65 Mustang Restoration
We've been busy, busy, busy working on the car over the last couple of weeks,, I just haven't had time to do any posting. When we last were on here, we were just starting to fit the driver's side floor pan. Well,,, it's now installed. We changed our process of how this floor was installed compared to the passenger side floor. This time instead of butt-welding the pan in, we opted to overlap the edges between 1/4"-1/2''. This was a lot simpler & only took about 1/3 of the time to do,, plus the overall result was much nicer,, and I think even stronger since both the top & bottom edges were completely welded in.
Once we finally got done with all of that welding & grinding, we spent some time fitting the new seat platforms. If you recall, we opted for the lower profile platforms that were made for the 69-70 Mustang so we'd have a bit more headroom & steering wheel-to-leg clearance. As with all of the aftermarket sheet metal, it took a bit of modifying,,, but no more than usual,,, the 65 platforms that we had purchased would have taken a lot more modifying, since they fit terrible.
The picture is what the seat platform area looked like just before we welded them in. All of those holes are where the platforms will be welded in, from the underside of the floor. Since I can't get to the area under the platforms once they're welded in,, we sealed the floor pan with some of Eastwood's Silver Rust Encapsulator. And since we're hoping that this Mustang sounds more like a Beemer when you shut the doors, than the standard rattly old car,,, we installed a layer of sound deadening mat, called "Rattle Trap XXX" which, from all of my research, is about the meanest stuff available at this time. Most of the time people will refer to this stuff as Dynamat,, which is basically what this is,, only, it's way thicker (80 mil) than the standard Dynamat,, plus it's approx. 1/3 of the price.
And here they are are all welded in. I'm extremely pleased at how well they went together. Once they were installed, we cleaned the majority of the inside of the car with Eastwood's "Pre" which is a paint prep cleaner,,, and then I sprayed the inside of the car with some more of Eastwood's Silver Rust Encapsulator. FYI: Wear a mask when you spray this stuff, and spray it outside if possible,,, cause this stuff tastes terrible,,, I still can taste it a couple of days later. We also installed the two inner seat belt mounting pads, which we had saved from the old floor,,, we just cleaned, sanded them, and then installed them,, very simple job.
These are just a couple more photos of the rust preventative coating we applied. Once that had dried it was time for some of Eastwood's Seam Sealer. You definitely want to wear rubber gloves for this job! We applied it with a caulking gun, but worked it into the joints by hand. It's a little bit on the messy side, but not too bad,,, Definitely Not a step you want to forget! This stuff worked out real nice, and tacked up very quickly.
So while that was drying, it was on to the dash. A couple of days earlier I had taken the dash to Discount Autobody and had Kyle do his magic to it. A little bondo & primer later,,, it was ready for me to do the wet sanding. It looks much better now. That's just a dark gray primer on it right now,, it'll be painted after it's installed. The back side was sprayed with more of the silver Rust Encapsulator to both protect it & to lighten it up under the dash, which I'm hoping will make it easier to see everything when we start installing all of those other items.
Next it was time to fit the new cowl section & get it prepped. The new cowl comes in two pieces(top & bottom), so once the bottom section was "persuaded" to fit a bit better, it was on to the top section. After the persuading session was done, we prepped the edges for welding(removed the coating), and then we sanded the middle sections.
We coated the bottom side of the top section with a layer of satin black Rust Encapsulator to protect it.
On the top of the bottom section, after it was sanded we added an extra layer of Seam Sealer around the vent and heater cones since this is the area that always rusts out on Mustangs & is the main reason for sooo many rusted out floor boards,,, a little extra protection surely can't hurt! Once that had dried, we coated both side with more of the silver Rust Encapsulator. Hopefully we'll be able to get it installed real soon.
Finally, we got started on, what is going to be the very Long Process of installing the Sound Deadening Matting. Just this section took a couple of hours to install.
Hopefully we'll be able to get the rest of the interior done tomorrow,, my back hurts already, just thinking about it,,lol.
Till next time,,
