Greetings,

We've bought a project car, well actually 4 of them. But the one I'm tackling first is my favorite, a 1968 XL fastback. The remaining 3 cars are all 2-door 1966 fastbacks. One of those being an XL as well. They are all truly basket cases and none of them ran ( I love a challenge), either they were delivered or we picked them up with a car trailer and hauled them home.

It'll be an interesting journey. Here's a pic of the '68.

As you exit out of the 1960's and enter the 1970's the styling isn't all that and a bag of chips for big American cars. But the 1968 has more sentimental reasons to me. My very first car I owned (Junior in High School) was a beat up rusty '68 galaxie 500 fastback.

It wasn't anything special, it was the bottom line version, no accessories, little 302, no A/C and black interior and a black vinyl roof. In the summer I roasted in it... It's all I could afford and I didn't know anything about cars, but even back in the early 90's it still had that old car cool thing, and that grew into an interest for me.

Had I bought a little Honda (no offense to Honda owners) or something, probably would have not taken the interest in the car hobby as much. As I learned to work on it and many other old American tanks that proceeded it, I gained experience and after college eventually wound up working in the automotive world as a testing engineer and then design engineer.

So I owe a lot to that old '68 Ford, as it started me off in the car hobby and ultimately my career, sadly it didn't last long, the frame corrosion was so intense the rear axle starting ripping free.

I've always wanted the XL version (love the hide-a-way headlights), fully loaded, and free to make modifications to make one really nice daily driver out of it and be proud to take it to the car shows on Friday nights.

OK I promised myself I wouldn't prattle on, so I'll make another post of the process of dismantling it for a body off frame restoration. Time to crack on...

I did have some fascination driving it around the neighborhood for a while, but it's such a basket-case, anything over 50 MPH and it's a scary ride. Feels like your driving a jellyfish.

The body is a "bondo bucket" and the frame needs the side rails replaced (rusted through), shocker there right, haha. It was a Colorado car all of it's life and surprisingly one owner only, they gave me the original '68 title from Ford, the little postcard one, along with a newer letter sized current one.

Most of the pics I have so far are from earlier this year. I hope to have the rest posted as to where I am right now with it.

I found some pictures finally of all three project '66's together. At the start of winter all three were wrapped up and stored away, but we decided to break out the reddish one (or what's left of the red paint) and not quite fully do a body off frame re-do (I only have enough space to do one body off frame redo and the '68 needs the most work) but we'll do everything else to get it R&R'd so we can at least enjoy one of the '66's for now.

Neeeeeeway, here's the 3 Amigos

The reason why we have 4 of them was it started out as my partner wanted a '66. She loves that body style. So why spend thousands on a "lightly restored" one when chances are you'll have to go through everything anyway to make it reliable for a daily driver. So we opted for the much cheaper "field finds". The red one was originally the one for her, the blue car in the middle was meant to be the "parts car" as they were sitting together in the Indian Reservation. Well, being desert cars, the blue one is too incredibly solid and everything is there except for the engine block and heads (trunk was full of all the other bits) to use as a parts car. So both of them are going to be redone as daily drivers.

But then I found a similar condition '68 XL. This was the car I was pining for. And so it had bucket seats and the floor shifter. Well my beloved after seeing the bucket seats and floor shifter also wanted that for a '66 model. And so we found another '66 galaxie XL, the one sitting on the right end of the picture.

And that's how we ended up with 4 of them.

Soooooo, whilst we save up for countless new parts, I'm currently either building or collecting the necessary tools to make the restoration and modifications to all 4. Such as the portable different size paint booths, electrolysis baths and high temp oven for welding cast iron parts as well as other bits.

In order to realistically finish these cars before the sun goes nova and ends up a black dwarf, haha, I literally have to set up a kind of assembly line. Thankfully the 1966 and 1968 full size models share many similar parts.

The good news is almost ready to start.

Cheers!

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