I bought my first Mustang on March 16th 1996. It is a somewhat rare car, in that it was a special order paint car. It was originally Orange with a black interior. It was fully loaded too, 289 2 bbl; C-4 auto trans.; Full length lower console; power disc brakes; power steering; Air conditioning. It was originally sold by Beverly Hills Ford, And the DOs is for Los Angeles. It was built in the San Jose Plant, now known as the Great Mall of the Bay Area. When I got it  the car was thrashed and the paint was a fading and peeling red. All the chrome was shot, the front end not in the greatest shape, headlight buckets were garbage as were the reproduction fenders on it. The previous owner had installed 3.55 gears with Trac-Loc in the original 8 inch rearend. The motor had a newly acquired Edlebrock manifold and Holley carb combo and Heddmen headers. The motor would get hot in city driving. I suspected a blown head gasket, and that wasn't that big of a deal. I say that because my friend who had the 67 had recently wrecked his first 67. We were going out to lunch one day after school, and were approaching the intersection of Bollinger Road. and Johnson Ave. We were making a left hand turn, the turn was unprotected, as straight through traffic also had the green light. We were sitting there waiting to turn and a new Dodge Ram came barreling through the intersection at about 50 Mph. We were stopped. He drove up and over the drivers side fender. and crumpled the whole front-end. The shock towers just collapsed. The motor had been in the car one month and had 800 miles on it. It was a shame because the car was just about done. His parents understood that it wasn't his fault regardless of what the insurance said (they deemed it his fault for not yielding- what a bunch of crap). He got to upgrade to a 67 GTA. His new motor was now going to waste with out a home. So he offered to sell it for $300 with no heads and I said cool sounds good. While tearing apart the Front-end and pulling out the motor, we discovered some more serious problems. The lower edges of the inner fenders ahead of the shock towers were gone, eaten away by rust, also was most of the battery tray. The underside of the hood was gone, right along the leading edge under where the letters would go on a 65-67.   My Dad wasn't pleased especially since we had brought home the car without him knowing (Sorry Dad). He was pissed, but realized all he could do was go get some coveralls and help us (me and my brother) with it. I think he wasn't too mad because this was the sort of thing he would have wanted do when he was young. We got some sheets of steel and worked worked on those inner fenders for days, pop riveting most of it (quit laughing there's more on this later). We fixed the battery tray, none of it was too pretty, but it worked and once I painted everything in the engine compartment gloss black you couldn't really see the repairs. Certainly this car would never be a show car without major surgery and that was not what we had in mind. My brother dubbed this car the Red Racer. This was despite the fact that I wanted to paint it dark blue or the original orange once I found out how rare it was. I was pretty sure I wanted a car that handled well, so I followed some of the ragzine's articles for good handling. I bought a 1 1/8 inch front sway bar and some 620 coils. Along with a monte carlo bar and an export brace. I didn't know much of anything about cars, so I ignored the fact that the shocks were dead. These might have been the original shocks, they were red and had a ford part number :-(. We then started working on the motor, we pulled the heads off the 289 that came out of it, I had them rebuilt at Peniman And Richard's here in San Jose. We used these on my new motor.
The basic combo was:

• 302 .030 over
• 84 block, 67 crank and assorted rods (I didn't know that till I tore it apart in the summer of 98 more later)
• Edelbrock performer cam (204/214@.050  448/472 lift)
• stock 68 289 heads
• Edelbrock performer manifold
• Holley 600
• Heddmen headers

    We got it together, along with a new radiator, stock water pump, no emissions components. I later learned that for 68 289 auto trans cars, Ford had included IMCO smog equipment. A dual diaphragm distributor (long gone) and improved combustion chambers in the heads. Cool, no smog junk taking up space in my engine compartment. We got it running, and I got to take it for my first drive. It ran like a raped ape, or so I thought at the time. It revved well to about 4 grand and that was it. the bald 70 series 14 inch tires on it didn't have much traction, I loved doing smoky burnouts. The ride was awful though, I couldn't figure out why. I figured it had to be the rear leaves, I had some so I installed them. it didn't help at all. The real culprit was the shocks, even though my Dad proclaimed them to be fine (they would compress and not come back). I got it running around July of 96 and drove the wheels off of it till I started having problems with the transmission. This becomes a recurring theme you will soon see. The  first time we had problems with my transmission, we took it to Peninsula Transmissions in Santa Clara. They declared it would have to be rebuilt. I also had bought a shift kit to use in the transmission for added durability. Well, after gladfully taking my $750, they gave me car back. The tranny was good, for a week. The band adjustment bolt had loosened and fell out. Back it went, Pete at Peninsula was a nice guy, and he immediately said hey no problem, its our fault and the fixed the tranny again. This time it held up for a little longer, a month. On September 25 we were taking it back to Peninsula and getting on the on-ramp to Central expressway in Sunnyvale when it happened.

The Accident

    I was on the on-ramp to Central Expressway from Wolfe Road when it happened, a little Indian lady in a Geo Metro went to the end of the on-ramp and stopped. The car on the expressway was at least a quarter mile away. The lady behind her in a late 80's Thunderbird slammed on her brakes, and came to a stop after barely tapping the Geo, I had looked in my mirror to make sure I could safely merge onto the expressway and when I looked in front of me, both cars were stopped. I  slammed on my brakes, and plowed into the back of the Thunderbird at about 25 MPH, My father was behind me in our family's Volvo, he came to a stop with his bumper underneath my rear bumper. I had tried to swerve out of the way, onto the shoulder but I didn't quite make it. It was an offset crash, my drivers side front to her passenger's side rear.  I was tore up about it, The hood, valence, bumper, front fender, and headlight bucket were smashed. Not only that but now I had a smashed up car that wasn't driveable either because of the tranny. My father was very supportive of the whole car project from then on. He had seen I had worked hard on it, and now I was screwed, especially since any logical person can tell you in that situation I wasn't at fault. He gave me two choices, I could either spend that estimated 2 grand on the sheet metal that I needed and get it painted or we could look for another car to start working on that would make a better base for the future (solid body and paint). The running gear was not important, as long as it was a factory 8 cylinder car.

Onto part 2.