Rust and the headliner

As I was removing miscellaneous components in the engine bay I came across another set of fiberglass patches underneath the battery tray, a common problem area on these cars due to damage from battery acid. These patches were much more solidly adhered than the ones in the trunk had been so I decided to leave […]

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Pulling the engine

The engine compartment in these Mustangs doesn’t offer a lot of extra room so pulling the engine requires removing just about everything surrounding it. First up was draining the radiator and overflow tank, followed by removing them and their respective hoses. The driver side header was removed off-camera as well. With the radiator out it […]

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Dropping the transmission

The goal for the day was to get the transmission out of the car. The catch was that the driveline was still intact, so there were several things that needed to happen before I could access the transmission. First on the to-do list was dropping the driveshaft. After getting the car up on jack stands […]

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Removing front and rear glass

Armed with a cheap “10 in 1 Trim Tool” from Amazon and a dozen YouTube videos I started working at the trim around the rear window. On these old Mustangs the chrome trim around both the rear glass and windshield is held in by metal clips that are notoriously difficult to release and the trim […]

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Dropping the gas tank

The first order of business was getting the remaining gas out of the tank. Due to a lack of foresight I started the disassembly with about a quarter tank of fuel left. As luck would have it the tank didn’t have a drain at one of the low points, my only options were the sending […]

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Backend disassembly

Unfortunately with two other cars wanting to park in the garage space is at a premium and I couldn’t leave the fenders laying around, so I mounted them on the wall to keep them out of the way for now. With the floorspace reclaimed my wife helped me remove the taillights, trunk latch, and rear […]

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Front End Disassembly

I’ve disassembled the front end twice in the past to pull the engine, most recently about a decade ago when I swapped the previous 302 for a 331 stroker. Having done this disassembly before there weren’t a ton of surprises, though I was disappointed to find that I hadn’t been particularly disciplined about using matching […]

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Holes in the Trunk

While taking a close look at the trunk tonight I discovered two areas where fiberglass patch repairs had been performed prior to at least the most recent paint job. The car was white when it left the factory, a previous owner had a rusty brown sprayed over the white, then the most recent black was […]

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Scoping the Floor

I knew the floor pans were going to need some work as I’d seen them about two years ago while replacing the water-logged carpet that was a result of holes in the rusting cowl, so I started by removing the interior. I was hoping to find that a couple floor pans would need patches but […]

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Starting the Restoration

The 1965 Mustang coupe that I’ve been driving for the past 14 years has been a good project and I’ve enjoyed keeping it running. Over the recent years it’s become apparent that the car, though it ran and drove, was in need of a significant restoration before it fell victim to the rust that was […]

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