Build Thread Mustang5L5's Build Thread -

Willybill32 said:

Mike, do you put some kind of sealer between the new boot and the transmission tunnel before you rivet it in? What kind of shifter is that?

Bill

Click to expand...

Some folks use seam sealer. I didn’t have any on hand so I used a thin strip of butyl tape on the inside. I feel that it did a good job creating a seal.

It’s an MGW shifter

Rolled the car outside and welded the other side

Unfortunately I snapped both of the bezels. Oops. They sell these as repops. I’ll just need to dye them.



For now, I tucked the belts in. Yeah, interior is dusty. Been 2.5 years since I’ve given it all a cleaning.

Hatch area mostly back together. Just need to address the new latch wiring when my harness shows up tomorrow. I think I can do a minor rewire to get the interior dome light to work correctly.




Next up. The subframe connectors. I left the seats and carpet out for this. Giving the floor a once over, I did find this crack in the floor pan by the drivers seat. I’ll need to weld this up, but the SFCs should reinforce all this

First pic as a whole car in a while. Still adjusting the fenders and such so pay no attention to the gaps. Also…new quarter window!

Yeah…still rocking the Mt Dew coolant overflow bottle. It’s tough trying to squeeze a 1/4” coolant line over the 3/8” nipple on the radiator.

Day two (of 4) of my single guy weekend even went as far to detail both vehicles. Cleaned the interior of my car and my wife’s. The wife’s car had never been done since we purchased it. Those darn kids stuffed so many snacks in every crevice possible.

Cleanest my car has been in a while. Could do more on the carpet but it’s good enough for now. It’s in what I call “trade-in” ready mode.

Now whether or not I do it all depends on the market. I’m 50/50 on doing it now vs waiting. Undecided if I’ll trade it in for a car for myself, or for the wife and I’ll take her car for another year or so.






Now to pull out the SFCs and start brainstorming my plan of attach for doing them. I might make some cribbing. We will see.

SO harnesses for the new hatch latch arrive. After comparing my original 1988 harness and the 92-93 harness, i elected to swap the harnesses is and use both of them. There's a main hatcvh harness, and a subharness that only does the latch/courtesy lights. There's also a short 3rd brake light harness but I was able to reuse that.

Anyway, fishing the new harness in was a PITA, but i got it in there. It all goes right in and you need to make a couple small changes in the hatch. One, i had to untape the brake light plug and move it to where my harness to the light was at the edge of the hatch. Then you have to add a small ground screw at the driver's side grommet area. There's already a predrilled hole there. Easy enough

Then you are left with this. Original harness end on the left. My new one on the right



Essentially the only wre you can use as-is, is the ground. So i hacked everything else off.



Now, you would just cut the plug ends off your original harness and splce them into the wires here so you can connect into your main harness. This will leave 2 free wires, which are now your rear courtesy light switch.

I think it's color for color, but heres what does what in the 92-93 harness

Red/green stripe : brake light
Purple: Unlock hatch
brown : courtesy lights
Big gray is your defrost

Green/yellow and black/blue are the courtesy light switch.

Here's where the old courtesy light switch is



Rather than running wires all over the hatch, i found the two wires in the main bundle at the plugs that connect to the hatch and pulled them out there. Just need to buy a simple 2-pin plug and wire it in there.


As luckj would have it. I hopped on Ebay and found a seller selling cut ends of the harness I need. So i'm not cutting up my orginal harness. Just need to wait for the new harness ends to show up in the mail now and wire them all in.

All that work for a functioning courtesy light switch, but you should know that's how this project is going to go.

I wasn’t too thrilled with the header panel mounting brackets. Dispite blasting them, they were just too pitted and I wasn’t a fan.

Bought the Drake SS brackets. We will see how they look natural. If they stick out too much I’ll scuff them up and paint them black.



Also decided to pull the interior back out. Going to POR-15 the floor and install sound deadener. I’ll start in the hatch, stop at the rear seat mount and then finish the rest after I weld in the SFCs

Just when I thought I was wrapping up…..scope creep!

Got this stuff in the mail. Then realized i got 50mil instead of 80mil.

Might return it and get the thicker stuff. This box is maybe 10#.




Took the opportunity to upgrade my garage chair with a halo headrest

Ok. So wired up the 92-93 latch. I ended up using all the 93 harnesses in the hatch and just cutting off my plug ends off an old 87-91 harness and splicing the harness ends onto the 93 harness. Easy as it’s color for color. Done. It works. Unlocks and the hatch light works as intended now.

Onto sound deadener.

Ended up buying 50mil thick kilmat and 150mil thick noico foam. Come to find out, they are the same company.


I know there is thicker, but honestly the car is loud as it is. It’s not gonna be a caddy.



The box of kilmat weighs maybe 10-12 lbs.


I plan on using the foam for its heat insulation properties. I’m going to apply it all around the trans tunnel, under the rear seat (where mufflers are) and on the roof. The roof might be a waste considering it’s a sunroof car with a hatch. It’s a giant greenhouse. Still, this stuff weighs nothing at all, so I’m gonna go nuts with it. The entire box weighs maybe a pound.

In the hatch, the sound deadener on the edges was kinda loose, so I took it up. Came up easy with a heat gun.


Rear floor area was in perfect condition other than some light surface rust in the tire well. Decided to POR15 that up.

Didn’t want to wait for the tire well to dry so I started putting the kilmat everywhere else. I’ll go back into the tire well when it’s fully dried

Went as far as the rear seat main brace. I don’t want to do the main floor until I weld up the SFCs.

I think I’m going to double up the kilmat on the wheel arches, and under the rear seat. Then I’ll apply the foam deadener under the seat area as well.

Easy to do and kinda satisfying to see the work get done. Fortunately my metal was very clean, so not a whole lot of prep before laying this stuff down.



I did some add some pieces to some of the flat metal pieces around the sides as well. You don’t have to cover every square inch of it to get a change in sound. Just a few squares on some of the verticals panels made the car sound less tinny when I tap panels.

I plan to do the floors, doors and roof with the stuff. I used 1/3 of a 50 sf box to get where I am now and I’m being generous with the application. I might need to buy a second, smaller box. I’m pretty sure I won’t use all the foam