Military Mustang Part I

On this edition of Search and Restore. It's the journey of a well worn mustang. A

story of extreme patriotism after 911

and a promise made to a young son that was shattered in an instant.

We will help out this us army veteran and his family by resurrecting their classic coup

and in turn, pay tribute to the men and women who risk everything to ensure our freedom.

It's all calm inside our 50,000 square foot tech center as our volunteer build team anxiously await their latest project

some 1200 miles to the West build leader Tim Strange and Tommy Boss

are moving towards their latest pick up point

there. We are

on the way to Colorado. Oh, yeah, man. I, I haven't ever been to Colorado, haven't you? No, it's been a long drive, hasn't it?

Not quite a hop skipping

the

J

because you gotta add like a wrong walk in there somewhere.

So this bill,

we chose a member of the military.

He got injured over in Iraq when he was serving his country and got a purple heart

and fix up his old 67 Mustang for him.

The

only car that I've ever really wanted to have ever since I was a little kid.

His name is Paul

Caylor Iraq war veteran and current staff sergeant with the Colorado National Guard.

He sent in his application with support from his mom,

his wife and three boys who all asked Tim and the team for help with his mustang coupe.

I got this from a soldier

and actually

my brother gave me the money for it, which was only 1500 bucks

and that was back in

2004.

And so pretty much it's been

sitting in his

current state

since

then.

We were drawn to Paul's story, not because of financial hardship or a broken down Mustang.

He made a choice 10 years ago, like thousands of red blooded Americans did after the attack on 911,

seeing the twin towers fall. This 28 year old divorced father of two, decided to join the army.

In my mind. It was uh an immediate, this is something that I have to do. Now, how am I gonna

make it work for my family?

His five year old son, Nate had the answer.

I don't know how he got the idea in his head, but he thought

that if I were to become a cook in the army, it would be ok.

And so he, he basically made me promise that if I joined the army,

I need you just be a cook. And I was like, ok,

Paul quit his job, packed his bags. And after basic found himself with the 329th field artillery unit in the Iraqi desert.

While out delivering ice. One afternoon, the unthinkable happened,

somebody shot an RPG through the door right, right next to where I was standing

and all I saw was sparks and smoke and,

you know, immediately my ears were plugged up and ringing and,

and I didn't really know what was going on. Luckily I hadn't taken off my gear and when the shrapnel came through the door and hit me, it shredded the back of my truck all the way down, popped two tires where I was standing

and busted the driver side mirror and I got it in my, uh, mostly in my Kevlar and in the back of my, my, uh, body armor,

the wounds to Paul's face and neck earned him a purple heart. And after four years active duty, he left the army and joined the National Guard

so he could spend more time with his family.

He still serves his country while taking night classes on his way to a degree in family counseling.

Hey,

how you doing, Tim? From searching your store? I brought Tommy from muscle car with me.

You really touched by your story. You wanna grab your mustang, take it back to Tennessee and build it for you.

Take it.

That's awesome.

Hey, guys,

wow.

Brought the big rig all the way across country.

So does it run. Oh, yeah, it runs,

it runs. Well, I, I, I'm, it runs

the driver's side a little rust, you know, for moisture.

Yeah, I've seen these cars rusted out so bad. I'm not gonna be, you know, too picky about it.

But, um, yeah, purple, I don't know.

What

color do you want?

What

color?

Cherry

red,

black,

blue.

My husband deserves this because, you know, he does so much for everyone else, you know, just serving in the military, plus his family and friends. It's just nice for him to get something in return.

What do you like to see on the inside of this thing?

I'm not too picky. I'd like to see uh you know, the seats look a little better buckets, maybe a console. Yeah, console would be nice.

A radio

that don't sound right

V8 engine

like that.

Be nice.

The thing that I love most about these older cars is the styling and the way they were built back in those days and you just can't get that kind of design and, and style out of modern cars. So the first place I'll take it when I get it back is uh straight over to my dad's house since he's uh out in Tennessee and I haven't seen him in a while, so I'll just drive over to his place.

See you in a month. We'll take good care of it. Sounds good.

Good

job.

Thank

you.

I think they're pretty excited. Don't you? Yes, they,

they threw out a whole bunch of different color combinations though, didn't they? Purple, red, black, gray? And at the end, the little kid said yellow,

yellow.

Next, the mustang arrives to a full house of volunteers. But after tear down a surprise under the paint brings the project to a screeching. Halt

T

Bone. Stay tuned.

You guys ready to see this thing?

I'm interested in the color. You said it was,

you weren't joking.

Don't let it make you seasick. We're keeping the color, right?

Does it run? Look at that nice

tractor motor.

It's a squirt.

We know what the car looked like when we picked it up.

So we call ahead and ordered full quarters. We've got doors here, we've got fenders, we've got full floors. We've got plenty of sheet metal here just in case it needs everything,

it's gonna need a lot. Probably have to put some fresh tires on. It looks like a little dry rotted. Other than that, it's good to go. What do you guys think of that interior in there?

We got the guys here from Hudson's rot and customs is gonna help tear down. They're gonna throw one awesome interior, full custom. Once it's all done, the tear away interior, you get tired of just tear it off.

Go hit the welding tank.

I've actually built probably half a dozen 67 mustangs.

So I kinda dig these cars.

It would be fun to get into another one.

Give me that.

Yes,

I got my wing van out but I can't get my door window out now.

It's no secret. I hate glass work.

I really don't think I knew any cuss words until I started working on cars.

Got a pretty big vocabulary.

At least he's not alone.

The rest should be pain free

since the majority of this Mustang is going to scrap and we have plenty of hands on deck. It's not long before we can remove some patches from the past.

You

know,

really not all that bad.

A purist would rebuild the classic in line and drive train.

The best we can do is save it for them.

Looks like another media blast job for milestone custom paint and body.

The Hudson crew can now do their thing stripping away the tails from their canvas of wire and springs on this season and we haven't done a what I call full custom Hot Rod Street Rod style interior. So I'm really looking forward to doing that on this build and we can do something like that to help these guys out. We're more than glad to do it. This is Homer Hudson owner, so to come down and donate a day, this is Will his son. It's well worth it. They brought along Corn.

Yeah. His last name is Corn. That was the main one that stuck.

Got a tattoo for that one. So

it's gonna be this color

and black two ton mostly. I

think I got him talked into some colored stitching that they don't usually do. But I think it'll really make it

do something at the front of the people come into the shop and they got one way of wanting to go. But when he gets done, they're going the other direction. I think my opinion would be the green,

the green on it.

Usually he winds up. Right. So I'm just going about my business and,

and do what he says. I got the ultimate faith in these dudes will do it right.

The morning brings good news. The blasting is done and it's ready for final inspection. If you see the, the way that quarters on there that's screaming. Hey, we got a problem over here.

Those sharp eyes belong to Alan Shepley and David Sams of Mustang Central.

This car's been hit,

it's been hit hard.

Wow. It does have

a bucket

on.

This car is a T

bone.

So we called our neighbor James early

win from Brown's body shop. A pro at pulling frames.

Yeah, it looks like it needs to come back a little bit scale 110, probably 31 thing we can do is get her and measure it and see where we can go from there. Well, it's probably, you know, we could probably just move around a little bit and fix it. Uh, but you know, you, you stop and think about the whole prospect of what we're doing.

This guy's in the military, he gave it his time. He, he give it us all. And so we wanna give it our all. We don't want to get half. So

best thing to do is have it pulled and, and do it right. We're gonna let this guy do his magic and we're gonna take the afternoon off.

Where's the pool?

The only swimming ahead will be in a sea of metal sparks and dust

after the break, four decades of wear is wiped out when search and restore continue.

Day three begins just down the street. You did. Awesome man where the Mustang took a half day detour to correct a rear quarter T bone.

The guy from Brown's body shop here local,

worked all afternoon, jumped right on it for us, pulled that smashed inner fender well out. I think it's time to get her back to the shop and start cutting all these panels off.

Now, we can get back to what we were gonna do a day ago.

Fortunately, Tim recruited some top notch talent like the guys from Mustang central pony car experts putting a full pan here. So it's gonna include the front section, back section under the rear seat and the tunnel. We got to pull all that out first and then we're going to put a new one in

a couple of gearhead brothers jumped in on rust repair to the front apron.

I'm Matt Dockery, my name is, uh, Jason Dockery.

I'm an ironworker fabricator. I'm here with Wild Tech.

He's the older brother. He's more of the hands on. He's the very artistic side when we were little. We used to butt heads like this. Yeah. Since I was the youngest, I always had to be better. Or else I get picked on every day

you put us together. It's 100%.

The two come from a family of welders,

but it was Jason who upped his skills at Wyotech Laramie Campus

chassis fab and Street Rod are just a few of the courses that have prepared him for an automotive career.

Another recent grad is Zach Booth who was hand picked by his instructor, John Christiansen.

It's been great to see him out here cutting some sheet metal, doing his welding, doing his grinding, you know, going to, he doesn't have to be asked to do things. He knows how to cut spot wells. He knows all these

procedures. He's been taught them over the last 12 months at Wild

Tech and he's performing up to the highest standard right now. He's doing a great job. Nice panel you made there.

It's a different experience actually being here seeing where everything goes on.

I never really thought I'd have the chance to do this.

Bumper, bolt heads are kind of ugly. See how it's just

boo

boo

boo boo

boo.

So we're gonna weld it all together from the inside and once we do that.

We'll take the hardware off

and then, uh, button weld and fill in the holes where the hardware was.

All the plugs filled. This is where the bolts used to be.

We realized we had a little bit of an issue with the tow boards up at the front.

We don't have any tow boards here with us. So right now, we're cutting and fabricating some pieces to fix that damage

and then we can progress and get that full floor pin set in. This right here is actually part of the outer wheelhouse,

which has a little bit of rust in it. Once they get

this welded in

and cleaned up, then I'll come back and fill in the actual quarter panel.

I gotta take this seat riser and cut all this excess full

pan that we're taking out, trim it up because the seat riser is gonna go back in the car.

So once we have that done and get the new fans in, we'll drop these originals back in for the seats to bolt to

for restoration Mustang parts. We called National Parts Depot

who stepped up big time and sent us everything we needed

at

this stage that meant all the body panels and a full floor pan

stand

up. Can

it great.

So we're well on our way to wrap this uh four pan part of it.

Mustangs are known for having a bigger door gap. So it's not, it's pretty good up here.

This is the first time I've ever had the chance to work with Tim.

And it has been amazing,

but that's minor right there

without heating, metal, cutting, metal,

doing everything with bolt adjustment, uh, and hand tools. And in 15 minutes, Tim fit that fender to that door.

And I just amazed it

yesterday. I was really bummed when he found that damage today.

Totally exceeded my expectations. Things weren't really smooth.

I just hope it keeps going that way

ahead. Our military mustang enters its mock up stage. Who's excited.

Stay tuned.

Last night, we got all the sheet metal hung from MP D right now. We're just finishing this quarter panel.

Rick's working on the quarter panel extension.

We're putting a Shelby back in but not the Shelby tail lights.

There's a little bit of fab work that's got to be done there. Hopefully, today we're gonna mock up the motor transmission, all the exhaust and bend all the brake lines. But of course, every build has its problems. We have a, uh,

a block and a bell housing for a Ford that doesn't bolt up. We have a quick tech question. Hey, this mock up transmission. What's this supposed to be for? They only bolt together with three bolts. Would the bolt

on the bottom go through the doll pin, the one we're getting should make up to it. Right. Thanks a lot. We'll see you. Bye.

He uses modern guts in an older transmission. No problem. We're good.

One example of why the mock up is so important. Rick Bacon and his body extension

is awesome.

If not fitting

when you're working with fiberglass parts, if something doesn't fit, you need to keep whittling it down until you find something that does fit and I've whittled it down. Pretty small.

The nice thing about a volunteer effort.

You never know who's gonna show up with good stuff like the president of be cool.

Hey, Roger Tim. Hey, Tim, how are you doing, Roger Rosebush? You brought us all kinds of goodies. Look at that. Look at this. This is what uh what we consider to be our module kit. You've really got an UP FT radiator that will take care of, you know, about 700

horsepower in this vehicle that should slide right in there and look and fit like a professional upgrade.

Yeah,

mount right for the factory locations. Look at that and you'll have 2011 cooling in a 1967 car. Thanks for bringing all this good stuff and thanks for volunteering and staying until the car's done.

That's really,

honey. I've got to change my schedule tonight.

The work continues one piece at a time.

The new transmission from Bower

arrives

the flow master exhaust kits tacked in

leaving only a couple more things left to mock up. So we got here is a complete A N stainless brake line from Speedway Motors.

This stuff is the best flare and stainless line in. It

also comes with all the stainless flex braided. Not only that,

it comes with instructions too.

There you go, Tommy

into week one. All the mock ups done

floor pans are in quarter panels done, rust repair. All done. The wild tech guys were a lot of help this week and those guys just jumped right in and did anything you asked of them. Tim actually referred a restoration shop in Minnesota. I'm gonna go there, send out a couple of emails, see if I can get

in and tour the shop, meet the owner.

He's still here and it's late at night.

That means a lot in the hot rubber,

hard work

pays off

and next time on search and restore hard work seems like an understatement when a dozen more volunteers arrive to get the body ready for and out of the paint booth. Plus reliable beast is the best description for the engine. The guys have claimed.