'68 Mustang
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My first "hot rod", a Ford Mustang. Purchased September, 1980 for $2000 about 2 weeks after a head-on accident on my Honda 500-4 (Amazingly my injuries were minor). In fact I was coming home from looking at the car when the accident happened. |
| It was a '68 "Deluxe", body style 65B with a 289-2 barrel, C4 Auto and 2.79:1 8 inch rear end. The car had been repainted black from the original Seafoam Green (or maybe Lime Green) with black 'C' stripes. It had the full GT interior and GT chrome 14 x 6 wheels (no GT emblem on the cap). It was not a GT but a special dealer option called a Sprint. According to records about 9009 were made like this. |
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The previous owner had added a 10"
"lowrider" steering wheel, chrome traction bars and "Grand Auto" fog
lights on the grill. These were all removed or replaced soon after purchase but the lights
and traction bars can be seen in these pictures. My first major addition was the 14 x 7 Western wheels and G60-14 Goodyear GT Radials. Thanks Randy M.! (For some reason I never got an actual "as purchased" picture) |
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Here's a shot of the interior. It was actually in great shape, with one
small tear in the drivers seat and some damage to the lower console pad (which I
replaced). The dash pad was perfect. You can just barely see the Formuling France 4-spoke wheel
in there and the speakers mounted to the storage "cubby" in the console.
Ruined a few cassette tapes before realizing why :( The Deluxe (65B) had the woodgrain on the dash, upper and lower consoles and door accent strip as opposed to the GT's aluminum. It also added the lower door aluminum trim with courtesy lights. A strap style door pull was also part of the package. The seats had a slightly different insert pattern than the standard interior. Some were cloth. Mine was not. |
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This picture shows the lowered front suspension. The impetus was the familiar (to Ford fans) front end squeak. I replaced all with new MOOG parts including some 390 GT springs that I cut by 1.5 coils which dropped it by 2". |
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I also relocated the upper a-arm pivot
point by 1" and added a 1" Stam Bar sway bar with Poly bushings. I later added
an 11/16" adjustable rear bar also from Stam Bar. It now handled quite well. If I had
replaced the the rear springs and lowered the rear it would have been truly sweet.
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My "built" 289. Since I didn't have a garage it was assembled
in the family room of my parent's house (my second one after the Cortina's). I basically built a Hipo 289 but with the 2-barrel heads. The Edelbrock F4B intake is a Cobra "copy" to which I added a 600 cfm Holley. A Mallory dual point distributor and coil gave spark and Hedman headers exhausted the spent gases through turbo mufflers. The engine was balanced and the heads "gasket matched" which were topped off with Shelby aluminum covers. It had a Sig Erson cam (specs similar to the Ford '6250C') and springs. All the rest was TRW. The stock C4 trans was rebuilt and a B&M kit installed. You can also see the export brace. I later added a 4-core radiator. I never put a "Monte Carlo" bar on it. |
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Here it is almost ready for paint. The body was fairly straight and totally rust free so just some minor filling and block sanding was needed. The black was only the second color coat and appeared to be solid so I decided to just sand and seal it rather than strip it off. The painter shot the last coat of primer sealer and blocked that out before shooting the color coats. |
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These pictures show the Dark Concord Blue Metallic Imron paint. Although the car was originally Sea Foam Green, I kind of got used to the black color and liked blue so... this was the darkest blue I saw on the paint chips. The picture on the left below shows the Autometer tach and the Grant wheel. The picture at right was a visual wheel test. I thought the stock chrome wheel looked better but it wasn't wide enough (only 6" width) to fit a "fat" tire. I suppose if I'd have polished the Westerns it would have looked much better. Or course these days a set of chrome 17" or 18" Pony's would be sweet. |
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Was sold to a 16 year girl. Bought by her dad for her first car. I saw it
a few times around the area after that, up to about 8 years later. It didn't even look
much different. It actually made me feel good.
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| Here is my collection sometime in 1982. I had just bought the Scirocco (the temporary tag is still on the windshield) and as you can see the Bug is for sale. Not too bad, early 20's and owning 3 cars! Of course I was still living at home ;) |
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