crashfab

In late august my mom had to call an ambulance because my dad was exhibiting symptoms of a heart attack. he was taken to the hospital and they were able to rule out a heart attack but found he was anemic. The doctors were sure his anemic condition was causing his symptoms but needed to look into why. I am not sure if it was was an x-ray or an MRI but they found something in his colon.

On september 1st he had an apointment to have an in depth MRI to find out what it is and of course it would take a day or 2 for the doctor to get back with the results. I was at work on saturday when he called me to tell me the news that they found it was a tumor and it was in his colon but we did not know the extent of it yet. He made another apointment that was a few days later and later that day he sent a text to all of us (me, my older brother and 2 younger sisters) that he wanted us at there house to talk to us.

Thats when he told us that he was at stage 4 and the cancer was spreading and already in his liver. He is going in for chemo next to try and beat this thing and we are all very positive. he's a strong person and we are a close family.

About 10 years ago he bought a 66' stang with the intentions of restoring it. About 6 years ago they sold there big house and bought a place on a lake that they were going to fix up. Well the new place didn't have a garage like the old house so it was driven up to my sisters place where it sat with weeds/brush growing around it.

With the news of something in his colon and the doctors concerns it was what it was--my brother in law called me with a plan. He loaded the car onto a trailer and hauled it over to my shop--we were going to do what we could to get this thing back into shape and at this point we were not going to tell him till it was done.

Here is how it sat right off the trailer around september 1st

crashfab

We gutted the interior and pressure washed the whole car. This is our starting point.











Our origional intention was to suprise him with it but once we found out where he was with his condition we decided to tell him so he could have something to help take his mind off things.

crashfab

So our plan off attack was for my brother in law(more like a brother) who goes by spidertoy here he would take care of the body and I would handle the rest.

So while Don stripped parts off the body my main thing was to start going over the wiring and trying to get it to start.



The stock fuse panel was just sitting and hanging--and its badly rusted out so I am going to replace it with an updated panel.







I threw a backup battery in it to just see if I could get it to turn over--nothing. I was not getting a crank signal to the relay. I started back tracing and was trying to see if I was getting voltage out of the ignition switch.



Well when I was "barely" touching the back side of the switch this happened.







I looked it over and thought to myself--I can fix this. So I cleaned it up/greased it and reassembed it and staked it back together--just like new.







So I threw it back in and it now turns over but won't fire. I pulled the cap off and cleaned the crud off the points and the damn thing fired off and ran pretty decent. While I was doing this my sister called my dad so he could hear it run---he was excited.



One cool thing we learned tonight---as soon as its done they are taking it to california to drive down route 66. So on top of the fact my dad is going to beat this--they have a plan for it...

crashfab

We are just cruising right along. My dad came over on friday(sept 3rd) to see it and he was amazed with what we had so far. He really wanted to hear it run "thats damn nice"--I told him "not good enough" "thumbsup"








I got it on jack stands to asses the brakes and such.



I got the interior all wire wheeled. Its not perfect but with the time we are working with--we are just going to have to seal it up the best we can without replacing any panels.





The drivers floor pan has some small holes but its still pretty solid. We will just have to seal it up for now.



One thing I am going to fix are the holes for the drivers seat where it mounts to the floor. The drivers seat base had broke and caused this.

crashfab

So we are trucking along.

I got the brakes done. I didn't replace the shoes(sanded them) but I did replace the front wheel cylinders. I also repacked the front wheel bearings and turned the drums.





I threw some paint on the drums.



I was kinda scared of this one since it looked pretty rusted and looked like it had never been touched in a long time.



The bolts actually came out with no issue. But I was right it had not been touched in a very long time--the fluid was the blackest 90w I had ever seen but it was not burnt smelling.



Cleaned the heck out of the diff and cleaned the cover and no prodject of mine is never complete without the use of hammerite hammered paint.

crashfab

I finally got the correct vacuum advance. I totaly dissassembled the distributor, polished all needed parts and reassembled it with the new vacuum advance/points and now it works like it should.



Got it reinstalled and set the timing to spec. I didn't set the dwell yet as I will do that after I get the carb off and rebuilt. This vacuum advance used hardline (3/16 brakeline) to go the carb. Long ago it was cut off so I am going to remake a new one and make it look factory again.

crashfab

There are small freeze plugs just below the headgasket level on the block. Now I would not mind this but its behind the exhaust manifold and looking at the bolts for it--ya I didn't have a good feeling about pulling it.



So I did everything I could to be gentle with the bolts. I did get it off.







I did end up having 3 bolts brake. One near the center and both upper outer ones(one front/one rear).

crashfab

Now you can see them very nicely. I am going to just go ahead and replace all the freeze plugs since I will have full access to them.



Now onto the fun part--removing the broken bolts. Luckily I have alot of experiance doing this since I have been in the biz for 20 years. The center one was easy. I just grabbed my torch with a rosebud tip and got the bolt cherry red. After that I grabbed vice grips and you justshock the bolt back/forth and it cracked loose and came out. The others were a bit more fun. Since they were on the outer edges you could see the top of the bolt but I had to remove the valve cover (which I was going to anyways to repaint it), the rocker assy and the outer valve springs. With this I was able to drill into the top of the bolt.



I first tried using my slick extractor. These things were in there and it busted it off. With this style you need to drill all the way thru the bolt which I did so removing the broken piece was easy.



I ended up having to just drill the bolts out completely and run a tap down the hole to remove the rest and yes they were virtually rusted in place.





I had mentioned earlier that there was an exhaust leak at the pipe to manifold area and I was going to drop the exhaust anyways. Well I found out why it was getting worse. The pipe/lip that the donut sits in is 1/3 gone.



I will have to see if I can locate a replacement.

crashfab

After Don's buddy who is going to do the body/paint work looked it over don went and pulled the doors off because they are no good. At that point don started stripping more areas that we could not get on the body with the doors on.











The door shell itself is toast--just too much rust in them to try and repair them. So now we are on the hunt for a good replacement set and they also reproduce them but are kinda spendy so we are trying to figure out what to do there.

crashfab

I got the freeze plugs popped out. The lower 5 were not in too bad of shape and didn't pop thru when I knocked them out. The top 4 smaller ones were just toast as every one I popped a hole in it removing.











Unfortunately I had one small one turn installing(they were very difficult to do) so I will have to grab another one tommorow. But the rest are in/done.







I got his new tires mounted and ballanced at work today. I just gotta clean them up so you can see the white walls (what he wanted).