1965 Mustang Continued

Well we tried our best. We tried our best to make the Christmas deadline, but we fell a little short. At 7pm on Christmas eve, we were dealt the final blow in the coffin when we discovered a leaking power steering control valve. Try and get replacement parts at 7pm on Christmas Eve….LOL. The good thing though, we were able to get the car cleaned up and Mike was able to bring his wife by on Christmas day to present the “gift” to her. Pretty cool.

We had started to tackled the interior shortly before Christmas. Brian first removed all the interior for us so Wes and I could lay in the carpet. This would later bite us in the butt, because when we went to reassemble the interior, we didn’t know where every nut and bolt went because Brian was not present. But…..what else does a guy have to do but swing by the shop on Christmas Eve to tell us where everything went 🙂

Starting to lay the new carpet in. We cut it wide on purpose as we want to make sure the carpet shifts and lays out where it wants, then later we will come back and trim the edges a little closer.

Once the carpet was laid in place, we reassembled the rear seats, and started on the center console.

And of course we needed new kick plates. Shiny 🙂

Lots of trimming and hole punching for things like seat bolts, seatbelt bolts, etc.

And back together with new factory floor mats.

When we started the car up, it roared to life and sounded great. Smooth as silk. We didn’t even have any leaks! Of course……we discovered there were no leaks, because all the fluids had already leaked out, lol. The power steering pump was dry, as was the brake fluid reservoir. We flushed the brake system and bled everything and got a good pedal. We need to replace the rubber brake lines, but we are going to do a factory disc conversion at all four corners in the near future, so decided to wait on that part. Currently the car has drums at all corners.

We decided we had better put in a new transmission filter and fresh fluid as well.

What finally did us in was the leaking power steering control valve. We had replaced the power ram because that had been wet with fluid, but didn’t expect the control valve to be leaking. We got a seal kit the afternoon of Christmas eve, but the housing was pitted enough that the new seals didn’t hold. So….fast forward to today, and I have a freshly rebuilt control valve installed and ready to go.

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