Cleaned up the exhaust on my 96

[Goose17]

After a handful of hours over a couple of days, I am happy with the exhaust on my 96 Cobra. The exhaust had surface rust eye sores after 22+ years of no attention. I started with the cats and worked down the pipes to the mufflers. I used some rust treatment chemicals as well as a wire brush on my drill and a power palm sander. My neck and shoulders are stiff, but I feel better with clean exhaust!

I am now considering removing the drive shaft and cleaning it up as well.

The before pics (these pics are after a thorough bottom detail, but prior to working on the exhaust):

After!

 

[TK1299]

Goose you are a legit mustang guy. We could be brothers.... yeah, brothers share thier cars with one another. I'll be up for the 00R kinfolk

 

[CobraBob]

You could serve dinner on that undercarriage, Tim. LOL. Really nice detailing of the entire undercarriage, including the exhaust.

 

[ZeroDCX]

The more I look at your car, the more I realize I have work to do with my mystic.

That thing looks awesome!

 

[Goose17]

I pulled the driveshaft this evening and worked it with rust disolver for a few go-rounds. This also gave me room to clean the driveshaft tunnel, top of the exhaust, rear flange and diff. All of these pics are “before shots.” I will check the driveshaft tomorrow to see if I need to sand it:

 

[amorrow]

Great work and always neat seeing such clean, original cars. Very nice collection of late model and SVT!

 

[96GT226410]

Damn, that's amazing.

Sent from my SM-G935V using the svtperformance.com mobile app

 

[Goose17]

I am happy to report this project is DONE! I should have kept count of the hours and days spent on the bottom of this car. It took a long ass time, but it’s done and will stay like this for a long, long time.

The driveshaft came out waaaaay better. I used Permatex Rust Disolver on it. I kept brushing it on, but was drying, so for the last round, I coated the entire unit and then wrapped it in plastic to “cook.” It sat like that for a couple hours and most of the rust is gone. Some small amount remains, but I opted not to sand since that would have erased the factory markings which are still visible. I also sprayed it down with Boeshield rust prevention prior to reinstalling it.

As for the reinstall... my lift got quite the workout! It took me awhile to get the teeth lined up at the front for it to seat properly and then once in, I inserted the bolts with some Loctite on them. In order to insert the bolts, I needed the parking brake off so I could rotate the axle to get the bolts on the bottom. Then, to tighten the bolts, I needed the brake on, but it had to be release between sets of two bolts to rotate them to the bottom for access. I then went to reference my Ford workshop manual for torque specs and read that there are yellow markings from the factory on both the rear flange as well as the driveshaft that should be aligned for better balance. So, up and down the car went to get the parking brake on/off to get the driveshaft rotated, uninstalled, reinstalled and torqued back down. The yellow mark on the driveshaft was faint so I didn’t notice it during the first install attempt.

Everything is back to normal and as good as when it left the factory. Now the bottom is as clean as the top.