After patiently waiting, it finally my time to get my Mustang Mach 1 into the paint and body shop. In preparation I had Ron from Auto Weave Upholstery (whom I highly recommend for anyone needing upholstery work) carefully begin the interior removal process.
He will be carefully cleaning and redyeing all the original interior panels back to a like new condition, as well as replacing the seat foam in all the seats since it had deteriorated after 51 years.
With the interior removed, you can see the original floor boards, underlayment pieces, etc. We had intended to strip the underlayments out and have the interior painted with the car. However, after seeing the remarkable shape of the underlayments I decided to simply leave it alone. We will only be replacing the trunk/backseat transition and the full width trunk gas tank underlayments. All the rest will remain original.
One of the interesting facts we found, because of its late build date many of the body panels had already been stamped as 1970 pieces. Shown below is the part number and date stamp on the original floor boards.
So I realize that may be hard to read because it’s actually stamped from the other side. So below is the same photo rotated, flipped and cropped so you can more easily read the stamping.
So now you can clearly see the date stamp, June 14, and the part number of D0ZB-63. The first character designates the decade. C would have been the code for the 1960s and D would designate the 1970s. The second character designates the year in the decade. So the code D0 would designate it as intended for a 1970. If it had been earlier in the model year run it would have begun with C9 for 1969.
Likewise, with the remnants of the headliner removed we can see the overall condition of the roof panel and the supporting structures. Here again we can see the date codes for each individual piece.
Next Step: Drivetrain Removal