our
yanks
ouryanks
82 ACMTALES FROM THE GARAGES OF THE PEOPLE WHO WORK ON, AND CONTRIBUTE TO, AMERICAN CAR MAGAZINE
Kev Carrington, Contributor
1973 Plymouth Duster, 2004 Ford Mustang GTDave Smith, Editor
1990 Ford Mustang LXThe Project 13/30 Fox Mustang
is now finally under way! You
can read about the progress
with the bare bodyshell in the
How-To section of the mag,
which does leave me slightly
less to prattle on about in
this column...
I took the shell to be media-
blasted, so while it was out
of the workshop I took the
opportunity to push a broom
around for a while. This is a
very rare occurrence, on a parwith a sighting of Elvis riding
a unicorn on Halley’s Comet.
Upon the shell’s return, while it
was still on its trailer, I decided
that the home-built rotisserie
stands could do with a lick
of paint as some secondary
media-blasting had shown up
some rust forming on them. I
wasn’t particularly bothered
about the finish, so I gave them
a good coat of aerosol primer
and started hunting around for
any old paint I could give thema top-coat with.
Right at the back of a
workshop cupboard I found a
two-litre tin of paint that had
been there so long I’d forgotten
what it was for. The label had
worn off, but after searching the
dustiest recesses of my terrible
memory I remembered it was
Carmine Red cellulose, bought
to respray the Triumph Dolomite
I owned in ... 1994! What are the
chances of 20-year-old paint
being anything other than arock-solid lump or separated-
out goo? Good, as it happens- I opened the tin and it looked
perfect. However, as brushing
paint goes it was terrible and
reacted with the primer so I
finished off some part-used
black and grey aerosols and
found an almost-empty tin of
chassis black for the leftover
bits. So now the rotisserie
frames are three shades of
black including pearl black and
metallic anthracite... classy.
I haven’t got round to fitting my
B&M shifter yet, but we have
made some decent progress
in other areas. The front
suspension upper arms had
really badly worn bushes and
ball joints, and it just scraped
through the MOT, so I thought
it was time to sort this. While I
was working in Miami I picked
up a full Energy Suspension
kit for the front suspension, so
we set about the task. To be
honest it was all too easy really,
the old bushes fell out and
the new (bright red!) urethaneones were a joy to fit. At the
same time I installed a new rear
transmission mount that had
just arrived from a mate in the
US, because the old one was
also worn badly.
I have never been quite
happy with the 8.5-inch Slot-
mags on the front so I have
been searching for a narrower
pair, and I found some 7x14s
that looked the part so I
grabbed these for £85 the
pair, fitted new tyres and got
them on the car. I think they
look great!our yanks.indd 82 21/09/2015 14:15:38