Progress Thread Foxy Molly Build

This is pretty much a continuation of the thread I posted in the welcome section. It gives a basic overview of Molly. The plan here is to document the car from a tired 89 mustang to perhaps something that can turn and do a couple road rallies reliably. This car will be used for Dustball and beginner SCCA type of events, at least that is the plan.

Here is how she looked when I picked her up in December of 2014.


Since I brought her home to Texas I've replaced the water pump, installed a set of used BBK long-tubes H-pipe with flow masters and repaired the non-functional reverse lights. The reverse lights ended up being a dime that had become lodged in the cigarette lighter and blew the fuse!



Since I brought Molly home I've moved into a new home which allows me much more room to work on her. Currently the interior is gutted and I'm cleaning, repairing and reinstalling the interior pieces. The previous owners smoked in the car so a thorough cleaning was in order. I also discovered that the drivers seat is broken and that the front mounting post has pulled through the sheet metal.



The exterior of the car is rough but not entirely bad. There are a couple small rust areas bubbling that I'll address later. The car has had a couple small fender benders and has been driven hard. The a-pillars show the usual cracks due to body twist and I've noticed that the fenders don't actually line up 100%. I'm okay with this as the car will not be a show car. I had to restore my taillight housings / lenses, restore the quarter glass and the side mirrors all because I'm too cheap to pay for news ones and I figured it would be a great learning experience.


The mechanicals are okay. With 235 thousand miles, you would expect the car to be tired. The engine is still strong, no horrible leaks, although it does have leaks, and it drives for the most part okay. The suspension is shot, the brakes are horrible, the clutch needs adjusting and the idle is not 100%. I do know I need to replace the IAC and a couple of sensors. I'll get to all these issues at some point soon

So as you can see Molly is going to keep me busy for the foreseeable future. I'll be creating a build/progress thread here at www.stangnet.com to help me document the car and to get input/help from the huge user base here.

This brings me to my self. My name is Brian, I'm 39 and I have pretty much no idea what I'm doing. My 12 year-old son helps me and we do the best that we can. I'm not a mechanic, a body person, welder or anything. I'm a software developer by trade. But, I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night, so I think I can do most of what needs to be done! All jokes aside, I plan on teaching my self as I go. I've lurked on this site for years, literally years and there is a huge amount of information here. I like to learn and make mistakes, so I imagine there will be plenty of mistakes to be made of which will be documented in the build thread! What I've done so far has already taught me so much. I'm sure I've made mistakes thus far, but nothing has been a show stopper up to this point.

I'm also trying to learn photography and videography, that means allot of what has been done already is being documented as videos and photos. The videos are pretty bad, you can clearly tell I'm learning, but I keep making them in the hopes that perhaps, just perhaps I may be able to help some one or at least show some one that you can do allot of things on your own if you're willing to make mistakes and at least try.

Thank you all for reading this huge first post and I look forward to being a part of the community!

Brian - Foxy Molly Build
B&T Garage

I already have plans for the MM full length subframe connectors. I agree with you that this is a must. In regards to the brakes, I'm not sure if I'm converting to 5 lug just yet. I'm going to attempt to modify the stock 4 lug setup as best I can until I have no other option then to upgrade. This is mostly because I already have brand new 4 lugs in boxes waiting for tires. Along with the subframes, I also need to upgrade the suspension. I already have shocks, struts, and BBK lowering springs sitting in boxes on my parts shelf. I need to research and get, caster camber plates, upper FR control arms, MM lower adjustable control arms, rear tower brace, front strut tower brace, and front and rear upgraded sway bars. I'm not sure what else I would be able to do on a budget in regards to suspension beside the better rotors and pads of course. I also need to convert to a 4 lug disc in back.

Any input would be great on the above.

TAIL LIGHTS

The tail lights were obviously original to the car and were scratched and one of the lenses had a crack and chip in it. I removed the housings, the rubber seals and separated the lenses from the housings.



I then removed all of the sealant used between the housings and lenses.


At this point I had to figure out a way to re-attach the broken plastic from the lense.


So, I improvised and used some JB Weld. I scuffed the plastic, cleaned it and JB'd it to hell!


I also JB'd any visible cracks I could find since the plastic was soo brittle.


Once I had the JB weld in place and it was sanded and solid I primed with high build, and sanded. Then primed again and sanded and then again and so on.



I then sanded, wet sanded, primed painted the exterior and interior of the housings.


Once the housings were completed I taped off the lense covers as best I could and sanded, primed and painted the black outlines. I then taped off the black outline and then wet sanded the lenses them selves. Once that was completed I clear coated the lenses. I think they turned out pretty good!

SUN-ROOF

The sun-roof on Molly wasn't really all that bad. There was some pitting and surface rust starting on the metal frame as well as the paint was faded.


I removed all the hardware and seal from the glass. I then sanded the rust and utilized rust converter. I then taped and primed the sun-roof.


I also sanded and wire wheeled the bolts and misc hardware.


Due to me being a cheap ass, I also reused everything.



It for sure looks better than it did!

MIRRORS

The mirrors need minor painting and perhaps I should have just bought new ones? The ones that came off of Molly work, so I said hell with it and just freshened them up visually. The motors in the mirror were not touched and hopefully will still work once I plug the mirrors back in.

These looked like turds...


I did the same on these as the other stuff, high build, sand, prime and trim and bumper paint.



Finished project.

FoxMustangLvr said:

How does the paint look on this car? All these parts are looking pretty nice but would look odd if put on a car with junk paint. Maybe a cut and buff or a clay bar for the paint is in the future?

Click to expand...

The paint is no bueno. I'm not sure if I'm going to get a respray or hold off and just dip it for now until I get the parts and funds for the body work. I'm not opposed to driving it around like mad max all beat up looking.

QUARTER GLASS

The quarter glass on Foxy Molly was super bad. I've seen many Fox's that are awesome looking but have nasty quarter glass. I'm betting that due to the labor involved with removing and restoring them and the cost of new ones, most people just deal with it. I figured that I would give it a try ad see how it went. I knew I could do it for far less than the cost of new ones with the Mustang script, and I sure as hell didn't want the covers. I'd read nothing but bad reviews on the covers on here and other Mustang sites. So, I did my research on the interwebs and got to work.

I started by removing all the bolts from the back side and gently pried the windows out. I was surprised by the amount of sealant and how hard I had to push to release them.

Once they were out I had to remove that sealant from Molly and the quarter glass.

There weren't any chunks or cracks in the moldings but they were extremely pitted and faded.

You can see in this picture the level of pitting I had to deal with. This is after several passes of high build primer and sanding.

I then spent a week straight of priming, sanding, priming, sanding, priming sanding. It was slow going!

I used various colors of primer to help me determine how far I was sanding, almost like a guide coat I guess.

After all that tedious sanding, I think I got a decent product. The total cost was less the $50 in primer, trim paint and sand paper and I did it all on my own. The product is not perfect, I know there are some nicks and grooves I missed to fill, but I'm happy with the results.


More back logged build photos coming soon!

Brian

INTERIOR:

The drivers seat in Molly apparently pulled through the front mount sheet metal. The interior is also very very dusty and smells like a 25-year-old ashtray. Not the best fragrance in the world and needs to be rectified.

I started by removing the entire interior, finding all the mount points and trying not to break any of the already broken trim pieces was fun. Such a pain in the ass for some of the panels.


I took piles of parts and scrubbed all interior pieces and determined which ones needed repair painting etc.


I then piled up the parts for storage until I'm ready for dying, painting and repairs before reassembly in the car. The rear quarters in this pic have yet to be cleaned.


I then needed to investigate the condition of my floor pans. I didn't expect them to be to bad since Colorado doesn't use alot of salt, but of course the car was driven year round in snow rain etc.


I noticed some surface rust and the horrible hole in the seat cross member. This is where the front seats mounts attach and the stud has pulled through the sheet-metal!

I had to determine if I drill out all the spot welds and attempt to replace the entire cross-member or try my hand at welding. Again, cheap ass here, so I'll try to weld it back in. More on that later....

I started grinding/sanding the surface rust then applied rust converter. It turns the rust black and apparently prevents further corrosion, I sure hope so, and time will tell.


After the rust was "converted" I applied some rattle can primer that I had on hand.

I then painted it with Ford Red.


At this point, I have a couple of more tasks to complete and perhaps where some people will be like wtf?

I plan on removing the old dried up sound deadening and replacing it with a combination of ghetto peel-n-seal for horizontal surfaces and aircraft insulation, then new carpet. I'm hoping that this combination will make it cooler and quieter when cruising around. I will perhaps drop some cash on the tiles or Dynamat for the rear quarters and door panels, but I've not come to terms with that cost yet.

More updates coming soon such as a total newbie learns how to weld super thin sheet metal; A total train wreck ensues!

SEAT MOUNT

I recently attempted a fix on my drivers seat mounts. As shown above, the cross-member seat post pulled through the sheet-metal.


By now I think it's pretty obvious that I'm going to try to do my best and fix it on my own. The expensive way to fix this is to drill the spot welds, pry out the cross-member, buy a new one, weld it in and be on your way. The cost involved is more than I wanted to pay and I could use this as an excuse to spend the cash on a welder. I know I'll need a welder in the future so I went this route. I picked up an entry level flux core welder from Tractor Supply.


I have no idea at all, what so ever, how to weld. I read a bunch of stuff, watched some youtube and decided to dive right in and figure it out. I picked up some sheet metal and start practicing with the power level and wire speeds. I quickly realized welding thin 20 gauge sheet metal is like super hard. Screw that, moving on. I went straight to fixing the cross-member!

I sanded/ground all the paint off the areas I was going to stitch weld. I massaged the area with a hammer to get it all as close to what it was. I got all the pieces back to where they belonged, attached the ground clamp and did my first spot weld, it stuck. Awesome. I then continued welding another spot, moving to different areas as to not warp the metal.


I knew it wasn't pretty, but I also knew I could grind it down to make it pretty. My only concern was to get what I hoped was a strong weld. I did several sessions, spot weld, brush slag, sand, weld, brush, grind, weld. I tried my best to make sure each area being spot welded was clean.



I ended up with this train wreck, but it seems pretty damn strong. I ground it down some more and then broke out the metal reinforced filler for appearances sake.





The mounting bracket was also broken-off on the drivers seat. Screw it. Why buy a new seat or mounting bracket? Let's try to weld that too! So, I attempted to do that as well, and it's not pretty but it apparently worked.



The seat now fits perfectly, is super sturdy with no flex, and the best part is the gangster lean is gone!



Now, I know that these welds are ugly and most likely not the most structurally sound welds, but I think they will work. Seriously, this is my first time ever welding with pretty much anything so don't be too mean. I can only get better from this point on.

More coming soon, removing the remaining brittle sound deadening and replacing it with some low buck stuff. After that, the interior goes back in!