Saturday, May 13, 2017

Original 1979 Ford Mustang Dash Hull Finally Found

After searching and searching for a correct dash hull I finally found one. Probably the only place now to find parts in Wisconsin. It's an old school type of salvage yard. The kind of salvage yard that still isn't really online. They aren't linked to car-parts.com com so there's a chance to find parts. This guy holds on to everything and he has cars dating back to the teens.20's and 30's and newer.



First thing that needs to be done is get your tetanus shot.. LOL Joking... This car is pretty bad. I will return another weekend for some wiring off of it. About the only good thing on it is wiring and the dash lol. 




Verified 1979 Mustang on the door. Very hard to find in Wisconsin. Any other junk yard would have crushed it, but these guys specialize in recycling and part selling. Not many salvage yards operate that way anymore.


Take care when part hunting you never know what is lingering under the dash or dash pad in this case. Found a mud wasp next. Good thing it was really old the bugs had moved on. 



This is a very tight spot and you will need this exact tool to unscrew these screws. There are some cracks in the dash but all are repairable on this one. By the speaker area is one. I will most likely epoxy or JB weld it. 




Now if you look down the hole closely you can easily pop off the atmosphere cables. First remove the locks then the cables are clipped into the controller block. you will need to press from the bottom to slide the cables out of mounting points.
















Finally out of the car. after a couple of hours. 



This is a true rarity to find a dash bottom that is not broken up at the vent open close points.  


Now I had to take extra care as you should with an old dash hull like this. They can be very brittle after years of neglect and UV damage. This car had the doors already ripped off and the glove box is rusted in position so I managed to work around that carefully and gently. Once home I will soak in WD-40 to try and remove. I have a couple glove boxes sitting. 


Wasn't a back couple of hours worth of work and the dash costed me $50.00. 
I have been looking a long time for this dash so that I can return the car to having an 8 track look a-like stereo. I modded my original dash for a $60.00 CD player when I was in the Army and while I was on a training rotation $1400.00 worth of damage occurred to my car to steal my stereo. Never again will I install a fancy  stereo into the car. I will make it look as OEM as possible. 

The thief used a breaker bar and put dents in the car damaged the door's chrome pieces. Then the thief damaged the lower dash in process of stealing the stereo. The idiot left the laptop in the back and the breaker bar. Unfortunately the police in Killeen, TX were unable to pull prints from the tool. 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What city was the junk yard in ?

FoxResurrectionGuy said...

I'm keeping that a secret till I have my project finished. Parts are too rare and hard to come by.

FoxResurrectionGuy said...

Next weekend pulling harness and blower box