A long bank holiday is good for a rest, well sort of as I spent two of my days of down at Mustang Maniac of course. They were long days, early(ish) starts by the time I got there and quite late leaving. I had to put the headlights on it was that late! Anyway this week I started on the front end of the car to remove the under seal to see what we had. It turns out that as I was getting to the bare metal we discovered that I have a genuine matching numbers car. The numbers being the two secret VIN codes that match the visible one as well as each other. This was also verified by the fact that the decoding of the paint colour matched what we found underneath the under seal and the previous paint job. Why are matching number important? Well if there has been stolen, been in an accident or part of the car has been replaced, then this is a way of identifying that the problem. It’s easy to cut out and replace the visible VIN number, but to do that on the other numbers means removing the fenders and bodywork to get to them which can be a real pain. I was a happy (Easter) bunny!

original colour

matching number 1

matching number 2

Last couple of weeks I have been getting to bare metal on the floor pans as you know. This weekend I managed to get the front end of the car cleaned up and stripped of the under seal. The process is exactly as before, plenty of elbow grease, a good flexible wall paper knife, patience and above all lots of good paint stripper. As I was working at the front there was lots of grease and dirt and mud wedged in places that should have been drain holes. I needed to clear these all out then get to work on the under seal. Some of the old original under seal was easily chipped of and no stripper was required until I got to the primer, but the newer stuff was hard work. I spent a complete day on each side of the shell to get it clean. We did uncover so rusty places that will need a patch put in. but nothing to horrendous I am glad to say. I have added the full set of photo’s to the main page under the “Photos Menu – Under The Car & Chassis – Under Seal removal”, or click here for the quick link.

This set of pictures was the left hand side:

original colour

This set of pictures was the right hand side:

As it was raining on an off over the days I was there the pack of dogs soon found a place that was dry for them to sit in, my little work area! It’s quite funny having to step over dogs when you need to get tools from one place to another. If you look carefully you can spot a couple in the photos now and again.

On another note:

I need to work out the female psyche, when women are upset and they have a few tears, A man asks “What’s up?”  the answer returned was “Nothing”. As far as bloke is concerned that is the end of the matter then as nothing is wrong as you have just confirmed. BUT, if a woman brings it up again a while later saying “Not as though you care, when I was crying!” is unacceptable. I witnessed this first hand and the face that the poor bloke had as he was looking on in amazement at the woman was a picture. I felt for the bloke, I wanted to give the geeza a little bro-mance hug to say “I feel for you mate, here’s a beer”. He was getting it big time, both barrels in fact. Why is there the need for the word “nothing” meaning “I have the right hump”, and now I am going to start a row. I just don’t understand. If anybody can explain this to me I would be most grateful.

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