1965 Mustang

No, My 1965 Pink Mustang is NOT Listed for Sale in Florida!

December 28, 2009 By jonbenya 3 Comments

A special Thank you to everyone out there that called or emailed me regarding the apparent listing of my vehicle by a dealer located in Pompano Beach, Florida. For the record, this dealer took what he called a “stock photo” until he could get real pictures of the car up. I’m not going to get into the issue of him using a copyrighted photo as I am not the copyright holder on that particular image, but I did take issue with images of my car being used in an advertisement for sale.

I contacted the seller, the sites the car was listed on, and the FL Attny. General’s office. Thankfully, the photos of my car have been removed, and photos of a different car are now up.

My concern was that this may have been a situation where my was at risk of theft. It seems now that this was really a case of a dealer not thinking anyone would notice the wrong car being posted online. Either way, you can never be too careful in this day and age.

Link to conversation regarding listing on VMF

Filed Under: 1965 Mustang, Dusk Rose, Mustangs For Sale, My 1965 Playmate Convertible, Pink Mustang Colors, Playmate Pink Tagged With: 1965 Mustang, ford, mustang, pink mustang, Playmate Pink

Original 1965 “playmate pink” color

December 16, 2009 By jonbenya 4 Comments

Notice the original paint vs. the mis-colored respray

Here’s an image of what the original “playmate pink” on a ford mustang looked like. This photo was taken during the current dismantling and restoration of my 1965 convertible.

When I compare this original paint to 1957 Ford Thunderbird color charts from Ditzler, the color matches up perfectly to Ford’s Dusk Rose.

It’s my belief that the color on the early 1965/1966 “playmate pink” mustangs was in fact Ford Dusk Rose, but because it was not on any paint charts in the mid ’60′s, combined with the hype that came with the playboy giveaway, the “playmate pink” term has gained popularity in popular terminology and led to confusion as to what the original “pink” actually was on the early Mustangs.

Filed Under: 1965 Mustang, Dusk Rose, My 1965 Playmate Convertible, Pink Mustang Colors, Playmate Pink Tagged With: 1965, 1965 Mustang, 1965 mustang door, convertible mustang, Dusk Rose, ford, mustang, mustang cowl, mustang fenders, Mustang restoration, pink mustang, Playmate Pink

Building a Stable for the Pony

August 25, 2009 By jonbenya 2 Comments

The Pink Mustang Waiting for it's new garage

Having a love for old cars carries with it an inherent problem: Where do you keep them all? For the odd junker or parts car, indoor storage may not be a necessity, but for an antique that’s in decent shape it’s a different story altogether.
Unfortunately, I purchased the Mustang without a garage space waiting at home. I was simply out of space, and until I found more, I was forced to let the car sit in the driveway, tarped and rather neglected. The immense rush of self-guilt that came from not having a proper garage space for the old car served as excellent motivation, and within a week of purchasing the car I started construction on a new single car garage.

I priced out pre-built garages, and compared with what it would cost me to hire a couple guys and buy all the materials myself. As it turned out, the cost to have one delivered was with about $150 of what it would cost me to build it myself, but the delivered garage would have no windows and would be 60 square feet smaller than what I would build on my own. In addition, the flooring of the delivered garage would be lumber, whereas if I built it myself the slab would be concrete.

We poured a concrete slab instead of wood flooring

The construction itself was incredibly quick. It took about 6 hours to dig out the foundation and pour the concrete. We built a slight ramp into the slab at the garage door, and decided to go with a 9′wx7′h garage door which ran $138 from Lowes.

The framing for the garage took about 8 hours, and then another 8 hours was spent finishing out the roof and walls. For siding I decided to use a smart siding instead of T1-11. It was my first experience with the material and I can’t say enough good things about it. For starters, it was roughly $9 cheaper per sheet, it has a hard primed exterior surface, and it takes paint much better than t1-11 does. If you’re looking to build a cheap shed or garage, check that stuff out!

The garage walls went up fast!

Putting up a garage like this was remarkably easy. I didn’t purchase any construction plans, all the construction was done from memory, right down (or up) to the roof rafters. I still need to build parts shelves in the garage and put up some finishing trim, but as far as storing the car is concerned, the mustang has a pretty new garage to rest in, safe and sound!

Filed Under: 1965 Mustang, Mustang Garage, My 1965 Playmate Convertible, Pink Mustang Colors, Playmate Pink Tagged With: 1965 Ford Mustang, 1965 Mustang, Building a garage, Mustang Garage, pink mustang

The Mustang and the Manhole

August 8, 2009 By jonbenya 2 Comments

I have to give a big THANK YOU! to the guys over at the Brandywine MD fire house for helping me out with my mustang this afternoon! I was worried sick that I might have caused serious damage to the car, but they really saved the day!

You see, I went out to a cruise-in at the fire house this afternoon, and as I was parking the car at the show, I drove over a manhole cover that collapsed beneath the weight of the car!!! Apparently the welded steel tabs that hold the cover snapped, and the front end of the car sank into the hole! I immediately froze, terrified I had snapped the A-arm or wrecked the suspension, and imagine my shock when I stepped out of the car and found this!:

Of all the places for it to happen, I was lucky it was at the fire department! Aside from the hideous embarassment of it all, at least they had airbags on hand to lift the car and get it out without causing any damage! Believe it or not, I didn’t have any damage to the body panel or paint, and only a slight nick to the lower chrome trim. I did catch serious hell from the Chevy guys there, but I was just glad there was no serious damage! It could have been a whole lot worse, and the guys at the fire house did decide to put cones up around the manhole cover after the little run in with my car!

Filed Under: 1965 Mustang, Funny Mustang Comments, My 1965 Playmate Convertible Tagged With: 1965 Mustang, antique mustang, playmate pink mustang, vintage mustang accident

Paul McCartney at Fedex Field

August 3, 2009 By jonbenya Leave a Comment

Getting Ready for Paul McCartney!

You may or may not have been aware, but Sir Paul McCartney played at FedEx Field in Landover, MD Saturday Night. I went to see the show, and while the music was great, pretty much everything else was a train wreck. I drove the pink mustang out to the show because I was at the Mustang Mania V car show in Columbia, MD earlier in the day. I got to the stadium 2.5 hours before the show, and it’s a good thing I did!

The show started about 1 1/2 hours late due to traffic being completely abysmal, supposedly people were stuck for as long as 2 hours trying to get in to the stadium! It was fortunate that we had avoided getting there at the last minute, because I’m not sure the car would have been too happy with a 2 hour traffic jam to get into the show.

Once I was inside I found that the water stopped running in the bathrooms due to a blocked up pipe, supposedly they had it fixed 25 minutes before the start of the show, but the show started at 9pm, and I found the water had stopped at 7:25, so that’s at least an hour with no running water in the stadium. Hardly the picture of sanitary conditions.

Food concessions were almost as bad. After waiting for 20 minutes to get sodas, I found the credit machines had crashed (Cash only, folks!), the soda taps weren’t working, and they were waiting on the beer kegs to be changed out. Essentially it was $5 bottles of water or nothing! I spent $200 on tickets for the show, but the condition of the facilities certainly didn’t reflect it!

Paul McCartney Rocking FedEx Field!

The mass exodus at the end of the show was also a nightmare. I assumed I would wait until the rush died down so that I wouldn’t get caught in a heavy back-up with a 1965 mustang. I waited for nearly 1.5 hours and the traffic was still heavily congested! I took my chances, and ended up getting out of the complex about 2 hours after the show ended.

90,000 people go to FedEx Field for Redskins Games, but 50,000 concert goers was apparently overwhelming. Don’t forget that they charged a $10 parking fee per ticket, but you don’t get that money back if there’s more than one ticket holder in your car! Oh, there’s also more seats than parking spaces there, so they were essentially charging for a commodity that didn’t “technically” exist!

McCartney himself was awesome, 2.5 hours of great tunes from a legendary artist, but FedEx Field really short changed their patrons, IMHO. How do you charge $10 for parking 50,000 times if there’s only 22,001 seats? It should be illegal to charge money for a parking spot that

Isn’t used
Doesn’t actually exist!

I will say this much: If McCartney comes back in town, I hope he goes to another venue. I’d love to see him again, but there’s no way I’ll ever pay to see another concert at FedEx Field!

Filed Under: 1965 Mustang, My 1965 Playmate Convertible, Playmate Pink Tagged With: 1965 Mustang, Concert, FedEx Field, Landover, Macca, Maryland, MD, Mustang Mania V, Paul McCartney, pink mustang, Redskins, Redskins Stadium, Washington D.C.

Motorcraft 2100 Carburetor is finished!

July 29, 2009 By jonbenya 6 Comments

I’ve got the Carburetor finished, and it’s running great! As it turns out, the inlet valves were almost completely gummed up, which would probably be why the car was stalling out so badly, and the gaskets were pretty much falling apart. (10 years of storage will do that!)

I got an electric choke to replace the original, but I haven’t actually installed it because the vacumn pump seems to be working perfectly after the rebuild (My original suspicion was that the original choke was shot). I’m hanging onto the electric choke as a backup, and I’ve finished replacing the convertible top and interior, so I’ll post that good stuff in a bit!

Filed Under: 1965 Mustang, Autolite 2100, Carburetor, Mustang restoration, My 1965 Playmate Convertible Tagged With: 1965 Mustang, 1965 mustang convertible restoration, 2 barrel caburetor, autolite, Autolite 2100, Carburetor, motorcraft 2100

Restoring the Air Cleaner

July 9, 2009 By jonbenya 2 Comments

I have to admit, the air cleaner on my car was in rough shape. The paint had been re-sprayed once, and the paint job was poor at best. The paint was chipping away, exposing the original paint, and there was some severe overspray on both the box as well as the snorkel.

Strip it Baby!

The first task was to strip off all of the original paint, and see if here was any rust hiding underneath the original paint. To strip the paint, I went to Home Depot and asked for the most caustic paint stripper they had. It was a rather hot day when I stripped it, and even though I was working in the shade, the paint stripper was boiling as it hit the metal!

I was dismayed to see that there was rust hiding underneath the original paint, particularly in the divot for the distributor cap. The rust had just started to pit the metal at that point, but otherwise the box was in decent shape, so I decided to take the entire box, lid, and snorkel and brush them down with a heavy wire wheel to eliminate any trace of rust.

Painting The Cleaner

I repainted the cleaner back to it’s factory original colors: Gold Lid, Gold Box, and Black Snorkel. I ordered the paint from CJ Pony Parts (Don’t get me started on them again, let’s just say I recommend using another vendor). I ended up with 4 coats of paint on each part, with wet sanding between each coat. The finished product looks great, and I can’t wait to get them back on the car! My next project is getting the valve covers repainted, which I suspect is going to be an identical process to restoring the air cleaner (Albeit much faster!)

I’ll have photos of the Air Cleaner up this weekend.

Filed Under: 1965 Mustang, Air Intake, Mustang restoration, My 1965 Playmate Convertible Tagged With: 1965 Mustang, black snorkel, ford, gold air cleaner, mustang, mustang 289 v8, mustang air cleaner, Mustang restoration

1965 Mustang Data Plate Woes

July 8, 2009 By jonbenya 1 Comment

I took a trip up to CJ Pony Parts about 3 weeks ago to gather parts, paint, etc. for the mustang. Al told, I spent a little over $1,000 on the order, and included in that was a $35 restamped data door plate to replace the original. My original door plate had been sprayed over, and I wanted to make sure that the plate was clearly visible due to the rarity of the car.

New and Old Data Plate, Notice the different font and spacing (VIN has been partially blurred out)

Last week my new data plate came in the mail and for some reason the stamping style was completely different from the original. I know that different stamp styles were used based on point of origin, date produced, etc., but all that info is on the door plate, so there shouldn’t have been an error like this.

I called CJ and they told me that Marti Auto Works did their stamping, and I would need to get in touch with them. When I called Marti, they said they had no record of doing the work and needed the order number. What followed was a flurry of calls back and forth that went something like this:

Call to CJ: They gave me the order number, told me to call back Marti. (Spoke to Earl)

Call to Marti: They said the order number was incorrect, please have CJ give them a call to straighten this out. (Spoke to Christie)

Call to CJ: They gave me a different order number, told me I could just call Marti back myself. (Spoke to Earl)

Call to Marti: They still couldn’t find the order, they again told me CJ should be the one calling them since they placed the order, and could I please email them photos of the original and re-pop plates. (Spoke to Christie)

Call to CJ: Asked to speak with Jeremy (The guy who did my order 3 weeks ago), asked if he was sure that Marti did their plates. He checked and said it was someone else. I explained the situation again, and the run-around I’ve been getting, and he said I need to talk to customer service. I talked to customer service, they asked for photos of the plates to see how bad the error was, and I sent them.

Call from Marti: Christie calls me, says that she looked at the plates, and it was obvious that it was not something they did. I explained to her what CJ told me, apologized profusely for harassing them, and asked them to go ahead and re-pop the plate, since they weren’t at fault but actually took the time to help figure this out.

CJ Pony Parts doesn't seem to care about how shoddy their re-pops look!

This took up a good chunk of my day, and I felt terrible about pestering Marti when it wasn’t their fault. CJ Pony Parts managed to make me look like a real asshole for complaining about a mistake they didn’t make; Thanks CJ! They also couldn’t be bothered to apologize for the mis-stamp, or for pawning me off onto the wrong manufacturer. I really feel like CJ did a piss poor job here, and I’m fairly certain I learned my lesson. I’m not going to be buying my parts from CJ in the near future!

Marti said it was going to take a few weeks to get the plate stamped, which is fine with me. I highly recommend you consider Marti if you’re getting a plate restamped, because who knows what you’re going to get with CJ!

BTW: Marti charged me $10 less than CJ did!

Filed Under: 1965 Mustang, Data Plate, Mustang restoration, My 1965 Playmate Convertible Tagged With: 1965 Mustang, CJ Pony Parts, Data Plate, ford mustang, Marti Autoworks, mustang convertible, Mustang restoration, Playmate Pink

This 1965 carburetor needs help!

June 30, 2009 By jonbenya Leave a Comment

I bought my mustang as a running convertible. That doesn’t mean it ran WELL, it just ran. I have the receipts from the engine/carburetor rebuild, and mechanically speaking the car idles fine. Once I got the car home I found that the carburetor was not operating properly. It would start without hesitation, but the choke didn’t want to move.

The previous owner had compensated by setting the choke more than 90 degrees too rich. The problem is that at 30 mph, the car wants to stall out. Certainly not what I would consider a safe driver.

There is also a significant amount of carbon of the choke valve and a ton of rust on the spring coil. Not only that, but the choke piston is completely missing! The vacumn works just fine, but without the choke piston, that doesn’t matter too much!

I decided to completely disassemble the carburetor, clean the engine paint overspray, replace the gaskets, and dip every nut and bolt. The goal is to restore the carburetor to “new” condition. I scoured a mustang junkyard for a replacement piston, but in the end I’ve decided to replace the choke with an electric, rather than manual, choke. This should provide greater reliability, and although not “original”, it will be unseen beneath the air intake, so I’d be very surprised if anyone noticed.

I’ll post photos once I get the carburetor finished, in the meantime I’m planning on stripping and repainting the air intake and valve covers back to a high quality gold finish.

Filed Under: 1965 Mustang, Air Intake, Autolite 2100, Carburetor, Mustang restoration Tagged With: 1965 Mustang, 2100, autolite, Carburetor, choke piston, motorcraft

What The F@*# Did I Just Buy?!? Part 2

June 22, 2009 By jonbenya 5 Comments

My brother Thomas and I decided to make the trip up to Martinsburg, WVA to take a look at this car. We left straight from work, and 3 hours (and several winding backroads) later we had arrived. The owner uncovered the car, and we searched high and low for some indication of what the original paint color may have been We were almost hoping to find a trace of vintage burgundy or poppy red, something that would justify that this car was not originally pink.

As it turned out, the original paint did indeed seem to be pink. The gentleman was asking $11,500, and based on the shape of the car, the price certainly seemed fair. I had brought Thomas along with me to help me examine the car in detail, and get his instinct on it. There was a litle bit of bondo sitting in the drivers rear quarter (common), but the floor pans seemed fair, the engine ran and idled well, but the convertible top was pretty much shot.

The owner said that the top needed a new rear curtain, but closer inspection showed several small stress tears, and excessive rubbing on the interior. I was confident at this point that the car was genuine, but I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to get involved with a “chick’s car”. I thanked the owner and started the 3 hour drive home.

The owner informed me that he had 3 people coming the next day, and if I wanted it, I needed to make a move quickly. On the drive home, I started estimating the price of making it driveable:

Retuning, New Top, New Steeing Wheel, Paint Touch-up, New Trim, New Carpet, New Wheel Inserts, New Seat Belts, Rust Remediation, and a Power Steering Leak.

Overall, not a terrible list. Slightly expensive (The top alone would be $1,300), but most of the work I could do myself, so I just need the money for parts. Even after all of the work was done, I suspected that I could still come out ahead.

Rule #1 (For me, at least) is that I don’t get into a car project that I suspect I’m going to loose money on. Maintenance costs are one thing, but I don’t want to spend $30,000 on a classic car that I can’t break even on. I look at classics as an investment!

The numbers seemed to work on the car, so 9am the next morning I called the owner back and offered him $10,000. I explained that because of the surface rust pockets coming up I’m forced to do some decent preservation work, and the top is more or less shot (getting stuck in the rain with a topless car stinks).

He agreed to the price, and I dropped off a deposit check. I got back up there a week later, trailer in tow, and brought the mustang home. I stopped at a gas station on the way back, and ended up with a crowd of people around the car shocked to see the pink mustang on the trailer. Any car that can grab that sort of attention at 11pm is worth getting in my book!

Filed Under: 1965 Mustang, My 1965 Playmate Convertible, Pink Mustang Colors, Playmate Pink Tagged With: 1965 Mustang, 289 v8, antique cars, antique vehicles, convertible mustang, ford, ford mustang, mustang, pink mustang, Playmate Pink, sports cars

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