Yes, I'm Back!

There was a time when my blog posts would start of with "....its been six months again..." Well, this one is actually being written three (3) years after the last post...and that was only some photos from a car show! So what happened? Well, the simple answer is that life is what happens while you're busy making other plans, to coin a phrase.

Not very impressive...

When I left off, in October 2015, I was still getting settled into my new garage, even though the 68 had been in situ for almost a year. I had quickly discovered that although the garage was located just three blocks from the house, in many ways, it might as well have been on the moon. I just couldn't find the motivation to saddle up and walk over there if I only had half an hour, so progress became minimal.

The house/garage move had also coincided with an expansion in our family and their needs coupled with a kitchen remodel didn't leave much time for tinkering with a car. I did carry on chipping away through most of 2016, but the pace was so slow that I essentially abandoned this blog in the summer of that year. I also became slack about documenting what progress I had made and I'd often forget to take the camera when I did find a couple of hours to sneak over to the garage.

There was an upsurge in productivity towards the end of 2016, and it really looked like the car would be running in the new year. However, in early 2017 I received the disappointing news that my landlord was not going to renew the lease on the garage. After moving the car three times since I took it apart in 2010, it was time to pack up and ship out once more.

This time around, I could not find a suitable garage space to put the car where I could (occasionally) wrench on it. It was with much sadness that the car was moved to a short term storage unit out by Oakland Airport in March 2017. Around this time it became clear that owning and living in a house without either a garage or off-street parking had run it's course. In April 2017 we began preparing our house for sale, and in August we moved to our new pad. Obviously it comes with a double garage this time and a big driveway. The 68 was delivered to its new home in October 2017. It had been away eight (8) months.

Garage #5

The last year has been incredibly hectic, and it's fair to say the majority of my free time has been devoted to smarting up out new pad - point your browser at this link if you're interested in that particular project - but I've found a few hours here and there to work on the Mustang, and thanks to all my buddies in BAMA my interest has been revived.

This blog was always intended to be a personal diary of the 68 restoration, and while it's tempting to post the most up-to-date progress on the car, I have decided I will build up to that by first documenting what I've accomplished in the past three years.

To be continued.....I promise!

time to saddle up and ship out

Good grief, it's been nearly six months! Again! And it's been six months without lifting a wrench in anger. Here's the story: A few days after we dropped in the engine, it was time to move house again, and part of that was packing up the garage. This was a task that took quite a while. As well as crating up all the tools and parts I had to take down all the shelves and empty out the benches and drawers ready for transport.

My high school buddy Martin was in town the day we moved the car to its new home. The tires could have done with some air, but otherwise it was straight forward thanks to Mark at Junebugs.

Moving all this was much tougher....

With a new house to organize, not much happened in the garage for quite a while after the move. I eventually got the work space organized in June 2015.

Scene of much work I hope...

A week later it was finally time to work on the car again. Started by installing the radiator.

Installed and torqued down the aluminum intake manifold....

....and popped on the water pump.

To be continued.....

increasing the compression

My 351W has been back from the machine shop since July last year. In other words it's been back almost as long as it was away. And, although I'm getting very close to the rebuild, it hasn't happened yet. Funny thing is, when I look back on 2013 as a whole, it was actually a very productive time for this project: much better than 2012 in fact. Twelve months ago I had just about organized an adequate work space at the rear of my tiny garage.

Since then I've re-installed a whole bunch of parts, thrown away a lot more, and in the process generated quite a few empty boxes. I've also acquired my dream toolbox and filled it with a bunch of very nice tools. It really feels like a worthy substitute for the two Marshall 4x12 speaker cabinets I never quite managed to own. When I set up the "shop" I maximized the space by rolling the car up against the vehicle door and positioning my workbench right in front of the car. I even took off the front bumper and the supporting struts to make a extra six inches of work space. This area has served me well. It's had too. But it does not provide sufficient access to the engine compartment for me to install the wiring harness, motor mounts and so-on that I want to complete before I put the drive-train back.

my son has been out of diapers for almost 4 years...

Fortunately I've emptied out enough old boxes that I had enough room to incorporate the toolboxes into my storage area, after a few modifications. This created some extra space, and I was able to shove the work bench about four feet away from the car, leaving myself a nice little work space. The next job is to put the motor back together and then get that Tremec box out from under the bench!

Honestly, it's acres of space

To be cont'd....

lighting up time

Happy New Year! I really hope that 2013 is the year when my '68 runs again, even if it isn't completely show-ready....ultimately the amount of time I have available will be the deciding factor. I've previously mentioned the huge swathes of down time during 2012, and the proof is in the number of posts: 20 in 2012 compared with exactly 46 in each of the preceding two years!

The other thing about this blog last year is that it was always several months behind. There is always some time lag between  when stuff happened and when it gets written up, but in 2012 this was exception. For example, the last real work I did on the car was painting the inside of the trunk and that was actually accomplished in November 2011...although it didn't make it into this blog until the following July! As it happens, the work described in the post you're about to read (if you plod on, that is...) was actually accomplished last Labor Day weekend, and that was pretty much the last vacation day I had until the Christmas break.

So....lighting up, so to speak. When I took over my garage it came equipped with three 110V outlets and a pair of incandescent light bulbs. It wasn't really good enough for moving boxes, never mind high class auto restoration. Or even the work I do come to think of it.

only a little better than the black hole of Calcutta

Fortunately I already own a bunch of fluorescent lights and all the related conduit, cable and fittings etc....and this is in fact the third garage/workshop in which they have been installed.

Every light installed is one less thing to store

Had to stand/lie on the platform I built over the car to hang these lights

After photo

three more at the "business end"

While this was going on I had to move the car away from the side wall, which isn't easy when there's not much space to go forward or back. The easy solution would be to buy a set of car skates, but I need to do it right there and then, and since the car is still devoid of a motor, I figured I could do it with the floor jack. This is easy at the rear, where I used a piece of 2 x 6 under the third member, but more difficult at the front where I only had the X-member to lift (white arrow).

To help, I made a custom lift block out of a piece of 4x4. On the underside I drilled some holes and worked them into a pair of curved slots with a half inch chisel: the slots go over the lifting pad on the floor jack and stop the block from sliding on the jack. You can figure out exactly where to cut the slots by putting the block on top of the jack and hitting it with a BFH.

Then I cut a slot the same width as the X-member on the opposite side of the block. The slot is deliberately offset so that the X-member (and all the weight) is shifted a little bit behind the jack's front wheels. So, raise the car until the wheels are about an inch of the ground and push sideways about six inches. Then the same at the back. And rinse and repeat etc.Stay tuned for some "real" car stuff coming up :)

setting up shop

The sharper eyed regular readers of this blog will have noticed one thing about my new garage: it's about a third of the size of the Green Room. This meant that once the car was rolled in, and the rest of my stuff piled around it, there wasn't really much room to do any work :( Add in the complications arising from moving house for the seventh time in the last eight years (!), and it's no surprise that several months elapsed with the following view pretty much intact:

I knew moving was going to slow down the project a LOT, and when I did finally get some free time, it was mostly devoted to making some extra space in the garage. I started by building a very strong and sturdy platform over the front of the car, which I can use for storage.

2"x4" joists supported  by a pair of 4"x6" posts

add closet doors

and start piling it up...

After a seriously long time spent shuffling boxes around in the dim glow from one light bulb, I had my workbench in place, some shelves on the wall, and a huge pile of boxes. It took the best part of three months to get this far, because I've been busy with other stuff.

Later in the story another platform got built at the back corner of the garage and I started getting stuff organized a little bit. The hardest part of this was trying to cut lumber on my miter saw without any space to work in.

Slowly the pile of boxes got smaller as stuff was unpacked, shuffled around or thrown out. I also sold off a lot of the excess furniture I've acquired over the last few years.

Really felt like I was getting somewhere when I had space to put some shelves up.

A few more weekends invested and this is pretty much how my new workshop will look for the rest of this garage. Now, back to the car....With a little bit of luck, 2013 will see the car running again! Happy New Year :)

the best of the green room

A lot happened on this project in the year it was housed in The Green Room. Without question it was the most productive portion of the project so far, and that includes a four month period where hardly anything happened at all. Looking back at photographs of the project over this time really helped get my motivation to keep moving forward in the next few months.