Mustangs were made at 3 plants in 69 (I think) Dearborn, Metuchen, and San Jose. Ok, taking notes and copying if a fine idea, especially if you are doing this at an MCA National where there might be a few to look at. But- choose the same assembly plant that your car was built at as there are production nuances that will make a difference in assembly.
The next thing is chrome: look over all the hard chrome pieces, have no pits
Gee wisz stuff that the car was not delivered with: The Autolite battery tag added to the battery, stuff like that.
Wrong tires, look on the Marti report for what exactly came on your car.
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Roddster
67 GT 350 (#0036)("Miss July" 2004) owned since 1971. And I still drive it...SAAC 29 Concours GOLD, Div II, MCA Concours Trailered Gold 2X,
Also: 67 GTA S code COUPE (under construction)
General Shelby and Mustang enthusiast, MCA certified Concours judge
Last edited by Roddster; 06-19-2011 at 11:16 AM.
Reason: adding stuff
1. Faded yellow instrument bezels. Have them rechromed, or at least get some silver touch up paint. The same follows for the instrument/gauge needles--paint them back their fluorescent orange color. After 40+ years, nearly all of them are at least a little faded. This is what you're going to be looking at 90% of the time when you're driving the car; why not fix it?
2. Non-original seat belts on an otherwise very nice interior restoration. It just irks me to see generic, one size fits all belts. 3-point belts are fine, but retrofitting aftermarket lap belts in place of original Ford belts just screams cheap to me.
3. So-called "Shaker" cars outfitted with a Torino shaker.
4. Cheap black plastic wiper blades attached to a car that never came with them new. This is especially obvious on a car that has stainless or chrome wiper arms.
5. Incorrect or poorly added options, especially things like window slats and spoilers. If you want to add it, fine, but don't just throw the stuff on the car without researching proper measurements, what kind of hardware it used originally, etc.
6. No sound deadener or seam sealer in the trunk. I see this one all the time. People spend hours making the trunk look great, only to leave the sound deadener or seam sealer off during the repaint. Quarters are supposed to have asbestos-based sound deadner on the portions visible in the trunk. In the seams and around the wheel wells, seam sealer was sprayed, and often not very well. Anything is better than nothing; at least make some effort!
7. People that have partial quarter patches installed, and leave the weld lines. I've even seen cars where the welds weren't ground down on the inside of the trunk. I thought the whole point of repairing a panel was to make it like new?
8. Poorly installed/sagging headliners. This seems to occur a lot with any year classic Mustang, probably because headliners are so aggravating to put in these cars. Very rarely do I see a car at local shows that doesn't have either a sail panel flopping down (especially on '69-70s), or inexcusable wrinkles in the headliner itself.
9. Hacked up package trays. If you want a modern stereo, that's fine. But don't blatantly hack up the package tray with obnoxious speakers! Even worse, the guys that cut the trap door to install speakers, that's pure blasphemy!
10. Blacked out hoods that either have the dimensions wrong, are too shiny, or use some other kind of paint that looks nothing like what Ford used originally.
11. Leaving the steering wheel alone while restoring the rest of the interior. How can people restore every last detail of their interior, only to top it off with a worn and cracked original steering wheel?
12. Getting the interior colors wrong. Either the paint is too shiny, fills in the texture, or is just flat out the wrong color. Lots of people fog everything one color on black interiors; few realize that certain pieces should be charcoal black as opposed to the regular interior black.
13. Mach 1 stripes that are anything but straight down the side of the car. I've seen them going uphill, downhill, and everything in between. If all else fails, break out the tape measure.
14. Incorrect exhaust tips. This is especially aggravating on the cars that have valence cutouts for the specific tips the car came with originally.
Last edited by drummingrocks; 06-19-2011 at 02:53 PM.
I had my 69 428 cj-r restored at Mustang Ranch in 2010. They did a very accurate and beautiful job. These guys are real Mustang historians and super technicians!
My comments are only for folks aiming towards factory correctness, however, I have nothing against owners going crazy with building a their resto-mod vision. Plenty of cars for everyone's dream.
For me the #1 gaff is painting the black-out hood with high gloss black and also not painting the black radius curves correctly. I've seen some glaringly bad efforts.
#2: I just recently pulled my 69 dash apart to fix the broken clock and lube the speedometer and fix burned out instrument lights. While it was all apart, I painted all the instrument needles with fresh instrument orange, and yes that really is a worthy detail update over faded pink.
Do you guys have recommendations for manuals or books that will aid in doing things like taking apart the clock/speedo/tach? Mine all need cleaned up and adjust the miles to 0 (actual miles on the title is close to 300K)
Books: The Ford 1969 Service manual. OK, many of the illustrations are generic, but the manuals help
Other: Buy ALL of the Osbourne assembly manauls. Take a highlighter and highlight the pages that pertain to your car only. Again, take note of Gold awarded cars built at the same plant as yours.
__________________
Roddster
67 GT 350 (#0036)("Miss July" 2004) owned since 1971. And I still drive it...SAAC 29 Concours GOLD, Div II, MCA Concours Trailered Gold 2X,
Also: 67 GTA S code COUPE (under construction)
General Shelby and Mustang enthusiast, MCA certified Concours judge
Another pet peeve (obvious from some of my other threads...)
Fake comfortweave. This is not limited to 69 Mach 1's though. About two months ago I saw a restored early Shelby with factory Paxton supercharger... rare and beautiful car worth about $200,000. And it had fake comfortweave inserts... come on, it's only about $400 more to get this right.
As to #12 in the list above... I am having a hard time thinking of anything that shouldn't be charcoal black metallic... Can you tell me what you are thinking of that is standard interior black?
-Rory
__________________
"I'm not a Mustang expert, but like so many others I play one on the VMF"
"How do you separate the truth from the cr@p spewn on the internet?"
As to #12 in the list above... I am having a hard time thinking of anything that shouldn't be charcoal black metallic... Can you tell me what you are thinking of that is standard interior black?
-Rory
i can only speak for what i found on my 69 mach.
they say the lower dash caps are flat. i could not see metallic on the backside of my originals like i could see on other items.
my console appeared to just be black plastic w/ no paint.
the plastic dash cover at the bottom of the steering column appeared to be not painted and only black.
my lower dash, steering column had metallic but had a slight blue tint. i don't think i would personally call it dark charcoal.
seat hinge covers. i struggled to tell if it had any charcoal metallic in it.
kickpanels, plastic seat backs, ash tray, inner rear quarters appeared to be the charcoal metallic on mine.
13. Mach 1 stripes that are anything but straight down the side of the car. I've seen them going uphill, downhill, and everything in between. If all else fails, break out the tape measure.
i remember a discussion on boss302 or 428cj where it seemed to be normal that the factory was far from perfect. some uphill and there were differences side to side. seems to me that an imperfect stripe would be more correct and a case of not "over restoring".
I've seen a lot of paint variations on the '69 and '79 shakers. (Mine has what appears to be six or seven coats of Krylon gloss black from the previous owner.) A lot of people sand the ribs on top to expose the aluminum creating "shiny stripes".
I was under the impression the entire shaker top should be painted flat black. But I recently read somewhere the ribs should be painted argent silver.
I just restored my clock and the kit comes with directions you need. It's a very do-able repair, but it takes some care and patience since everything is tiny and fragile. Work someplace with bright light and work over a tray so anything that gets away doesn't disappear onto the floor (lesson learned). I opted for the quartz movement since it will outlast the original Borg Warner movement and uses less juice.
Last edited by MEADOWFERN; 06-22-2011 at 09:24 AM.
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Top 69 Mach 1 Mistakes made when restoring...what are they??
