Matt's Gen2 65 Coupe Build Thread

[mtwarog]

The last thing was to extend the solenoid, wrap the cable around and crimp it tight.


Once that was done, I mounted the inside door handle to the top position of the latch. Instead of the clevis, I used a couple of throttle cable mounts which raised up the height of the cable to be inline with the bracket that holds the cable. Plus, since the solenoids were going to be pulling, I didn't want the ball on the end of the cable to pop out of the clevis. I'm hoping this will hold better and not fall off.




Both doors done.




-Matt

[mtwarog]

Time to catch up on some miscellaneous progress on the car. With the body still on, I wanted to see how the trunk glass would fit.

Got the brackets together.


Put them on the car






With the glass on, it seems like it fits pretty well. Final adjustment and sealing will be done later.




Since I need to take the body off again, I didn't put the hatch struts on yet. I was pretty happy with how it fit and took the glass back off to store for a while.

-Matt

[mtwarog]

Also with the body on, I starting fitting the doors. I took out my belt sander and started grinding away. This was very dusty and took some patience. I didn't want to grind out too much, so I just took a little bit at a time until the door fit in tight.

Eventually I got the driver's side door to fit pretty well.






Once the driver's side was done, I repeated the same on the passenger side and that went much quicker. Looks like I didn't take any pictures of it though.

-Matt

[mtwarog]

Next up with the body on, I wanted to drill the holes for the tail lights. I decided on the default positions for the brake and turn lights. I also bought a set of matching clear lights from ********** (Marker Light - L488) to be used as the reverse lights.
I decided I was going to put these below the other two like this:


Holes drilled.


The upper holes just lined up with the plates in the back.




Since there was a small gap between the plate and the fiberglass, I plan on adding some spacers here.

[mtwarog]

The bottom hole was just under the plate in the back and required a little trimming of the metal plate and 3/4" square tubing to fit.
Passenger side:


Driver side:




Lastly, since every time I took the body off, it would get hung up on the gas tank flange, I decided it was time to chop some of that off. I'm not sure why it stuck out there and what the hole was for. Hopefully it isn't needed....


-Matt

[mtwarog]

After drilling the tail light holes, I took the body off again. Now, it was time to finish up the trunk aluminum.

First was to see of the bump outs I made for the speaker actually fit inside the frame. Very close, but good.




Ran the speaker wires as well.

[mtwarog]

Now to finish up the riveting and the tops for the storage compartments.


Used a piano hinge for both.


Little one open:


Big one open:


Just barely clears the side as I open it. Better to be lucky than good...


Cleaned up a bit.




I'm happy how it came out. The plan is that this will all be covered up with a rug that I'll roll up when I need access to these boxes. We'll see how it comes out.

-Matt

[mtwarog]

With the body off, it was time to finish up the driver's side foot box. I had left this open for a long time to make sure I was able to get all the wires in and the pedals were working. I had to cut the aluminum a bit and bend it in so the headers and side pipes wouldn't hit the corner of the box.

I cut the side piece and bent it up.


Test fit it in.




Made a new piece to cover up this hole in the front as the one supplied with the kit was a little too small.


Next was to make up some pieces above and below the cuts. First was to mock it up with cardboard.


Then cut it and bend it up.


Fits well.

[mtwarog]

On the inside I added some insulation. I used Quadmat 4 Layer Dampening System plus Thermal Insulation/Cushioning that I purchased from Breeze Automotive.




Now added some aluminum tape on the outside to finish it off.


-Matt

[mtwarog]

After placing the rear spoiler on the back and seeing how it fit, I decided that I wanted to fiberglass it onto the car. The curve of the spoiler didn't really match the curve of the body that well. I would have to force it down quite a bit to sit flush. Since the fiberglass on the spoiler was pretty thin, I figured trying to screw or rivet it on would crack it.


I decided that I was going to cut out a section in the back and set the spoiler down into it. I first started by trimming the edge of the spoiler, but leaving about 1/2" of the lip. Put a piece of tape on it and took my dremel tool and cut it off.


Then after cutting, I centered the spoiler with the edges of the rear window. (Here was my first mistake, but didn't realize it yet, more on this in a bit....). And then traced on the back where I would cut out. I drilled holes on the corners.


Then cut it out.


Next was to fit it in and support it. I used some scrap pieces of aluminum and washers to set the depth.


Then put the spoiler in and started taking some measurements.


So I continued to make adjustments keeping the height of the top of spoiler constant across the back. In order to make this happen, I had to lower the driver's side much more than the passenger side. It still didn't hit me yet why I needed to do this, so I just kept going lower and lower.

[mtwarog]

So then when finally the top of the spoiler was the same height as the back, I fiberglassed in part of it. This was my first time fiberglassing, but it seemed to be going ok. My Dad was helping me put down the glass and I would add the goop.


Once that section was done, it was quitting time. A little while later, I went back downstairs to check on it and it finally hit me. Why did we have to lower one side so much? I measured the spoiler from the top to the lip and it was pretty consistent the whole way. If the spoiler is the same height the whole way, why does it need to be set in on one side to be level? Then I stepped back again and took a look.


Wait a minute, the spoiler isn't centered left and right on the car. Looking at the holes for the tail lights you can see it is shifted towards the passenger side. And now that the driver's side is set in more, the angle where it comes out of the body won't be the same on both sides. Since I'm planning on having stripes, I think it would become more obvious how not centered it is once those were painted on.

What I realized is that the corners for the rear hatch glass weren't centered in the car, therefore when I centered the spoiler to the rear hatch everything was shifted to the passenger side.

After sleeping on it, I didn't like it and I decided to cut out what I did and center it left/right with the tail lights.

So, I took out the dremel and cut out what I did the previous day. I moved the spoiler over to the driver's side and low and behold, it is now centered with the back and the correct height across the top and down about the same depth on both sides.


Now that it was in a position that I liked, it was time to fiberglass it back in. More on how that went tomorrow.....
-Matt

[mtwarog]

Now that the spoiler was in a place that I liked, it was time to glass it in (again).

You can see where I cut out the previously glassed in section.


You can see how far I moved it over


Duct taped the under side


Glassed in the sections between the mounts.




After that dried, then next day I took off the mounts and the spoiler didn't move at all. I was all prepped and ready to go to fill in the rest.

[mtwarog]

When the top was dried, flipped the body over and prepped the bottom to get glassed in.


I cut two pieces of plastic pipe to strengthen it up a bit and glassed those as well.


Finished product.




Hopefully it will hold. Now it'll be up to the painter to make it nice.
-Matt

[mtwarog]

I finished putting in the dynamat in the trunk. It took a lot of cutting and measuring and it took a while.

I also lined the inside of the storage boxes.


I covered the top of the box lids




Added some tape around the box edges.


All done.


The trunk area ended up taking a whole box of the Dynamat 10455 Xtreme Bulk Pack.

-Matt

[mtwarog]

I've been finishing up putting the insulation around the foot boxes and floor.

Here are some pictures of the driver's side footbox with the rest of the insulation on:


With the cover's on:


Passenger side:


Passenger footbox with quadmat

[mtwarog]

Getting the dynamat on the floor




Done


-Matt

[mtwarog]

I decided that I wanted to coat the underside of the body while the body was off the car. I didn't want the red from the body showing through and thought putting bed liner on would work well. I looked around and ended up buying some Dupli-Color Bed Armor. It is water based and was not too stinky putting on. I lightly sanded the underside, then vacuumed up the dust and wiped it down with PRE paint cleaner.

Taped up the edges:


On the roof, I put down two sheets of dynamat. I'm hoping this will hold and not fall on me while driving. Time will tell if this was a good decision or not.


Then I starting putting on the bed liner. The kit that I bought comes with a roller and a brush. I'd say the roller didn't really work that well with all the curves of the body. So it took a little longer with the brush, but it came out ok.


First coat on:


Applied the second coat and it looks a little better.


With help from my son, we pulled off all the tape. I'm pretty happy with how it came out. Tomorrow we'll put the body back on the car and see how everything fits. The hood will be another day once I finish trimming it to fit the body.


-Matt

[SingleMaltWSKY]

Looking really nice!

Great minds think alike, we also plan to integrate the wing like you have.

Question on the reverse lights, I like the location - are the Marker Lights - L488 going to be white lenses? If so, can you let me know where you got them?

Awesome build!

[mtwarog]

Thanks Jonas.

Yeah for the reverse lights I purchased them from: http://www.**********accessories.com/c-58-lights.aspx
Under "color", select "clear".

-Matt

[mtwarog]

With help from my Dad, we flipped the body over and put it back on the car. Every time we try to put the body back on, it seems as if it's not going to fit. Then after a few minutes of struggling, it pops right into place. This time I was more nervous putting it back on since I added all the trunk aluminum, dynamat etc. I figured this time it wouldn't fit, but I was wrong. The usual few minutes of struggle, then magically it's on.

I finally can see how those "wings" on the side trunk aluminum pieces will fit in. I always assumed they were meant to sit to the frame, but see now they will fit against the body and I'll tie them in later to seal between the inside and the outside.




There's a little bit of a gap between the front mount and the body that I'll have to shim up.


The back mount is just about touching


Zoomed out it looks pretty good


Little bit of a gap on the driver's side between the door sill and the frame


The passenger's side has a slightly bigger gap


-Matt

[mtwarog]

Since the wheels I bought had a 6.8" backspace vs. the 6" backspace of the FFR 17" x 9" Vintage Halibrand Replica Wheels, I knew I'd need some spacers to bring out the tires a bit.

With the nose on the car, I got around to getting some front wheel spacers.
After a few quick measurements, I decided 1" would put them where I wanted. The edge of the tires are set in about 3/4" at the top of the wheel arch.
I bought a set of: 25mm (1") 5x4.5 to 5x4.5 Black Hubcentric Wheel Spacers for Ford Mustang by Precision European Motorwerks



Now the front wheels fill out the nose a little better.




Looking from the back:



-Matt

[mtwarog]

Catching up on some miscellaneous pictures as I finished the wiper installation, the firewall insulation and painted the seats.

First the wiper installation. I posted a while back and getting them ready to install, but never finished it. I was hoping the tubes would be the correct length because it was time consuming to get them setup correctly. I unconnected the nut holding the tube to the motor and the cable slide right out. Greased it up and put it back in. I wasn't sure how much to put on and didn't use a ton, but hopefully enough around the cable to prevent it from binding or rusting (Sorry, no pics). We lifted the front of the body up enough to fit in and then slowly lowered the body, but the hole/notch that I cut in the body mount wasn't big enough. So got the dremel and made it bigger. Then it fell right into place.





After the test fit, picked the body back up and finished the insulation on the firewall. Used some more of the quadmat for this.




Now with the body back on.




Zoomed out it looks pretty good. I hope they don't break anytime soon after the body/windshield is on as it will be really difficult to service.

[mtwarog]

Finished up the insulation around the footbox and front of the transmission tunnel. Also finished snaking the rear speaker wires through the transmission tunnel and into the inside of the car.




Painted the seats and the slider.


-Matt

[Automan]

Hi, Get breakdown on your build. Fascinating. Fantastic job. Are you going to continue on with the remainder of your build here?

thanks
Nelson

[mtwarog]

Thanks Nelson.

Yeah, I'm going to continue to update the remainder of my build here. It just takes time to find the correct pictures to upload and replace the links. I try to get a couple updates posted every few days.

-Matt

[mtwarog]

It was time to get back to working on the doors. I setup the frame to open and close without the door on. I tried to adjust the door frame to be roughly parallel and still open and close. I wasn't exactly sure where the frame would line up inside the door, but figured I had to start somewhere.

First was to clamp the door to the frame to see where I need to cut for the latch now that the door shell was sitting in the correct position with the body.


Used my dremel to cut out the hole for the inside handle and shop-vac to keep the dust down.


Once the hole was made, then needed to fish the handle through from the inside.


Then I could close the door and mark where I needed to cut for the latch and made the cut.


Now the door could close and latch. Next was to loosen the bolts from the frame to the chassis and play around for a long time. Going back and forth between getting the door to latch, have the door frame sit flush against the door and getting the door to fit and open and close without rubbing against the body. This took a while.


Now repeat for the passenger side and started drilling and mounting the door to the frame


All 4 bolts in.

[mtwarog]

For the striker posts, I made a spacer so the large washer on the post would sit over the body. You can see for the driver's side, I cut out a really large hole in the body. I originally thought that the large washer would be inside the body and therefore needed a large hole in the fiberglass. What I realized is that I only needed a small hole in the body, just enough to fit the bolt and spacer. The post needs to stick out pretty much all the way to latch on the door.


So, I re-fiberglassed in this hole so I wouldn't have the body cutout extend past the large washer on the striker post.


Then re-drilled a smaller hole and now the washer will cover the hole.


Looking at the above pictures makes it seem like the whole process went quick and easy. It was far from it. The fitting of the doors took a long time and a lot of small adjustments of the frame and sanding of the door.
In the end, it came out pretty well. Any fine adjustments will have to be done by my painter.

-Matt

[mtwarog]

With the doors on, it was time to move on to the hood. I had fit it on a while back lining it up with the front wheel well, but hadn't done any trimming where it meets the body.

To get the initial marking of where to trim, I put down a piece of tape on the body with the edge of the tape on the edge where the hood would go:


Now closing the hood I could see how much I would need to trim.


Next was to put a piece of tape on the hood lining it up with the tape on the body.


Then have at it with my dremel, cutting off the piece of the hood with the tape.




I put a small spacer in the middle of the hood to line up flush with the body and closed the hood to see how the fit was. You can see the hood was higher than the body by about 3/16" or so. I considered myself lucky after seeing the gaps on other red body coupes that were much larger.

[mtwarog]

Passenger side about the same.


Since the gap wasn't too big, I decided that I'd just add more fiberglass to the lip and then grind off the bottom of the lip until the top of the hood fit flush.


After a bunch of grinding with my belt sander, the fit ended up pretty decent. What a dust storm though. Dust everywhere.....




-Matt

[mtwarog]

I put together the hood latches by riveting on the plate that I'd previously powder coated. I only had the longer rivets left, so I made a little spacer out of aluminum to give the rivet something to grab onto.



After filing away a bunch of fiberglass, the latch fit pretty well, so I clamped it on and started drilling the holes.


For some reason the bottom piece isn't flush with the top part of the latch, so I made some more spacers to space the latches in the same amount.


Got it put on.


I thought about bending the top tabs flat on not putting spacers, but I kind of like how the latch is recessed in the hood. Also, if I bent the top tabs, I'd have to make sure the holes were the same width as the lower mount, otherwise the bolts from the outside wouldn't look even. Anyways, just left them as is.


Then repeat on the passenger side

[mtwarog]

Now on to the hood struts. I didn't like the way the hood strut bracket on the front only attached with two bolts into the fiberglass. Figured that would just rip out at some point. So, I made up some aluminum pieces and sandwiched those around the fiberglass.




Driver's side.


Then attached the other mount to the frame and installed the struts.


-Matt

[mtwarog]

Since the hood is hard to open with one person without getting caught up on the latch and hard to close without getting the end of the hood caught on the body, I bought some hood rollers. I got these from Whitby Motorcars.

I sent the bracket off to my Dad's to powder coat them. They were pretty straight forward to install. Got the passenger side done and adjusted them so when the latch is closed the bottom wheel holds the hood out to the correct position. I installed them lower than the directions say so the bottom wheel would be closer to the bottom of the hood.




On the driver's side, even with the wheel out as far as it could go, I couldn't get the wheel to touch the body when closed. I'm not sure if it's due to how I adjusted the body when doing the doors or not. Maybe I'll look into tweaking it a little and re-adjust the driver's door, but for now just made up a couple spacers out of aluminum to push the whole bracket out a bit. Now it works perfectly.


Thanks.
-Matt

[mtwarog]

I had put together the rear hatch hinge and hardware on the hatch glass a while back, but didn't mount the strut brackets and struts. Now that I had the body back on I wanted to get this done.

Ok, the first thing was to position the bracket and then drill the holes making sure all three screws would go through the 1" square tube. With the dynamat on and the body, it was tough to see if where the drill bit would end up on the tube. Just had to go for it and drill.

Ended up getting lucky on the passenger side and all three holes made it.


One thing I did notice was that the 1" supplied screws weren't going to be long enough, so needed to buy some 1.5" ones.


Got lucky on the driver's side as well


Still need another coat of bedliner on the aluminum.......


Driver's mount on.


Passenger mount on.


Not bad.... It actually now opens and closes.


-Matt

[mtwarog]

Finally finished wiring up my shaved door kit openers and tested them out. These are the Spal Shaved-40 Door kit. I wrote about mounting them a while back, but never tested to see if they worked.

First for a few pictures:


Snaked wires through the door hinges.


Passenger side done.






Now for a cheesy video to show them in action......
https://youtu.be/K16CC6bpnMk

Hopefully they still work when I put the fiberglass doors on.

-Matt

[mtwarog]

I haven't really been looking forward to putting in the windows, but now was the time. I started with the passenger side. First was to see how the frame would fit to the door.
I could see that I'd need to trim a bunch off the top of the door so the window frame would fit flush with the door. Took my best guess on how much I needed to cut on the front and the back. Then put a pieced of tape on the door where I would cut.




Once the cut was made I started drilling holes in the door to mount the window frame. The bottom hole hit some metal of the door frame, so I tapped that into the frame. The top two holes were just into the fiberglass of the door, so I used the supplied lock nuts.


The same for the rear, with the lower screw hitting the metal frame.


Frame removed, can see the 3 holes on the front and back of the door.


Frame in.




The passenger side went in pretty well. Next up the driver's side. Figured that would be a piece of cake. Wrong. Will post more on that later.......

-Matt

[mtwarog]

After having pretty good success on the passenger side's window, I moved on to the driver's side. Made the estimate of how much I needed to trim, then put the tape down and made the cut.





Next was to drill the hole for the window frame. The front went ok and I hit the frame for the lower hole and tapped that. Then came the back of the frame. As I drilled through the fiberglass for the bottom hole, the drill bit then hit some metal and shifted to the side. I took the door skin off and put a piece of tape about where the hole was to see exactly where I was. I was right below the 1" square tube hitting the weld between the tube and the back plate. Couldn't tap it, couldn't drill it and couldn't get a nut on it. See little black dot on the tape where the hole in the door is:


So I took my dremel and notched out that metal in the frame.


I then took another small piece of scrap metal that I had and JB Welded it into position. Then put the door skin back on and drilled and tapped this new piece.

[mtwarog]

Next was to put the window frame back on and line things up. Then I noticed that the frame wouldn't side flush on the door, so I started grinding away some of the fiberglass. Yup, I needed to grind away a lot and created a big hole in the process.


Had to then patch that up.


And grind it back down.


Now put the frame back on and things fit ok. Couldn't get the allen wrench on the top back hole of the frame. Will have to get a hex head screw to fit. Also, needed to put some washers on the frame to make it sit better in the body opening. Then I tried to close the door and found the window frame hitting the body. A little trim of the frame and now the door closes. After all that, I still didn't have the actual windows in the frame. I still wasn't quite sure how the actual window and bottom will fit in the frame, so next up the windows.....

-Matt

[mtwarog]

I unpacked the windows and found the rubber edge trim that goes around it. Worked my way around with the edge trim and trimmed the corners and edges with some cutters.



The window was able to slide in from the bottom and fit pretty snug. Then to get the bottom piece to line up I need to re-bend the tabs to fit correctly.




Got the passenger side in as well and this required some trimming and re-bending the tabs in the bottom piece, but eventually got it to fit pretty well. With the window frame flush to the door, then top of the window framed lined up about perfect.

[mtwarog]

I eventually went back to the driver's side and made some spacers and used washers to better fit the window frame with the body. Without the spacers the window frame was sticking out too far from the body. After many hours of work it finally came out decent.






-Matt

[mtwarog]

Since I was planning on painting on bed liner to the underside of my hood, I wanted to make the necessary cuts in the fiberglass for the headlights. First was to figure out how the lights went together.

Got the headlights and buckets assembled.








Now with the headlight assembled, let's see how it fits. I made a template based on the dimensions from the manual and put it over the pre-cut hole. Looks like I'll need to do some trimming.... In fact the pre-drilled holes didn't even line up.


Same with the other side


So I enlarged the hole for the bucket and then took a drill and enlarged the two little holes to line up. After doing so, I then had a slot instead of a hole, so I glassed those back in and re-drilled in the correct position.


Now the bucket fit in and lined up with the holes.

-Matt