Putting the Finishing Touches to a Magnificent Mustang

by Nigel Matthews on Wednesday, June 4th, 2014

Our classic and collector car expert continues today with the third part of his four-part series on the restoration of public relations executive Laura Ballance’s rare 1967 Ford Mustang T5 by 360 Fabrication in Abbotsford…

 

 

The Mustang T5 body shell has been painted, clear coated, wet-sanded, re-cleared and finally polished to a show quality finish.

Now comes the fun part of a restoration, the reassembly, opening boxes and fitting all of those new parts. This is as close as you can get to being a car factory assembly line worker except you are doing every task instead of just one, and you have all the time that is needed and not having to work to the speed of a moving production line.

One of the upgrades that the T5 will receive is a new product designed to dampen and suppress the driveline and road noise, making the inner cabin as quiet as possible and a bit like a modern car. The foil covered pads have a peel off backing and are adhered to every inner sheet metal panel such as the roof, floor, doors and bulkhead. The next step is to install the new wiring harness; old wiring harnesses become brittle over time due to heat and corrosion at the joints and terminals, ask the owner of any British Sports Car from that era!

The interior has been completely renewed from top to bottom staring with the headliner, trim panels, carpets, dash pads and the seats have all been reupholstered.

Before the new back glass and windshield are installed (all of the other glass panels have been replaced) the new vinyl top is installed. Installing a vinyl roof is not a task that is performed very often these days but 360 have the skills to do this in-house.

LKQ stocks a huge selection of high quality muscle car sheet metal and parts. “If you are doing a premium muscle car restoration the only sheet metal you want to use is from LKQ,” asserted Rick Francoeur at 360.

The exterior panels will soon have their final fitting. They have been fitted and removed during the restoration process countless times to make sure that the panel gaps are correct. The final fitting process will involve two or three people to make sure that the paint does not get chipped or damaged.

Before the original V-8 engine was removed from the car it underwent a compression check, all of the cylinders had equal and strong readings so a complete re-build was not necessary. The carburetor has been replaced with a new two-barrel, the automatic transmission has been completely re-built as has the rear axle.

Rick talked Laura out of fitting a modern rack and pinion power steering kit or even upgrading the manual steering box to a power-assisted unit so it will be reliving the Armstrong steering experience for Laura when parking at low speeds!

One safety upgrade is the installation of original Ford front disc-brakes; these are a must in today’s traffic. Collector vehicle drivers are very cautious, invariably when accidents occur it is the drivers around you that are not paying attention or cutting you off.

360 have done their research and paid a lot of attention to detail during this rebuild, right down to avoiding the temptation of installing an exhaust system with two tailpipes.

Next week, we will explore what exactly a T5 is? How rare they are and explore some of the events that Laura and her brand new old car car will be attending in this 50^th anniversary year of the Ford Mustang.

*Nigel Matthews is the director of sales and marketing for Hagerty Insurance Canada.

Contact: nmatthews [at] hagerty [dot] com