Mint Condition

I neglected to mention that about two and a half weeks ago, I took out the driver seat and did a little rust removal. Water had been leaking onto the floor pan, and there was a really nasty rust spot festering behind the driver’s seat. Using some Naval Jelly, I managed to clear it up pretty good and then proceeded to coat it with primer to seal it.

Due to the oncoming winter season and subsequent rain, I needed to seal up the quarter windows—or lack thereof. And I did it yesterday, none too soon: it rained quite generously today. There’s one small part of my seal on the driver’s side that needs to be patched, but otherwise it’s holding up quite nicely.

I also purchased an aftermarket tachometer, mainly for adjusting the idle (which I’ll hopefully get to soon). I hooked this up yesterday too, along with my CB radio and antenna. I’m trying to get my neighbor to install his CB too. It’s just something fun to have in the car. I made a bit of a mess with all the extra wiring, but it gave me a chance to wire up the lights for my aftermarket temperature gauge, which had been in the dark until now.

Last night, poor Nugget was having some sort of engine trouble. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but after checking the tranny fluid and letting it sit for a minute, she was working well enough to get home. So she’s really not ready to be my school commuter car yet. I need to get the engine and everything tuned up in the next couple weeks.

I was also thinking about body work. Nugget is kind of an eyesore right now, what with the bondo, rust spots, and other body work to be done—not to mention the color. It’d be really nice to pull everything apart and sandblast the chassis and sheet metal, prime everything, and paint it. I have no idea how expensive sandblasting is, but I’ll definitely need a garage to work in to disassemble everything. I haven’t settled on a color yet, but right now, I’m thinking white with red detail and interior would look really cool.

I calculated how many miles per gallon the Mustang gets yesterday. It gets about 9.7 mpg. Yippee!

A bit depressing, yes. But at least I have closure.

Today, I hooked up the parking brake control. The cables were all in place, though they don’t retract terribly easily when I release the brake. The parking brake will need to be adjusted at some point, but the nut that adjusts is pretty stuck, and I don’t have the tool necessary to test it.

While I had the car up on the ramps, I also adjusted the transmission manual linkage. The shifter was a bit off, and I think I may have been driving in 2nd gear this whole time thinking it was Drive. So now that’s all cleared up and working fine.

The transmission is still pretty rough though. I’m not sure what the problem is; my dad suggested I get the bands adjusted. We’ll see. It’s not urgent, but I’d like to get it sorted out at some point.