Car Restoration Porn

So here are the first photos just after The Little Pony arrived in it's new corral.

You had me at "Hello"

So here I am at Daves' house. I only ran two red lights on the way! There languishing under a huge pile of melting spring snow she sat. First impression...... red, a good sign. Louvers...... retro cool. Spoiler.... cool. I brush piles of snow off the roof.... T-Tops! Red interior! .....and a 4 speed manual transmission. The only drawback so far is a severely cracked dash, broken fog lights, a small crack in the front air dam and junk yard faded paint. I experienced that nervous "buzz" I used to get when, as a high schooler with money in hand, I allowed myself to be pushed over the edge and commit  to a new project. Whether it was a new beater car, an old guitar or a motorcycle, that feeling flowed out of some mysterious place and consumed me with joy the moment I "gave in" and jumped off the cliff. 

 I phoned my long suffering wife right away. Now what makes her so cool is her ability to place herself in another persons shoes. Really, it's a rare gift. So I blurt out my storey and ask for her opinion.......... I can SEE her smiling through the telephone as she asks a few questions, helps me sort my thoughts, formulates a budget and tells me that she thinks it sounds perfect! AND she only mentions once that I sold my Mercedes only yesterday and maybe I should wait...... Well back to my mechanic I go and seal the deal. He told me that he would dig it out tomorrow and bring it down to the shop and give it a spring wake up. I don't sleep. At all. Not one wink. Nada.

 I spend the night on the internet investigating this new thing in my life called "Mustang" Oh The Humanity!!!! What have I gotten my self into!! I discover a whole world (literally) of possibilities. It's like I've fallen into , at the same time, Heaven and hell........ like I've discovered that my wife is, at the same time, a stripper and a nun!! There are people that modify these things to the point of the ridiculous just because they can. People who keep cars in hermetically sealed time capsules, letting them out only to breath the rarified air of selected dust free auto shows. There are women with pink fire breathers, young high schoolers with no brains, (and some with)!! People drag racing 500hp rust buckets, people auto crossing mustangs lowered to within an inch of their scarred under bellies. The possibilities are literally endless. No, MORE than that. These cars and the after market that services them have become a direct reflection of the psychology of the western world. If you doubt me just try an experiment. Sample 5 different chat rooms on fox body mustangs. You might find sites that allow guys to post photos of their girl friends posing nude (or damn close) next to $20,000.00 nitrous injected, slammed, show cars. Or you might find engineers that have methodically rethought every shortcoming of the fox chassis and found ingenious solutions that make a fox handle better than a porsche and out drag a Ferrari. There are sites where guys discuss little numbers stamped on the inside of 1982 GT hood scoops to determine which production run the car was in. REALLY! It goes on and on. Humanity in it's most honest and naked self.... for the world to see. I was hooked. In one blissful moment of letting go I became a Mustang Nerd. The only thing left for me to do was to survive the time between sunrise and my scheduled delivery of (Daves' Name not mine) "The Little Pony".

So here it is. 3395 lbs. of burnin' German love!

Yes Folks, It's a 1981 American market 380SL in all it's faded glory! It was, at the same time, a fabulous car and a devil in drag. These cars were stupid expensive to buy and own when new and worse (as I learned repeatedly) to restore when old. A small 8" long hose connecting the motor to the heating coil: $50.00 and 3 weeks wait from the father land. A new, rebuilt, steering box ("no high tech rack and pinion in our panzer"): $2500.00!!! Need a new dash cap? Oh, sorry that will be $2000.00 for a whole dash as the cap isn't separate and it will need about ten hours to install it. Heaven help you if you want to do it yourself....... We do have a cheap, ill fitting vacu-formed cover that you could buy for $99.00 and spend the rest of your natural life fooling with to make it look kind of nice...... Try and find a vacuum leak so my engine will run smoothly. Just try and fix the convertible lock leaver! Just try and fix my fancy automatic door locks! I dare yuh! Do you find the suspension a bit flabby? only one option out there. Do you want more modern wheels and tires? Good luck.... What? You want more power than we decided was needed? (say this in a German accent) You Americans are so silly. You always vant more of this und more of that! Just drive it the vay vee designed it! Despite how great a car it was (and it really was fun to drive) it drove me more crazy than I drove it! When I finally yelled "I surrender!!" and sold it, it was literally falling apart as it drove out of my driveway to it's new home! Thank God The new owner knew exactly what he was getting into. 

 So here I was with the pittance I had received from the sale of my Dad's Merc. in hand looking for another project. The deal was that I would take half of the Mercedes money and purchase another car to throw money at. The other half was going towards a vacation on Maui for my long suffering wife. Hopefully she would allow me to come along as well! That day I went down to my mechanics shop to ask him what his opinion was on fun project cars. He had never worked on the Merc. He told me that it was outside his expertise and he'd waste my money learning the car. I always respected that. I also respected his "If it ain't broke..." attitude and his approach of getting good value out of the things you have in life. He had serviced my Wife's Malibu Maxx and my Toyota Sienna for a few years now and I always had good results from the work he did. I popped the big question. I told him I was looking at older Mazda RX-7s and Toyota Supras etc. or maybe an older Mustang...........

 Mustang? (he said) I have a mustang that I might be convinced to sell you. I pounced. He told me it was a 1982 GT and it was sitting under a pile of spring snow in his driveway if I wanted to take a look. I shot out the door faster than a wild horse running free with too much cash in it's pocket! Snow sprayed his business front as I flew down the street to check out the possible (he had me at 1982 Mustang GT) new metal mistress in my life.

  

Trials of a 1982 Mustang GT

Welcome everyone. This blog has been started to chronicle my experiences restoring and modifying my 1982 Ford Mustang GT. My hope is that someone will benefit from my experience. If you can learn from my triumphs and failures or even have a few giggles along the way then it is worth it! So enjoy or ignore. It's up to you!

 I am my fathers child. There are times I curse this and would like to deny it but, I have to face it, the lug nut hasn't fallen far from the tree. He was a passionate man who had a child like joy for experiencing new things. Of course my mother could go on and on (with good reason) about all of the negative consequences of this side of him but if you chose to look at the positive side this youthful enthusiasm had a hand in creating some great moments in his life and through shared experience my own. I have very fond memories of the excitement my sister and I felt each year when my dad would pull up with a new family car. Now I don't want you to get the impression that we were a wealthy upper class family. If we were, I certainly didn't know it. My mother held the financial reigns of our family my whole life growing up with a restraint and responsibility that would have made Ghandi proud! She wasn't cheap, just careful and God bless her for that. But woven through this practical, hard wearing fabric she created were just enough golden threads to keep it interesting to wear. Those threads usually came from my Dad.

 Dad lived and worked in the day of the "Company Car". I believe at some point he sold product for a steel company to farmers and had to do a whack of travel so every year he would get a new car to use. Now initially these were not high end vehicles. Most were stripped fleet vehicles designed to provide reliable basic transportation (the term "Broom Pedlar Special" comes to mind) but each year they were new. If I scan my minds eye I can see a Dark metallic green Chevrolet Beaumont with a mint green interior, an appliance white Dodge Polara with a bright cherry red interior, a somewhat disappointing  Metallic brown (can you say baby poo?) on brown Chevy Biscayne, etc. etc. but later in life he started buying cars on his own terms. From this era clouds of vehicles swarm like a tornado through my minds eye! A Beige on Beige Dodge Charger SE with a white vinyl roof and a 440 six pack, a Ford thunderbird with suicide rear doors and a swivelling front bucket seat, a 57 Volkswagen micro bus, a 57 Dodge with a push button automatic and fins the size of a sailing yacht (and a gigantic back seat.....). I could clog up the internet with only a partial list but that's not the point. The point is that even after I grew up and left home my dad loved to own and drive a dizzying number of automobiles.

 I am just like him but I am as poor as a church mouse.

 Now by poor I mean "North American poor". My wife and I have a nice house that's paid for, two cars, jobs, etc. etc. but we are both artists so, by our own choices, if we wanted to survive we had to live very close to the bone. Like my mother, I can mostly thank my wife for this financial success. So when I say poor I really mean absolutely no disposable income. None, Nada, Nix, zilch,...... you get the point.

 In a somewhat long winded way this brings me to the last car my Dad owned before he passed away.