New guy 70 Coyote Mustang build

[devojrx7]

I have been lurking for a long time and thought that I would finally introduce myself. My name is Jeff. I have a 70 Mustang Mach 1 that my wife inherited from her uncle. When we got this car about 8 years ago I was working as an aircraft mechanic at night on the weekends and going to college during the weekdays. My wife was in law school and working as a waitress. My original plan was to do a mostly stock rebuild on the car with the help of one of my Air Force buddies who restores Mustangs full time after retiring from the AF. My dream was to do a coyote swap and modern suspension and brakes, but due to the car's excellent condition and being completely numbers matching he had convinced me to not do anything that couldn't be easily returned to stock. He's a purist. This quashed my coyote dreams as they won't fit between the shock towers. I had dropped the car off at his house even though he had multiple cars in line before he could start on mine. I was so busy that I hadn't checked on my place in line for months. I decided to call him up one day and when he answered the phone he was obviously upset. He had been working on the car and calling a phone number that I had not used in years so I wasn't answering his calls. It never occurred to him to ask one of our mutual friends to contact me. He had finished all of the exterior body work and I owed him nearly $5000. When I dropped the car off we had discussed that he would take a $2000 deposit when he was ready to start and work until that money ran out and then I would be able to pay him weekly. I was not at all prepared to come up with almost $5000 all at once, and my wife was furious when I told her about it. I sold some of my stuff to get him paid, but since I didn't have the money to finish the car I had to come get it. I had planned to do the interior myself as well as some mild engine mods, disk brakes, and swap to a manual from the stock auto trans. In my limited free time I was able to get the interior stripped and pull all of the old factory AC equipment out, but when I got into med school all of the work stopped. The car has been siting in primer ever since. Now that I'm out of school and residency I have the time and resources to build the car the way I originally wanted.