One of the things we managed to take advantage of just before leaving for our cruise was corresponding with a dude that happened to have a hood for a 69/70 Mustang on FB marketplace. He contacted me to let me know he still had it when we were coming back and was willing to meet us Sunday evening. $400 later we were in possession of a pretty fresh replacement hood that is already black and even has a red bordering, which is something I thought about adding to the Rustang when I did get the body done anyway, red striping. The old hood on the Rustang was actually a replacement hood we found many years ago but as time passed, the hood rusted in the middle and repeated opening and closing caused the hood to start bending due to the upward resistance of the spring hinges and the downward force of closing the hood. Because of this, the hood would close with a bow in the middle, which was an unsightly thing. This hood had to go. Now there are a couple of things to note. One is the idea that this replacement hood used to have the factory hood scoop typically on the Mach 1 cars equipped with a 351 or 429 V8. The spot is still present on the hood with the input vents at the back of the hood and the stud holes for the vent. I will have to find another one of these vents, especially since I have a lead on a 351 V8/C6 powertrain for this car. More on that in the near future. Anyway, the other thing about this hood is that is has these twist locking hood locks that were installed in place of the regular hood pins that were mounted to the radiator core support. The old hood has these metal washers that bolt to the hood and when the hood is closed, allow the pins to protrude up through the hood so the cotter pins, typically held with short cables, can be snapped in place as an added safety to keep the hood down. I will have to see what else attaches to these twist locks so I can possibly restore this feature for the hood. In the meantime, I'll have to remove the old hood pins so the hood will be able to close all the way. We removed the hood and the hardware from the hood, setting the old hood along with the outgoing scrap as there is nothing we can do with this hood other than scrap it. The hood pin washers and the hood latch bar came out as well. With that, the new hood went on, using the four bolts to hold it in place. I removed the hood pins so the hood can close all the way. Afterward I had to realign the hood so when it closes the hood will be evenly closed on all four corners. With the hood in place, I can now start trying to do some other body work to this car to at least try to make it look a little better. The passenger door still has a major dent that has to be pulled or knocked out. The door panels can also be spray painted, even with canned spray paint to make them look better, along with the front fenders. Even though the front fenders need replacing, hitting them with generic spray paint will at least help make the car look better. Now as for the rear quarters, that's another animal. Short of doing some real fuckery with some scrap sheet metal and some bondo, even on a temporary basis, there's really no other way to address the rear quarters without cutting out the old metal and welding in fresh panels. I'm more than game to do some real fuckery with scrap metal and bondo to give the illusion of a restored body to help make this car look just a little better before I can manage to implement my ultimate plan of installing the body on another truck frame.
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