critters

[kb426]

I've owned 17 mustangs. Of those, my favorite was a highland green 67 coupe. It looked like a taxi but it was a 390 4 speed car. It had the engine dress up kit and the factory tach, no other options. The 69-70 Shelby's have the great style but the 2005 and up cars are way better drivers. I would buy a 05-09 if I could find a nice one that wasn't too pricey. My son had a 06 that I drove 1000 miles to pick it up. No complaints about the car. It was a v6 5 speed. It needed more muscle to develop character. The 08 bullitt has some cool factor on it. The 2019 bullitt has the performance to match the car. Serious money. No decisions on my part. Just don't buy a 96 because they seem to be shot from the factory. LOL.

[idrivejunk]

17? There won't be that many cars in my whole life!

Maybe you can clear something up for me then, oh Mustang guru.

Door crash bars. What I have called door intrusion beams...

Early Mustangs don't have them. Some replacements do.

The 70 I did got one new door, with bar. So it is running around lopsided on ballast.

The 69 now got two new doors that do not have bars. (These are horrible, shells are improperly located within the skin, causing a mountain of problems when the originals were usable)

So I wondered if the door bar was a change from 69-70. Added for the 1970 year. Searched for that answer because if I ever was to want a Mustang, I'd want the safer, heavier doors to bring crash safety out of the 1950s on it.

Item descriptions found by me on web do not state whether a particular door is with or without crash bar. Prices vary widely.

I see doors with bar offered for first gens currently so I deduce from these facts that crash bars are found only in aftermarket '70 and earlier doors and that up until at least 1971, such was not originally offered.

I don't need a stereo or air conditioning or power anything but door bars are pretty much a minimum requirement for anything I want to commute with.

So whats the deal with early Mustang door crash bars? Why are both offered but with no distinction or price difference or even so much as an indication in product info? Seems like I am missing something.

[kb426]

I have no knowledge of crash bars. I have no memory of what I saw under the door panel. Too many decades ago.

[idrivejunk]

I hear that. One door you can hang by yourself, but with the other kind assistance may be required. Bikes run into doors a lot and for example a redlight-running sideswipe by an FWD SUV will penetrate less deeply into the interior and help prevent the door from being shoved through the jamb. With as much material and weight difference as it makes, you'd think there would be a distinction in product info and pricing. Just so a guy knows which he is buying. It would suck to order a pair and get one of each.

[idrivejunk]

Score another one for the bird dogs. Went for a lovely peaceful ride again tonight but it didn't last long. Picked up a bird dig tail that stuck like a cockleburr on a hound's behind through three or four turns. Finally theres an S curve so I do it at double the limit. No matter, here they come with headlights of a thousand suns apiece in their mundane everyday carefree pace, looking to throw a hook on my bumper for a free ride I guess. I whip into a driveway before they run me over and they nearly do as I cuss at them loudly. Dander up, I give them little breathing room in return for a few miles to the next turn opportunity. They are running down the next bumper, accelerating until they get on it too. Ridiculous. Dangerous. Tripling of speed limits was involved just to not be in the way.

I am sick of this place. It has been ruined thoroughly and I have to grow old and die here yet. That won't take long, with me trying to own transportation.

So I shake it off and cruise normally until I reach my turnaround. Theres a dog standing in the blind curve. Darting at me, barking away. Doing all it can to to corner me. So screw if theres cars coming, screw the stop sign, mat the gas and swap directions with bark bark barker desperately trying to be under a wheel.

It set me off. Clear all the way home I done the car like a circus elephant standing on one ear. Generating maximum heat in brakes, engine, and trans. Kept it on the verge of traction.

This won't do. It definitely is stupid for me to have my car. Its a hate envy generator, a scumbag target / beacon, a sick baby goat in leopard land. Can't go to work in it, can't use it to stay sane. Can't maintain it or even grasp it's value and probably can't even work on it anymore, too stupid.

Yet it delivers relentlessly, asking nothing and constantly enduring. Well, she is harder than me. Feels like being in a marital relationship mutually cherished but destroyed by outside forces beyond our control. Theres just no good left to get. You don't even get to see a same person twice around here anymore unless you work with them.

Thin ice. Peril. Curtains. Fixing millionares' garbage an hour away is the only way I can touch cars but thats my tether to reality. The GP is like being tied to the corral fence with wildfire approaching. Like the faux old west scenario where you give the wife the last bullet and a kiss then run headlong face first into your attackers.

I can't make sense of the day ruiners, some are not even human. Is it still legal to run over a loose dog in the road?

[jaybee]

So which Mustang generation do you guys want if you can take your pick and have it your way?

And what if you could opt for a Maverick or Cougar or Fairmont instead, would you?

Oh, good question!

• First choice would have to be a '69-70 Sports Roof. No shock, I think. They're right up there with the '67-68 fastbacks in popularity. The later car is my personal favorite.
• I had a '68 Cougar and a '69 Cougar, and still regret not having that second one. My favorite car of all I've owned, hands down.
• Any of the early Mustang coupes would do the job. They're just as good a car as the fastback/sports roofs, without the price premium.
• These days I really, really, really want a Maverick. It's a good looking car. It is suitable for all the chassis upgrades you can apply to an early Mustang. It's smaller, and I like a small car. Being Falcon-width, you should shave the shock towers for a 351W and need to for anything physically wider, but a 347 stroker would be perfect. Oh, and I have personal history, as my Dad had one. His was a six with 3 on the tree and I enjoyed it very much.
• Speaking of Falcons, why not? Or a Falcon-chassis Fairlane or Torino, for that matter.
• Who doesn't like a Fox body? They're getting expensive, though.
• The aero T Birds, but particularly the chisel nose of the '87-88. It's an improved version of the Fox Mustang chassis, and once again you can do anything mechanically you can do to a Fox body Mustang
• SN95/New Edge. The styling doesn't bother me as it does some folks, and it's a more capable version of the Fox chassis in every way. Unfortunately I just can't warm up to the 2v OHC engine.

How's that for a list? I was brought up in a Ford house, btw. Does it show?

[idrivejunk]

I should have thrown in Pinto /M2 too. Yeah thats a good list.

Fairlane and Torino on a Falcon chassis? How does that work with all being unibody?

SN95 and Fox, not on my list. Far too commonplace. But Coyote Maverick sounds tempting. For someone else. Tbird was a personal luxury coupe-only which is more my style but I don't go for their style.

Dad went through Ford phases but none were modified. Couple of vans then an Exploder they let Ford pour glass into the engine of.

[idrivejunk]

Barking city dogs ruin lives. People on my block will not be satisfied until I am in jail over it. If I never heard another bark in my life, that would be too soon. The problem is always the owner's fault and never the dog's.

Thats as short as I can keep that. Awakened by barking. Next I'll be standing in the street at 4AM taking video evidence. Twice now I've ripped up my voice screaming at the top of my lungs. Is forcing people to move away with your dog legal?

[kb426]

Just for the record, I recently read that the falcon chassis was the same design for mustangs, cougars, mavericks, granadas, monarchs, fairlanes and torinos. Different wheelbases, same architecture.

[idrivejunk]

Ah, like Fox or Panther, its the platform name. Got it. Some of that Ford-speak. GM just uses letters.

[idrivejunk]

Thats a grey area on 69 Grand Prix, it might be called an A+ or G body but its an alteration of the A body. The body on frame configuration and F and X body GM subframe design is the least meaty thing I would want under me for any daring do. Unibody and V8 just don't add up for me but we were talking style. And I have learned from whats been said.

If jaybee showed up with a hot grabber Maverick and I showed up with a Monza Spyder... well I would envy the Mav.

I test drove a Monarch or Granada with stick shift V8 once, and a stick 318 Duster but ended up with a hatchback bench Nova, 350 Qjet. During HS. Even then I guess I wanted the good subframe, but mainly the carryover familiarity from tinkering on an A body.

[jaybee]

What KB said, Matt. They took the 1960 Falcon and made it longer, shorter, wider, narrower to suit for Falcon, Early Econoline, Ranchero, Mustang through 1973, Fairlane after 1964, Torino before 1972, Maverick, Granada, and all their Mercury equivalents...and many years beyond that in Australia. As a result, a 1965 Mustang front sway bar bolts right onto the control arms of a Maverick, which in turn will bolt onto a 1970 Mustang.

We're talking about Ford, of course, so it's a little more complicated that that. After all, the water pump and timing cover of a SBF requires up to 10 different and specific fasteners, all of which have to be installed in just the right holes. As a result there are at least 3 different spindles, 2 different bearing sizes, 2 different strut rods, tie rods are different on power steering and non p/s cars...you get the idea.

Speaking of body on frame cars, the Torino went to a perimeter frame and 3 link rear suspension in 1972 which had a lot more in common with the T Bird and Lincoln Mark cars.

[idrivejunk]

Thats a lot of critters from one mama. At least the car Starsky and Hutch kept skidding into curbs with was full frame.


Deleted the paragraph with thoughts in it.

[idrivejunk]

So I heard that Steve Magnante caught a wicked brain infection from junkyarding. That sucks, I used to read his cool stuff a lot. Curious what happened.

Today, making the seasonal switch back to jeans, I spotted the spot that will never wash out. From grinding the left knee into so much critter droppings for so long starting on the job I'm finishing now.

Black rat turds. Swarming ants. Hearing about Magnante vindicates my complaints from that time. Why the oldest guy, the metal work anchorperson, who has been there longest, was tasked with shoveling manure I will never figure out. Once I cleaned it out and tore it down it went to a racer guy who did tubs and replaced roof. Theres 8 welds on front of roof where 40 should be. Soon as it was discovered that customer only had about half the funds for their dream build, then I got the job. To mud, and to fix the lumpy quarter patch. Now I am digging off all the materials not scraped off before blasting and doing what I can with ospho there. Seems dumb, all of it.

Here is a critter tidbit from the web I enjoyed today, being someone who has had to dispatch such a nuisance before.

[idrivejunk]

OK well video no worky. But it was an orangutan evicting a nuisance critter from it's lofty man-made habitat. A big tall jungle gym thing, treetop high. Orangutan climbs to top, finds an opossum up there and just flings it away. 

Then there was just the prison-escaped murderer who eluded police for the last couple weeks and was finally chomped on the head by a K9 German Shepherd named Yoda while cowering trying to catch some zzz's surrounded by camo cops. Now that... is a goood doggie critter I tell you what.