72 Father Son Project

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forix33

Member
Joined
Apr 18, 2017
Messages
10
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0
Location
Missouri
My Car
1972 Mach 1
Well since I got the introduction out of the way figured I'd post some pictures of of our project so far. Like I said in the introduction we got the car about two years ago, back story is the owner of the car passed away so we bought it off the family with no title (eek) in this condition. for $3,500!!! The old man had gone through and had the whole car sandblasted and painted, we've yet to find any real rust on the car. The VIN on the dash AND inner fender matches back to a true Mach 1 (using a free mustang VIN decoder non Marti) however the motor does not match. In the picture with the two of us is the night we hauled it home literally stuffed with parts. They assured us everything was in the car that was needed to complete the car.... no quite true but for the price we weren't too concerned.





Dad likes to send me taunting pictures of how his Galaxie is ready to go and mines still no where near being finished



In some automotive magazine my dad found a company out of Vermont that could get a title for you car for a fee (around $500 if I remember right, there's probably other ways that are cheaper but that's the route we chose) so we now have a clear title for it which was a big fear and drawback for me to spending any money on it in the beginning. Through the past two years we got the 351c up and running for the most part, still having carburetor issues to really run like a champ but good enough to drive down the road and back. Dad was able to find the front and back glass and luckily we had all chrome fittings for the glass in good shape so that was a plus. Really other than the glass and engine work we just let it sit in the garage.

Goal is to make it a daily driver, neither of us are real concerned with it being a 100% authentic restoration, maybe if the motor was numbers matching but we just want to drive it and enjoy it, not park it and stare at it.

Thankfully I finally got a little more stable in my career and could afford to start dumping some money into the car. In the past two weeks I've ordered a headliner, carpet, rear seats top and bottom from eBay (non-fold down and different colors for now at least lol), dash pad, the circuit board for the instrument panel, and a slew of other odds and end pieces. CJPonyParts, Mustang Depot, California Mustang, and National Parts Depot are all good resources if anyone else is ordering parts just be sure to compare between the lot for the best price, I've found parts can range anywhere between pennies and $50.

Last week in preparation for the carpet I tried to clean and paint the inside of the car I forgot to take an after picture unfortunately =/ however I did get all the bare metal painted for some protection





In the mean time while waiting for all parts to come in the mail my dad, who drives a tow truck, came across a 73 Coupe sitting behind an older guys barn. The man had dad tow a different car back on his property with the other "dead cars". Dad offered him $400 the guy countered at $800 and they settled at $600.



Dad said he pulled this guy from the trunk of the car while he was cleaning it out, shoulda been charging him rent as big as he is lol



Obviously not all interior trim pieces fit since it's a coupe and ours is a fastback/Mach 1 but the little pieces that you don't think about such as headlight, wiper, and cigarette bezels, a literal map for the vacuum hoses under the dash, side marker lights, door panels!! (We have DELUXE door panels that came with ours but for some reason they don't fit our doors? I did some google image searches and found that it seems to go both ways between standard door panels and deluxe? If anyone has an explanation for this I would love to hear it, were my doors originally from a coupe that the guy before us used on the car? I just have no idea). 

This past week the carpet arrived way early from the expected date so we were going to try to get it installed but we were hit with a real nasty hard rain which lasted all day and had us going on tow calls getting idiots who didn't know better than to stay home so we tried to do what we could, we were able to install the door panels which dad had previously repainted from brown to black and we got the side marker lights installed.



I feel like they turned out pretty good, I didn't get a picture of it but we installed both rear view mirrors, one of which I'm holding in my hand.







Then onto the marker lights... We got the marker lights installed on the rear too but I forgot to take pictures of those =/









If you couldn't tell my dad is kind of the mastermind behind all this but I feel like I'm learning a lot. Not only that but it's been great getting to hang out with him like we used to. Plan is to have it running and mostly restored by my wedding in November, or at least that's my goal. I know its a bit of a long post but I hope you guys liked it. I'm going to try to get better at remembering to take pictures before during and after.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Great car. Congrats on the purchase and the progress. Would look amazing in your wedding pics. Ladies have their dress and guys have their car. Lol.

 
Do you have the roll down rear windows in the coupe? If so you can install them in the Mach , a nice addition. Good luck with the project , looks good so far.

 
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