There and back again: A Mustang Tale (Pt 2)

Are you kidding me?

I almost couldn't believe what I was seeing on my phone in my hand. The Chase app was telling me that there were no Branches or ATMs near me. I zoomed out. None in the state. I zoomed out more. None in North Carolina, none in Tennessee, and none in Alabama.

Fail.

I was crestfallen, utterly defeated feeling. I had planned to snatch this car up this weekend. Investigated my towing options, looked at rental locations, and had been forming a plan in my mind about storage options and the first few projects that I would undertake.

That was all off the table now. And I hated it. I wanted to go home, call the trip a wash and hang my head in defeat. Thankfully my wonderful wife was not so inclined.

"We've come all this way, let's still go look."

It was a simple thing really, a rather innocent little sentence in her mind. But to me, it was support, encouragement and so many other things. She so easily could have seized the chance to end this wild chase and send us home. No, instead she pushed for the quest to continue.

And continue it did!

We made some little rest stops on the way, but finally we were in the mountains, on the road the car sat off of nearing what the GPS said was our destination.

Parked on a small bridge over a river we were thwarted by a gate blocking entrance to the property. We set out on foot leaving the truck parked over the 5 foot drop to the water below on a bridge older than I am.

*knock knock knock*

No answer. A quick look around, no cars parked near the house. The barn was far away and I didn't want to just stick my head in and rummage around. So back to the truck to think...

Wait what?!

That's the wrong house number! Quick out of the driveway back on the road! What if they had come home while we wandered around their property?!

It took some effort, but we found the place. And there, right of the road, inside the barn, was a 1970 Mustang Mach 1.

Here I am giving it a close inspection

The original 351C-4V was long gone. The 351W that now sits between the shock towers is actually the third engine to be in the car

Normal Mustang rust, the battery pan and fender were completely toast. They'd need to be replaced.

I hadn't expected the hood to be so shot. The springs were frozen and the hood has been unbolted from them.

The body lines were super crisp. No signs of body damage or the use of bondo anywhere on the car.

Drivers side trunk was missing, you could see the ground below and I was told the gas tank also had issues.

Nothing in the lower window corners. Solid!

Taillight corners were solid and the whole trunk opening looked to be in good shape.

Quarter panel extensions while a little roughed up were in good shape as well.

Those are 302 headers in the trunk. They had been part of the trade that landed the 351w now in the engine bay.

Just a little bit of bubbling along the trunk lip. Still quite salvageable.

The drivers side sported the most rust damage, but here you can see that the extension still looked good.

She's a Mach 1 alright.

The worst sin here was the paint. Someone had covered the Pastel Blue paint with a quick and dirty white job at some point before this owner landed the car.

After the new motor was dropped in back in 1986 the car sat, the swap never completed. It has been here since.

Shock tower holes for greasing the suspension, a sign this car was run and run long.

The only spot of rust on the front fenders, easy to repair and hardly worth mentioning.

I wanted the car after looking it over. I don't have pictures but the car interior was the dark blue. With the exterior paint code and interior trim, this car is one of less than 400 produced like this for 1970, not even counting the Mach 1 trim.

The wonderful people selling the car really deserve every penny of the $9000 asking price. You might think that's high for a car no longer sporting the original engine (It does retain the factor 3 speed though) but the color and trim combination make it a diamond in the rough.

I had intended to pick this car up and restore it myself, but plans have changed and I wont have a garage in which to work on it. So I can only hope that someone else finds this car and puts it back to the state it deserves to be in.

1970 Mustang Mach 1

DOOR DATA PLATE INFORMATION
Serial Number 0F05M160205
0 1970
F Built at Dearborn
05 Mustang Mach I 2-Door Sportsroof
M 351-4V Engine
160205 Serial Number of this Ford scheduled for
production at Dearborn
01/70 January, 1970
63C Mustang Mach I 2-Door Sportsroof
N Pastel Blue Paint, Ford #921-A
3B Medium Blue Clarion Knit/Corinthian Vinyl Bucket
Seats
9 3.25 Conventional Rear Axle
1 Three-Speed Manual Transmission
22 Charlotte Ordering District

Your vehicle was equipped with the following features:
- Black Hood Stripe
- E70X14 Belted White Sidewall Tires
- Power Steering
- AM Radio
- Argent Styled Steel Wheels

STATISTICS
Your vehicle was one of:
731 With this Paint Code
448 With these Paint/Trim Codes
1,299 With these Engine/Transmission Codes
1,580 Ordered from this DSO
7,916 With Argent Styled Steel Wheels
For the 1970 Mustang Mach I 2-Door Sportsroof

IMPORTANT DATES
ORDER RECEIVED: --
CAR SERIALIZED: 01/21/70
BUCKED: 01/29/70
SCHEDULED FOR BUILD: 02/02/70
ACTUALLY BUILT: 01/31/70
RELEASED: 02/02/70
SOLD: 01/26/71

Craigslist Ad: http://asheville.craigslist.org/cto/4679169626.html

If you do buy this car, let me know! I'd love to feature your progress here.

There and back again: A mustang tale (Pt. 1)

Two days. Eleven and a half hours, and 645 miles of driving. All to spend an hour looking at a car stuck away in a barn for nearly 30 years.

Crazy? A bit. Fun? You know it! Worth the drive? You better believe it.

Now some guys would cringe at the idea of bringing their wife with them to go look at a potential project car. And I really feel bad for them! It was an absolute blast to have my wife and best friend along for the ride. The voice of reason when "disaster" struck and a good sounding board as I struggled with important decisions and backwoods exploration.

We set out Friday night after I got home from work. And let me tell you, driving through the Kentucky country land (Or should I just say Kentucky?) at dusk in the autumn is pretty breathtaking when you're from a place where the only example of you have of green are the fresh tumbleweeds growing on the sides of the road. We were pretty smitten with it all and road in relative quiet aside from the occasional gasp and "oh my that's pretty" as we pointed out houses and pastures that the average passerby could probably care less about. Does this single us out as major tourists? You betcha. Did we care? Not a bit!

But then the sun set, and we were cloaked into almost suffocating darkness. There were no lights for miles in places, and when I say no lights, I mean NONE. Now I'm from Southern California originally, and the only way I can get somewhere with "No lights" is to close myself up in a closet. It was amazing, for about ten minutes, and then it was really boring. We only had three hours worth of driving to do this first night since we were just making the jump down to Knoxville, TN. But the last hour and a half or so was in complete darkness. We needed coffee and we needed it badly. Enough so that we settled for McDonalds coffee during one of our bathroom stops.

It was a mistake.

Really.

Big mistake.

Now I've had bad coffee before, and at times it's my own fault. Don't even get me started on the stuff that I drink at work on most days. Now I've never had something to drink that not only didn't taste like anything approaching coffee, but was, in my opinion, what liquid plastic would taste like. It was horrid. Why they call is a "Caramel Latte" and not "Brown plastic in a cup" I don't know. But avoid if at all possible. I prefer truck stop coffee over this stuff, at least it tastes like coffee.

I pushed through it though, mostly because I desperately needed caffeine like a fish needs water. And I'm still here to write this post so it didn't kill me. Looking back on it now, it didn't feel like three hours in the moment, but it also didn't feel like 3 minutes either. 

We arrived at the hotel, and after just a touch of waiting we were all checked in. A short walk, an elevator ride, and another short walk brought us to a humble little room with the basic accouterments. We settled in for the night and did our best to get to sleep.

The universe had other plans.

Sometime around 2AM in the morning we were both jerked from sleep by the sound of wailing klaxons. Fire, tornado, rampaging squirrels?! I had no idea what was going on but jumped out of bed and made for the door. Just as my hand touched the handle, the noise stopped. A tense moment of silence passed and... Nothing. Silence, Blissful, peaceful silence. I looked back towards bed. Had I imagined it all? Was this a dream? Nope, A quick query to the wife shows she heard it as well.

Hmm. Odd. Back to bed I guess.

45 minutes later. It happened again. But the tone was faster (at least that's how I remember it) and this time I only managed to crack my eyes open before it stopped and I was out again.

The morning finally came, time to throw some clothes on and head to the lobby for that promised free hot breakfast.

One word. Salt.

I'm not sure how you make pastries salty, but I think they managed it. If you could make apple juice salty they probably would have done that too. Now I know I shouldn't complain about a free meal, but afterwards I think I would have been better off just not eating. The dead was done though, now it's back upstairs for a quick shower before looking up the first destination of the day.

Oh no... Are you kidding me?!

(... to be continued)

To such great lenghts

It's not unheard of to go to great lengths for the things that matter to us. But when that thing is  a car and the great length is a long drive, well it's time like this I'm appreciative of the woman that I've been blessed to be married to.

As you can guess, we're about to embark on a trip to go look at a car that I'm hoping to buy. But with such an extensive list of requirements on my sheet, I've had to expand well beyond the bounds of my county, well to be true my state.

We're going to crack into a new state that neither of us has ever been to, and with a drive time of a little over five hours, it's easy to see that she has to love me if we're doing all of this just for a car. Now the hope is that it'll be the one, I'll seal a deal, and the ton of this blog will take on some new aspects as I begin to describe the process of going into a restoration of a classic muscle car.

I'm being intentionally obtuse about the location of the car and what it is. Call me paranoid but I don't want to risk ANYONE getting to the car before me this Saturday. There's no room for favors here, when you're hunting for a car that was made 45 years ago it's obvious there's a limited supply and an ever growing market of buyers.

Image courtesy of newscarsreview.com

On the lighter side of things, we are going to make this a multi-day trip. We'll do half of the drive tomorrow, and spend the night at a hotel at a location of our choosing. Normally, I wouldn't bother, I'm a car guy, and the thought of driving 11 hours in one day isn't that big of a deal to me. But this isn't a solo venture anymore, and I'm lucky enough to be able to include my wife. Adding the overnight stay was her idea, though now I wish I could take credit for it. A better night sleep and a happier disposition means I'll be a better negotiator when the time comes. Not to mention that it makes the whole thing feel a bit more fun, and less of a chore.

Keep your ears tuned (eyes maybe?) for the results of the adventure. I'll also do a follow on post about what to do when you go to visit your potential project car. Should be fun...