IT'S ALIVE!!!!......kind of.

That's right.  It's almost Halloween and I've started the bad Frankenstein puns.  

At long last, here is Frankenstang!.....sort of.

This last weekend I didn't get a lot of time to work on the car, but I got what looks like a lot of progress.  I finished removing the back end of the coupe and was able to easily lift it off the back of the jig with help from my brother that lives down the road.

Putting the convertible rear portion on the jig was little more difficult.  I'm pretty sure it was close to twice as heavy as the coupe back end.....who knew rust was so heavy?

At this point, the convertible back end is about 3 inches too far aft since the front bolts of the rear leaf springs are still rusted to the rear torque box.  The upright on the jig fits snugly up against the inside of the rear frame rails so with the bolt heads sticking out I couldn't get it in place.  My next task is to cut those bolt heads off and slide the back end into place.

Removing the back end of the coupe was the easy part.

Kept the transmission tunnel and a good chunk of the roof at the top of the windshield

Before the transformation

After the transformation
(insert evil laugh here)

                                                  

 

Prepped for surgery

The left overs

 

I also removed the convertible top since it kept getting in the way while I was trying to poke around and find the rusty parts I need to clean up.  It was pretty simple after removing the bolts holding the rear window and curtain.  Whoever replaced this top the last time must have lost about half of the correct bolts.  There 2 different sizes of large lag bolts holding things together.  After that, it was just 6 bolts on the sides and the whole top came off in one piece.

Drivers side rear curtain bolts to remove

Bolts under rear window

Passenger side bolts

Top extended one last time before I store it away

View from the back

This might have made it lighter if I would have done this before lifting it onto the jig.
Maybe I'll think of this the next convertible I do.

This will make it much easier to work on.

With it up on the jig, I had a lot more room to climb underneath and start doing my screw driver test. (see earlier post on this method)  You wouldn't know it from the pictures below, but the drivers side rear frame rail is slightly better than the coupe.  I only need to remove the front and the rear part of the frame rails rather than the entire thing.  The frame rail hump didn't spring any leaks when I poked at it with my screw driver.

Whats left of the drivers side rear torque box and frame rail
This is before I took the air hose to it and removed 10+ years of spider webs.

I'm still a bit dubious that this part of the frame rail isn't rusty....After all, check out
what's left of the rubber mount bracket.

One of the previous owners frame rail repairs.  I'm not the best welder, but from the looks of this car
I know I'm definitely not the worst.....by a long shot.  Most of these welds remind me of
a pile of hocked up loogies.

From the looks of things this car has been "restored" at least twice.  The first time it got a nice coat of yellow over the original silver frost paint.  The second time, I'm not sure if the owner even sanded it before slapping on the bondo over the riveted on galvanized quarter patches and painting it red.  

It might be a little early to start thinking of the color, but my plan is to paint it Ford Laser Red with a set of Perl White GT stripes with the Deluxe Ivory interior.  This isn't the original factory colors, but I just can't get that excited about the silver frost paint with black deluxe interior that it originally had.  This won't be a contours level restoration so I might as well finish it the way I want. right?  Any thoughts?

I am a little curious about the chrome trim behind the '67 scoops.  I've never seen anything like this before as part of any option package on these mustangs, so I'm guessing it's some aftermarket add on that helps cover up poor body work on that ridge around the scoops.  Any ideas where these came from?

I kind of like the yellow with the black GT stripes......that could be a nice choice for the final color.
(minus the rust and cobwebs)

I guess the genius behind the galvanized metal is that it didn't rust!.....and it's not really a good
idea to weld galvanized metal (nasty fumes) so that's where the rivets came in handy. right?????
REALLY?????