1979 Mustang Ghia
This is what we started with. Here Chris is standing next to his 2nd cousin who had just given him this 1979 Mustang Ghia. It had not been started in 5 years and had not been in a garage in 15. The hot Texas sun had definitely taken its toll on the interior, hood, and roof. Fortunately little road salt left the underneath in excellent condition. It has a 4 speed overdrive manual transmission and a 5.0 liter engine. We drove to San Antonio and towed it back to Wisconsin in 4 days. Our thanks to PST Performance Suspension Technology, Summit Racing Equipment, and Eastwood Automotive Tools & Supplies.
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| Before | Currently | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Taking
out the engine and starting to tear it down. |
 Look
at the neat parts layout. |
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   Taking
it apart. |
 Ready
for painting. |
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  After
Chris added a few items and had the block bored out 0.30" oversize. He
added racing cam, intake manifold, and special carb. |
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  Sanding
the rough roof. 12 hours. Left side in pic 2 is unsanded. |
 After
Dad and Marc primed the roof. |
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  Engine
compartment before. Marc scrubbing it prior to other work. |
  After
sandblasting, pressure washing, blowing out with air, hand brushing, and
then spraying black encapsulator paint. |
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 |
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 Really
taking it down to the basics. |
 The
entire front end after sandblasting, pressure washing, blowing out with air,
hand brushing, and then spraying black encapsulator paint. |
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 Chris
sanding on parts prior to priming. |
 Rear
brake drums after sandblasting and spraying with black encapsulator paint. |
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 Drive
shaft before. |
 Drive
shaft after sandblasting and painting. |
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 Rear
end before cleaning it up. |
 After
painting with black encapsulating paint. The bottom has been
sandblasted and painted since this picture was taken. |
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 Front
suspension parts after sandblasting
.On the right, after painting. |
Left f  ront
end suspension stripped.
Right: front end reassembled. |
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 On
the left are the new seats that we bought at the Jefferson Car show.
Much better looking than the old ones at the right. |
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  Here
are the headers before and after sandblasting. |
 See
how they look after painting with the special header paint from Eastwood. |
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 25
Oct 03: We have finally finished the front end. We removed control
arms, springs, steering, tie rods, etc.. We sandblasted and painted
them. We removed old bushings and replaced them with polygraphite ones
from the P-S-T company. We installed new gas struts and new bored and
slotted rotors. |
 After
that we mounted the body on stilts so we will have room to work on the
underbody. The stilts are on casters so we can roll it around. |
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| April 2005: We put back on the fenders, doors, hatchback, installed new black carpet and put in the new grey seats. Still need some work on the back seat. Then we installed the transmission, a double-hump crossmember and the drive-shaft. We also used our new welder and fixed a couple of rust spots in the floor. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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