1994 Mustang Budget 302 Build

[BrettNorton]

Spring break 2015,
Day 1 of 5

Alright! My first day of spring break 2015. My parts are in, I have no obligation to be anywhere, and my younger brother Justin is here to help me out. Let’s get started.

I got up at about 8:00 this morning, ate breakfast, and went out to work on the Mustang. I did a few knick-knack jobs, but could not get much done until 12:00 noon when Justin woke up. Waking up very late in the day. Kind of one of those things that teenagers his age (16) do. We started installing the lower battle boxes from Late Model Restoration (LMR). The provided instructions in the LMR kit are all the DIY person like myself needs to install the lower battle boxes.

I cleaned up and painted underneath the car while Justin took a wire wheel to the sound-deadening tar in the interior. Yeah, the wire wheel to tar idea might not have been the best one, but it was the simplest option available.



Wear some damn safety goggles and a dust mask when grinding or wire wheeling under any rusty dirty car. The $I-I!+ gets everywhere, including your eyes and lungs without the safety gear on. Anyway, to install lower battle boxes on any 79-04 Mustang, there are openings in the frame rails where the triangle-shaped pieces go through. On 94-04 Mustangs however, these openings have to be enlarged a bit for the triangular plate to fit. I used a grinder to enlarge the opening.



The 3/8” holes were drilled, hardware was installed, and plates were painted up. With two people working at it, the lower battle boxes were not that difficult to install at all.



The lower battle boxes were bolted in and I wanted to have Justin weld them up. Justin is used to MIG welding, but unfortunately, the available MIG welder had no CO2 gas in it. So instead of a MIG welder, Justin attempted to use an old wire welder with flux core to weld up the lower battle boxes. Needless to say, with a wire welder that had not been used in 5+ years, the welds did not turn out very well at all. Justin said that the wire was being fed at erratic, unpredictable speeds and that is what resulted in crap welds. Justin is better with welding and metal fabrication than I am, so I will believe him on that account. The crap welds will be ground off, and my grandpa will pick up some CO2 gas for the MIG welder tomorrow.



Next doable task was installing the upper battle boxes also from LMR. Justin and I only got one of the upper battle boxes bolted in for now. We will eventually have to take the whole setup back out in order to clean and paint the areas around it. Unlike the instructions for the lower battle boxes, the instructions provided in the LMR upper battle box kit are not enough for the average DIY to understand the installation. I suggest googling “Mustang battle box install” and going to the website listed in the search called mikefordmustang.com. The upper battle box installation there is much clearer and touches on solutions to problems not given in the instructions. Back on topic. The difficult part about this install for me was after I drilled my holes for the upper ½” bolts, I had to enlarge them into a bit more of an oval shape in order for the bolts to be able to get through completely. Speaking of bolts, I had to get some 3/8” and ½” bolts from Home Depot that are ½” longer than the bolts provided. The provided bolts are barely long enough to go through the floor of the car and both upper battle box plates. I installed the new upper ½” bolts with the provided angled spacers and nuts along with some flat washers (not provided in the LMR kit). I drilled out the lower 3/8” holes while Justin pushed against the curved plate inside the car with a pipe. Without Justin doing what I explained, these upper battle boxes would have taken me much longer to bolt in since the drill bit would have just scratched the plate instead of going through it. I then installed the lower 3/8” bolts with the provided nuts and some lock washers (I repeat, washers are not provided in the LMR torque box kit).



Hopefully, my grandpa remembers to get that CO2 gas tomorrow. I plan on having Justin weld up the battle boxes inside the car as well as welding up the spot welded torque boxes underneath the car. The subframe connectors also need to be welded in.

Stay tuned for an update tomorrow…

 

[BrettNorton]

Spring break 2015,
Day 2 of 5

I did not get very much done today. No MIG welder, grandparents were at a St. Patrick's day parade, and Justin and I had to watch the dog at home most of the day.

Justin took a wire wheel to more of the sound-deadening tar in the interior in order to weld the upper battle boxes. Word of warning when wire wheeling the interior tar, THAT CRAP GETS EVERYWHERE. Windows, door panels, carpet, floors, trunk, your shirt, your shoes, your pants, everywhere. The pic of the lower torque box plate below shows only a fraction of the mess inside. Luckily, the splattered tar is easy to remove, and it will be vacuumed up tomorrow.



We finished the day up with getting the upper battle boxes bolted in. Before officially bolting the plates in, I sprayed some primer on the metal that was wire wheeled. As posted yesterday, the driver's side went in without issue. Passenger's side had a little fit with a bolt stripping AND rounding off on me. Home Depot trip took care of that. Passenger side got bolted down soon enough. Plates underneath the car were primered and painted after being bolted in.





Grandpa also bought some CO2 gas today. Hopefully, we hook the CO2 up and the MIG welder works right. Update tomorrow will reveal whether the MIG welder works or not. Stay tuned...

 

[BrettNorton]

Spring break 2015,
Day 3 of 5

DAMMIT, DAMMIT, DAMMIT!!!!!!!! OF ALL THE WORST POSSIBLE TIMES FOR RAIN TO HAPPEN, IT HAD TO BE TODAY!!!!!!

*Sigh* That being said, I barely got anything done today. I could not have any welding equipment out in the rain, I could not have any electric tools out in the rain, and Justin did not wake up until 3:00 p.m. All I did today was take a razor blade to the rear glass and scraped most of the old tint off of it. I still have to take a vacuum to the car in order to vacuum up the old tar and tint.



I will probably get even less done tomorrow. My grandpa got the CO2 gas we needed, but there is a little gasket at the valve that he forgot to save from the old bottle. Weather is also supposed to be rainy tomorrow as well.

DAAAAMMMMMNN......

 

[BrettNorton]

Spring break 2015,
Day 4 of 5

Sad to report that I did not get to do anything with the Mustang today because of the damn rain. Weather was a bit colder than normal today as well. Grandpa got the little gasket needed for the MIG welder... I think.

Hopefully, the rain actually does clear up tomorrow. I cannot wait until the end of summer when I will buy all suspension parts needed to put the car on its wheels again and roll it into my grandpa's shop. That way, I will never have to deal with this $h1+ (rain and cold) again.

 

[BrettNorton]

Spring break 2015,
Day 5 of 5

Nice! The MIG welder is working and there is no rain today, so many jobs for the Mustang were accomplished.

First task at hand was actually moving the MIG welder out next to the car. The thing weighs near 500 pounds, and is about 6' 6" tall. Rolling it out the door of the shop was not an option. So my grandpa used his 1994 Chevy truck equipped with a Tommy Lift gate in order to haul the welder around the shop and out to the car.

Once the MIG welder was set up, Justin welded the battle box plates inside the car. He did a pretty good job. We had to take an oxyacetylene torch and a hammer to the tops of the upper plates in order to make them flush with the floor. I put primer down on the plates after they were all welded up.





Justin also welded up all of the torque box seams underneath the car. He kept complaining how it was a tight fit underneath the car on jack stands, but he managed to push through the task all the way until the end. Torque boxes are all finished up.

Justin ended up having to leave around 3:00 p.m. so that left me alone to install the subframe connectors. I used a pair of pipe jacks in order to hold the subframe connectors underneath the car, and it took me about half an hour to weld each one in. Even after doing so, the body of the car does not seem to be too flexed. The doors still open and close perfectly, the subframe connectors are rigid. I believe my subframe connector installation is a success.



"Ahhhh, my day is finished," I thought. "All of my parts are installed and the welding is finished." As I was putting all of my tools up, I noticed that the 3/8" nuts on the upper battle boxes did not seem to be tight enough. I got my grandpa to help me tighten them up some more. I remembered the torque spec that I got from that mikefordmustang.com website. 50 ft. lbs. OK. I set my torque wrench to 50 ft. lbs., tightened one of the nuts on the driver's side further, and...

SNAP

...............

AHHH DAMMIT!!! THE BOLT SNAPPED!!! I now have advice to offer to all Mustang battle box installers. DO NOT TORQUE THOSE 3/8" NUTS TO 50 FT. LBS. OR THEY WILL SNAP!!! The lock nut still looked usable, so I used a pair of vice grips and a wrench to remove the lock nut from the broken 3/8" bolt. Luckily, I had another good 3/8" bolt to use, so I put the new 3/8" bolt through the hole, my grandpa held a wrench on one end, and I attempted to torque down the lock nut. However, the lock nut would not tighten down at all. "Damn," I said. "The threads in that nut must be screwed up too." We removed the lock nut and sure enough, the threads of the nut AND bolt were both gone. This mess was going on at about 6:00 p.m. so I had no time to get new hardware. New hardware will be bought tomorrow and those 3/8" nuts will be torqued to 30 ft. lbs. instead.

 

[BrettNorton]

March 2015,

Upper battle box installation is all finished up. Got myself a new 3/8" bolt and lock nut, and torqued all of the nuts down to 30 ft. lbs. instead of 50 ft. lbs.



Next task at hand is cleaning up the underside of the car. Got quite a bit of scale and surface rust to remove. Those blue things in the last pic are latex gloves that are covering the fuel and brake lines. Stay tuned for more small updates on that over the next few months.

 

[BrettNorton]

March 2015,

I got off work early today, so I cleaned up and painted the subframe connectors and floor pan underneath the car. I previously thought about undercoating, but I researched about undercoating, and read a bunch of horror stories about how it can crack, trap moisture, and cause even worse rust than what was cleaned up. All I did was wire wheel, primer, then flat black. It turned out pretty good. Then again, I did not have to remove any major rust or scale from the floor pan. The trunk pan is a different story...

That orange spot is a towel covering the shifter hole in the floor.

Before



After

 

[ShiftinGT]

Came out good man, looking forward to more updates.

 

[BrettNorton]

@ShiftinGT

Thanks man. There will be many more updates of this project over the next few months, but they are just gonna be about little knick-knack jobs that do not cost me very much, like painting. I will probably not be installing any new parts until after summer break.

 

[BrettNorton]

March 2015,

Did some more cleaning and painting underneath the Mustang today. I got the lower torque boxes, floor pan underneath the back seat, and the spare tire well all finished up.

Driver's side lower torque box



Floor pan underneath the back seat



Spare tire well



I would have done more, but I ran out of primer and daylight. The rest of the trunk pan should be cleaned up some time this week.

 

[BrettNorton]

March 2015,

GAHTDAYMN, CLEANING THAT TRUNK PAN SUCKED MAJOR DONKEY BALLS!!!

First off, while cleaning the trunk pan with the wire wheel, I discovered some structural rust on the car. Right behind the driver's side wheel well, there is a good-sized rust hole in the trunk floor. It is very difficult to see. One has to look underneath the car to see the hole, as it is covered up by the quarter panel and bumper cover. Description is not very good. Pics will help.

This first pic is of the rust hole underneath the car behind the wheel well.



This next pic is of sunlight shining through the hole in the trunk.




The first pain in the ass was wire wheeling and painting around the fuel lines. Some of the lines around the fuel filter area are made of rubber, so those could not be touched. I also had to avoid the braided lines that attach to the fuel pump.

The second pain in the ass was getting the driver's side of the trunk pan cleaned up. There was so much scale in so many tight spots in the area that needed to be cleaned up. I had to use a small pneumatic wire brush to get in the tight spots. If there is anything that I regret, it is that I did not get a before pic of the driver's side of the trunk pan. It was probably the area underneath the car that needed to be cleaned up the most.



Underside of the car is all cleaned up and painted! Next up for cleaning is the engine bay and miscellaneous small parts that I saved.

Before



After

 

[BrettNorton]

Dat is me in this pic. If you look closely, you can see where my safety goggles and dust mask were at while I was cleaning the trunk pan.

 

[joe12289]

Looks a whole lot better. Keep up the Hard work. It'll be worth it in the End.:rockon:

 

[coposrv]

Wow. What a difference underneath. Sweat equity right there. Looks great.

 

[BrettNorton]

Thank you for the kinds words my good sirs / madams. It feels even nicer to hear that after my first time doing this stuff.

 

[BrettNorton]

April 2015,

Today was a good day. My only class at school was cancelled, and I just barely avoided a rain storm that happened this morning along with another storm that is supposed to happen tonight. I had a whole nice day to clean out the engine bay.

To wait out the drying rain, I hit the whole underside of the car with another coat of Rustoleum flat black. Like a man with a hard hat tied to his ass, it is for extra underside protection.

I pulled the lower cowl cover off. It is the plastic part that covers the wiper motor. I cleaned, primered, and painted it flat black off of the car. Cleaning the engine bay was a bit more difficult than the rest of the underside of the car. Not because of major rust, but because of many tight little spots that needed cleaning. I had to use a mini grinder with separate scotch brite and wire brush attachments. I also had to do the cleaning around the brake lines and ABS pump, which was a pain.

Before

Primer

Flat black paint. Yes, I do notice the runny paint in many spots.

Next task is cleaning up the inner fenders and underside of the K-member.

 

[BrettNorton]

April 2015,

Had to work most of the day today. All I did when I got home was throw all of the necessary wiring back into the engine bay. I will work on cleaning up the inner fenders and K-member tomorrow.

 

[BrettNorton]

April 2015,

Because of Easter, work closed early today. That gave me quite a bit of time to clean up the Mustang some more.

I cleaned up the inner fenders and underside of the K-member. I did not get all of the inner fenders because they were pretty clean. Not very much to clean up down there.

Before

After

I do regret painting the engine bay before the inner fenders though. Because of some wind, a noticeable amount of primer over sprayed into the engine bay.

Also, I had to take the wiper arms off a few days ago in order to pull that lower cowl cover off. Well, I decided to put them back on tonight. I opened up one of the arms (like if one were to raise the arm up if it was still attached to the car) to mess with the little retaining clip, and it closed shut in my hand...
AAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That arm pinched the ****ing holy $hi+ out of my hand.

I eventually got the wiper arms put back on though.

Next up for cleaning is some of the small parts that I will be reusing. Grandpa has a good sandblaster which should make the cleaning go very smoothly.

 

[May93]

Looks good. Keep up the hard work and you'll have a nice car when your done.

 

[BrettNorton]

Thanks May93. I just hope that the car actually runs and drives right when I am finished with this Budget 302 Build project. It is my first time doing everything I am about to do with this car.