Hi All,
This weekend while I worked on the car, Wayne was involved on a new project. A customer brought in a 70 Camaro that he wants built into a ground pounding, earth shaking, 504 cubic inch big block beast. I could not help but listened to him and his son talk to Wayne. And while he says his intentions are only to do a bit of cruising and joy ridding and maybe hit the local car show circuit, I cannot help but feel that he has no good intentions toward all my faithful Ford brethren. And, even though it is a (cough) Chevy, it is going to be one beautiful ride when finished.
So, while Wayne was busy with a paying customer, I worked on modifying the pony door panels. I needed to remove the raised areas that interfered with the ends of the dash and also, I needed to remove the entire ribbed center section. While, on the surface, this sounds like a relatively easy project, It ended up taking most of the morning. And, I still have to fit the panels up one more time to check the clearance. Also, since I am not using any of the chrome trim, the edges have to be ground to a nice consistent lip all the way around the panel and then I need to radius all the edges (they currently come to a sharp edge). When I am done, they will go off to the upholstery shop where they will be covered in the same leather that was used on the dash panels. The center section will end up with a padded insert. The only hole in the panel will be for the standard Mustang door pull.
I also spent time mounting the two 6 volt batteries. I picked batteries that were gel filled and mountable in any position. Originally, we were going to hang them in the trunk from the cross member that runs the width of the car just in front of the deck lid. This proved to be a poor location. The batteries are quite heavy and we felt the area had to much flex. If we mounted the batteries there, there was a strong possibility that the weight would pull that area of the car down so that the body no longer lined up with the deck lid. After much consideration we decided to mount them under the internal cross bracing where the rear seats used to be.
Well, enough for now. It is time to get back to work.
Catch ya'll l8r
Bob