<June 27, 1999>
Just hold still Bloo, this will only hurt a bit... (ok, I lied)
Well, what old Mustang doesn't have rust? I'll bet most have it here and there, in the usual places, the lower rear quarters, the doors, the dreaded cowl, and the floor the cowl leaked on. Bloo has all of them. The poor thing started out in Colorado before moving to the Northwest, so I'm sure she's been rusting away a long time. We're jealous of those supposedly 'rust-free' California cars.
Anyway, I got an estimate on fixing only the rear quarter rust on the driver's side, plus the little spots on the lower front corners of the doors, and it came to $1500! Yowza, Bloo only cost $4000 to start with, and that had been with the understanding that the body was already fixed, since the previous owner was a professional bodyman. What I didn't understand then is that professional bodymen know how to cover up the flaws and lay on new paint so you can't see them, and even people who seem nice and professional will lie-like-there's-no-tomorow when money is involved. So now that I've learned that lesson, let's see what it's going to take to get Bloo fixed up.
Here's the rear quarter problem, just to refresh you memory...Keep going down the page for the new cowl stuff
<April 1, 1999>
Hey, it's april fools day, and I've got a little rust problem - no foolin'! Around the back driver's side wheelwell there's rust bubbling up through the paint.
A couple swipes with the sanding block makes it really stand out. All those spots are where the paint has been raised from underneith by rust. I quickly got tired of block sanding and put a sanding disk in my rechargable drill and went after it, intending to go down to bare metal...
But to my horror the rust spots kept getting bigger as I sanded, and deeper, until I took the dremel and attacked the spots directly. Turns out they aren't rust bubbling up under the paint, it's rust HOLES coming through from the backside. My car's got the dreaded car-cancer! I got discouraged and called it a night, but it looks like these holes are going to go straight through. Man, did I open up a can of worms!
<June 27, 1999>
Recently I posted a question to the newsgroup asking if it was worthwhile to fix all this rust, or should I go looking for another '68 to lavish my attentions on. The responses pretty much boiled down to that I should poke around and determine just how much there was that needed to be fixed, and base my decision on that. Several people mentioned having given up on rusty cars in the past and sold them to people who had the talent to fix the bad body. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses. There's some comfort in knowing that almost everything I've done so far could be unbolted and put on another car.
So, I decided to start where I know it's bad, and find out just what's going on in the cowl. It's been a constant source of trouble. It lets water in to soak the carpets (which got moldy one winter thanks to the leak), and the firewall and underdash are coated in surface rust or worse. The floors are swiss-cheese in front, but only very small holes. The former owner covered them with some thick, silver paint, so I'll have to determine just how bad they are later. I realize that holes in the floor generally mean the metal had to rust away enough for holes to appear, so it might be pretty thin around where the holes are.
So I stripped Bloo's fenders off and cut holes in the sides of the cowl, following the instructions from my Mustang Monthly How-To book. Once I pulled, scraped, and brushed a pile of damp pine needles, leaves, rust flakes, and god-knows what else from around the cowl hats I found..
Holes on the driver's side (lower right of the hat). They're bigger than they look in the photo, about an inch by a quarter-inch wide. There's also so much damp stuff in the vent itself that it's jammed closed, which is fine, else it would all be on my carpet inside. I'll have to shop-vac that out.
And holes on the passenger side (left of the hat). On this side the drain was pretty much blocked with seam sealer. These holes are huge, and the more probing I did the more fell away. Obviously, a new set of plastic 'hats' isn't going to pull Bloo out of this mess. Well, at least now I know why the floors were wet.
Also, someone told me magnets won't stick to Bondo...
Good advice, at least it would have been when I was car shopping. Right now it's a little disheartening to discover there are places on the passenger side rear quarter that can't hold a magnet at all, mainly around the 'scoop'. The magnet doesn't have much luck with most of the lower eight inches of the driver's side rear quarter either. However, the doors are solid (well, except for those little holes I already mentioned), so I've got that going for me.
<June 28, 1999>
Today I stripped out the interior so I could do a couple things. One, I wanted to see the inside of those rear quarters. Two, I wanted to take an icepick to the front floors and see how they stood up. It sounds kind of masochistic, and right now my husband is wondering why I'm tearing the car apart and sanding paint off here and there, making little primered spots on the nice blue paint, and trying to perforate the floor with pointy tools. It's hard to explain to him why bondo is bad, when he just sees a pretty good lookin' car with a nice shiney paint job.
yuck!
Well, inspecting the rear quarters from the inside was interesting. Mostly I can just see a lot of surface rust, and globs of bodo on the passenger side, and a layer of bondo on the driver's side. On the passenger side there is cracking on the inside, and flakes accumulating at the bottom where the panel meets the rocker. I wish I could have gotten a picture of it. (the red cable is from the trunk mounted battery)
driver's
side trunk wall
Looking at the quarter from here, I can see a seam running horizontal at the level of the rear marker light. There is also a rough, porous texture above it I assume is bondo (wrong - I've since been told the rough surface is factory undercoating - that's a relief). Also, it is hard to see in the pic, but the wheel well liner has been cut and rewelded.
passenger side, trunk
wall
This wall also has a rough, porous surface. There is also a piece of weatherstripping wedged between the panel and the wheelwell liner.
So, let's check out the floor...
Poking at the floor with an icepick revealed 1) a few spots that rang like metal 2) many spots that made a dull thud and appear to be filler, as the pick tip sunk into them and 3) places where the pick went through like it was paper. I was able to poke holes both on the floor, and on the area behind the pedals. Also, when I hit that area with a glancing blow, large flakes of the silver paint began coming off, revealing that the rust has been chewing away under that paint just fine. I guess you can't count on paint to stop rust.
Same goes for the passenger footwell, though the driver's side seems to be worse.
Also, with everything out of the way, I examined under the dash to see how the cowl looked from underneith. There was lots of surface rust. A little poking with the pick determined the metal was just as thin on the side of the hats I couldn't reach from my little access holes.
So, I'm still trying to decide what to do. It seems like a lot of work to replace the cowl, the floors on both sides, the floor to firewall panels, and the rear quarters, especially since I don't even know how to weld yet. I think I'll just sleep on it for now.
July 8, 1999
Ok, we decided to save Bloo. Although I never intended to do body work, sometimes you don't get to choose these things. You just have to play the hand you're dealt. Already, I've had friends offer to show me how to weld, and the replacement metal for the cowls and the floor doesn't sound too expensive. I think I might not have to replace both sides, we'll see how bad it is when we get it all apart.
My husband's big concern is that we'll be chasing rust for as long as we own the car. The best solution, to me, seems to be to have the car professionally stripped, replace the bad metal, seal and protect everything, and get a fresh paint job. This would also get rid of the current paint job, which is chipping away all over the car anyhow. Since I've replaced the entire drivetrain, suspension, and pulled out the interior twice already, it doesn't really scare me to dissasemble the car one more time for bodywork. In fact I'm kind of excited about it. I'll finally know my car is good from the ground up, and it will get a good paint job that will last for many years. Also, it will let us discover just how bad the body is before we go any further, so if we have to stop and find another Mustang to replace Bloo, we can do it before we get too much more money sunk into her.
Of course, this is kind of an expensive project, so it might take a while to start seeing results. I've found a place that will do the stripping for $550 (media blasting). I'm already working on disassembly. I'll let y'all know how it goes...