Replacing the taillight panel

Long time no updates!

After the whole thing with the hood (which has been dipped and is waiting for the future in a nice coat of primer) I set upon replacing the taillight panel since it's rusty in a lot of places. For this I had to deconstruct the whole rear. Knowing that welding was required I first removed the fuel tank and lines as I did not want my car to go up in flames.

When I was ready to drill out the spotwelds I thought were holding the panel in place, I found out I was not the first person to do this as the panel was alreay brazed... Great, I had to put a torch to my car to get it out of there.

After a few very exciting hours of setting the rear on fire and exploding fume clouds (I did this outside, obviously!) the panel came out.

The next few months I spent on removing the bumper brackets inside the trunk only to find out rot underneath. Also around the fillerneck opening it was pretty rusty so I put 3 patches in the trunk floor. This was all good welding and metal shaping practice!

Eventually it was time to start putting the new panel in. First I welded the trunk latch support back onto it:

Then I prepped all the edges that were to come in contact with the new panel. I drilled new holes and prepared old ones:

Then One more round of sanding all the spots to be plug-welded. Panel ready:

Car ready:

And voila, it's in!

Very pleased with the results and also a little bit proud of doing this all myself :-)

Finishing my trunk

This is what my trunk looked like before. It started rusting after some tosser left it outside in the rain overnight with the cover on and put it in the trunk before I came to pick it up. I was not impressed...

And before the rest of the story, this is the finished result. I am quite pleased with the improvement but I'm still gonna put one more layer of clear coat on it. I'll explain why.

I bought a can of Eastwood Rust Encapsulator and a can of Trunk Paint. I thought the trunk paint would be black/grey with white splatters but it apparently is ONLY black and white splatters...

So this is what it looks like up close.

This is from a bit further away.

I had a few spots with the old black paint on it which now is visible. It's not too bad though. So just a clear coat and it will be finished.

More sanding / the wires

Today was a good day to spend some more time on the Mustang. Two good things happened!

I am so glad I bought that little sander. I got most of the rust and bad paint off. However, the last spots are probably going to be the shittest of them all ;-)

I found these loose wires under the passenger seat and I'm thinking they'll make the "Fasten seatbelt" sign work once connected! I really want that to work so I better find a way to connect these wires...

Another trunk update

Not much has been happening in the trunk department until today. Mainly coz getting results has been a dreadfully slow process which was not very inspiring. So today I wanted to change that and I bought a proper circular sander. El cheapo but wow does it work!

This little sander gets the job done a lot quicker! I did this in about 30 minutes. Not bad I reckon. At least I'm getting some results now. A few more times and I can start painting. YAY!

Trunk update

Cleaning up of the trunk has officially started now! :-)

I've started to remove old body sealant in places with rust. Most rust is on the rear left side. This is around the wheel well.

Also underneath the left taillight there's some rust. I have yet to find out how to get rid of the rust in hard to reach spots...

I couldn't do too much today because the batery of my drill was empty and so was the second battery, grrrrrr.

Project trunk has started

My trunk is rusty. 90% of this rust started after some twats from the winter-parking put it outside in the rain eventhough I asked them not to. When I picked up my car the outside was dry but there was a small puddle in the trunk and I only discovered so after I drove to the current parking. Crap!

So today I started preparing the trunk for sanding and painting. But I also wanna know what these wires are for:

?

This is what the trunk looks like right now. Too much rust...

It's still surface rust so I should be able to sand it away and paint over it.

Behind the filler-neck.

There is this soft, white, rubbery substance in the corners everywhere. I don't know what this is...

My paint also arrived today. In convenient spray-cans :-)