kjacobson351

A while back I bought a 68 coupe for 1,000 bucks being 16 at the time i was quite pleased with my purchase but its been parked at my house for several months and I do not even know where to begin the body is decent somebody did a horrible "homemade" paint job on it but there is very little rust and body damage, the car does not currently run but it has a 289 ( I have a 351 windsor that I plan on dropping in and I bought a manual valve body C4, and the interior is in medium to low shape. my question is in what order should I start my rebuild? if you have any experience with this would you please give advice with what helped you, and what you would have done differantly? thanks for any advice.

ovidoman

Well it depends on what type of restoration you want to do and how much you have to spend. Some would say gut it out to make sure there is no hidden rust. Strip that homemade paint off of it to get a good look at the body. Theres no point in putting a nice engine in a rust bucket so i would start with the body first and make sure everthing is ok for you to start dropping in a good engine and suspension and everything else.

codeman94

Well...just my opinion....I would get it running and drivable first. That way you can drive it if you want and work on it as you either have the money of the time. Since your so young. i wouldnt try to do it perfectly, becuase it will proably never happen. Not saying that you dont know what your doing, but 17 year olds have other things to worry about like school, women, getting a cool ride...anyway...i think you will have a lot more fun working on it if everytime wou make a large adjustment to if current condiontion, you can go out and show people your accomplishments insted ov havving on bloacks in your garage for the next 10 years. Plus....driving it is why your doing it anyway. and in a few years, if you want to do a full gutting and all of that jazz, you still can. But you gotta drive it so you dont get frustrated!! $0.02

kjacobson351

Thanks alot I think thinkt that i am going to go with codeman on this one because really what motivation would i have to restore it if i am not going to drive it. but i'm thinking about something like a california special thing, i like the scoop, and the ducktail spoiler but how do you think it would look with 2003 mach 1 wheels? also (codeman) i saw that you had a 5 point racing harness? i was thinking about something like that but i dont have a roll bar nor do i want one but how did you get that to work with stocktype seats? I plan on having alot fun iether way thanks

codeman94

I dont know about the Mach wheels, I wouldnt advise going any larger that 16". The fender shape really doesnt allow for it. You dont want your wheel to have a larger circumference that your fender...it just looks funny.Youd need a suspension kit to make it look right. 17"s can be done, like eleanors, but like I said that is not stock suspension. You can just do regular Magnum 500 wheel, cause I dont belive that the 2003 Mach wheel will bolt up, but I could be wrong...

kjacobson351

Well I bought this 9 inch rear end along with the transmission that I bought from this guy that raced a 65 falcon in the 1/8 and the front spindles it was originally a 6 cylinder car. so it has the 4 bolt wheel pattern but I was looking in mustangs unlimited and the were selling late model wheels AND adapter kits so that you could just bold those on your 1st gen car. but I don't plan on keeping the original 6 cylinder suspension anyway so that isn't much of a problem. but I was kind of going for that New retro look on a retro car but not too overdone. right now its just alot of dreams but I really cant wait to get it going its really ugly right now but come on its classic ugly
once again thanks for the input

codeman94

oh...real quick...you said you wanted to do maybe a GT/CS clone...do yourself a favor, and dont put the rectangle fog lights in the grille...those are so ugly.

kjacobson351

Sure thing I cant stand those either I just wanted to add the things I liked which is basically just the fiber-glass i was thinking doing the blacked out grill with no emblems at all, I thought about billet but I wasn't sure about it i think i'll just stick with the blacked out grill.