Progress Thread Low Mile 89 GT Restomod - Finished paint

KRUISR · Jul 10, 2026

At the end of June had another few days working on this thing. Started with the rear lower control arm relocation brackets. Again using the drawings from the Mathis book. I made up all the plates and then bolted up each plate and custom fit the parts for alignment and fit. I didn't make the shock relocation tabs as my son's car used a single bolt back into the axle bracket to mount the shock.

Sorry I didn't have a pic of all the individual plates, I thought I had taken a picture of them but can't seem to find it anymore.

One change I made to the Mathis plans was to add an additional set of relocation holes. The second set is 2.5" lower than stock and moved an additional 1/16" forward. I made the same brackets for my 90GT 10 years ago and have the arms positioned in the 2.5" down position and have no issues (aside from the tweak needed for the sway bar).

To align/install the spacer tabs I used a couple bolts to align the holes and then tack weld the spacers in place, remove the bolts and fully weld them in place.

Painted and re-installed.

For now at least, the lower control arms are installed in the 1.75" lowered position. We will see if that is where we keep it.

To not scratch the painted axle housing I used an old rubber floor mat draped over the jack pad. Worked perfect.

KRUISR · Jul 10, 2026

Re-seam sealed the doors, primered and painted the backside of the doors.

After a couple days, re-installed back on the car.

Did the same seam seal, primer and paint to the backside of the hatch.

KRUISR · Jul 13, 2026

Though not going on my son's car, but I picked this up last summer and decided to clean it up/repair it a bit.

A previous owner had the thought of enlarging the inlet - probably thinking it was needed for a 75 or 80mm TB.

They bored a nice straight hole that fits a 3" piece of exhaust or intercooler tube inside (perfectly), but broke through the cast near the throttle body mount.

KRUISR · Jul 13, 2026

I picked up some 2 part epoxy off Amazon and came up with a plan to repair.

I wrapped the 3" tube with kitchen plastic food wrap and inserted it into the bored out hole to use as a backer to support the epoxy while it cured. I then mixed some material up and applied and shaped it the best I could with some popsicle sticks to get the shape as close as I could.

The next day - after it cured - I sanded the epoxy a little to smooth out some of the edges and applied some Tremclad Hammered paint to try and get a texture similar to the factory cast look.

Two coats later...

If you really look you can see some of the edge of the epoxy, but a quick glance under the hood and you will likely not see/notice it.

I think it has come out not bad considering I paid less than half of what most Explorer uppers only are being asked for on eBay right now. It came with a new Cobra decal as well.

KRUISR · Aug 18, 2026

Well I got back on the paint and body for about the last 10 days now and made huge progress.

Started by test fitting the front end to make sure I could line everything up still and after painting.

Satisfied with what I had I moved forward.

Before blowing it all apart to continue body work I test fit a steel hood I modified - 1" cowl rise over stock.

Though not fully body worked yet I am happy with the look. I offered it to my son to put on his car but he chose the stocker. So this will get finished off and go on a future build.

While trying to line up the front bumper cover, I couldn't get it to move in far enough to fit right to the rad support. Looking deeper I found that the issue wasn't the bumper cover, but the driver side rad support. When we got the car the previous owner gave us two new aftermarket front fenders and a mangled original DS fender. I considered repairing it but it was just too crinkled. He had told us that he backed into the car while clearing snow in his yard at some point. I had not thought to look deeper into this and it has come back to bit me. Turns out the DS rad support where it meets the front frame rail was folded over somewhat and pulled the rad support toward the engine area. Since I had already painted the engine bay I was none to happy with my discovery, but I wanted things to fit right. So out came the block of wood, punch chisel and big hammer and I "massage" the metal back closer to where it should be.

This is after hammering outward from engine bay and using punch to straighten metal back toward engine bay. The result is the upper rad support was back in range of where the bumper cover could attach to it. A new problem came up...

I moved metal enough that my weld I did many posts earlier with an replacement center upper rad support cracked -

Shown I had already further sliced the crack to get a better weld in the area. So I guess I am touching up the upper rad support when I paint the rest of the car.

KRUISR · Aug 18, 2026

After a day of boring sanding, scuffing and booth set up we are ready for some polyester high build primer.

Then the sanding continues...

The driver door bottom that I had to repair an old collision repair. First image is the guide coat on the high build primer, the second is mid way through sanding and we are almost flat - a couple lower spots still remain. Once cleaned up we moved on to the rest of the body.

I moved the bumper cover out to round 1 of painting, primer sealed what was left and ready to paint.

And finally in color...

That was Sunday morning at 4am that I finished.

KRUISR · Aug 18, 2026

Left the body in the booth the rest of Sunday to dry and cure a bit and moved parts around on Monday.

Then got the front bumper cover, fenders and hood and hatch hinges in. The pic shows the spoiler but I pulled it out after it fell and chipped (a fix for later).

KRUISR · Aug 18, 2026

Sprayed those parts on Monday and Tuesday disassembled the booth and installed the painted parts on the car.

All back together...

I ran out of paint at this point so will need more of that to finish the rear bumper cover, spoiler, all the side skirts and fuel door. I think one more quart could do it but I will get 2 quarts for safety sake and to have a little left over if needed.

Looking at getting back at it end of August. Hopefully that will be the end of the Ruby Red painting and it will be assembly time after that.

General karthief · Aug 19, 2026

Like a giant red piece of candy

limp · Aug 20, 2026

Can you tell us more about your paint booth? Thanks

KRUISR · Aug 20, 2026

limp said:
Can you tell us more about your paint booth? Thanks

Its a 10x20 Party Tent I purchased off Amazon 3 or 4 years ago (paid around $130-150 CDN). I added an 8x8 sun shade pop up to the one end. I installed the roof on each and wrapped the sides in painters plastic sheet (item shown below) also purchased on Amazon. I purchased this 9ft wide roll as well as a 12ft wide roll to be used to cover the whole car if needed (will be needed when painting the trim black on the tops of the doors). The plastic sheet gets hung on the outside of the tent frame and taped to outside roof every 4-6ft. I try to wrap the outside in one continuous length sheet to minimize leakage points. An extra pair of hands works great here. We then used some scrap boards we had laying around to hold down the bottoms to keep them from flapping around.

I purchased two simple box fans (20x20 ish size - about $30 each). I purchase a case of 20x20x1 Merv 8 furnace filters (from an online furnace filter outlet) for use as inlet and outlet filters. One fan pushing air in and one fan pulling air out. The filters were taped to the plastic and then the opening cut. The fan was then tapped to the filter to provide a seal. On the exhaust side I built a box using four filters to give more surface area to exhaust through because if not by the end of painting there is barely any air is being drawn out. I guess I could change the filters half way through as well, but I am usually focused on cleaning paint gun or mixing paint/clear.

The same interior area could be achieved with two or three 10x10 sun shade pop up tents. I would butt them tight together (possibly tape the legs together) and still wrap the outside in one continuous sheet.

The garage/shop we are working in is a 40x40 with a 14' ceiling.

limp · Aug 20, 2026

TY for the response.... I like the idea of butting together the three 10 X 10 pup up tents... Most temp paint booths seem to be built out of wood which looks like alot of work to build and tear down.....

KRUISR · Aug 20, 2026

limp said:
TY for the response.... I like the idea of butting together the three 10 X 10 pup up tents... Most temp paint booths seem to be built out of wood which looks like alot of work to build and tear down.....

And what do you do with the wood framing in between paint jobs.

I would suggest changing the outside wall plastic after priming/sanding is done. I was chasing dried primer flakes in the fresh paint while building the layers of color. This Ruby Red is a tri-coat so the paint process was one coat of sealer, 2 coats of color, 2 coats of tinted clear and 2 coats of full clear. I had to pick a couple flakes out in between the two color layers. Thankfully it did not affect the final outcome, but something I will definitely be considering the next paint job I do.

KRUISR · Sep 1, 2026

I have a question for fellow GT owners out there. I am about to repaint the factory tail lights. I have the stencil kit from LMR. My question is do I leave the stencils on when doing the final full clear (and remove them after) or do I pull the stencils after the 2nd coat of tinted clear (color) and do the full clear over everything, essentially sealing in the edges?

Thoughts.

Noobz347 · Sep 2, 2026

Final clear goes over everything once you have it set how you want it.

KRUISR · Sep 2, 2026

Noobz347 said:
Final clear goes over everything once you have it set how you want it.

Right, so pull the stencils after the color coats and clear everything. That's what I thought, but had some doubts. This way I will scuff the entire tail lights, lenses and all. Then mask and then spray. Thanks for the opinion.

KRUISR · Sep 9, 2026

So back at painting. Sanded/scuffed both tail lights with 320 grit and masked up using the GT tail light stencil kit from LMR. It is a tedious task redoing the tails (first time doing GTs). I will highly recommend using the stencils as once you get the hang of it they go on very nicely. I couldn't imagine trying to use masking tape and cutting the tape tightly along ALL those edges. I do recommend wearing latex gloves as your tail lights will be cleaned with wax and grease remover already and you don't need contaminants in there. Also the stencils will stick to your fingers as you are putting them down. The gloves help with not contaminating the adhesive on the stickers so everything went down very nice.

After sealer and the four layers of color coats it was time to peel the stencils off.

Using a pick tool and some tweezers I was able to curl over one corner and then grip enough with tweezers to pull enough to grab with my fingers (in latex gloves) to remove each stencil panel (24 panels per tail light). What I really liked about the vinyl stencils is they left a very sharp edge when peeled.

Then after 2 coats of full clear they turned out pretty good.

KRUISR · Sep 9, 2026

The rear bumper cover had a tear when we purchased the car.

I did some (a bunch) of plastic welding to repair the crack/tear as well as multiple sessions with the heat gun to return the overall shape to more factory like.
After all that there was sanding, flexible bondo, plastic weld compound and more sanding to get to here...

The first three pics are the outside of the bumper cover where the crack/damage was and the fourth pic is the inside part of the crack and the plastic welds.

High build primer going on followed by black sanding and paint.

KRUISR · Sep 9, 2026

The driver side hockey stick skirt was damaged at some point. I believe it happened when the door damage occurred years ago and was repaired (not the skirt though). My belief is the damage happened when the door was impacted, the front edge must have bent outward. Then when the driver exited the vehicle the front edge of the door caught the skirt instead of tucking behind it. It caused two vertical tears about 1/2" and 1" in from the rear edge at the body side moulding. I didn't take a pic of the before damage . But here is the result after plastic welding and flexible bondo repairs.

The rear angled edge was also damaged and repaired (though no pics).

Here is the painted side skirts and rear bumper cover once painted complete.

KRUISR · Sep 9, 2026

Finished up body work on the remaining skirts, spoiler, gas cap. Parts hanging with first coat of red.

All finished and sitting out in the sun the next day...

Test fit some new headlights I have...

Still need badges and emblems. Not sure if we are doing the factory blue Ford emblems or the black versions. Also not sure if 5.0 badges are going on or if we keep the clean look on the fenders.

Progress Thread Low Mile 89 GT Restomod - Finished paint

KRUISR

KRUISR

KRUISR

KRUISR

KRUISR

KRUISR

KRUISR

KRUISR

General karthief

wonder how much it would cost to ship you a pair

limp

wrap a little cheese around it and its a done

KRUISR

limp

wrap a little cheese around it and its a done

KRUISR

KRUISR

Noobz347

Stangnet Facilities Maint Tech... Er... Janitor

KRUISR

KRUISR

KRUISR

KRUISR

KRUISR

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Progress Thread Low Mile 89 GT Restomod - Finished paint

wonder how much it would cost to ship you a pair

wrap a little cheese around it and its a done

wrap a little cheese around it and its a done

Stangnet Facilities Maint Tech... Er... Janitor

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