Mustang Newbie w/ Story

[wheatdog]

Hi Guys & Gals,
Just went and picked up a 65 coupe from Louisville, Ky. Car's in pretty good shape and had a half ass resto done on it about 8 yrs ago. Presently showing rust bubbles around passenger door edge and drip rail on both sides. Also, both rear wheel wells behind the tires need replacement. All else is solid. Glass is good, interior upholstery good, carpet good but faded, dashpad also good. Used to be a six but converted to 302/C-4 with granada disk front and granada back axle. Ok for $4500. Lots of money left over to make it right.

Drove it back with a couple of minor issues but the old girl made it from Ky to Louisiana with one blown tire and one overheating incident. Now for the really cool stuff. The tire blew about 30 miles south of Louisville and sure enough, no spare, jack etc. You'd think I would know better. Hobbled up the first exit and pulled into a service station which, of course, was closed down. I'm thinking "You're so screwed" when a guy pulls up and offers assit. Cool! This is rural middle of nowhere land. This guy lives about 3 miles back off the highway and we pull up to this huge barn/ work shed next to his house. He rolls back the door and LO ---- Mustang heaven!! The first to catch my eye is a '67 Shelby GT 500 absolutely immaculate condition. The 428 is on the floor cause a valve guide failed after doing a recent head rework. I'm all over this car looking at details and ask the guy what he paid for it. He smiles and said "$2000 dollars in 1974 in the same perfect condition you see now". It was his high school ride!!! The guy is a retired Ford factory worker.

Anyway, he digs me up a spare loads up his old car with jack and lugwrench and gets me back on the road. Really cool people.

I'll be hanging around the tech forums mostly. Gonna make a road racer outta this thing. I use to race Porsches so I'm trying to equal that kind of performance. Expensive I'm sure.

Mike

 

[Horsewhipped]

Sounds like you lucked out with the roadside assistance! I'll bet that was a nice garage to poke around in!
I had a 66 coupe 6 cyl that I bought back in 2000. I was finally going to get around to restoring it in '07, but it was rusted much worse than I had originally thought. The end of May, I decided to call about another 66 that I saw posted on a bulletin board at KAR Mustang. Turns out, the guy bought the car off of Ebay in 03. It was a San Jose C code coupe, sauterne gold with black standard interior. The engine and tranny were rebuilt right before he bought it. He had intended to get it back in shape, but never did. The body is solid, and you can wipe off the grease on the underneath and still see the original red oxide primer. I bought the car for $5000. It also came with a set of gt steel wheels, new heater core and hoses, new am/fm cassette that fits in the stock dash hole, new bumpers, new window felt, new rear view mirror and new door sills.
The paint is bad, and its painted a nasty olive drab over top of the original paint.
Since I purchased the car, I have upgraded to a dual master cylinder and replaced the upper and lower ball joints and all new polygraphite bushings and new lower control arms. I also did the "Shelby drop."

My question is, when I take it to paint, which should be in a few weeks, should I keep it stock?? What I kinda wanted to do is go back to the sauterne gold base/clear, then satin black shelby style stripes across the top-or ghost stripes, and forget the side stripes (bottom of the door). Other than that, I like the look of the GT rear valance, since I plan on running dual exhaust.
I just don't want a "Shelby tribute" or a "GT clone", not that there's anything wrong with them, but was wondering what your opinions were of the stripes and gt rear valance. Would that affect the value of the car? Would it be best to just go with the factory color and standard valance?

Thanks for any advice.

Eric