A Horse of Another Color

We've been cobbling this car together using cast-off parts from just about every year Fox Mustang ever made. And for weeks we've been finishing little projects and components - always ending the day feeling dead-tired, and remiss that things aren't getting done fast enough. Every week that is except this week.

Our goals for this weekend were many. We had all of the components to put the engine back together, we had sourced together all of the bits and pieces to finish the brakes, and we had sealer and paint at the ready should the weather choose to be favorable for shooting the car.

We had room in the budget to address some reliability stuff. The knock on running any small block at an event like Lemons is that they blow head gaskets. Well, we're doing everything we can to keep things cool under track conditions, but we felt better getting a couple of new gaskets installed just to be safe. Good thing we did. It's amazing what you'll find in a 180K mile engine. We found a couple of surprises rattling around the bottom end and timing chain area that could have delivered TKO to our efforts.

Big tip-of-the-hat to Rod. He showed up after a very big night on the town. He looked a little green, but managed to thrash on the car with us all day.

While the engine was being torn down and refitted, we took advantage of the weather - and prepped the car for sealant. I'm pretty sure it's against the Lemon rules to actually use tape and newspaper to mask off anything before painting - but maybe they'll look the other way after seeing the final product.

This car has so many different colored parts on it you'd think it was designed by some UN treaty organization.

Making the car look good enough for Lemons is sort of tricky. On one hand, they want you to put a lot of thought and effort into the final theme. They are always talking about the teams that do a great job of attention to detail. On the other hand, you can't make the car look 'too straight' or everyone thinks you're competing with a big cheater car.

So our goal is to put in good effort, use decent materials, but we won't spend the usual time on blocking, sanding, or final finish. We'll leave it a little rough.

The difference in attitude of the car was immediate. Following our P51 theme - we'll leave the flat black sealer on the hood of the car - and spray silver everywhere else.

The nose and tail of the theme will be shot in bright orange - per the original sketch. Man those Anniversary wheels look awesome, but we're going to be running with skinnier 94 Cobra wheels shown up front.

The paint even makes the craptastic brake ducts look aW3z0me!

By nights end - we had the engine back together, a huge fajita victory dinner, and a couple of beers in our bellies as we sat back and admired the day's progress. Our next goal is to have the car ready for the track Dec 3rd for some testing. That means next weekend is critical. We have a lot left to do.