1966 Ford Mustang - Engine Bay Overhaul - PHR Project Car

We doused the engine bay with Gunk's Engine Brite, and let it sit the recommended 10 minutes. When that time was up we went in with the sanding pads to help loosen the dirt and to prep the paint.

After three rounds of de-greaser, scrubbing, and rinsing, we came up with this. We let the car sit out in the sun for about an hour before revisiting it for the next step.

The last step in the clean-up process is to take the grinder and clean off any extra material, whether it's seam sealer, paint runs, chipping paint, or metal from welding the unnecessary holes. We then used compressed air to clear off the grinder debris.

Before you bring the welder out, prep each hole you wish to fill by grinding the paint away around it. This allows the fill rod from the MIG welder to ground and create an uncontaminated weld. It also makes it more obvious which holes you chose to fill when you come back around with the welder.

We used a Lincoln Electric SP-135 Plus, a welder that we've used in a couple stories in the past, that is really great for when you don't have access to a 220-volt power outlet. The best way to fill the larger holes is to build a ring of weld around the existing hole to form a wall, and build off into the middle. Too much heat into the sheetmetal, and it will burn away.

Before the black paint goes on, put a layer of primer over the places that have been brought to bare metal. We used Dupli-Color's Self-Etching Primer. It's great for adhesion, and gives the next coat of paint a consistent finish.

Here you can see how many holes we welded up. We left the ones that we'd use again. The lack of extra holes should give the sheetmetal a cleaner look.

When you're done with the welding, go back around with a grinder and sanding pad to level the weld with the substrate metal. When you're done, it should look as though nothing was ever there.

We're sure you're curious about what's going into our Mustang project. Weturned to Smeding Performance, a well-known crate engine builder, to put our 427ci Windsor together. Each Smeding engine is broken in and dyno tuned, and no engine leaves their shop with an oil leak. We needed a small block with at least 500 hp that was streetable and ran on pump gas. With 10.2:1 compression, Smeding-branded AFR heads, and a hydraulic roller cam, we got a 560hp crate motor that will idle 'til it runs out of gas. Stay tuned for the full story next month.

Now it's masking time. We used 3M blue painter's tape and some masking paper to hide what we didn't want sprayed. You can also see in this photo where the light green self-etch primer was used.

The first coat of paint was VHT's Epoxy Satin Black. It's got some high-build properties to smooth out imperfections. The final coat was of Dupli-Color's Truck Bed Coating. This stuff is extremely durable and sprays on really smooth. Though not perfect, our final product is much nicer than when we started.