[tdavidl]

sorry, can't help with the part #, but i have to commend you on your imagination on your frame "stand"

[njsteve]

As for the "frame stand", the wife had a yard sale and nobody wanted the free "Abdominizer 5000" so I use it as my frame stand now.

[tdavidl]

hey, better then having it inside with clothes hanging all over it....

[njsteve]

I have the subframe all painted up and on the stand now. I started cleaning the control arms and noticed that the factory must have dipped the arms in black paint with the idea that they stopped dipping before the paint got onto the area of the ball joints. (or the ball joints were nsatlled when the arm was dipped) Here is the lower control arm. You can see by the rusty area that there was never any paint on the end:

[njsteve]

Here's the underside of the lower control arm. By the way, the wierd tiger stripe pattern is a result of the pressure sprayer set on too fine of a nozzle.

[njsteve]

Here's the upper control arm with the same paint cutoff:

[njsteve]

Here's the top of the upper control arm. As you can see, the upper ball joint must have been installed before the paint dipping, as there is no paint under the ball joint mounting area. The car still had it's original riveted ball joints, when I took it apart.

[Larry Navarro]

I have always wondered that myself about the dipping of the arms.
I took many a control arm off an f-boby and it seems to be common practice.
Out of all the arms taken apart, the upper ball joints were never worn out. The lowers I always replaced.
Having the original riveted joints looks great for a "original" restoration.

[njsteve]

If it had lower mileage than 115,000 miles I would have kept the original upper balljoints in place. But I like to drive my cars without having extra stuff to worry about. (Like clueless dolts on cellphones, myopic grannies backing out of driveways without looking, teenagers doing makeup in their rearview mirrors at 70 mph aren't enough to worry about)

[racerboy]

Steve,
Great pics!

Did the pressure washer alone elimnate the undercoating, or did you have to use some kind of chemical stripper? I'm temtepted to go buy one and start blasting parts of my '70 to see if I find similar color marks.

[njsteve]

There was no undercoating under the car, except for the random spots you see in the photos. The wheelwell undercoating was unaffected by the pressure sprayer except when I accidentally had it on too narrow of a setting and it cut some lines into it. The subframe had a very thin layer of paint in most places which came right off under pressure. I used paint stripper and a wire brush followed by the pressure washer to get it totally santitary for paint. Sure beat paying $250 to redistrip it. I think it cost me $17 for the gallon of stipper (the can is still 3/4 full) and I borrowed the pressure washer from my friend.

[Frank'73 T/A]

Steve, Thanks for taking the time to give us the details. I am getting ready to replace my fuel tank and lines and I also am lucky, no rust on the frame or underbody but the entire underside was sprayed with undercoating. I am not sure if I am going to try to remove it or clean it and paint over it. Frank

[njsteve]

Check out this link below if you are going to be trying to remove the undercoating. From his experience, it sounds like this stuff works well on undercoating. I saw it on sale at Home Depot the other day. -NJSteve

http://www.svend.net/mustang/ww73/ww73.html

[racerboy]

Here's the red primer under my dash. I have no reason to beleive that it is not origianl:

[njsteve]

Here is a photo of the cleaned up driver's side spindle. you can see the green paint on the underside. The actual finish on the steel appears to be some type of grey phosphate finish. Looks almost like a painted coating but it's not.

[njsteve]

There is also a black paint daub on one of the dust shield mounting bosses and some green paint dripes here and there.

[njsteve]

The passenger side spindle has a blue paint daub on it.

[njsteve]

There was also a 1/4" by 1-1/2" yellow mark near the disc brake mounting hole.

[njsteve]

And also a white paint mark on the top of the pass spindle dripping down the side.

[njsteve]

The theme of this car is a "reassemble-ation" not a restoration. I am trying to document, clean, preserve and then reassemble the components as they were originally. I sprayed the spindles with a wax-based metal preservative Nyalac, which should keep them from rusting. I did repaint the subframe and the lower control arms exactly as they were originally (I had to do something to preserve them since their paint was almost non-existant to begin with). I should have some assembly photos next week as I put the suspension back together.