Today I worked on mounting everything under the dash. First was put the pedals back in then remove all the old stuff from the car.

It took a while to get the pedals in place and get the steering wheel at the right height to be comfortable driving. But after it was in I checked the fit of the heater box and it has plenty of room on the passenger side. I then started fitting the Metro wiper assembly into the car. It is a different width between the posts and the motor will be in a different place but I think I can get it all working. I just need to come up with an easy way to modify the sweep angle of the drivers side wiper to get it to sweep a bit wider than stock.

I managed to get the holes to put the shafts through sized properly and get the wiper shafts put in place. They are not mounted yet. I will probably have to glue them in place to mount them. The motor will probably be the hardest part to get mounted since it will be mounted under the dash instead of through the firewall and will mount  backwards. I will experiment with the mounting tomorrow and see if I can get a working setup.

Today I started by framing up the front section of the floor. I will make the floor later. I mostly wanted it framed in so I could start building the firewall and getting everything mounted. With the floor lowered an inch and the body raised 3/4 off the frame I have more room for the pedals. So first thing is figure out a template for the new 16 ga. firewall.

Using cardboard I made a template for the firewall that fits pretty snug in the opening. The closer I can get it the better off I am with sealing it up and keeping it from leaking. Once I cut the pattern out in steel I marked and cut out the hole for the master cylinder mounting. The new location for the master cylinder gives me plenty of room under the hood for the stock setup to fit. I might still add a remote fill to it so it will be easier to top off the fluid.

I spent a long time trying to connect the morse cable I am using for the clutch to the pedal but there just was no good way to get it working right. I finally just gave up and used the stock Metro cable to mount to the firewall and built an adapter to connect the two cables together. This will work out good since it gives me even more adjustment capability on the clutch cable. I will mount the adapter bracket in the front somewhere once I get more of it built and know where it can go. Up next is to finish mounting the pedals to the firewall including mounting the throttle pedal. After the pedals are in place I need to mount a set of good wipers and mount the heater box. Then I just need to build a dashboard and the few odds and ends for the interior then it is time to start on the final build to get it on the road.

I decided to split the floor into two parts. The back part will be welded in and the seats and seat belt hardware will be mounted solidly on it. The front half will be bolted on so I can remove it to access under the dashboard. I just had to cut and weld on some 1 inch square tube to go around the frame to give me something solid to mount the floor to. I used the old floor and  just cut out the part of it I needed I spot welded it to the frame enough to hold it in place for now.

I will use square tube to mount the front section of the floor and weld nuts. I will most likely use angle to attach the front firewall to the floor. After that is framed up I will start building the dashboard and that should finish up figuring out all the locations of the components. Then I can brace everything up solid then strip the car down to do the final welding and rust proofing of the frame.

I got the body lined back up on the car so now it is time to start fitting the interior of the car together. First thing is to get the seat area finished so I can sit in the car and test fit the locations of all the dashboard parts. I need a bit more head room in the car so I decided to lower the floor pans an inch from the frame rails. I ran out of square tubing so I didn’t get it totally framed in today. I will finish it as soon as I get some more metal.

After a overly long break from working on the car I finally got time to start back on it. I have most of the major frame work done but there are a few changes I needed to make. I don’t have enough head room in the car the way it is built so I needed to make some room somehow. The easiest way to get more room is to raise the body off the frame. I used 1 inch square steel to raise the body off the frame. It was a pretty simple mod but made enough difference I will have no problems fitting in the car now. The pictures are a bit hard to make sense out of but they are with the car in the air and the floor removed.

With that change I lowered the car down and checked the headroom. I can now sit in the car straight up without hitting the roof. There isn’t much room around my head but I don’t have to drive it with my head to one side now. The car looks even funnier now with probably 6 inches from the tire to the fender. I will need to get dropped spindles for the front suspension to get it down low enough to look right. The good thing is I can lower the pedals to get them back where they were in relation to the floor and this gives me just enough room under the hood to get the master cylinder reservoir to fit now.

Today I worked on getting a few things mounted. I first made a few brackets to mount the gas tank in place. I had to raise it an inch and a half off the frame to clear the shifter rods. It will also need the extra clearance later for the parking brake cables. The tank has a set of straps that go over the top to hold it in place. The radiator was just a matter of bolting it in place since it was already made to fit the opening in the front. I then put the old floor back on so I could take the car to a car show.

I will be getting the car out of the garage tomorrow to wash it and get it ready to show. It isn’t near complete yet but it is good enough to let everyone see what kind of progress is being made on it.

Got a working shifter setup installed in the car today. Since the front wheel drive setup had a shift rod running straight out the back it was not that hard to bend a section of pipe to go around the frame and run it forward instead. It works good the way it is. I need to run the brace rod back and mount it somewhere on the engine so the shifter moves back and forth with the engine like it does stock. I will do that after I mount the parking brake handle so I know where it needs to be to clear everything. But for now it shifts gears really well and is in a good position for the driver.

I managed to get the CV axles made up and installed today. I ended up using two axles on one side. I just stuck them both in one in the engine and one in the wheel then marked them in the center to know where to cut them both off at. I then used a 4 inch piece of 1/4 inch thick pipe that was drilled out to match the axles. I slid them in the sleeve and put it on the car to make sure it fit. Once it was fit in properly I welded it up solid.

The rear suspension is complete. I need to go over it a bit and tighten everything down and get the toe adjusted a bit better but at least now it can sit on the wheels and roll without any trouble.

Didn’t get a lot of time to work on it today but I at least managed to finish mounting the fuel pump and get it wired up and everything on it working properly.  With the tank assembled I figured I might as well check the clearance on it to see what kind of room I have. With the tank just sitting on the frame it has plenty of room between it and the engine. The tank will actually sit about 4 inches further forward than shown in the picture but I don’t have any brackets made up to hold it so I just had it sitting on the frame.

The round black sending unit actually sits under the bar to give  you an idea of where it will be sitting. I won’t mount it until after I make the shifter setup. That is probably the next thing I will be working on. The reason I didn’t mount the tank behind the engine is I want to keep that area clear for the electric drive system once I get to that point in the build. I will be using a much larger electric motor and will be needing the extra room to mount it. Plus putting the tank in the back is a bad idea if it gets rear ended.

The steering parts came in today so I put it all together. The stock rack was not long enough so I put a set of rack extenders on it to make it the proper angle so there is no bump steer. The front end is basically done except for letting the front arms settle then torqueing the mounting bolts so the bushings are aligned properly. I need to align all 4 tires but that is not a big deal to do after the car is finished.

Next I started on trying to come up with a good gas tank. The stock Metro tank is about an inch too long to fit where I want it. So I will have to use the larger aluminum tank I built for the car from before. It did not have an internal fuel pump so I took the stock Metro pump out of that tank and started working on trying to get it hooked up to the larger tank. I have the fuel line connected now I just need to make a brace to the top of the tank mount so the fuel line is not supporting the weight of the pump. The fuel will exit the top of the tank and return to the bottom. It is not the smoothest way to do it but it works and should be a lot easier to change the pump in the future.

The Metro pump is on the left, the right pump is the inline pump that fed fuel to the old engine. It is way larger than the 3 cyl engine needs so I won’t be using it on this build. Once I build the bracket to hold the fuel pump and come up with a way to get the power wire out of the tank it is ready to install. I will have to make the shifter setup before mounting the tank so I know it will clear the shift rod.

The hubs came back from the machine shop today. So I started putting the rear suspension together properly. I didn’t have a large enough bolt for the lower control arm mount so I will have to get one later for it. I bolted the struts and tie rods down solidly and mounted the hubs and rotors after drilling the rotors to match the hubs. The brake calipers I put on are from the front Metro suspension. I have a set of swift GT calipers ordered that are made for the rear that have the parking brake setup in them that I will put on once I get them. But for now I won’t have a parking brake. The passenger side CV axle fit perfectly on the drivers side so I will just have to cut and lengthen one side now.

The wheel spacing looks good now. I like the looks of it much better than when I had them set the same width front and rear. The car is not sitting as high in the air as it was but it is still probably 3 inches higher than it is supposed to be. As I put more in the car it will hopefully start sitting lower to the ground so I don’t have to cut the springs to make it ride at the right height.

I am still a long way away from having it ready to drive but at least now it is looking much more like a car than it used to. I will probably get the gas tank out of the old frame and see how well it fits in the car. If it fits I will start on the gas tank and shifter setup next.

Since I have been spending so much time with the frame I decided to take a break from that and work on the headlights. The front of the car just didn’t look like much sitting around without headlights in it. So I mounted a pair of 4 1/2 inch driving lights to the bottom and a set of 5 3/4 headlights to the top. There are not high and low combined sealed beams in that size I could find so I used some conversion headlights that can use standard Halogen bulbs so I can have high and low beams in the single light easily. I don’t like how the adjusters are mounted to the back side of the bucket so I will probably modify them as soon as I can think of a good way to do it.

Mounting the driving lights was pretty straightforward. I cut the backs out of the housing so I could access the bulb without taking everything apart. I then just cut a hole the exact size of the housing and Popped them in place. I put a few small dings in the metal so it holds in place pretty solidly. I will shim and aim them later before gluing the housing down permanently. The upper lights I did basically the same except I kept the hole slightly bigger than the bucket and used the mounting plate from the headlights behind it. I then assembled the buckets in the car and with the mounting plate behind it I can aim the headlights without a lot of trouble. I need to do a bit of detail work making them work better but for now they are mounted and done.

The headlight covers need to be trimmed up a bit to fit the openings and mounted but since none of the body work is done I will not mess with them for a while. I would like to tint them slightly but I have no idea how to do that so they might just stay clear.

Today didn’t seem like much getting done but I probably took the pedals off and reinstalled them 15 times to get everything lined up. The throttle cable worked out pretty easy since it had a lot of clearance to line everything up and get it drilled. The clutch was in a hard to get to place so that took most of the time to get right. Once I got them mounted to the firewall running them to the back and connecting everything up was much easier. Now the car has a working throttle and clutch. The brake booster is also installed. I just need to get the lines to run for the remote reservoir and wait for the rear rotors to be drilled out then the brakes can be installed as well.

Since I can’t do the brakes and rear suspension until the hubs are back from the machine shop and the steering parts are not in yet. I will probably mount the trunk lid and get a few other large parts installed like the gas tank.

I took the rear hubs to a shop to have them drilled out. They should be done tomorrow so I can finally get the car able to sit on it’s wheels and suspension. So while that is being worked on I went ahead and started figuring out some other stuff. I had to make a new firewall out of 16ga so it would be strong enough to support everything, the fiberglass would weaken over time and crack with constant use. I just had to figure out where to put the pedal mounts then cut them out of the firewall. The power brake booster fits without any problems but the master cylinder is right up against the hood. It would be possible to fill it but converting it to remote fill is the best way to do it. I can run steel lines to the back and fill it there.

The steering ended up being much easier to hook up than I thought it would be. It even bolted onto one of the stock Metro mounting holes on the pedal mounts. I ran it between the clutch and brake arms but it clears everything just fine and is a pretty straight shot to the steering rack. I had to extend the lower shaft about 6 inches to make it work but it is all bolted together and working good now.

I still need rack extenders to have the steering fully finished and I will get them as soon as I can find the proper ones to fit. I also need to make a clutch cable mount and mount the gas pedal and run it’s cable. After that I could probably connect up all the brake hardware and have all the pedals fully working.

I went over the frame to make sure everything looked ok and so far it looks like everything is all good on it. So I started assembling some of the parts laying around the garage to try and free up some space. The engine and suspension parts are taking up the most garage space so that is the part I am working on first. The engine was pretty easy to put in. There is nothing else in the way so it was just a matter of putting it under the car and lowering the car into position.

I still need to get some good bolts to bolt it all together but there are enough in it right how to hold it in place. After that I started putting all the parts together for the front end. The wheel bearings are bad but I don’t have new ones so They will do to hold the wheels in place. I put the springs and shocks in place and tightened up the ball joints. I will have to replace the wheel bearings and put a new set of non stuck calipers on it but I put them in place for now to get them out of the way. The suspension looks much nicer with the stock Mustang II parts gone. Hopefully the new parts are just as strong as the old.

I still need to work on the steering and will have to fabricate something to make it work. The rest of the car is just bolting on parts now. I will start from the bottom getting the suspension done first then work my up. So probably the next thing to work on is the rear suspension. Then the car can finally roll around on the finished suspension.

I just had to add the upper frame to the front end to finish it. I also needed to make a set of braces to hold the front body and keep it solid. I need to weld everything up and add a few more braces but the frame is basically done on the car now. The front end is sitting nice and strong and should give me plenty of foot room for whatever kind of pedals I can find to fit in it now. I also need to come up with something for steering but that should not be that bad to get together later on.

Next up is finish welding and bracing the front end. Then throw some paint on it and start putting stuff in the car. I will mount the engine and the full suspension first. After that is in then I can start planning out where everything else goes and put it all together as I figure out what I am doing.

I got the front end put under the car and squared up. It is much easier when the entire thing is one piece. After I got it sitting exactly where I wanted it I just had to connect it to the old frame. I made the lower frame sections and attached them. I still need to do the upper part and some bracing. Once it is all done the front end of the car should be strong and much lighter than it was. I also will reinforce the dashboard crash bar a bit better. Having a single brace on it doesn’t seem like enough for me so while I am at it I will add a bit of bracing to it.

The front end is strong enough it can be lifted off the ground without flexing but it would bounce and sag with any significant weight on it. Once the rest of the bracing is in place the front end is finished. All that is left after that is I just have to make a few body mounts on the front and rear and the structural parts of the frame are finished.

Today I finished cutting off the old frame parts and cleaned up the crossmember. After that I just had to cut it in half and widen it 5 inches. I welded on plenty of bracing to hold it solid. It might be a bit of overkill on it but I would rather have an extra 10lbs of weight in the front than have it weak. I painted it and put the new control arms on it. I don’t have the springs or shocks on it since nothing is installed permanently right now until it is in the car.

After I get it installed and squared up in the car the frame is for the most part finished. I will have a bunch of minor details to do like welding on mounting tabs all over the place but that stuff is minor work I can do as I need it. The only problem I have to solve now is to figure out a good set of parts for the steering rack. I need something 5 inches wider than stock now.

The front crossmember had a lot of stuff welded to it and in general was a pretty good mess. I have most of the old frame cut off it except for one part. I will cut it off eventually but it makes a useful handle for now. I managed to get the lower control arm bushing cut off one side without damaging the frame. I was able to put the new control arms on and weld the lower arm mounts in place. I will do the other side next before cutting the last of the old frame off. Once the control arms are replaced and the crossmember is cleaned up I will widen it so I no longer need wheel spacers.

After widening it all that is left is to put it in position in the car and build a new frame to attach it. I am planning on running the interior all the way up to the crossmember this time so I have plenty of foot room. The only thing I am still needing is to figure out where to find a wider steering rack.

The back was mostly done except for some minor bracing and needing welded up completely. I finished it up and after it cooled off I put some paint on it. I will probably go over it one more time after the front is assembled and I remove the body to make sure there are no spots I missed but from what I can tell it looks like I have not missed any spots.

Once the back was done it was time to start on the front. I had to pull out the old brakes and random stuff from the front end. After it was cleaned out I started cutting the front end free. I have no need for something as heavy as what was in there and redoing it will give me a lot more foot room. So I have no need for any of the stock front frame. It was much easier to just cut the entire front frame off and just rebuild it once I get the crossmember set up the way I want it.

Right now it has spacers on the rotors. I will do away with the spacers and just widen the front end to the correct width. I will also remove all the old frame material and replace the lower control arms with improved pieces that do away with the strut rod. I am not sure what steering parts I will use but I will try and use a Metro rack and tie rods if possible. If it isn’t possible I will probably have to order a custom rack for the width I am needing. Once I get everything cleaned up and ready to reassemble I will have a better idea of what I need.

Last time I welded up the entire rear end solid before test fitting it to make sure everything looked just right. This time I learned my lesson and while it was just spot welded in place I put the trunk lid and tires on it and lowered it to the ground as much as the spot welds could take then made sure it was all good. The front tire is not attached it is just sitting in the fender well so it is maybe a half inch farther out than it will be when bolted on as well as not centered in the opening. The rear is in the right position and it looks much better where it is at. The car is still a lot higher off the ground than it will eventually be.

After it was test fit and looked good. I started to properly build the rear frame back. It was much easier this time. Mostly because the main frame bar is already in place and solid. I have it welded good enough to hold it solid and I still need a few braces to finish it. I will finish it up completely tomorrow. Then I can finally start on the front end and get it put together as good as the rear end.

With the marks on the floor it was pretty easy to just cut the suspension free and move it out to the new position. I mostly have it spot welded in place with whatever tubing I had laying around. I will test fit the tires on it this time before welding it all up solid with good mounts. Overall it looks like it will sit much better with the wheels out to the edge of the wheel wells.

Next up I will stick the wheels on and the trunk lid to make sure it looks right. Then I will cut new bracing and get rid of the mess holding it together now and weld it all up solid. This should be the last time I have to change the rear end. I will soon be able to start on the front end and hopefully it will go much easier than the back.

Today the power was out most of the day and it was really hot in the garage so I didn’t get much accomplished. I have the positions laid out on the floor for where everything goes so I cut one side free and positioned it in the new location. I spot welded the lower suspension in place enough to hold it. I will finish bracing it next then position the strut tower. I need to move each side 2.5 inches so in the pictures you can see how much that is.

So the car has sat in the driveway for a week with the tires and wheels on it. After staring at it for a while I decided the rear tires being equal width to the front is not right for the car. So I unbolted the wheels and slid them out wider until I found a place that looked like it was right. So I ended up with 60 inches hub to hub on the front end and 65 inches rear. The wheels are 8 inches wide and a 5 inch backspace. That means the total width from the outer edge of the rims is 66 inches wide front and 71 inches wide rear.

With that decided it was time to resquare the frame to the floor. Instead of putting marks on the concrete, I am going to try laying down a large box to mark on instead. It seems much easier to do it this way. I have it laid out and ready to cut the suspension arms and strut towers free and move them out a few inches.

I haven’t had time to work on the car much but I did manage to put the rear struts back on the car. The new wheels and tires came in so I figured it was a good time to put them on and roll it out and get some pictures. It looks like it has a lift kit on it right now since there is nothing in the car except a bare frame and body. Once everything is in it the car will sit much lower.

I probably won’t have time to work on it for a few days but when I get back to it I plan on cutting off the front suspension and redoing it. After that the frame is done and it is time to start putting the car together.