Mustang Tech

Hi Everybody,
I bought my first Mustang about 18 months ago. Unlike most people the birth of my daughter was the trigger for Mustang ownership. I have a nice XR8 ute but it had problem-not enough seats! As a joke I said to the Mrs Mustangs have 4 seats and won't devalue like a new car. To my eternal gratitude she took the bait and october 2012 we bought this 69 coupe



Its a 20 feet car- looks ok from 20 feet but was mostly solid, just rust in the floors and was missing some bits and pieces.
It is fitted with 302W, C4, 9" power steer and 4 wheel manual drum brakes. Current plan is to fix the rust, get the L02/L08 Aussie compliance work done and front discs. Down the track the plan is EB-AU 5.0, AOD, LSD Borgeson power steer and air conditioning. My plan is for it to be my daily driver. I'm out in the country and do a 50km round trip on the highway to work and back so I'm after a comfortable cruiser with a bit more go.

Welcome to the forum Shaun, love your reasoning to the boss mrs .... The Mustang has four seats :rotfl: :rotfl: i like it.

Enjoy the ride

Welcome Shaun,
You must been keen if you are driving to Toowoomba or Oakey from Goombungee.
Those shitful roads scare even my Hilux 4WD.
I always go through that way if i have time so i can look in sheds, never know what you might see!!

Keep pumping out those kids. When you get to your 3rd (like I recently aquired), all of a sudden the Mustang becomes Daddy's toy.
Welcome to the Forum of awesomeness Shaun

welcome shaun will make a very nice driver ! just watch out for the other shaun the absolute guru of motors and all things cars if you need an answer he's the man plus he's a queenslander

Welcome to the forum. Enjoy the hobby. Lots of advice and fun to be found here.

Good to see another project in the works. Welcome!

Welcome to Mustang Madness Shaun! It's a not so serious disease but seriopsly contageous!

You're up 'Bungee way. Used to frequent the area many moons ago when I was at Cabarlah, Nice area!

Welcome mate, now get out in the shed and sort that car.

Welcome, you chose the best year..

Look forward to watching what you do with the car. Looks good.

Thanks for the welcome guys. I've done a lot of googling looking for ideas etc and this forum kept coming up, especially about aussie spec brakes, seat belts and Falcon parts swaps. The biggest thing that scares me about the Stang being a daily around here is hitting a roo. Thats the chance you take with driving a classic. Funny thing is i hit a roo in the ute last year, just cosmetic damage but was $6000 to repair. The owner of the panel shop is a Mustang owner and for a joke did up a quote to repair my coupe with similar damage and it came out at $4000!!!
As I get time I'll post pics of work I've already done. Most of the rust work is completed, everything electrical works now and I'm gathering bits for the power front disc conversion and suspension rebuild.

Seat belts- I'd contacted a local engineering firm (Toowoomba) about getting the L02 compliance work done and they recommended a local performance shop. My thinking was this is primary safety stuff and get the professionals to do it. To say I was disappointed with the work is probably the understatement of the year. I'll let the pictures do the talking.




The back inertia reel belts were ok but the fronts and the baby bolts were a joke. I went back to the shop and spoke to the owner and his only response was to offer to shape the reinforcing plates to the floorpans. Didn't offer to mount the belts properly or a refund on the dodgy work. I looked into legal side of things but that would wind up costing me more than it was worth to fix things myself. About the only joy I've got out of it is I've steered quite a few people away from getting work done there.

After more trolling here and a couple of calls to Gasoline Alley in Brissy, I bought some of their mounting plates and started sorting out this mess.






The plate for the upper mount I wound up making myself and slid it up into the roof rail. I got all the specs for the plates from the QLD transport website. I had a lot of people say to me just to do the belts myself rather than pay someone. I wish I'd listened, I could had saved myself some grief and cash!! Lesson learnt.

The Stang had a set of Flofit aftermarket buckets fitted and I didn't really like them. They were uncomfortable for a big lump like me and didn't have enough rearward adjustment. I had a set of front buckets from a Landau Coupe in my parts collection so first up looked at using them, then lucked onto a set of BA ute seats on evilbay that I scored for $80. the RH seat had a crack around on of the mounts but a quick zap with the mig fixed that. The LH seat didn't flip forward, which turned out to be a plastic mount that had broken. Bought an new one from Ford which sorted that out. I made adaptors to use the original Mustang seat tracks from some 20mm tube. I've fitted everything up and I've got enough headroom and rearward adjustment. I'll see how it goes when it's on the road. As part of the rust work I fitted fastback seat platforms and moved them back about 20mm.



The orange tiger stripes have to go- I might get some leopard print seat covers. Pimpin!! I had a trimmer suggest black vinyl for the sides and leather for the seat facings with the rear seat trimmed to match.