Project Rustang

This week on muscle cars

bringing a mistreated mustang back to life starting with a dropped mustang two front end.

And our muscle car flashback is the end of an era. The last of the real 442.

Yeah, muscle cars are us today is the tale of two ponies. Now, I'm not talking Disney either. I'm talking two ponies that are vastly different projects and you might have seen this one before when we first picked it up.

It was a work in progress with a long way to go.

And in the coming months, we're gonna build it into a full spec vintage road race car.

This is a really good starting point because it's a really solid car. It's going to get a complete new frame, some high tech suspension and lots of horsepower to do that. It's going to eat up thousands of man hours due to the fact that everything must meet some pretty tough safety requirements.

You could easily spend over 100 grand on a project like this. In fact, the Sky is the limit.

This Mustang is a totally different project with a total different goal in mine. I'm going to turn it into a G machine which is a more affordable yet practical project to build. Now, the tough part about this is the previous owner got burned and he got burned really bad.

This thing is a true 60 footer. He thought he was getting a good foundation for a car, but he must not have known what he was looking at because right here you've got a common rust area with an uncommon repair. Who in the corn bread hell would use five glass to fix rust like that

or this,

there's enough inside this quarter panel to build a boat and fiberglass in a trunk. And you can see underneath somebody had braised it. That's a really old repair. He obviously knew he wanted to put some power to the pavement. But what he didn't know is that this car wasn't structurally sound enough to handle it

and then to add insult to injury, somebody convinced him to go and paint the car before the chassis work was even done

and he paid five grand for it. It looks good at first. But when you get up close, that's about 100 bucks a bubble, 50 bucks a scratch

man. There's even mud in the roof.

The point is this guys make sure that you get a platform that you can work with. If you've got questions, ask them if you don't know the answers, get somebody that can answer those questions. This guy literally blew his budget out of the water and had to walk away from the project before it even got started. This car is appropriate for its project

but this car's budget was not,

but it is a fast back so it's worth saving. So what I'm going to do is start over with a realistic budget and start from scratch.

Being at the rear end is almost done in this thing. I'm going to turn my attention to the front end where I'm going to put in a Mustang too. Now, there's a few reasons for this. These shock towers get in the way of a lot of your engine swaps. Not to mention

that front end design just wasn't that good

and it doesn't lend itself to performance modifications.

Now, you can buy these Mustang two front ends from a bunch of different manufacturers. I've had this one hanging out in my shop for a couple of years with nothing to put it in. The thing I like about it is you get rid of that stock Bolton cross member and this one welds in using your existing frame rails. And the other thing is, is you move your spring location from the upper control arm down in the lower by utilizing these hats

on this car. You can see what I mean. The stock spring and shock are located on the upper control arm by using the Mustang two setup. It mounts it all down here on a lower control arm making it a more efficient setup.

I'm only cutting away the shock tower mounts and the engine mounts. I'm leaving the inner fender wells here for a little while longer.

All right, now that everything's cleaned up, it's time to test fit our cross member.

You remember everything's built to ride height around here. Let's see what we got.

Oh, man.

Cross member is way too low. It's gotta be at least five inches off the ground, but that's ok. It's

like everything else. It's gotta be modified and we'll do that after the break

next. It's a big job but muscle car can do it. Cross member and air suspension coming up.

Welcome back to the shop. I'm in the middle of resurrecting an abandoned Mustang project by putting a mustang two front end under it.

But because the ride height is so low, which I'm not gonna compromise for anyone. I've gotta raise my cross member

earlier. We pre fit our cross member. It's only three inches off the ground.

It's gotta be five.

We've got a long way to go and in order to get there, I'm gonna take a piece of tubing, put it on top of my old frame rail, weld it all in to shore it up and then I'm gonna cut out a big chunk of that factory rail and to figure out how much I had to measure 24 and a quarter inches from the front.

And that gives me my spinal location. And then all I have to do is measure enough to clear my lower control arms.

It's time to start the modifications. First, you wanna make a couple of small cuts on the top of your frame around.

So when you finish welding in your support tubing,

those cuts on top will give you a nice clean cut when you remove those old frame ramps.

Now that the cross members at the right ride height, five inches,

I can tack it to the new frame room.

Always remember tack everything together. It's always easier to break your tack versus cutting your weld. Now it's time to start putting this baby together, starting with the hats.

Now, if you notice the hat is higher in the front than it is in the back. And the reason for that is, is your anti

dive angle, it actually rocks your spindles back when they're installed. So when you're hitting the brakes, they wanna go forward because if they go past vertical, it gets really unsafe. It gives you better control for breaking.

Next is the control arms. I got this complete set from Southern Rods and parts. They're inexpensive and they're easily converted to the airbags that I'm gonna run.

They have a larger base. So I need a little bit more clearance for movement.

Now, if I had decided to run springs, I would have to take this plate and weld it into my new frame rail and it provides a relief for the spring. This way, it doesn't hit anything. But I decided to go with some shockwaves from air ride. This way, I can really get this baby in the dirt.

Now it's time to install our upper control arms.

I'm using these dropped s 10 spindles from Bell Tech for a couple of different reasons. If I wanna run big breaks, there's plenty of selections for it.

Not to mention if I wanna raise the car up two inches. All I gotta do is get some stock spindles

with everything where I want it. It's time to make it permanent.

Oh,

that's a mighty fine piece of fabrication. If I do say so myself. Now, later on in the show, I'm gonna connect these frame rails to the rest of the car. So don't go nowhere. Don't go wandering off

coming up big block and crushing rock. The last of the muscle 44 twos

during the muscle car years, big horsepower and big engines were the norm and then the insurance companies got involved and put their thumb down on it.

But nobody but nobody could ever claim they had the Tik Tok

tack

only on the 71. 4, 42.

Today's muscle car flashback. The 71 olds 442 W 30.

The old 442 was a legend of the muscle car year. 400 cubic inch engine in the G MA body with a four barrel carburetor and two exhaust plenty of attitude.

The W 30 performance package was the hot version.

It was a blueprinted, we balanced 455 with four,

their induction, special intake and exhaust manifolds and heavy duty suspension

good on the streets, bad for insurance. So GM didn't want to say how much power the big block owns really man.

The changes from a regular cutlass are easy to pick out

rear bumper cutouts to make room for the oversized exhaust tips.

Superstock two wheels, red plastic inner front fender liners to save weight and w 30 war paint down the sides and on the top of the fiber glass hood

and that factory blueprint at 455 was sucking some serious air with a double set of fresh air scoots. A special low restriction air cleaner.

The 442 sat low and sinister on G 70 fourteens and some of them didn't stay on there that long.

The 71 was the last of the 442 that was really good at slinging some rubber around.

And even so the horsepower is down from the year before.

How much

GM used different measurements for the 71. So you really can't compare without putting them on a dyno.

But there's no question. The 71 was a low compression engine that didn't make as much power.

Muscle car expert Colin Carr

says it's not that big of a loss now because the 71 is better at handling the cheap gas up to de

the seventies with 10.5 to 1 compression.

You run them on pump gas, you have to retard the timing which, which takes away as much performance as lower compression. In my opinion,

the W 30 ran fourteens at the track, but it handled better than most muscle cars

are about as well as you can expect from a 3800 pound piece of Detroit steel.

This is a fantastic driving car

and it had that Oldsmobile comfort inside with strato bucket seats and a center console FM radio. Even a clock and a tachometer in the same gauge. They called it the tiktok tag. But the W 30 was all muscle under that thin layer of luxury.

The four speed from hers was the first clue. You couldn't even get power brakes on a four speed car because the C was so hot. It didn't make enough vacuum

and look at those red inner panels to save weight up front, the dual exhaust in the back and the 455 under that four

stair hood.

And there was one more sign that you could only hear

the Muncie rock crusher was a super duty transmission with nearly straight cut gears. They sounded like they belonged in a school bus and you can only get them in 71 when gears are positioned like that.

You get the, the wine from them. They sound like uh like they're crushing rocks. I like the strength and I like the mind.

That was only the first three years. Fourth was a whole different story.

71 was the last year for a real 442. After that it was just an appearance pattern. All show. No, go, they don't make them like this anymore.

And that's why the price of a good W 30 has doubled in the last two years. So if you've got one, you better hang on to it.

A

really nice 71 W 3442 could run you 75 to 100 grand. But that one's not for sale.

And coming up, we knew this Mustang had some problems. Oh,

check this out. Los

making them right, right after this.

Welcome back to the shop also known as the compound

in case you just got here, here's what you missed.

We're still in our rescue mission on this rust ridden sting when we started to put in the front end. My right height was a little low

which led to some small modifications.

The cross member was gonna plow the pavement. So we had to relocate the front frame rails just to touch.

We even had time to install some a arms spindles and some air bags

and I'm not done yet. I'm going to take some tubing and weld it from the front of the

Subra

to the firewall. And if I've got time, I'm going to put some Subra

connectors in this baby. But first these inner fender wells have got to go.

I left them in place while I fed up the frame rails, they held, hold everything together and square till I got the thing welded up.

I feel like an archaeologist uncovering 1000 year old stones. If you remember, I tell you this car was structurally unsound. Well, check this out. This rust is so old. It's all flaky water got between the pieces of steel and it just festered and then you come down here and it's just poor metal prep. It just rusted right through this rust really messes up my plans. I can't tie into the front of the frame rail

and go into the firewall. Like I wanted, I wanted to take two plates and sandwich it and brace it up. So what I'm gonna have to do is put a piece of tubing in the rear, come forward, tie it into the front. And then when I build my roll cage, I'll come through the firewall, tie it in. Let's go bend some T

I'm using engine five H 120 wall dom tubing and started with a 35 degree bend.

Then I simply eyeballed where the second bench should be. Then you wanna make sure when you're doing your frame brace that you don't make it too high or else the hood won't close. So then you eyeball it and all you gotta do is put it where you want it

and mark it.

Then you use this one to make an exact copy for the other side.

Before we go any further. I need to strengthen up those pathetic original frame rails because that's where the tubing is gonna be mounted.

And remember always use a mounting plate.

Now I wanted my round tubing to go further apart as it went towards the rear of the car. That's why I had to put the square tubing in here. So the tubing has somewhere to land, not to mention because they're going wider. It gives you room to work on the engine. And also when I do my roll cage, it gives the a pillar bars a nice place to come through and tie on to. It's time to tag this baby in

tubing can't be higher than defender

tested it.

Oh, yeah,

I am the man

and with both of them in place, the front end is done.

So it's time to install the frame connectors and I tear the carpet out and I come to a real serious realization. This car truly is a P OS.

You could see where somebody cut the car in half to replace the front end and they did a really poor job of it and that hole over there by the glove box, it didn't come from the factory. And once again, we've got this fashionable fiberglass rust repair.

Oh, check this out. 001 piece baby. Yes.

Yes.

I needed to put in some temporary frame connectors just to move this car. And for the frame connectors, I'm gonna use two by 2065 wall square T

I don't know about you guys, but I always tie my Subra into my rocket panels.

Yeah,

you guys get the gist of what's going on. I can't finish welding in my frame rails cause I got some work to do in the rear end. But that's another day.

I'm really happy with the stuff I got done today on this thing. Although you won't be seeing it that often because I got some really cool projects right outside that door that I just gotta get done. But you will be seeing it from time to time because I got some really cool stuff to show you on project Rus

Dang later.