sounds great!

New year, new plan: I just know 2015 will be the year the '68 runs again! I've got mixed feelings about the decline in the number of posts I've been writing about this project in the latter three years: of course it's mainly due to "other things" taking priority, but I also think that my posting style has evolved such that I can cover more progress in each installment. There, that sounds much better!

The trend is down.

Even though I spent most of the Summer working on the shed and deck projects, I did find a few hours here and there to chip away at the car. One of the things I worked on was the audio system. When I got the car is was still equipped with the original am-only radio and the solitary center-dash peanut-sized speaker. Clearly this would not do.

Original water-stained maroon package tray

starting to look better...

Test-fitted the speakers

After cutting the speaker holes, I covered both sides of the modified package tray in thin foam which I attached with the 3M yellow weatherstrip adhesive. After that I wrapped the package tray in the special material I will be using for the interior accent pieces. I'll be keeping the exact design a secret for the time being. Later I installed the revamped package tray and speakers in the car.

I hand re-painted the original radio bezel and test fitted it with the radio unit I bought from Custom Autosound. I've not heard the unit play yet, so I can't review it, but I will say that I was very disappointed with  the company's customer service (both my emails remain unanswered) and with the lack of speaker wires included in the package.

Installation in the dash was pretty easy. I installed my custom speaker wires for the two rear speakers. I'll be installing custom control knobs for the radio in the future.

I'm using a "hide away" antenna which I can either hide in the glovebox or at the edge of the dash pad. I also made the connections for my cell phone and MP3 player which are straightforward with this package. I made sure I left plenty of extra cable so I don't have to keep the phone in the glovebox while it's charging.

Getting the glovebox door aligned correctly was a bit of a chore. It's been almost four  years since these parts were painted - they were actually done at the same time as the interior portion of the doors. I'll be installing tweeters in the door panels or at the kick panels later.

Lovely-jubbly

more engine-uity

It's been a couple of months since the engine came back. I've been chipping-away-at-getting-ready for the rebuild. First objective was to get the block back on the engine stand and paint it. Most people assemble the engine first and then paint it, but I never do what most people do. I had to put my tried-and-trusted  methodology into practice to get the block up on the stand.

chocked up the cradle

constructed an adjacent slightly higher pile of crates

humped motor across and built bigger tower

humped motor again...

inserted a few 2x4's followed by the engine stand

Bob's your uncle!

This was where I found my first issue...the remains of a broken bolt or something stuck in the block. I've no idea what this is was actually, but I knew it needed to be removed.

The first thought I had was to try my screw extractor....but that just snapped off too. Oh dear. This happened to me the only other time I tried to use a screw extractor, so I think I'll give this idea a miss in the future.

I recently acquired a very large box on 1/16 drill bits and I ended up donating several of them to the cause. I was fortunate that the bolt thing was aluminum, otherwise it would still be stuck in the block. After literally drilling out the remains of the bolt, the piece of screw extractor was liberated and I chased out the thread with the appropriate tap. Hopefully I got away with this. 

After losing a couple of hours to the "bolt thing," I scrubbed the block down really well and masked off the bits I didn't want to paint.

If you're expecting to see a shinny Ford Blue block in the next pic, you'd better look away now. Frankly I've never understood the blue engine thing. I'm going to be driving a red car with a black engine compartment. The accent pieces are gray, chrome or (mostly) zinc plated....why would I want a blue engine? It's got to be red or black surely! It's actually going to be Ford Red, Dupli-color ceramic engine paint, code DE 1605, to be precise. This is significantly brighter than the candyapple red that will be on the car. But it's still red!

block came out nice...

...very nice!

the heads got the treatment too

The machine shop already converted the timing chain cover and oil pan from a pair of very dirty specimens into pristine parts, and I painted them too.

the oil pan needed a bit of re-working

came out beautiful!

small is beautiful

Once I was happy with the magic rust removal solution (ie exactly one day after I started using it!) I spent a while collecting together every small part that could possibly benefit from treatment....and then systematically soaked everything in batches. While this was going on I also stripped the old paint off of some of the other small parts that I was planning to refinish. It wasn't long before I had a growing pile of pristine, original parts.

I converted my garden shed into a spray booth so that I could get the nice shinny parts painted as quickly as possible. Anything that originally had the appearance of bare metal got painted with my favorite Eastwood Brake Gray over a light coat of etching primer.

finished marker light brackets

floor plugs

I decided it would be most time efficient to refurbish a few parts that I'm not even 100% sure I'll be reusing (like the fuel line attaching bracket, below) while I had my Production Facilities/Paint Booth fully operational, rather than coming back to this stuff later on.

By this time I was accumulating another large pile of empty rattle cans in the shed.

The black parts got hit with at least two coats of the same Duplicolor paint I used on the engine compartment.

window winding mechanism thing (!)

clutch and brake pedals

horns

brackets from somewhere inside the door

headlamp inner buckets

Most of the shed was black too by this point...

I painted the tail light buckets with some chrome-look paint on the outside, and then I used some duplicolor brilliant white on the inside - this took a lot of masking and re-masking to achieve, but the white is much better for reflecting light than chrome or gray would be. At this point I have finished pretty much all of the small parts that will have a paint finish - so in other words the garage is still stacked full of boxes of parts, but now more than half of them are ready to go back :)

into the black

I was really happy with how the trunk came out, and I still had the garage covered in plastic, so next up was the engine bay. This area was painted with epoxy a little while back. I started the latest bit of masking by carefully covering up the read paint in the trunk area, and then I peeled back the covering at the front of the car.

I was careful also to cover up the floor where I previously painted clear coat.

I read a really useful article in Mustang Magazine about types of paint to use on the engine bay, and I settled on Dupli-color DE1635 Engine Enamel which is freely available at Kragen. Provided you mix (shake) the cans properly, this paint goes on great and is very affordable. I started on the outside, although I think it would have been easier the other way round, and all subsequent coats of paint were applied to the inside of the engine bay first.

All told I need about 3-4 coats to be happy with the coverage over the epoxy primer. However, a certain amount of sanding drips and sags in the paint followed by re-applying was needed before I was happy with entire area. Also, applying paint from a rattle can underneath the engine bay was a little bit challenging.

Took a bit more paint than I initially imagined...

So, time to unmask the body shell then? Well not quite actually. While I still had the most of the body masked off I took the opportunity to spray some rubberized coating into the rear wheel wells.

I also handed out the same treatment to those areas behind the fenders where road damage usually has the highest impact.

Here's how the body shell came out after I removed the masking and cleaned up the garage.