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Unhinged: Wasps, Mustangs, And The Honey-Do List


Unhinged: Wasps, Mustangs, And The Honey-Do List

(“Unhinged” is a new column on BangShift, where McTaggart puts all of his opinions out on the table for everyone to see.)

The morning of the Fifth of July, I awoke to a sugar-induced hangover. The ringing of my ears from such delights as “One Bad Mother”, “Freedom Candle” and the type that are just wrapped in brown paper and come with a steel tube was still clear as a bell, and I could feel each and every tiny burn from a notable incident of the night (when my father-in-law said, “Aw, that one’s a dud!” right when I realized that a mortar round only went just above my head and was gonna blow). All in all it felt like freedom, just when freedom needed an aspirin or two.

Next to me on the nightstand was a small honey-do list. I don’t normally get a list at all, and for that I’m grateful, so when the occasional one shows up I try to get stuff done…hey, “happy wife, happy life” is a mantra to live by. It makes my shenanigans much easier to live with in her eyes. And the list had three items:

  1. Clean up the fireworks leftovers from the yard.
  2. I could either wash dishes from last night, -or- I could actually get her Mustang running and driving by the end of the day.

Yeah, forget the dishes.

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Here’s the story on her Mustang: It’s an ’80 Ghia with the weird little 4.2 V8. Even though it’s got some rough edges (cough-TOP! -cough) and the color is pure Seventies, it is a clean little beast and for an early Fox, it’s actually pretty tight. It drives well and the motor runs decent enough. It ain’t gonna scare anyone on race day, but it’s a cool little commuter and it has working A/C, something even the Imperial doesn’t have. The problem started last summer, when we swapped in a 4.10-equipped rear in place of the 2.21 rear for a little kick in the ass. 4.10s in a car with 400-500hp is an awesome ride. In a car that might, on a good day, swing 120 hp, it only means that I could do killer burnouts and …that’s about it. The car had a top speed of 68mph, and that was at about 3700rpm. Thus, after the swap, the car had been pretty much parked. In April, I had dropped the 4.10 rear out, but had left the car on jackstands. As I walked outside in my mechanic’s clothes (old black t-shirt, shredded jeans and sandals) I sighed. You see the blacktop in those pics? Yeah, that shit gets hot. Beats gravel, but barely.

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First thing’s first: popped the hood and checked the battery. Except that when I opened the hood I pissed off every mud dauber that had made a nest under there. The largest nest, one about the size of my fist behind the passenger-side headlights, had at least ten of the bastards on it. After doing the 100-meter dash away from the car, I came back armed: first with wasp killer spray to drive them off, then with a high-pressure garden hose to get rid of the nests. After all that was done, I learned that the battery was absolutely flat and would have to be replaced.

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Dawdling no longer, I rolled under the car on my creeper and found ANOTHER nest, on the upper control arm, plus a red wasp nest under the bumper cover. I decided to take out the mud daubers and just sprayed the red wasp nest for the time being. After fighting to set the pumpkin of the axle on the jack for twenty minutes, I got the control arms and shocks bolted in rather easily (new hardware and an impact wrench helped a little…) I got the brake lines hooked to the wheel cylinders and was making great headway until I tried to screw the lines into the brake block, where the main hydraulic line junctions at the top of the axle. The line had dry-rotted and the threads on the block were fragged. Frantic calling to the store got me a line, and by luck they had a battery ready too, so a quick trip back to my former employer got all of the parts I needed.

Once back from my quick break, I got the rest of it snugged up and done. Then I met my match. I’m not good with drum brakes…hell, I’m not good with anything that has the words “spring-loaded” in the phrasing. I attempted to get the emergency brake cable and ended up pulling the wrong spring out, and watched in frustration as half of the brake assembly fell to the ground. Muttering the kinds of things that would frighten Hunter S. Thompson, I tried piecing things together. At one point I had three needle-nosed Vice Grips holding the spring back on the brake cable while trying to create a fourth joint in my right forefinger so I could push the cable’s knot into the catch of the brake lever. I got it together in about an hour, and learned my lesson for the other side, which only took forty-five minutes. Stop laughing.

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Once the drums were on and the brakes were bled out, I was ready to drop the car off the stands and test-drive it. I had the wheels back on, lugs torqued, and the car lifted off of the stands…and noticed that with everything else I had to do, I forgot to hook up the driveline. More annoyed words, but five minutes worth of work.

Driving it with the correct gears in it: Better. While I liked that the car would chirp the 1-2 and 2-3 shift and would haze tires like none other, I was a one-trick piece that I couldn’t drive without worry. Now, at least, I can cruise the damn thing and we can get some use out of it. Which will come in handy once I start ripping into the Imperial.

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I’m sure they’ll be back as well.


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4 thoughts on “Unhinged: Wasps, Mustangs, And The Honey-Do List

  1. Matt Cramer

    So… did you put back in the 2.21 gears, or go to a somewhat more reasonable compromise between the two?

  2. catchmeblue70

    The original 2.21 was put back in for now. I’d eventually like a better/more powerful engine with the 4.10, but that would require a different transmission as well, which means more $$$. There’s a reason I haven’t done much with it in a while 🙁

  3. Whelk

    Lot’s of room for a turbo! I think if I found wasps, I’d have just gone back and washed the dishes. Let winter handle the bugs.

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