Quote: Originally Posted by musclecar70sfan Wow I just stumbled across this thread and I gotta say man you're doing great. I love watching the progress people make with their project cars. Be sure to provide updates!!! And 350 with a T-5 huh? I wonder how that lil' t-5 was holding up. It all depends on how you drive it, if you try to blow it up you can do it in no time flat. If you just drive the car normally and don't beat on it to hard it'll last a long time. On the other hand if you throw on slicks on it, take it to the track and launch it hard chances are it won't last more than a couple runs, either that or the rear will blow apart.

Well got the front done so I have moved on to the trunk.Trunk is in good shape so it will just get the wire wheel and then chassis saver.

Figured I better check behind the bumper cover and as I suspected more rust. The impact bar was rusted clear through in a couple of spots. Had to cut it up just to remove it. The stove bolts that mount it spun inside their square holes.

After finally getting that crap off of course there is more rust,shocker.

The rust on the panel isn't too bad.The sheetmetal appears to be about three layers thick in this area and the outside layer is all the deaper it has gone and that sheet is very thin. I am going to sleep on it tonight. Not sure if it really needs a piece welded over it. I may just spray the chassis saver on it heavy and call it done,can't see it anyway.Oh yea and some genious drove out the lock and really bent up the lock hole.I think I got it tapped back into place good enough. Just need to weld up a small crack created when they forced it out.

Today I got the donar impact bar cleaned up and a slight bend in it straightened out. Then I started cleaning out the pockets on each side of the trunk. And what a shock again,more rust. This hole was hidden by layers of crap laying in the way.The trusty shop vac was kind enough to reveal it for me though.

Glad I found it now then later.The gfx was broken behind the rear tire so I would have found it later anyway. As luck would have it there was also a small hole showed up in the inner panel when I hit it with the wire wheel cleaning off some rust scale. Welded in a small patch in the inner panel and seamed sealed it.

This made for a good stopping point. I already have the patch panel cut out from the parts car so I should be able to get it welded in tommorrow. Glad I have a southern raised parts car, the body is beat up some but relatively rust free.

Got the patch panel piece welded in and smoothed out.

After a little bit of body filler, another job checked off the growing list.

Looks good. I had to do the same thing on my car in that area on both sides. The only differance is that my patch was just a bit bigger. lol

Oh yea I'm not complaining it could have been much worse than it was.
Yesterday I finally got the prep work done in the trunk.Was having trouble motivating myself to do the trunk.Still have some work to do around the lock hole where the lock has been punched out.My parts car was worse so I had to straighten it some and weld a small tear in the metal. Also had to weld in a small piece of the lip area above the lock due to rust.


The inner bumper from the parts car was a little bent and some of the factory welds had come loose. Got it all fixed up. Went ahead and put some chassis coat on it as well. I had just enough left in the sprayer to cover it.

Looks like it is going to end up looking FLY. You are definitely putting alot of good work towards this and I think it is going to end up looking great!

Thanks I appreciate the compliment. This project definately is taking more time than I expected though. I wanted to get all the undercoating done before winter, the cool air is already starting to roll in early this year.
I guess next on the list will be to put it back up on stands to weld in the SFC's and LCA's. Replace the fuel sending unit I fried.This should keep me busy through the cold months.

Well here is the old girl back up on jack stands again.

I spent several days with an air grinder and a wire wheel cleaning off years of dirt and old undercoating.I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of serious rust.


Spent the better part of today spraying the chassis coat undercoating on. What a crappy job this was. Hopefully the underside work is mostly done except welding in the SFC's. I think it turned out good and should protect everything for many years.

When removing the fuel tank I found a small wet spot that kept returning after wiping it off. Luckily I kept the tank out of the parts car which was in excellant shape. Only rust it had was from sitting it outside the garage waiting to scrap one day. I went ahead and undercoated it also.

Snapped a pic of the heart of the beast since the tank is hanging right beside it. Doesn't look like much now. Later on I will put on the nice looking stuff.

While I had the rear end out I decided to rework the shock mounts that I made last summer. I didn't get the angle right and the shocks were at a bad angle when bolted up. Here is what I thought would work.Pic is kinda fuzzy but you get the idea.

I took the rearend out of the parts car and partially cut the mounts off of it. Then I cut the mounts on the 9-bolt to match. Welded them in place. I think this is a lot better looking setup and everything mounts up better too. Also welded on the lowering LCA's while I was at it.

Cleaned all the rust scale and dirt of the rearend that I painted over on the first go around. Repainted it and installed a new cover. I actually bent the factory cover while moving the rearend around one day and dropped it right on the cover. Painted the calipers and put some new rotors on since the old ones were right on the verge of being worn out anyway.
Sorry the pics came out blurry for some reason,but I'm not taking the rearend out again to get better shots.


Put the rearend back in and put the rear side of the sfc's on while I had the control arms off. I started welding them in place but ran out of wire in the welder.

You are doing a great job! It starting to look really good!

hey its looking great. any new progress?

About the only thing I got done after putting the rear end back in was welding in the sub frame connectors. The weather started getting cold fast. The only way I have to heat my garage is a 300,000 BTU torpedo heater and it drinks the kerosene. At $3.00 plus per gallon it gets expensive fast. I will probably spend the next couple of months trying to find more parts I want or need. I figure sometime in Febuary I will be getting stir crazy in the house and the whole family will chip in on the kerosene and throw me out.
Thanks for the compliments by the way. I am going kinda slow to get everything right the first time around.

Thanks for checking it out and welcome to the boards.

Where was the wet spot? Is it where the filler neck goes into the tank? I think mine might be leaking.....

Dude, you must be my long lost brother, who loves the Cowboy's, listens to metallica and drives a 3rd gen!

The wet spot was on the bottom side almost in the middle of the tank. It was a rust hole in the first stages getting ready to come thru. Weird thing is when I removed the tank it wasn't full of rust. That spot was under the baffle so I couldn't really see that area too good.

If yours is leaking around the filler neck you could probably fix that since it doesn't have fluid sitting there at all times. Most chain store autoparts places have fuel tank patching stuff.
It's such a pain to get the tank out of these cars,which makes any kind of tank repair suck.

I haven't heard from DC in along time. Last PM he sent I think he sold his Maro and was getting into 4x4's cause he asked me some questions about my Jeep.

great looking car man, i have always wanted a convert just cause when you smoke them tires off the smoke comes right on in to greet ya lol keep up the good work you will be laying um out in no time

Thanks for the compliment. I will have to take it easy on the tire smoking though. The little T5 won't take too much. I will swap to something better one day, but for now $2000 or more can go to a lot of stuff I have to have to enjoy driving it some.

well you should search for a used t56 from like a camaross with the ls1 or something idk throwing out an idea

Oh yea that is my full intent one day. But my engine is a gen1 which can be expensive to adapt to an older style engine. Thought about a Muncie or something similar but those are getting to be old school now too.
I want to get it looking good and drivable first,then start looking for a better tranny.
I have never even driven this car yet. I'm kinda anxious for a little windshield time!

yea i understand that well best of luck to ya yor doing a great job, any updates? pics?

Hey Breeze, get anything done on this IROC lately?

Hey thanks for asking about updates guys but unfortunately I don't have any. I have been in the garage some but I been working on other peoples stuff trying to make a little cash for the money pit. I will be hitting it hard soon. I am going to make a list of things I need to get ordered so when the weather breaks a little I can get started.

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I had a little break from working on other peoples stuff this weekend so I got started cleaning and painting on the little stuff that needed some attention. I started with the tail lights. I took them partially apart, cleaned them,lightly sanded and painted them.

The wiper motor was pretty rough looking so I cleaned it up and painted it a darker silver than most people do just to be a little different.

Cleaned up the the fuel lines and brake lines and put some paint on them too. They will look good for a little while anyway. Had a new piece of brake line made for the rear line since the fitting twisted off, and it was way cheaper to have a small piece made rather buy the entire rear line.

Hopefully I can get myself in gear and get some more done soon.

This is one of the oldest scams in the world. Don't believe a word of it. They are trying to get a car for free. It happens in other countries all over the place

I think they resolved it a while ago... by dismissing it as a scam lol.

Yea it kinda freaked me out at first, then dismissed it as a load of crap.

OK Cool Sorry - New to this thread & didn't read rght through to the end. My Bad

I had a little set back with the engine this weekend. I have the engine on a stand that I built so I can run it without being in a car. I noticed a little milky tint to the oil over the winter and passed it off as condensation,since I usually just start the engine, bring it up to temp and shut it down.This time when I let it run a little while it sounded like the valves needed adjusted so I removed the valve covers and found antifreeze mixed with the oil on top of the heads. Several rocker studs were leaking. Since I used the same wrong stuff to seal the head bolts I figure they would start leaking also if not already.So I removed one head bolt at a time and hopefully it won't hurt the head gasket seal. Of I had to remove all the rockers and studs and reset all the valves. That took most of the day Sunday and finished it up tonight. Tonight I drained all the oil and started putting the headers back on. Hopefully I can get everything back together in the next couple of nights and get the engine fired up to check if the leaks return.
I am about done with these old school double hump heads, they have been fighting me the whole way. If they leak again I see some new aluminum heads in my future.

Here is a picture of the engine on the stand I built. This thing has been a life saver. The problem I'm having now wouldn't have showed up until the engine was installed and ran for awhile.

And here is the joy I discovered under the valve covers.

I had a little break from working on others peoples junk so I tried to get a few things done to my junk. I couldn't find the camera to take before but I did get some in progress stuff. I removed the tonneau hatch and removed the cover from it. I am going to try and find someone to recover it. Sanded it down and put some epoxy primer on it.

Removed the quarter caps, sanded and painted them as well.

I completely stripped the areas under the trunk lid and tonneau cover to bare metal. Straightend out the area around the keyhole and smoothed out some factory spot welds that were standing out like a sore thumb on the rear panel.



Also in the process of rebuilding the corner broken off the side body skirt.

Got the passenger side quarter sanded down and epoxy primered also. I did some reading about the epoxy primer and figured it would work best for me as I can only work on it ocassionaly. Its a good sealer and won't attract moisture.

So any updates if I may ask?

Unfortunately I have no updates. It still looks like it did in the last pics. We have had a heat wave from hell lately. So I been taking the Jeep out. It's topless too. We sold our boat and bought another playtoy. Remember my heart is chevy but we also own a dodge and now the newest addition is a Mustang. Bought it on a whim. Cause I know it will be awhile before the verts done. It is super quick too. I will add a pic hope it doesn't tick off too many but I like many different vehicles.

Nothing wrong with mixed loyalties... that Mustang looks solid, have fun with it!

Thanks. Your T/A turned out sweet. You have done a great job so far. Keep up the good work.

What's up breeze? Any updates? It's been a while since you posted on this build.

Hey rs. I been busy as a one armed paper hanger since the weather is finally starting to break, unfortunately not on my stuff. My neighbor has been buying and selling a bunch of cheap cars and he has kept me busy throwing on some cheap paint jobs. Im hoping I might accidently learn how to do a decent job with enough practice. Last week i started doing some sanding on the quarter panel caps and fixed the broken ground affect in the pic above. I really need to get moving on it though as I am afraid I will loose interest. The love affair with Mustang is over. I plan on putting it up for sell soon. That way I can recoup the money I should have spent on the vert. I coulda had this sucker on the road soon if I woulda just kept the money.
Anyway thanks for asking and hopefully I can get caught up around here and get back to my stuff.

thats the uglyist thing ive ever seen

loose interest or something? threads been dead about a good 6 months now...

Nope haven't lost interest. Just been a little busy with life. Couple of weeks ago I was able to get a little body work done. Had a small dent in the passenger quarter panel in front of the tailights and some smaller dings a little lower.
I litterally almost had a heat stroke this summer and couldn't tolerate the heat for about a month and a half, so that slowed me down a little.
It will get there just haven't had much free time. Thanks for asking.