Mach 1 Club

Good to see it home where it belongs. You should have it on the road this Summer! I wish mine looked that good...

Since I've had it home, I haven't spent much time with it for various reasons - not her fault... she's been bugging me to work on it a lot, actually.

This whole long weekend has been a struggle. Saturday was trying to get the grille area back together, and the grille's mounting bolts were actually snapped off in the headlight buckets. So - I ordered some new buckets that should be here by next weekend. Yesterday, I fought with trying to get the honeycomb tail light panel installed, and let's just say the method was not one of Ford's "better ideas." The "stock" acorn nuts would not grab threads on the mounting studs for anything. So, today I went to the hardware store (Westlake Hardware, our "ACE Hardware" store) and found a couple of different solutions to install the honeycomb tail light panel trim (just in case one didn't work). The fasteners are 8x32, in case anybody ever needs to know - I scored a dozen 8x32 nuts, 8x32 wing nuts, and 4mmx10 flat washers.

Got home, loaded up the brite trim pieces with the panel studs and sealer rings, put the bottom one on the panel and carefully fitted it onto the car. The 8x32 flat nuts grabbed the threads nicely and I was able to loosely fit the bottom piece without hassle. Carefully loaded the upper brite trim piece onto the plastic panel and lined up the studs - again, with the flat nuts grabbing threads. With a little bit of adjustment, the panel's on - and I had enough threads to screw on the acorn nuts over the tops of the flat nuts... can't even see 'em now. SCORE!!

My wife also cleaned the ever-livin' sheet out of the tail lights as the sun moved into position and chased the shade away from my improvised workbench of the Ram's tailgate. I bought some used tail lights from a friend several weeks ago, and they seemed to be in better shape than mine. I did notice the original from driver side was a bit better than one of his old ones, so I used it and the better of the two Kurt sent me - pulled 'em apart so she could clean 'em inside and out. As she was cleaning them, I installed the rear marker lights. Then I pulled the quarter extensions, put the seals back in, and reinstalled them into the proper positions. After she got them as clean as she could (with Simple Green, a cleaning brush, and a plastic scraper - she did a GREAT job, BTW), I put them back together and installed with new seals.

Here it is!


Still gotta align the trunk lid so I can apply the new Mach 1 decals and install the trunk seal & license plate light/bracket, but it's a far cry from Day One:

Great contrast and comparison pictures of before and after. It's hard to believe it is the same car. Take your time with the detail work, it will all pay off very soon. The car looks awesome!

Thanks for the kind words, guys - it's been a long road, and I'm happy to finally see a new road to take coming up soon ("Enjoying" vs "Restoring").

So, the new headlight buckets came in Thursday, and today I took the old ones back out. The body shop guy had cut a bunch of corners, by not aligning things or even putting fasteners in some places. On each side, the plan was to remove the hood lock bracket and the old bucket, install the side marker lights, adjust the fender caps, install the small plastic trim panels, then the new buckets & hood lock brackets. That went pretty well for both sides, except that I also had to also tweak the front cross member to install fasteners to the corresponding places inside the fenders, and drill holes for the chrome bumper filler pieces. Took some time, and a lot of breaks to move around, as I'm not used to being crumpled up in a pile on the floor in front of my car for hours on-end. Once both sides were back together, I installed the grille and had to make a bunch of adjustments to the buckets - and also discovered the grille mounting bolts are too small for the receivers in the new buckets. Crap. Oh well - I'll get some more at the hardware store tomorrow or something.

Then the bumper went on, and required a ton of adjustment - since the body guy simply tossed the new repop fenders on without any kind of alignment or adjustments. Then, for a good measure, and since I was so close to being done with the front end, I tossed in the headlights and doors.

Here it is - sorry for the crappy auto focus fail:


It's come a long way from this:




I think next up is getting the door handles, locks, door glass, and quarter windows installed... then start working on the interior.

First of all , your car looks amazing and you are doing a spectacular job putting it back together.

A similar story to yours is a friend of mine had a guy do the body work and paint on his car. The paint job came out really nice and the panels were straight as an arrow but he dropped the ball on the fitment of the fiberglass hood. It likes he did the body work with the hood off the car. Needless to say, my friend is very unhappy with the fitment and most likely going to purchase an aftermarket metal hood. To make matters worse the car was painted a blue metallic and chances are he will never get the paint to match exactly.

Keep us updated on your progress and don't hesitate to step back from your work if you feel you are getting frustrated...it seems to work

Thanks, Guys! It's all been worth it and especially having the encouragement of all the great guys I've met along the way.
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Finished up the headliner and sail panels today. Installed the quarter windows (roll-up conversion), and the weatherstripping rails on both sides.

Here's how the headliner came out - crappy camera still:




Next weekend, we'll install the weatherstripping, and start getting ready for carpet (got a lot of nit-noid things to do... like locate seat belt holes, mount the shifter, mount the dimmer switch, etc.).

Nice work on the headliner...it came out real nice! I don't know about you but sometimes when your so close to the finish line all the small stuff left do seems like so much work. Keep it up you're almost there!