parts bin and improvise, of course!

I had a couple of Scott Drake chrome wire clips left over from when I installed my hood scoop wiring:

These clips were about the right size to contain the control wires, but they didn’t have any way to allow a screw to hold them in place on the inner door frame. To fix that, I grabbed an extra u-nut from the box I purchased a while back while installing the dash.

Lastly, I grabbed an extra weatherstrip channel screw to complete the family portrait:

When fit together, everything seemed to work perfectly and I was plenty happy with my improvisational skills:

With the mirror cable and bezel sorted, I installed the door panel clips into the backer board and installed the panel onto the door:

With the door panel installed, I then moved on to affixing everything that goes over it. I started with the arm rest:

which attaches to the door through the three holes and brackets you see in the images above.

After the arm rest was installed, I cleaned and re-installed the window cranks:

I decided to re-use my original window crank hardware even though it’s not as perfectly nice as I would like. I’ve spent enough money on the car already and these are easy to replace later at any time. The only new item I used was the little sticker that covers the screw holding everything in place.

The last piece of the puzzle was the upper door panel trim:

I’m…a little ticked at myself here as far as these pieces are concerned. Since I restored them a year and a half ago, they’ve just sat on a shelf under my workbench – uncovered and exposed to the elements.

This stupid mistake resulted in re-disgustingified panels that required extensive cleaning:

Thankfully, after a non-insignificant amount of elbow grease, the panels cleaned up nicely:

The hole you see above is where the door lock knobs go. Between the door lock knobs and the upper trim panel is space for a grommet. These grommets come in two varieties, the el-cheapo plastic version and a stainless steel version with an anti-noise felt pad.

I originally bought the cheap ones.

Don’t buy the cheap ones.

I managed to break the first el-cheapo grommet as I tried to install. As I mentioned, these grommets are plastic and need to have their little tabs compressed in order to seat correctly. When attempting to push the grommet through the hole in the upper trim panel, one of the tabs snapped off – rendering the grommet useless.

My second attempt with the soon-thereafter-purchased nice stainless steel grommets was much more successful:

With the grommet installed, it was time to put the trim panel in place, attach the door lock knob and enjoy my now-fully-dressed doors:

One thing I should point out about the red under the door panel. It’s not supposed to be there. Originally, the bare metal under the door panel was painted interior color. In my case, black:

I chose to leave this body color because I like the look of it better. It’s not “original” but I think it’s a nice custom touch.

With the doors finally dressed, it was time to do the last bit of prep work to lay the carpet.

I brought out the rear seat belts:

and got them installed into the car:

I made sure that they were installed in such a way that the buckle faced up as it came out of the seat. To seal in the washers, I applied a thin bead of strip caulk and pushed them into place. The caulk had the added benefit of keeping the washer in place as I laid the seat belt bracket up against it and threaded in the bolt.

I also removed the deck lid and installed the trunk weatherstripping:

Finally, it was time to open a box I’ve had sitting on a shelf for over two years:

I dry-fit the carpet into the car and left it there so it can loosen up a bit and start to take the shape of the floor pans:

The plan for this weekend is to have my Brother-In-Law come over and help get the carpet installed for real along with at least the front seats and the deck lid.

Which brings me back to the holy crap, I’m almost done here! statement. This realization hit me pretty hard last weekend. Once the carpet and seats are installed, there’s precious little else that will need to be done before the car will be ready to drive. I’m honestly a little flabbergasted to be saying that. I’ve been working on this car for over three years and am just now actually seeing the end.

It’s a…weird… feeling, but one I think will be fairly easy to get used to…

 

 

 

Unavoidable Goo and Fiddly…

Ever since the Mustang’s windows were installed last December, I’ve been finding ways to avoid putting in their weatherstripping and aligning them. The weatherstripping is a dirty, gooey job and the window alignment is a never-ending battle with fiddly to get right. Neither of these tasks were particularly appealing to me but as of last week they became unavoidable.

I started by taking inventory of the weatherstripping I needed to put in:

Those packages contain the following:

• Two roof rail weatherstrips
• Two door perimeter weatherstrips
• Two front of door seal weatherstrips
• Trunk weatherstrip

My plan was to install everything but the trunk weatherstripping.

I started with the easy tasks – the two front of door seals:

These install (unsurprisingly) in the window channel at the front of the door.

Interestingly, the seals I have do not have slits cut for the window whereas my originals did:

I’m note sure which is actually correct, but not having the slit doesn’t seem to be impacting the performance of the seal so I’m leaving them slit-less for now.

With the easy stuff out of the way, it was time to get out the goo:

I started with the door perimeter weatherstrip that goes along the bottom of the door and loops up to the window:

After cleaning the weatherstrip channel area and the weatherstrip itself with isopropyl alcohol, I set up tape at small intervals along the channel to keep everything in place:

As it turns out, the little channel at the bottom of the door does a surprisingly good job of keeping everything in place by itself, but having the tape there made me feel better about things staying where I put them.

Rather than glue everything at once, I took the gluing process in small steps to avoid getting any dirt or contaminants between the weatherstrip and the door. I’d start by running a thin bead of glue on the door and then another on the weatherstrip. I used a small wooden stick to spread the glue out very thin and then waited for a minute or two for everything to become tacky before I attached things together.

This took a while, but in the end everything seemed to work out:

With the door perimeter weatherstripping done, I moved on to the roof weatherstripping. This weatherstripping attaches to the roof rail weatherstrip channel I installed back in November.

This weatherstrip fits into the channel on the flat side of the cross section you see below. The channel has c-sections as both ends that the rubber fits into that holds it into place and aligns the weatherstripping to where it’s supposed to be:

Have I mentioned this process is messy? I’m still working on getting all the glue off my hands. However messy, it didn’t end up being terribly hard and before long all the rubber that was to be installed was in place and ready to sit for a day to cure.

Once the curing was complete, it was time to adjust the fiddly windows.

You might be wondering what exactly I mean by “fiddly windows”.  Webster’s dictionary defines “fiddly windows” as windows that have NINE adjustment points per side. NINE. Really:

Window adjustment points 1 and 2

are along the bottom of the door and allow for the tip in of the window to be adjusted (basically allowing the top of the window to be closer or further away from the car).

 

Window adjustment point 3:

is actually two adjusters in one. It’s the front window stop and also has an adjustment for allowing the window itself to be moved within the door.

 

Window adjustment point 4

is the rear window stop allowing for the adjustment of how high the window rolls up in back.

 

Window adjustment point 5

is for the front of the quarter windows.

 

Window adjustment point 6 and 7

adjust the quarter window tip in (adjustment 6) and the fore and aft location of the window (adjustment 7).

 

Window adjustment 8 (purple) and 9 (red)

control the rear quarter window height (adjustment 8) and also assist with the fore and aft location of the window (adjustment 9).

Nine adjustment points. Wow.

So…hours later…

I think I’ve got it as good as it’s going to get. I did the passenger side first and it’s at a point where the windows line up and seat in their weatherstripping both when I roll the windows up and when I open and close the door. The only hiccup is that the mating between the door window and the rear quarter wind right at the top isn’t quite right. The quarter window is a little too far in – creating a gap. It’s my theory that this gap will close once I put the quarter trim pieces in and the trim’s belt-line felt pushes the window in a bit. We’ll see.

I just finished the driver’s side tonight. It was…more challenging. Right now, I’ve got it to the point where if I roll the window up after closing the door things work fine. However, if I open and close the door, the window doesn’t seat in the weatherstripping properly along the top of the roof. However, if I make it so I can open and close the door and have the window seat properly along the roof, it doesn’t seat properly along the front. Ugh…

My solution to this conundrum was to close the door, roll the window up so everything seated right and then crawl out through the cooperating passenger door. Hopefully, the glass and weatherstripping will form to each other while sitting there for an extended period of time and allow the door/window to open, close and seal as it should. If not… well, I guess I’ll be a-fiddl’n some more…

Dynamat Vol. II

There have been a number of times over the course of the Mustang’s restoration where I’ve whined about the difficulty in constructing a compelling narrative for a blog post based on what I accomplished the previous week.

This is another one of those times.

To avoid death-by-boredom for my readers, I’ll summarize my tasks this week with the following brief bulleted list:

• Measure Dynamat/Tape
• Cut
• Apply
• Repeat (over and over and over and over again)

When the process finally ended, I am delighted to declare the application of the Dynamat completed:

Initially, I was thinking my next step would be carpet. However, upon further consideration, the carpet really requires the seats to be installed in order to lock it into place. With the seats installed, it would be more difficult to get into the back seat area to adjust the rear quarter windows so I’ve decided to do that first.

As usual, there’s a prerequisite step that has to be done before I can adjust the windows. The roof weatherstripping needs to be in place for proper alignment. I don’t know how much time I’ll have this weekend, but whenever I do get down to the shop, that task is next on the list.

 

Do-Re-Mi…

Let’s start at the very beginning. A little over two years ago, I figured out how the wiring for my radio and electric choke was going to work:

Not long after that, did a dry run of my new stereo system. This proved the wiring worked, but the sound was less than inspiring:

A few months later, the radio was dry fitted into the lower dash for the first time:

Last month, the radio was finally installed into the car’s dash:

But it was still hooked up to only the front dual-voice speaker:

And the rear speakers I originally purchased were poorly researched:

Last week’s goal was to address all those issues. I started where I left off the prior week: with correctly-sized 4×10 inch speakers:

…and a Dynamatted package tray base:

I then wired the speakers up and took the package tray insulation that I purchased:

…and cut out speaker holes in that as well. Once the insulation and the package tray were fit together, it became clear that I needed to use the speaker grills to help hold down the edges of the package tray:

Thankfully, with everything in place, the edges were pulled down nicely.

Finally, with everything in place, I was able to listen to my stereo at fully capability:

Ignoring the sounds-like-static rain in the background, this audio output was much, much nicer than my previous tests. Success!

I’ll be the first to admit that success notwithstanding, the sound system is far from top-notch. However, as I’ve mentioned previously I rarely if ever listen to the radio while I’m driving. What I have will more than do for the rare times I want to listen to something other than my engine.

With the radio finished, it was time to install the metal trunk divider. There was only one problem; the provided screws were nice and shiny. These screws would actually be visible from the trunk and I didn’t like the idea of shiny pointy things sticking out against the black motif of the trunk when the deck lid was opened.

A trip to the hardware store was in order for new fasteners:

The black screws were a little bigger and about a quarter inch longer, but they were as close as I could get in black sheet-metal screws so I called them good enough. The only issue was that the hardware store didn’t quite have enough. I ended up using the black screws everywhere they’d be visible in the trunk and the shiny screws along the bottom that attached into the void between the transition pan and the trunk:

At this point, all that’s left is finishing the Dynamat. I hope to be able to get that all taken care of this week.

 

 

 

Past Failures Of Research…

Many of the parts I’m installing on the Mustang now were purchased a year or two ago during my initial period of naivete when I thought this would be a quick project. During those “early years” I wasn’t as well versed in researching the proper parts to order as I like to think I am now. This lack of Google-fu was in prominent display this week as you’ll see below.

This week’s work started off just fine with the extension of the Dynamat to the back of the rear seat pans:

At that point, I noticed that I had a fair amount of work left to do in the rear of the car:

This work would require me to crawl all over the Dynamat on the floors if I installed it beforehand. While that’s probably not a huge deal, I decided it was probably best to leave the floors alone and break out the rear seat divider, speakers and package tray I’ve had lying around for a couple of years.

I decided to start with the Mustang’s package tray. This tray sits right beneath the rear window on the metal shelf you see in the image above. Originally, these trays were a press board material that had a propensity to attract moisture and rot away to nothing. Neither of my two Mustangs have their original trays.

Naturally, there are replacement trays available. In many cases, these trays are now made of fiberglass for a more long-lasting solution. However, just because these trays are made of a better material doesn’t mean they’re better made.

From the product page of the package tray I purchased:

NOTE: As with most fiberglass, some preparation may be needed for best fit and finish. Please TEST FIT before any prep or painting, modified parts are not returnable.

In the case of this product, “some preparation” meant sanding away over an inch of material in some areas before it would even begin to fit:

The reason this material needed to be removed was that the package tray is held in place by the rubber seal of the rear window. That means it needs to slide in under the seal to fit into its happy place. There was so much extra material on the product I purchased that it almost touched the window itself.

Had I done better research, I would have found a much better product at California Pony Cars. Not only does this product not have an overabundance of material at the end (you’ll note on that page the lack of any verbiage indicating any required preparation) but it also has the correct pattern on the top – something my package tray attempted but failed miserably at.

Having sunk 70+ dollars into what I had, I decided to make the best of it and proceeded to coat my entire shop with a thin layer of fiberglass dust as I “prepared” the tray for installation. Finally, after about an hour I was able to successfully get the tray to fit where it was supposed to:

You can see in the shot above that the package tray is tucked in under the rear window seal. In order to do that, the Internet recommends a couple of different tools:

I found the little plastic door panel pry-bar to work the best for me. Your mileage may vary.

With the package tray in place, it was time to cut holes in it so I could mount my nice 6×9 speakers…

…the 6×9 inch speakers that were too big when I got them out of the box and attempted to dry fit them:

Going back through my thought process for buying these speakers, I remembered that I based the size on the fact that *all* of the package trays at cjponyparts.com that have built-in speaker pods have their pods sized for 6×9 speakers:

I apparently took these search results as speaker-size-to-get-gospel and purchased accordingly.

Since I’m in possession of metal-working equipment, I could have easily have made the speakers fit. In doing so though, I’d be cutting into perfectly good metal for the sole purpose of covering up a research error on my part. I wasn’t enthusiastic about doing that unless it was a last resort.

After a break for some more-better Googling, I discovered that the speaker housing in the package tray area for my 69 Mustang Coupe is designed to directly accommodate a 4×10 inch speaker.  These speakers are apparently none-too-common in today’s world as it took me three music stores to find a pair.

Once I did though, the fitment was much better:

With the speaker situation sorted, I was finally able to cut the holes out in the package tray and paint it to match the rest of the interior:

I then applied Dynamat to the metal backing to give the speakers their best chance of producing good sound:

At that point, work on the package tray needed to stop. During my speaker research I also discovered that there’s a piece of insulation that installs under the tray I had neglected to previously discover and procure. That piece is on order and should be here this week.

I next moved on to dry fitting my metal divider that goes between the trunk and the rear seat area:

This metal piece is another solid upgrade to the original press board divider the cars originally came with. Being metal, it adds a more fire-proof barrier between the passenger compartment and the gas-tank-containing trunk. It also helps to stiffen up the car’s unibody.

You’ll notice that the piece above is nothing fancy – basically just a rectangle of metal with ears. At the time I purchased this piece, my two primary on-line sources of parts were National Parts Depot and cjponyparts.com. cjponyparts.com doesn’t appear to offer these panels as options at all so I went with the panel from National Parts Depot.

Once again, had I done some more exhaustive research, I would have found a much better divider from Mustangs Unlimited:

*That* piece is actually form cut to fit the curves of the wheel houses and notched to avoid interference with the seat mounting brackets.

Once again though, I had what I had so I made the best of it:

Everything you see above is simply dry fitted to make sure all the pieces would work together. Once I was done with this shot, I started to take everything apart again for final installation next week.

I quickly stopped though when I realized there was one more piece of the puzzle that probably should be introduced to make sure it still fits:

It’s been over a year since I’ve seen any of the seats I restored and re-upholstered. I knew that the seats would be among the last pieces of the interior to be installed and until this week, they’d been largely out of mind. Getting the rear seat back down to dry fit it into the car made me realize that I may soon need to face the terrifying reality that I might actually get this car done in the coming months.

That thought had me grinning from ear to ear and forgiving myself for the research transgressions of the past.

 

Dynamat Vol. I…

In more than three years of owning the Mustang, I’ve taken her for only a small handful of drives. The most memorable was right after the electrical system was brought back on line for the first time:

During that drive, I noticed that it was…a little loud inside the cabin. Part of that for sure was the fact that both the hood *and* the trunk were off and the windows were down, but a significant contributing factor was also the fact that the Mustang’s old carpet and underlayment were shot and not providing any sound deadening at all. It also didn’t help that the headliner was ripped to shreds.

Not detracting anything from the glorious sound the Mustang’s engine makes, I do have to admit sometimes it’s nice to have a little peace and quiet. This weekend’s goal was to set the foundation up for a more silent cabin in the future.

The product that I chose to use to shush out the road noise was Dynamat:

From everything I’ve read, this is one of the best sound deadeners you can buy – which I really hope is true because it’s also one of the most expensive.

Dynamat comes in sheets measuring 18 inches by 32 inches. It’s basically a sticky butyl rubber compound with an aluminum topping. It’s designed to stick to the metal of car doors and floor pans and reduce the resonant frequency of the metal by adding mass and preventing vibrations.

I previously installed Dynamat in my doors in small sections:

and went wall-to-wall with the installation on the firewall.

For my floor pans, I was going to continue the cover-everything approach. I admit this is probably overkill, but I don’t care. It looks wicked cool – even though no one will ever see it.

Before I could lay anything down, the Mustang’s interior needed a little pre-Spring cleaning:

The white streaks you see were the remnants of the cutting compound used by the body shop to polish the paint. It’s not the easiest stuff to get off, but a couple of rounds of scrubbing got most of it:

You can see in the image above I kept myself busy while the floor pan was drying by installing the floor pan drain plugs:

These were a simple install. All it took was a little bit of strip caulking around the edges:

…and a couple of screws into the floor pan:

With the drain plugs installed and the floor dry, it was time to lay down the Dynamat. I had originally hoped to get the entire floor finished, but quickly found out that it takes a while to get this stuff installed over all the bumps, curves and contours of the floor pan.

My basic approach is to lay down the Dynamat, use the rubber roller to smooth out the flat spots and then make relief cuts in the material to allow it to conform to the floor pan:

Once the relief cuts are flattened down, additional material can fill the gaps and then the seams are covered with the Dynamat aluminum tape.

After a few hours of working, I managed to get maybe two thirds of the floor pan finished:

The rest will have to be finished next week in Vol. 2…

 

 

Venting…

With last week’s successful dash installation, this week’s project was the items that install under it.  If you recall, there’s not a whole lot of room under the dash and I’m not a big fan of working there.

By way of visual, this is the general outline of the floor pan where I was contorting myself while doing my work on Saturday:

As you can imagine, that shape is not one in which humans are particularly adept at conforming to. At the end of the day, I hurt everywhere…

My goal was to install these vents:

…into their receptacles on the lower cowl:

Naturally, what I thought would be a quick job turned into something a little bigger. Note to self: in the future, install this vent before installing the heater box:

I honestly couldn’t tell you how I installed the vent on the passenger side. The heater box was completely in the way. Finally, after maybe half an hour of fiddling, it popped in and I was able to rotate it into place. Not knowing exactly what I did to get it to “pop” in the first place, I was disinclined to remove it to find out. Sorry readers, this one I can’t explain and you’ll have to fiddle on your own.

With the tight space, I did have to make a few tool modifications in order to tighten the fasteners:

At long last the passenger vent was in and I moved on to the driver’s side. This vent had plenty of available space and installed in less than five minutes:

Not being one to let something easy get me down, I decided next to install the Mustang’s parking brake assembly:

…which goes directly over the top of the cowl vent:

Now me (previously future me) was very happy with past me for leaving the parking brake cable loose under the car which made it much easier to clip the cable to the brake assembly:

…and then fasten the whole thing into place:

At that point, my lovely wife came down to the shop asking when I would be finished and noted that she’d helpfully pre-heated the oven for me to cook dinner. I told her I was “just about ready to come up” which may or may not have been an accurate statement of fact – depending on your definition of just about ready.

My Saturday-night definition of just about ready involved installing the following pads and stainless trim under the dash:

This took…probably more time than most definitions of just about ready but the end result was pretty cool:

Next week’s plan is to install the remainder of my sound deadener to find out how much more I need to order before I can put the carpeting in.