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Bondo, duct tape, and bailing wire. Time to bash the previous owners Posted by Daze on November 10, 2008, 9:55 am 69.145.221.22 Lets face it most these cars are around 40 years old or older, and in most cases have had many owners. During the course of previous owners many of our cars have been "repaired" in ways that that never should have been done. I have several I found on my cars and would love to here the ones you found on your cars. My mustang started life as a manual transmission car, but when the person I bought it from bought it, it had been converted to an automatic but the clutch linkage was still in the car. With a desire to have a manual car her father put a 3 speed back in it, but instead of getting the correct shifter linkage he chose to make his own out of all thread and enlarge the hole in the transmission tunnel by about 6" to make it work Also on my Mustang the floor board were repaired with stolen road signs.... well maybe some one gave them to them but either way I had to remove them and do the repair with actual patch panels. On my Galaxie the drivers side front fender had been repaired with bondo. A good rule when using filler, is "no thicker than a nickel". The previous owner probably thought the rule was "no thicker than a nickel up on its side" Also on my Galaxie and I am assuming all Galaxies pree 65 the inside door handles are held on with retainer clips that take a special special tool to remove. On the drivers side door handle the clip had obviously become damaged or lost so the natural solution in PO fashion to keep the handle from falling off was to put it back on with JB weld I had a really hard time getting it off with out damaging the door panel and once it was off the handle an mechanism were not repairable. lucky for me there was a 62 in a local junk yard.  Post a Response

Re: Bondo, duct tape, and bailing wire. Time to bash the previous owners Posted by JCAllison on November 10, 2008, 2:04 pm, in reply to "Bondo, duct tape, and bailing wire. Time to bash the previous owners" 8.2.210.59 Lets face it most these cars are around 40 years old or older, and in most cases have had many owners. During the course of previous owners many of our cars have been "repaired" in ways that that never should have been done. I have several I found on my cars and would love to here the ones you found on your cars.. Hey Daze, What's worse than finding the previous owners "repairing" in ways that never should have been done, is finding someone who knows that there is a proper&correct way but still has to do the repair in a way that never should have been done. Example: The use of FastWeld to remedy the exhaust leaks between the head exhaust flanges, and the exhaust manifold flanges. Also on my Galaxie and I am assuming all Galaxies pree 65 the inside door handles are held on with retainer clips that take a special special tool to remove. I figured out a way to get that retainer clip off that takes just a piece of dental floss. You make a hoop of dental floss about 12" in diameter. Then you push the inside door panel back till you can see the clip. You then put the dental floss loop over one of the ends of the retainer clip, and pull the dental floss till it slips past the shaft onto which the retainer clip is positioned. Then just pull the floss loop, and off comes the clip! As you probably know, the way to put the handle on and get the clip to be in place is just to put the clip on the handles, and then push the handle onto the splined shaft.  Post a Response

Hey JCA good tip Posted by Daze on November 10, 2008, 3:15 pm, in reply to "Re: Bondo, duct tape, and bailing wire. Time to bash the previous owners" 69.145.221.22 I never would have thought of using string to remove the clip. It was good to see your post. I was beginning to think you had abandoned this little corner of the web  Post a Response

Re: Hey JCA good tip Posted by JCAllison on November 10, 2008, 5:49 pm, in reply to "Hey JCA good tip" 8.2.209.117 I never would have thought of using string to remove the clip. Hey Daze, I figured out the dental floss method when I had a 59 Studebaker Hawk. It had the same little retainer clips as do the Galaxies. It was good to see your post. I was beginning to think you had abandoned this little corner of the web Would I do a thing like that? Sometimes there is just no motivation to write anything. I think it's because all the energy is being expended otherwise. I am bi-polar. I swing between between just happy to being ecstatic. Ecstasy takes a lot of energy! All day today, FordMuscle has been unavailable. Earlier it was because their server was too slow to keep up with even my nitzy little 56K Dial-Up connection, but just a few minutes ago, at 6:30 p.m. cst, I got a "Server Not Found" notice. Anyone know what is going on with them? Hope you are well. JC  Post a Response

Now I get it you only come here when the other forum is down :) :) :) Posted by Daze on November 10, 2008, 5:55 pm, in reply to "Re: Hey JCA good tip" 69.145.221.22 just kidding. to answer your question, if you go to the regular fordmuscle home page, not the forums but the actual www.fordmuscle.com it says "Fordmuscle is currently down for maintenance."  Post a Response

Re: Now I get it you only come here when the other forum is down :) :) :) Posted by JCAllison on November 10, 2008, 6:51 pm, in reply to "Now I get it you only come here when the other forum is down :) :) :) " 8.2.210.12 Now I get it you only come here when the other forum is down Hey Daze, No, no, no... I read both forums all the time. It's just that I don't always have the energy to respond to much. just kidding. to answer your question, if you go to the regular fordmuscle home page, not the forums but the actual www.fordmuscle.com it says "Fordmuscle is currently down for maintenance." I was getting to the point of starting to worry about them. Anyway, it's getting close to my bed time. Hope y'all are well. JC  Post a Response

No one else has previous owner repair stories???? Posted by Daze on November 11, 2008, 3:49 pm, in reply to "Bondo, duct tape, and bailing wire. Time to bash the previous owners" 69.145.221.22 Lets here them  Post a Response

My previous owner story. Posted by Jay on November 11, 2008, 4:11 pm, in reply to "No one else has previous owner repair stories????" 24.40.213.188 Previous owner cut a hole in the tunnel of my 66 Galaxie 500 and swapped in a toploader 4 speed MT for the FMX AT (although my reference book say it is an FX). Not a bad idea except he never got it to work right. Daze explained that the "shimmy" problem was due to a shorter input shaft. Thankfully, he saved the metal from the "hole" and it will be welded back before I put the motor and AT back in the car. The unfortunate decision mentioned above probably cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 30+ man hours and perhaps several hunderd dollars, all for naught.  Post a Response

DID SOMEONE SAY BONDO????? Posted by Grimm on November 11, 2008, 9:03 pm, in reply to "My previous owner story." 75.214.100.100 These are the rear quarters of my Mustang. The driver side front fender is the same. The PO was good at bondo. To looking at them before I tore into them you would swear it was metal...... He also used roofing paper and tar to cover up the holes in the floors. The holes in the floors came form the rusted out cowls. I was in to much of a hurry to own a 65 Mustang. I did not take the time to check everything like I should have and ended up with a lemon.I am no quiter though. I have since replaced the cowls and the driver's side floor boards. I needed something that I could work on and get some results faster so i got the land yacht. The Stang is in the garage waiting for me to get back to it and finish.  Post a Response

frame repair? Posted by roger Schroeder on November 12, 2008, 3:29 pm, in reply to "No one else has previous owner repair stories????" 99.139.138.82 When I bought my LTD, the prior owner had the frame repaired, sort of. What they did was weld four plates of steel over the torque boxes and a length of L-beam steel along the main rails. After a few years I had new exhaust put in and noticed I could put my finger through the torque boxes where the weld was and there was essentially no frame other than the L-beam!. Thus ended the driving of the LTD. I have now put in a replacement frame I got from the other Donor car. That body is chopped up and is for the scrap yard. Roger  Post a Response

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