71 Coupe

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Joined
Sep 5, 2011
Messages
862
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11
Location
San Diego, CA
My Car
1971 Mustang Grande
She is named Victoria and sports a 302 with a C4.
Guess I'll go ahead and do one of these. It was about a year ago that I really started to get on this project. My goal was to get her down to bare metal to see what I was really working with as far as body goes, then apply a nice coat of DTM Epoxy Primer from Eastwood and reassemble to make drivable. Here are some pictures for you all. After I sanded it down to bare metal I cleaned it with a product from KBS called rust blast remover, it worked great! The pictures are of the metal after cleaning and ready for epoxy.

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Next up was to apply the Epoxy Primer to prevent rust from occurring. There were a couple of places on the car that had surface rust that I busted down and then coated with rust inhibitor under the epoxy primer.

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Now I needed to do all the rest of the panels minus the hood because I plan on getting a ram air hood one day. Everything was meticulously prepped because I wanted it all done right this time.

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After everything dried and pieces were rebuilt with new parts, I started to put her back together after a lot of painstaking hours to line up the body parts to try and get the body lines straight and the gaps close to perfect. After a couple of days I realized it just wasn't going to be perfect with this car, but I did pretty good I think.

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After lots of new parts and thorough cleaning and reconditioning of original parts, she is coming back together! Slowly but surely...

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Here are some extras that are pretty much self explanatory. Thanks to Mike (mach71351c), Jim (sdstang), and Dennis (hemikiller) for help with parts! I upgraded as much as I could to new tech, including replacing every bulb on the car with LEDs.

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I was having problems with the Edelbrock carb that was on the car, a 1406 on a Wieand Stealth 8020 manifold, so I decided to go with the stock setup instead. Thanks to Hemikiller for providing the Automate 2100. It was completely disassembled and rebuilt with a complete kit from Mike's Carburetor Parts. The factory manifold was hot tanked for like 3 days to get all the grime off of it, then sand blasted and painted. The valve covers and air cleaner are old, but painted to match the rest of the motor.

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Miscellaneous projects to make this fun included making my trunk look and sound nice. I had some old equipment left over from my last Mustang (2006 GT), and got a new Pioneer Digital Media Receiver from my wife for Christmas. I used MDF and Fiberglass to achieve my new trunk. Everything is sound deadened with aluminum sided deadener for quietness. I still need to make a few adjustments for some rattling, but it looks great!

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Next side project was to get ahold of a tail light lens that Obsidian 71 made and replicate it for my project (still in the works). I also had the time to play around with building a tail light board with leds to go behind the new tail lights. Thanks to TheJ for hooking me up with the lens (and don't worry I haven't forgot about you bro)!

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I know it looks like a lot, and trust me, it has been! Many nights and weekends in the garage working on this car with my son. It has been a gratifying experience and my 4 year old loves to help me out. Current projects without pictures yet are just finished installing my windows with all new rubber, applied sound deadener to every nook and cranny in the interior for hopes of a quiet ride one day, patiently waiting for a solid day to install the new headliner, repainting all of the interior trim in flat black. More pics to come. Lastly I just need to do some final tuning with the ''new'' fuel intake setup and she will be road worthy!!! Thanks for looking and for all the support from everyone on the site!

 
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Nice job! My first car was a '71 coupe, love to see those resurrected. Enjoy.

 
Looks Great ! I think you may have made a bit of a mistake using the rustblast PRIOR to the epoxy..Pretty much all epoxy's will have a problem react with the acid in rust removal products and most will state not to be applied over any products containing acid. What happens is down the road the epoxy will delaminate. You better call eastwood tech or get the tech sheets to find out for sure what substrates their product can be applied over and what is the required procedure to neutralize the acid before applying the epoxy. Just a heads up

 
Damn Nik!! You have been busy. Nice job!
Thanks man, little by little it has been coming back together. If I only had the patience to post the 40 or so pictures I took of the Automate 2100 that I rebuilt, the photo above of it sitting on top of the manifold does not do it justice, I tore that thing down to springs and redid everything on it. That was a solid week of work, but it runs beautifully now!



Looks Great ! I think you may have made a bit of a mistake using the rustblast PRIOR to the epoxy..Pretty much all epoxy's will have a problem react with the acid in rust removal products and most will state not to be applied over any products containing acid. What happens is down the road the epoxy will delaminate. You better call eastwood tech or get the tech sheets to find out for sure what substrates their product can be applied over and what is the required procedure to neutralize the acid before applying the epoxy. Just a heads up
Thanks for the knowledge Scott. I did use a heavily water diluted zep mix to spray the car down after the rust blast, then wiped everything clean with water just before spraying the epoxy. I know that the epoxy isn't a permanent coating, I just want to be able to drive it right now without worry of rust. My final paint and body will be done by professionals and much later down the road. I have a deployment to the middle east next year that I am prepping for and will probably have the car painted while I am there. Do you think that my prep before the Epoxy was enough to prevent the delimitation of the Epoxy? Thanks again!

 
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Thanks for the knowledge Scott. I did use a heavily water diluted zep mix to spray the car down after the rust blast, then wiped everything clean with water just before spraying the epoxy. I know that the epoxy isn't a permanent coating, I just want to be able to drive it right now without worry of rust. My final paint and body will be done by professionals and much later down the road. I have a deployment to the middle east next year that I am prepping for and will probably have the car painted while I am there. Do you think that my prep before the Epoxy was enough to prevent the delimitation of the Epoxy? Thanks again!
I'm not sure Nik you really need to call eastwood tech and find out since different products require a procedure specific to that product.

 
Thanks for the knowledge Scott. I did use a heavily water diluted zep mix to spray the car down after the rust blast, then wiped everything clean with water just before spraying the epoxy. I know that the epoxy isn't a permanent coating, I just want to be able to drive it right now without worry of rust. My final paint and body will be done by professionals and much later down the road. I have a deployment to the middle east next year that I am prepping for and will probably have the car painted while I am there. Do you think that my prep before the Epoxy was enough to prevent the delimitation of the Epoxy? Thanks again!
I'm not sure Nik you really need to call eastwood tech and find out since different products require a procedure specific to that product.
Cool, Thanks Scott!

 
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