Project "Therapy Sessions" 1972 Maverick

I guess it is time to start a build thread on my project car. It is being called Therapy Sessions. For me all the time in the garage is like a mini therapy session. Where I can get away from everything and just dive into a project with just me, my tools and the radio playing music in the back ground.


So here is the plan,


Suspension:

I have already bought and installed the Rod & Custom coilover front end. I have acquired an 8" V8 Maverick rear that came without the center section. As luck would have it I found a newly rebuilt center section at a local swap meet in the fall. It had the 3.80 gears that i was looking for too. I am also planning on adding rear disc brakes soon. I have taken the rear springs apart, sand blasted them all individually and then painted them all. I picked up a set of 2" lowering blocks and have plans to install CalTracs as well. Right now the car is sitting on my scissor lift without any suspension at all.

Engine:

My Brother in law donated an 89 5.0 and it's AOD trans. It came out of a good running car. I pulled the motor completely apart to inspect it. Everything looked really good so it all went off to the machine shop. After getting tanked and checked out the guy determined that all the cylinder walls needed was a honing. He cut the crank by ten thousands, installed new bearings and freeze plugs for me. I picked everything up and started assembly. I installed the GT40P heads that I found all rebuilt, also installed the Ford Racing E cam.
Body:

I plan on leaving the body fairly stock. The biggest exception to that would be changing the rear body panel to that of a 68 Shelby so it will accept the Shelby taillights. I plan on picking up a Grabber spoiler set as well as a Grabber hood. I am not sure yet if I will try to find a good steel one or buy Maverick Mans carbon fiber hood. Time will tell there. I already bought the billet grill for the car. I am also planning on changing out the stock side lights for the flush mount lights that Hagen Street Rods sells. My goal here is not to alter the cars look, only to enhance. Again, in my eyes.

Paint:

Paint has finally been decided on. The paint scheme will be a cross between the Brazilian Mav. and a 70 Boss Mustang. I will be using all PPG products for this project. Top of the line everything. I am also going to be using the new Envirobase water system. I plan on clearing it with the PPG's Global D8152 Glamour Clear. Sanding it all down and then flow coating the whole thing.

Interior:

I am going to modify the dash and run aftermarket gauges. Still unsure on the final layout. My goal would be to run some of the newer quad gauges so that I can istall them in the stock location. If that doesn't work I will run the typical speedo and tach. in the stock location and then mount the other gauges in the dash angled toward the driver. I found a set of nice 90-91 Mustang GT seats. They are comfortable and have good support.

Wheels and tires:

I have pulled the trigger and ordered Billet Specialties Vintec Dish rims for the car. 17x7 front and 18x8 rears wrapped in BFG tires.

I still have lots of money to spend and many hours working on this, but I can't wait. My goal is in color by next Spring? Time will tell on that one. The body and paint work is easy for me and doesn't cost me anything but my labor. Materials are all donated so I am lucky there.

I will be posting picks as I move forward. I am going to be adding all the single posts I have made so far to this project thread.

Thanks,
Glenn

 

Finally got her home...
I started a thread a few weeks ago about this car. Well I had to wait a little while because it was buried in the back of a garage with 3 other cars in the way. Now for the first time since 1990 it has seen the light of day.

The person I got the car from is a good friend and had to empty the garage. He just went through a divorce and she got that house. It is all mine now. I have many spare parts for it. I still have more to get out of her garage.

I am looking forward to sifting through the many parts that are in it and still tucked away. I know there is more I will need, but it is a great start.

For all the Sprint lovers.... I am sorry, but I will be changing the color. I can't say I hate the color scheme, but it does nothing for me. I will be saving everything that makes it a Sprint though. Who knows, maybe someday I will repaint it back to what it is. But for now I am definately planning on a color change. Now if someone wants this car really bad, I would consider a trade for another body.

The Conn. title I have says the car came from Alabama in 1988. It was driven here in CT. for only 2 years before my friend bought it and parked it in a nice dry garage.

I am looking forward to this build. My wife likes the car, and my 8 and 10 year old girls like it too. I think it will make a fun little hot rod!


link to original thread:
http://mmb.maverick.to/showthread.php?t=59364

 

It's been a good day!
I received the Rod & Custom front end on Wednesday. Just in time for a long holiday weekend. My goal was to get the old front suspension stripped out of the way and get the shock towers cut out, and then tack in the crossmember. It only took three hours to get all the old stuff out of the way on Friday.

Today I cut out the towers and measured up where the new crossmember goes and mocked it in place. I got it tacked in for now. Hopefully sometime this week or coming weekend I will get a friend that is a certified welder to come over with his welder and take care of buzzing it the rest of the way in. My welder is a good Miller 110v welder, but for this I want to make sure it is done right.

link to original thread;
http://mmb.maverick.to/showthread.php?t=62202

 

Today in the garage...More progress!
More progress today. A good friend is letting me borrow his rottisorie. I have it for 6 weeks. I better make good use of the time! Today I got it set up, which took a bit longer than I expected. Not easy to do by yourself. I think the car looks really solid under there. With a bit of elbow grease and some paint the underside should look good. I still need to pull the rear end in order to get the car to rotate further. I will do that during the week, then start the cleaning. I wonder if I should rent a steam cleaner to help with all the grease?? Any suggestions?? Other than a few gallons of wax and grease remover. I was thinking about oven cleaner, it is supposed to be a degreaser right??

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I made a new front crossmember to clean up the engine compartment a little more. The big front crossmember isn't really needed as big anymore without the front strut arms going through it. Since I have installed the R&C front end. This is made of 2x2 square tubing. And before some start to question it's ability, I consulted with a friend that is a structural engineer. He thinks it should be fine in this situation.

The crossmember was actually fun to make. I did notch it a bit to match the old one. I am not completely positive that I had to do that, but I didn't want to have an issue when I install the engine and found out I needed the clearance for the front harmonic balancer or pully.

Here are a few more pics of it. I still need to box the ends and finish the welding, but you get the idea.

As a side note.... I had a certified welder come over yesterday with his equipment to buzz in the R&C crossmember. He took one look at what I had done with this new crossmember and said I would have been fine welding in the R&C crossmember myself. He said with my welding ability and my own welder I would have been fine. I still feel better having him weld it in as that is structural and has all the stress of the suspension on it when being driven.

link to original thread:
http://mmb.maverick.to/showthread.php?t=62688


More progress!!
I had to reposition the car on the rotissorie. I didn't have it centered properly so it wouldn't rotate correctly. That's all set now.

Today I got to cleaning the underside of the car. The entire trans. tunnel was a mess. I bought some Simple Green HD and a scrub brush yesterday. I think it looks pretty good. The rust you see in the pictures is just on the surface and will all clean up. There isn't any repair work needed on the floors, rockers etc..

In fact the only rot in the car is the bottoms of both quarters, inner and outer. Not bad really!

Glenn

 

I spent 4 hours in the garage today getting things as clean as I can. I still have 2 or 3 more hours worth of work before I can metal prep the whole thing and then epoxy it.

Yesterday I brought the engine block out to Edger Machine in Ware, Mass. He come very highly recomended. He will hot tank the block and inpect it. Then give me a call with a price quote. I am only having him do any machine work it needs and install new bearings for the cam and crank as well as new freeze plugs. I will then rebiuld the engine myself.

Here are a few pics of todays progress.....



between yesterday and this morning I got the underside of the car all painted. I finished up the prep work and masked everything off. Wrapped plastic around the garage as well. I didn't want everything turning black.

I sprayed 2 coats of PPG's DP90LF epoxy. I let that sit over night, then this morning I went out and used 3M heavy body seam sealer and sealed up a bunch of seams that the factory should have. 30 minutes later I sprayed 2 coats of PPG's HSP-2128bk. It is a polyurathane primer that is in their "light industrial" line. Awesome stuff. It will dry to a rock hard, semi gloss finish. This will be the final finish. It does not need to be top coated. I know restoration shops that use this on suspension parts and radiator supports for a final finish.

I can't wait to let it cure up and get it off the rotissorie!

 

Painting parts...
I sent a bunch of parts off to the sand blaster to get rid of nearly 40 years of crud. Blast
Techniques in South Windsor, Ct. did a great job for me. Included in the parts
bin was all the rear leaf springs. I took them all apart and had them blast the leaves individually.
The shock plates, two mount to the bottom of the springs and two mount to the bottom of the
car. I also threw in the front radiator support braces. These parts along with the rear end itself
went the same chassis black as I painted the bottom of the car. I painted the oil pan, timing
cover and harmonic balancer a gloss black. I am painting the engine black because I have not
chosen a color for the car and don't want anything to clash. I love having access to a spray booth!!

I spent several hours in the garage last weekend with my brother in law putting the 5.0 302 together.
By days end we had the crank, pistons, cam, timing chain and the heads assembled. I
painted the block and heads yesterday. Now that the timing cover and oil pan are painted
we can assemble those parts as well as the water pump. I still need to figure out what I am
going to do to the intake as far as a finish. I don't know whether to paint, or send them out
and have them coated, like an HPC coating? Still up in the air with that one.

Time to do a job that pays so I can have some Maverick money! No more palying with the Maverick
for a bit. Now in the shop I have a 50ish Chevy pick up cab that I need to get done for a friend.

Glenn

link to original thread:
http://mmb.maverick.to/showthread.php?t=64450

 

5 hour therapy session...
I have finally finished a side job I was doing and was able to spend some quality therapy time in the garage working on the Mav. I purchased the new steel repo. tail panel that allows you to install Shelby taillights in a 67-68 Mustang. I new with just a bit of fabrication I could get this to fit nice rather than using a fiberglass one. One way or the other I would have to spend around the same money so I decided to go with the steel panel.

The part itself is made by Dynacorn. I purshased it from Mustangs Unlimited since their Manchester Ct. store is 3 towns over from me.


Here is the back of the car as I started..


After a little trimming I was able to get a better handle on how things were going to fit, Not bad!!


Here I have the stock rear tail pan trimmed and sprayed some weld threw primer on the bare metal..


Got the new panel tacked onto place..


On the sides is where most of the fab work came into play. The stock Mustang tail panel is concave where the Maverick is flat. So I had to cut, trim, slit the metal and hammer and dolly everything to where the transistions looked like it should have been Ford made.



And here is how it is now. I have to finish up some of the welding along the bottom and a few other spots, but, all in all I think it fits and looks great.

 

Engine assembly.....
Lately I have not made much progress on the Mav. Between work, side jobs to pay for the Mav. and doing a little work on my 47 I haven't been able to spend much time on the car itself.

What I have been doing lately is putting together my first engine build myself! I have had my brother in law guiding me through the process, but I have done everything myself, and it feels good. I have done engione work here and there before, but never a complete build. On this car I wamted to be able to say that I built the entire car. The only other thing I will have to farm out is the seat upholstery.

So here we have a 1989 Mustang 5.0. When it came out it was a really good clean strong running engine. It had 192k on the clock. But during disassembly we were quite impressed with how clean it was inside. It must have been a very nicely taken care of car. I did send the block and the crank out to be checked. The cylinders only needed to be honed, and the crank turned .10. I have added GT40P heads, an E cam and a 94-95 Cobra intake. I also picked up a March Serp. system for it.

The long block is all ready to go. The water pump and pulley set up are just mounted up to check it all out and see how everything fits together. I am now beginning to reget the Cobra intake as I am just now learning that the throttle body I have doesn't fit a 94-95 intake. Can you hear that sound..............that is the sound of more money flying out the door

Looks good I think so far though!!

link to original thread:
http://mmb.maverick.to/showthread.php?t=67946

 

Sounds like a great project. As a Sprint owner, I know what you mean about the color scheme. You'll have a more interesting paint job. Its your car, your money, your time so you get to do what you want. I'm doing some things different on mine that not everyone will like but its what I want. It'll be how I think a Sprint should have been done.

Are you going to change the torque converter to higher stall to go with that cam?

 

Probably, but at this point I haven't really given it much thought.

 

Nice project, I like it.....

That tail light panel will be nice when you get it done..... I thought about changing the one in my car but don't know if I want to go through the effort, but it's not painted yet so who knows.....

 

I don't have any personal knowledge about the cam but I wondered because I've seen recommendations for higher stall with it. Just curious.

 

i searched for that tail panel from mustangs unlimited for a little too long so ill save everyone else the trouble heres the link!!!!

http://www.mustangsunlimited.com/itemdy00.asp?T1=TLPS68+01

 

Having installed the R&C front end and cut out the shock towers I was left with quite a mess in there. I did weld one of the included panels to fill the big gaping hole where the shock towers were. The problem I have with that, it has different bead rolls than what the factory has. Not only are they different shapes, they also go in different directions. They just don't look right to me.

So last week I stopped at a Fabrication shop and talked with the guys there. He says that if I get him good patterns he will make me perfect replacement panels for around $200. I spent some time today making patterns. I think they look good. I plan to bring them to the shop this week to be bent up for me. I will include pictures as the process rolls along.

I am basically replacing both sides from the firewall forward. Stay tuned....

Glenn

 

I love it!!