Understand I own a '63' and an '02 model.

Fist off, the '63' '64' models it was sparse on photos of the Production Models. A lot of Prototype Pix;s but lacking on the actual Production cars. The written info was good but could have gone further.

Then the 2001-7 info was also a little lax. I was hoping for actual production numbers regarding the '02' model. They had one page (the last page) dedicated to those numbers but it was broken down into a 2001 category and then skipped to the 2004 model... No mention or understanding of what happened between these years. Seems 53 models were made between '01' and '04' but it's not broken down as to how many per year.

Didn't anyone take a tally of what was made and when? Seems this would be common practice and actually essential to Us as Collectors.

I'm interested in Your feedback on the yearly production numbers and overall take on the Writings of this book..

After measuring for the basic size, I cut two 12” x 22” pieces of 1/4” Luan plywood to create templates since I knew there would be several hours trimming, test fitting until everything looked right.  Wanting them to be uniform in shape when joined together and being able to remove it if needed was another consideration. The Avanti front nose cap in front of the radiator has a lot of curves up and down, left and right that affected how level the piece would sit so test fitting and trimming was mandatory.  And of course, the finished piece had to look good.

While I was working on the final template layout, I order a sheet of 12” x 48”, 1/8” thick, epoxy based marine fiberglass off of eBay. The seller is a boat company who sells 1/8” – 1/2” thick panels cut to the buyers’ specs who I’ve used several times for flat panels. Here are a few photos of the process and the results. 

Thank you!

Eventually, I got the cover lowered enough that I did acheive about 1/2" clearance between the front of the cover and the hood when all the way shut.  Now the center of the cover was really cut down and didn't look good at all, and the notched section at the back side for the latch arm went completely through the back, eliminating all structural support.  As I looked at it, it occured to me that I needed to make a top cover section to attach all the way around the top, which would make the cover solid and strong and cover up the cut out center section.  I remembered that I had some 1/4" thick clear plexiglass, so I made a template and then made the top plate.  Next I got some small brackets that I had laying around and used 5 of them to screw the top plate in place.  ( I notched the plate for the hood latch arm before installing it) 

I decided to paint the cover to match the engine valve covers in red and semi gloss black.  During the process, I went to a local sign shop and had a couple of decals made for the cover in Silver and installed them. Then I added some pin stripe in silver where the red and black met.  Now at this stage, the cover was looking pretty good except you could see the cut out center section underneath the plexiglass top plate.  So I painted a 1" border around the top plate which covered that up, plus the mounting brackets.  NOW THIS IS GETTING PRETTY COOL!   

As I looked at the flat black intake manifold runners, it struck me that I could take some of the carbon fiber wrap that I had left over from the dash project and place 8 strips of it on the top surface of the intake manifold runners. And then I decided to add a couple of 1" tall strips along the bottom sides of the new intake cover.  (It's important to know that the angles of the carbon fiber pattern are a perfect match over all of the strips and side panels).  Now it was time to install the cover and MAN THIS LOOKS AWESOME to me and the wife!!  Here are some photos of the journey plus if you ever want to have the decals made locally, I have the VECTOR file that I can send you!

These are very common today and I purchased mine off Amazon.  For our 06-07 Avanti’s, we need 6 of these since there are 6 turn signal bulbs in the car.  Once you read about them or receive them, you’ll discover that they generate heat, enough so that you don’t want to zip tie or tape them to any other plastic part in the car.  In my case, I decide to make simple brackets out of 1/6” x 1” aluminum flat metal. For the front, rear and front side marker lights I purchased the Auxito bulb brand off Amazon since I like the bulb design and have used them before without any problems.  With the bulbs and resistors in hand, the next thing to do was to make up the brackets for the resistors.  The fronts were simple since you can use one of the bumper mounting bolts the extend inside the tire wheel well and simply add a nut to hold the bracket in place.  I used blue Loctite on the nuts to be sure they wouldn’t come loose.  The rear lights were a little more challenging since you want to stay off of the interior trim pieces / carpet and provide room for the resistors to get some “air”.  Once the bulbs and resistors were installed, the bright and crisp lights were now a welcome addition.

Once back home, I started doing research on electro magnets and found a company called APW Company who makes all kinds of permanent and electro magnets, so I ordered two EM100-12-122 1 ½” wide electro-magnets and two matching plates.  The magnet have a rating of about 70 pounds which means it takes 70 pounds of pressure to remove the plates from the magnet.  Next was to decide where and how to mount them.  I decided to mount the magnets next to the outer hood stops using a thick aluminum bracket that attaches to the hood stop threaded shaft.  The brackets will need some twisting and bending to meet the plates on the hood correctly.  (the hood is not parallel to the hood stops so the bracket has to be bent so there is full contact between the magnet and plate).  To wire the magnets up, I placed the ground lead on the screw that holds the magnet to the bracket, which is grounded to the metal inner fender.  For power, I went to the harness close to the ignition switch and tapped into the white wire with a yellow tracer.  I placed a 5 amp fuse inline with the power wire.  The electro-magnets draw about .4 amps each, so 2 of them would be under a 1 amp draw.

We then went to a car show, which was a 4 hour round trip and no matter what kind of bump in the road, the hood corners never moved at all.  The problem was now fixed!

One of the other issues with the hood latching is flex in the hood latch firewall section and as you continue to tighten down the hood, you are actually pulling the hood down in the middle.  With the 2 pieces of plastic trim under the wiper arms removed, you can grab that firewall piece of metal and move it back and forth with little effort. To correct this, I took a piece of aluminum metal and added a brace, which eliminated any flexing of the latch firewall. (picture 3) Lastly, I had already placed a hood stop close to the latch to hold the hood firmly in place when latched.  (picture 4).  The process I would use to do this again is to install the brace, install the hood stop, adjust the hood latch and stops and then install the magnets.  For our car, the latch brace, corner stop adjustments and electro magnets have eliminated all hood movement issues.

The modifications to the cars body started with our attending the Mustang Week event in Galveston Texas last April.  With hundreds of Mustangs there, I was able to see all of the things that could be done to our car and set out to do each one of them.  We got a lot of attention with our “Avanti Mustang” there and next year we are going to blow them away.  OK, I’m going to highlight our first 2 body mods and then move into our last, a custom-made lower rear valance.

First, I looked hard at radio options and selected the Kenwood DMX908S Touch Screen radio.  It has all the bells and whistles that I want, plus it has more power than the Shaker 500 radio.  Crutchfield Audio sells the Kenwood radio and a wiring kit that connects it to the Mustang stock wiring which allows the 4 car speakers and 2 door mounted subwoofers to work correctly.  I had previously replaced the 4 car speakers with JL Audio speakers which was a good upgrade and let me tell you that this radio upgrade is a HUGE improvement over the radio. 

Next, I had to decide what to do with the gauge appearance.  In doing research for options on the Mustang itself, I found US SPEEDO, a company that make gauge cluster panels for all cars.  After checking out all of the options, I selected the Stainless-Steel Panel.  I also felt that the dash panel that covers the dash was missing 3 trim rings that could go around the gauges.  Now I’ll tell you this was not an easy thing to find since there was almost nothing available.  But I finally found a company called GAFFRIG which makes gauge trim rings for all sorts of companies.  They did have the 4” ID gauge rings for the speedo/tach and the 3 3/8” ID rings for the center cluster.  They were polished aluminum with some kind of clear coating added.  The ring edges are pretty wide and once the speedo/tach rings were set in place, the center ring wouldn’t fit flush since it overlapped the other two so I decide to modify the edges in 2 places so it would fit correctly.  Lastly, the plastic coating on the rings looked dull next to the chrome A/C vents in the dash so I decide to sand off the coating, repolish the rings and then put on a heavy coat of car wax to seal them off.  They look like chrome now.  Attached are photos of the project and I hope you like it!

Mind you, I'm a little frustrated.

John Hull has been Helpful to a degree and I thank Him.  I have a 2002 and John told Me I owned 1 of 33 that year. I quickly photocopied that e-mail and put it in my Avanti File.

But what about further info ??

When You buy a Car and want specs showing rarity and limited production number on most any vehicle, the info is available... info like paint colors, (theres a thread right now on how many black 63-64 Avanti's were made) engine sizes and options, Hardtop vs Convertibles.(add t-tops in our case.). These and many other items play into finding out the rarity in numerical order of wether a car is rarer than the next of the same year. It plays into valuation.

If I buy a 67-69 Camaro . I want to know if it's an SS/RS  a Z-28, Convert or other, Do numbers match thruought  and so on. The same goes for these cars and they are FAR RARER  than any Camaro or Mustang..

The frustration Is We Have Little To Go On!  Y'all here have been VERY helpful but we're all left lacking.

Now I want to take you through the installation of the door speakers and subwoofer enhancements.  (I also replaced the rear panel speakers) For the subwoofers, you’ll need to get some speaker poly fill.  Poly fill placed loosely in the subwoofer “box” smooths out the low base sounds a lot and is definitely worth doing.  Now, the door panels need to come off and there are a lot of u-tube videos on how to do this on a 2006-7 Ford Mustang so I’ll skip that part. If you buy the speakers from Crutchfield, they will send easy to read instructions on how to replace the front and back speakers.

Picture 1 below shows the new speakers and the grille.  The base of the grille goes between the speaker and the factory speaker mount, then the speaker is attached with screws through the grille base.  To start with, you have to remove the factory speaker mounts off the door.  Each mount has a marking that says left/right and Top to help you when reinstalling. 

Picture 2 shows the factory speaker mount with a Dremel tool next to it and the 4 places that the “ears” need to be removed from the mount.  I use the Dremel tool, you can use whatever works for you, you just have to remove the 4 ears and leave a level surface for the speaker grill base to mount.

Picture 3 shows the “ears” removed and the grille base.

Picture 4 shows the speaker mount reinstalled on the door.  Note that the speaker lead wire is installed between the mount and the door body.  You have to do it this way in order to connect it to the speaker and car wiring harness.

Picture 5 shows the speaker grille base and speaker mounted to the factory speaker mount.

Picture 6 shows the speaker grille installed.

Picture 7 shows the back of the door panel with the subwoofer panel removed and the poly fill laid into the sound channel.  The panel, which is above it, is also recessed but you don’t want to fill it.  The poly fill isn’t supposed to be packed in the area, just loosely set in, so doing half of the area is sufficient.

Picture 8 shows the other door panel and the red silicon adhesive that I used to seal off the subwoofer channel from the rest of the door panel. 

Picture 9 shows the subwoofer panel reinstalled.

Picture 10 shows the ½” x ½” foam gasket that I used to fill in the area between the speaker grille and the door panel.  What I didn’t show was that the door panel had an extra plastic edge there that I removed where the gasket is now.  I was afraid it would hit the speaker grille so I pulled the leather back and trimmed it off and reglued the leather back around it. 

Picture 11 shows the door panel on and the foam gasket.

Picture 12 shows the completed job and the sound is absolutely great.  The subwoofer sound is much louder, smoother and the speaker sound is much better than stock. Sitting in the car, I can’t really see the yellow color because of the grille which is good also.  Hope you liked this!

Would love to hear some thoughts.

I'm interested in it but leery of 21 year old new car and dont know if price is fair.

I bought a new 90 4 dr in 92, had no issues.

My 2006 engine looked pretty plain, so I decide to upgrade the appearance by painting the valve covers.  There are some aftermarket valve covers available, but for the money, you end up with "Ford" or "Ford Racing" made into the cover.  So, I spent less that $100 to paint the covers to match the car color, including a new gasket set.  Here are before and after photos:

Time to make a change.  I took a scribe and traced out the hood hinge where it sat on the fiberglass nose cap.  Next I laid out some blankets on the windshield and fenders and removed the hood by removing the 4 nuts off the lower hood hinge bolts.  I left the hinge attached to the hood so as to not change any adjustment pertaining to that part.  My wife and I picked up the hood and slide it back about a foot.  With the hood hinge area now exposed, I got out my Dremel and Die Grinder and cut out the fiberglass area that I had traced out.  Once done, we set the hood back in place, bolted it down and took a look at how it fit and operated.  

The hood now sits almost flush along the fenders and headlight area.  But when opening and closing the hood, you can see the hinge flex some where it attaches to the sheet metal core support brace.  Well of course it does, this Ford Mustang radiator core support brace was never intended to support a hood hinge!  So, I cut two 12" long, 1 1/2" wide, 3/16" steel pieces of steel that I had laying around, drilled 1 hole in the center of the metal and placed them under the braces so that when you installed the front hinge nut, it would stiffen the support brace.  

Test # 2, problem resolved.  Now the hood sits much closer to where it should, it opens and closes well and there isn't any movement in the hinge mount.

I'm happy and finished up the job with some seam sealer around the area I cut out.  Picture #1 is before, 2-4 after.

In looking at the hood, it's obvious that it is bowed downward in the center, from the front to the back.  This means that you will never get all the gaps around the edges to where they are all flush, yet you can get the sides really close to flush with the fenders and the back side by the latch.  

To tackle this, the first thing that I did was to add a bump stop right next to the latch area.  I had an adjustable one from a vehicle that I had, so I modified it as necessary and installed it as shown.  I temporarily loosened the latch and set the hood up correctly using the 3 bump stops that were now along the back side of the hood.  Lastly, I set the latch to where it would lock the hood in place where there was even pressure on all 3 bump stops.  The center bump stop will prevent any more "bowing" of the back side of the hood and help stabilize it.