My wife's old car. A '66 coupe restomod-eration

[I make oil]

I guess this story began about 3 years ago.... My wife and I were going to an afternoon matinee at our local movie theater and there in the parking lot sat a old Mustang for sale. We got the number and went watch the movie. After the show we looked at it again and left. On the way home we talked about the car and decided to call about it. I put the paper with the number in my console of my truck and promptly forgot about it.

4 or 5 days later my wife asked me if I'd called. :whis. Oops. Sorry babe. I went got the number and called right then. The guy who answered told me, "sorry but it's sold." Dang! Well so much for that I told her. A few days later we went to a friends house for dinner and there it was parked in their driveway. Come to find out the wife had bought it! Let's just say I heard it that night. Every time my wife saw her driving that car I heard it again.

Fast forward a year and the couple is going through a divorce and we see the car parked at her Mom's house. A few months later and it's still parked there. I saw her husband at his job and asked him about it. He told me something was wrong with it and she couldn't get it fixed. I asked him what was wrong and he didn't know. I asked if she wanted to sell, he didn't know so I called her. Well it just so happen she was. So I made a offer and she accepted. That's how I came to be the owner of this beautiful piece of Machinery.

Here it is in her moms driveway.

 

[janschutz]

Cool! What was wrong with it? Keep us posted.

 

[cmayna]

Nice looking car.

 

[I make oil]

Well, after I bought it I figured I better get it running. It turned over so the battery and starter where good. The engine was the original I6 and all the fluids where good. Pull the distributor cap and what do you think I saw.... Points! Unbelievable. I ordered a Petronics kit installed it and Vrooom! :yah

 

[I make oil]

So I drove it home send handed my wife the keys. :bow To say she was happy was an understatement. bj

Then she started driving it. My wife is 40 years old and has never driven an original classic car. It didn't take many drives before it started sitting in the garage. I noticed she wasn't driving it much and added her what was wrong? She started on the list. Brakes suck. The three speed transmission was weird, the AC was broken and it was gutless! No power at all. She is used to driving a modern luxury car lol. To be honest I expected this from the beginning. So I started driving the car some and found if to be a blast. It felt like I was driving a go cart. It got attention everywhere I went. It was really really fun. :thum. But...... I started reading up on '66 Mustangs and decided I wanted to change things up some. My original plans was to hop up the original engine, add a T5 take card of some of the rust sneaking through the paint and drive it.

 

[I make oil]

I bought a Weber carb, performance ignition and SS headers from Classic Inlines. Installed all that along with an electric fuel pump and 40 series mufflers out the back. The power went way up and the rear end and tranny became my bottled neck. So next on my plan was upgrade to a T5 tranny. I also thought about installing disc brakes and converting to 5 lugs. The cost of things I wanted to do started to add up..... Awww heck. I just decided to do it all. I sold the engine and tranny to an employee and drug the car to Fisher Collision in Gonzales Louisiana.

 

[Drumr90]

Nice car man.

 

[RapidRabbit]

Great project.

Sent from my XT1058 using Tapatalk

 

[I make oil]

I'd like to make this understood upfront. As you can tell by my user ID I work in the oil industry. It so happens I work in Africa which requires me to spend lots of time away from home. I love to spend time with my family and hunt and fish. The car is something I enjoy researching about, dreamin, planing for, shopping for, owning and driving. My fabrication skills are ok but would limit the quality of what can turn out. A mans got to know his limitations. I know I could eventually get the car where I want it but at what cost? My time at home is to valuable to me to spend it in the shop building this car. I hope that does not lower my stock amoungst the other members but that's just how it is. My plans might go against the grain for many Mustang purists but to be honest the only person I have to please is myself. It is my car and my money after all. That said I'll continue to share my build!

Corey and the guys tore the car down some to see what was what....

 

[I make oil]

My internet connection is slow here and most of my posts are from an iPad so please excuse the spelling/grammar and multiple picture posts. It's easier to post multiple posts with a few pics to avoid timing out.

 

[I make oil]

More

 

[I make oil]

All of the things we found lurking under the skin concerned me. After all the car is 50 years old and I am building this car to last. In order to find all of the hidden problems we decided to send it off for soda blasting.

 

[scedd]

Hi and welcome to the fix.
You wont be criticized here for farming the work out.
As you said your priority is family.
Some have the skills to build their cars completely, but many haven't.
Your skills lie in making oil, that's pretty impressive to me as i need more than most people.
Thanks for you build post.
Please keep ig going.
Steve

Sent from my RM-821_apac_australia_new_zealand_218 using Tapatalk

 

[Grabber70Mach]

Enjoy watching the progress, Thanks for sharing it with us. It doesn't matter how it gets done, just saving another one is great.

Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

 

[Drumr90]

Enjoy watching the progress, Thanks for sharing it with us. It doesn't matter how it gets done, just saving another one is great.

Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

This is best way ive heard it said in a wile.

 

[tarafied1]

I hope that does not lower my stock amoungst the other members but that's just how it is. My plans might go against the grain for many Mustang purists but to be honest the only person I have to please is myself. It is my car and my money after all. That said I'll continue to share my build!

No worries, can't wait to see more progress pics!

and Africa? cool

 

[Fast68back]

Welcome, keep the posts coming

 

[I make oil]

Thanks for the comments. Here are some more updates.

Got the car back from soda blasting and found lots of old body work along with rot. The car had been hit in the rear and the drivers side door in the past.

 

[I make oil]

Corey and crew found the frame to be bent from the rear hit. They put it on the frame straightener and fixed it up. If you look closely at the pictures you can see the frame pull backwards about 1.5''. This will go along way towards the panels matching up. I decided to replace all of the bad sheet metal with new.

 

[I make oil]

This is where I'm going to loose some of the purists.

I want my car to be fun to drive, comfortable, turn heads and really perform. Something that I really like is fat tires on classic Mustangs. I mean really fat tires. 315's fat. That's difficult to do and I've rarely seen it on them so that's a priority for me. I don't like to see fat back tires overwhelm the fronts so the fronts will also be wide. I'm going with a 4 link suspension on the rear and a Rod and Custom MII on the front. Initially I was planning on going with shock waves on both front and rear but discussions with a rep at Rod and Customs convinced me otherwise. I'd love to go that way but have concerns about drive ability. How difficult is it to keep your front end aligned with air ride on the front? Anyways as of now I'll be going with coil overs. For the engine I've changed my mind a few times. Originally I was going with a 5.0 out of an 96 Explorer I bought for parts. Then I decided to go with a Coyote crate motor. But looking at other builds I decided I didn't like the way the engine looked in the car. What to do? Well my builder Corey contacted me and told me he found a great deal on a 351 W. We talked about it and I bought it. The engine once out together should put out in excess of 450hp. That's plenty for this car. Now I'm in the air about what transmission to go with. My rear will be a shortened 8.8 out of the explorer. I'm thinking about a T5 from Summit that is supposed to handle up to 600hp. Any advice on this? I guess that's it for now.