1967 Ford Mustang Coupe to Fastback Conversion - Coupe-To- Fastback Conversion

If you're lucky, the panels will separate after grinding. Most likely, you will need to use a combination of chisels, an air hammer, pliers, and cursing to pull apart the panels.

Oftentimes, you can just bust the spot welds apart with a little persuasion from the air hammer. Here, Inman showed the decklid mounting brackets who's in charge.

One more method we've heard about but have never tried is using a torch to cut spot welds. Fire it up and hold the cutting tip directly at the face of the spot weld. When it glows cherry red, push the cutting lever and blast out the weld. Use a narrow flame, and theoretically, it should work.

Here's a cool trick the guys at Recon showed us. In really confined areas, you will sometimes need to cut away sections of a panel to get to the spot welds, like where the quarter-panel meets the wheelhouse. These two panels are spot-welded together at the wheel lip, and that can be an awkward place to get a drill into. So Aguayo cut pleats into the remaining sections of the quarter-panel and peeled them back individually. This worked better than just trying to peel off the whole thing in one big section. Because sheetmetal is strongest where bends and body lines are stamped into it, the wheel arch is the strongest section of the quarter-panel. The force required to pull it away in one piece may have damaged the wheelhouse behind it.

With the quarter-panel peeled away, Aguayo was able to break the spot welds up with the air hammer.

No matter which method you use to remove the spot welds, there will always be some remnant of the weld left behind. Grind those sections flat with 36- or 40-grit discs on an angle grinder, or use a flap disc on an electric grinder.

Using air hammers to take cars apart will cause some damage to the chassis-bent flanges and stuff like that. Here, Inman used a body hammer and railroad dolly to straighten the framerail flange edge under the Mustang's floorpan. A new floor will be welded to it soon. This is also a good time to run a grinder across the edges of all the panels. It's hard to weld to a rusty panel, and you don't want to trap rust behind your new sheetmetal.

At the end of the first day, this is what was left of our coupe. The guys at Recon cut off all the coupe stuff and sandblasted the chassis. Because it was nearly 11 p.m., Aguayo held a pair of shop lights while Villarroel sprayed the bare chassis with primer.

Buy It Or Build It?
Admittedly, this is a huge job that may well be outside the scope of what the average guy would want to attempt in his garage. If that's the case, you can buy a complete shell from Recon for $9,500. The company builds '65 to '68 Mustangs in either fastbacks or convertibles. The bodies are delivered just as you see in this picture. That is a bargain considering each body comes with a title in addition to all-new sheetmetal. You won't have the hassles of registering the car as a re-body or a new car, which is subject to your state's emissions laws. Recon does more than Mustangs, too. You can send Recon any American muscle car, and the crew will recondition it for you.

Next month, you'll also see how they transformed this worthless, rolled-over '65 coupe into a convertible. You won't want to miss it.