davidbosch
New member
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2014
- Messages
- 4
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- Mexico City
- My Car
- 1972 Mustang GT-351 (original Mexican version with the coupe body and a 351 Windsor)
Hi everyone. My name is David, I live in Mexico City and I'm new to the forum. Forgive my English. This is my story: My dad recently passed away and he left behind his 1972 coupe (Mexican GT-351). I am a huge fan of Mustangs and my dream had always been to restore this car with my dad and drive it as often as possible. He bought it used in 1977 and it became his daily driver. The car has basically been in storage for the past 25 years (since I was born) ever since my dad decided to modify the engine but never quite got time to finish the whole thing. Only about 10 years ago my dad and I started working on the engine but he moved away after that and we never got to finish the project. So here I am, with little money (I recently graduated from university) but very eager to give this Mustang its life back as a last homage to my dad.
The photos that I attach here show the car almost as I found it. I haven't even washed it before I can move it, cause I want to check for rust and there are things stored in the trunk and water can leak. The body is in a very decayed condition, there's hardly any visible rust but the paint has been sprayed over with other colours and not very nicely fixed, there's some body damage (look at the roof over the rear window). I'm pretty certain all the parts that appear missing are stored somewhere except for the rear valance, which I'm sure is lost. The NASA hood and tach are original. The exhaust pipes are clearly not original. The interior looks in pretty bad condition but it really isn't, it's complete, it's original, it's just taken apart. The engine is what's interesting. It's the only thing on which my dad really worked. On one hand the paint and some modified parts are a huge mess, such as the engine bay painted in silver or the block painted in light blue; on the other hand the engine is quite powerful already and I'm pretty sure my dad did a very good job mechanically speaking (he was an design engineer at Ford Mexico), but there's still a whole project here for me to embark on. I don't know a lot about the engine modification, just that it's got flat pistons, a 302 cam (my dad's notes just say it supposedly has a 8.4 mm lift), an aluminium Edelbrock intake manifold, a Holley 4776-4 4 barrel carburetor, heavily ported heads, an aluminium water pump, electric fan and some modification to the valves that I can't remember. The engine is a 351 Windsor mated to a 4 speed manual.
My idea so far is to take baby steps, but have the car almost fully functional from the start. It will take me some years to fix the car in the nicest proper way in which a restoration must be done, but I want to enjoy it, drive it and not having it seating another 25 years in a storage room (plus I need to save a lot of money to properly restore it and that'll take time).
So far, the engine started after some work on it. I changed the oil, I gave the cooling system a chemical flush, I changed the spark plugs, the cables. There's a gas leak on the front of the carb. I just need to be able to move the car to inspect it thoroughly.
So what are your first thoughts?
The photos that I attach here show the car almost as I found it. I haven't even washed it before I can move it, cause I want to check for rust and there are things stored in the trunk and water can leak. The body is in a very decayed condition, there's hardly any visible rust but the paint has been sprayed over with other colours and not very nicely fixed, there's some body damage (look at the roof over the rear window). I'm pretty certain all the parts that appear missing are stored somewhere except for the rear valance, which I'm sure is lost. The NASA hood and tach are original. The exhaust pipes are clearly not original. The interior looks in pretty bad condition but it really isn't, it's complete, it's original, it's just taken apart. The engine is what's interesting. It's the only thing on which my dad really worked. On one hand the paint and some modified parts are a huge mess, such as the engine bay painted in silver or the block painted in light blue; on the other hand the engine is quite powerful already and I'm pretty sure my dad did a very good job mechanically speaking (he was an design engineer at Ford Mexico), but there's still a whole project here for me to embark on. I don't know a lot about the engine modification, just that it's got flat pistons, a 302 cam (my dad's notes just say it supposedly has a 8.4 mm lift), an aluminium Edelbrock intake manifold, a Holley 4776-4 4 barrel carburetor, heavily ported heads, an aluminium water pump, electric fan and some modification to the valves that I can't remember. The engine is a 351 Windsor mated to a 4 speed manual.
My idea so far is to take baby steps, but have the car almost fully functional from the start. It will take me some years to fix the car in the nicest proper way in which a restoration must be done, but I want to enjoy it, drive it and not having it seating another 25 years in a storage room (plus I need to save a lot of money to properly restore it and that'll take time).
So far, the engine started after some work on it. I changed the oil, I gave the cooling system a chemical flush, I changed the spark plugs, the cables. There's a gas leak on the front of the carb. I just need to be able to move the car to inspect it thoroughly.
So what are your first thoughts?
Last edited by a moderator:
