Removing the stone guard from a 1968 Mustang

The stone guard is held on by 10 bolts with 1/2 inch SAE heads.

My car was missing this one when I got it so that left nine for me to remove.

Two inside each wheel well.

 

Four along the top at the front behind where the bumper sits.

Two at the bottom of the car.

My bolts were rusted into place and didn't want to come out. My father in law left his  big socket breaker bar here a while ago and that was just what I needed. 

One of the bolts just twisted around and broke the tab in the stone guard, so that one is still in the car. 

Here is the stone guard off the car. I decided I didn't trust the wires for the lights in it so I just cut them and will do new eventually.

And here is the front of my car without the stone guard. 

Next up on the list is the front grill. Hopefully that can come off this week.
 

Removing the front bumper from a 1968 Mustang Coupe

I have been reading through this blog http://68vert.blogspot.com/ again and this inspired me to get back out to the garage and at least start to make some progress on the restoration of Lola, my 1968 Mustang Coupe. I decided to start by removing the front bumper since it looks like almost all of the front bumper and grill area of the car will need to be taken off in order to get the fenders off.

The bumper is held on by four bolts along the front and a smaller bolt on each side. I was missing one of the side bolts when I got the car, so that left me with five bolts to remove.

Bumper on the car before removing any bolts.

 

Missing driver side bumper support.

Passenger side copy of the bumper support I am missing on the driver side.

 

The bumper is off the car.

This may be the only original style bolt, or this one might not be original either. Its kind of hard to tell with this car.

This is a shot of what that bolt looked like on the car.

 

 

Here are some shots of the front bumper supports.

 

One of these things is not like the others.

It looks like this bumper support was replaced at some point since this one has no rust and is painted black.



The next step in the restoration of my 1968 Ford Mustang will be removing the stone guard that sits behind and below the bumper. Hopefully I will get that done soon.

Garage Workbench Build: Adding a Work Light

Back when I originally ran the electrical wiring for my garage Workbench I made a few key decisions. 

1. After figuring out that I had access to two different electric circuits I decided I wanted to use both of them and put half my outlets on one circuit and half on the other.

2. I decided I wanted at least one of the outlets to be switched.

3. I decided I wanted at least one outlet at the front of the bench.

4. I decided I wanted a work light over the Workbench.

The switched wire for the work light has been coiled up above the bench waiting for me to buy a light since I finished the wiring. Well I got a bit of Amazon money for Christmas and decided to use some of it to finally buy the work light that has been on my wish list for months. 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01BW7HHOQ/ref=ya_aw_od_pi?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The light came yesterday and I hooked it up and mounted it in place after the kids were in bed today.

I had a bit of metal wire tubing and managed to force my wire through it without stripping it first. That was a job.

Review: Yost 750-DI Multi-Jaw Rotating Combination Pipe and Bench Vise

Review: Yost 750-DI Multi-Jaw Rotating Combination Pipe and Bench Vise

http://www.yostvises.com/multi-jaw-rotating-combination-pipe-and-bench-vise-swivel-base.html

One of my first purchases for the garage when I started really thinking about getting a classic mustang to restore was a Yost 750-DI Bench Vise. My grandfather had a bench vise on his workbench in his garage and I always associated that with being someone who was good at solving mechanical problems.

My grandfather's Charlie Parker Bench Vise, mounted on his workbench, currently living at my aunt's house.

I read quite a few reviews on what was the best garage bench vise at a price I could afford. I looked at Sears and online for a Craftsman Professional 5in vise after reading a glowing review, but they had stopped making that model. Then I found a couple of "top bench vise" review sites that recommended the Yost 750-DI, which just proves I am susceptible to well written marketing copy. However, after reading up on this vise, and reading a bunch of reviews I decided this was the one I wanted.

Having had this bench Vise mounted on the corner of my workbench for over six months I have had time to put this thing to work and I am very happy with my purchase. 

This thing is a 63lb beast that I fully expect to will last a lot longer than me.

Installing a Bamboo Hardwood Floor

Installing a Bamboo Hardwood Floor

Our house was brand new when my wife and I moved in 10 years ago when we got married.

Since then we have taken the basement from an unfinished to 95% finished state, moved to a new master bedroom down there, painted the upstairs bedrooms, and replaced the roof after it got damaged in a Kansas hailstorm.

What we hadn't done until now was any major work in the living room/kitchen area. This part of the house was still painted "builder's tope" and still had the original builder's quality carpet in the living room and vinyl floor in the kitchen.

Well, we finally decided to fix that last year. We pulled all our baseboards in the area we were going to floor and with help from family we painted all the walls, then over my Christmas vacation, also with LOTS of help from family we installed the floor.

We started the project by calculating the square footage of the area to be floored. 

We bought flooring and placed it in the room to be floored the weekend before starting the actual project so the wood could acclimate to the room.

Before:

I took a week of vacation at Christmas and we did 90% of the actual work while I was off. 

On Tuesday my father in law came over and we tore out all the old carpet and pad in the living room, pulled up tack strips around the edges of the room, pulled the vinyl floor in the kitchen, and the luan subfloor that was under the vinyl.

My father in law is a plumber and he pulled our dishwasher for us so we could put plywood there to bring it up to the level of the new floor. He then re-installed it for us.

He also helped us pull and later re-connect our gas stove. 

Wednesday we finished tearing up the carpet in the hallway, then rented a floor sander to flatten out a few high spots. We then nailed down a ton on staples in the kitchen area that were used to fasten down the luan and didn't come up when we pulled it. We ended the day by checking spacing by test installing some boards from one wall to the other. 

Thursday my brother and dad came over and we started in on the actual flooring. We got about half way across the main room that day. 

Friday I did the finicky kitchen area.

Saturday my brother came over again and we finished the main room and did the hall.

Sunday I rested and did family stuff. 

Monday I put a bit of trim back up so we could put our kitchen table back together and get our house back in a livable state. 

The next weekend I did the tricky end of the hall and put up a bit more trim so we could move our fish tank back in to the house and set it back up.

This happened a lot more often during this project than I want to think about. Dead board and wasted time pulling it back up. 

This weekend I took some time off from the project to relax and spend with family. 

Next weekend I hope to finish the door transitions and do the landing at the top of the stairs. That will just leave two closets to do and a bunch of trim to put back up.