Sound Proofing

What started out as a quick coat of paint on the dash ended up being a 2 full months long project. The dash was removed and was stripped, sanded, etched and painted. Stationary glass removed and the flange cleaned. For the most part, only one area with the paint blistering was in the bottom corners on the rear glass.

I decided to remove the steering column, brake pedal support, wiper motor/linkage, heater box and wiring harness and finish the floor to the windshield opening with Rust Bullet. Three layers of Peel & Seal was applied to the firewall and toe board.Two layers applied to the floor, kick panels and inside the quarter panels.

I disassembled the steering column to bead blasted and paint. I found the shift lever tension spring was broken in 4 pieces and the grease in the steering column was dried up. I lucked up and found a substitute spring that I could use in my 5 gallon bucket collection of nuts and bolts. The speaker mount was bead blasted, painted and new cloth was glued down using cardboard for a gasket. The parking brake assembly was bead blasted and painted. I found a nice driver's side fresh air vent from a early '70 complete with a intact control handle. The old howling heater blower motor was replace with a new motor and new fan.

I made a bracket to relocated the fuse box to a more convenient place. When installing the wiring harness I moved the harness under the dash a couple inches from the corner to have room to put the power trunk release button under the dash and this also gave me enough room to put the wiper delay box behind the dash. I had to spliced extra length to the wires going to the dimmer switch to get the wires behind the kick panel trim. New carpet pad was added before the freshly dyed old carpet was installed.

The speedometer cluster housing was brittle and crumbled and will be replaced. I was bound and determined to replace the cluster with a '71 cluster but the wiring harness plug was different. I found a 71 plug but it had more wires than the '74. After looking at the 2 different circuit boards I notice they were different circuits. I shaved one of the alignment pins on the back of the '71 cluster that holds down the circuit board to swap circuit boards but then I noticed one of the circuit tracks crossed over the plug receptacle. I decided to give up trying to reinvent the wheel and bought another one from a 75. I swapped my gauges in the cluster cause the '75 speedometer only went to 100 mph and I also wanted to keep up with the original miles on the odometer. A fresh coat of paint and new lens for a 69-70 Mustang to replace the old scratched and cloudy Maverick lens made things look good as new.