I bought this Mustang GT new in 1983 in Toms River NJ. The car came with a 302 HO which was equipped with a Holley 600 cfm four barrel. Factory horsepower at that time was I believe, 175. Pretty good for those days! Performance cars were just starting to make a comeback in the showrooms. The transmission was 5 speed manual.  The car arrived from Dearborn painted a dark charcoal gray with a black interior. After moving to Phoenix, AZ and using the car as my daily driver, the harsh Phoenix sun had taken it's toll on the paint. Oh yeah, and a little incident where my Mustangs front end attempted to occupy the same space at the same time as a CJ-5 Jeep resulting in some reshaped body panels. What better time for new paint? I found a front fascia from an 85 Mustang to replaced the tore up original unit.  What came as a surprise to me was this, after looking through all of the pictures I've shot over the years, I couldn't find one picture of the engine!  When I rebuilt the mill around 1986 I did a good job on it. New forged pistons, decent cam, headers, Edelbrock intake, roller rockers and a set of 351 Windsor heads!  I had also replaced the entire front and rear suspension with everything Ford had in their SVO catalog at the time, springs, bushings, sway bars, etc. The car ran real good but was severely limited by traction. The one time I tried a full boogie run out of the hole I shattered the rear. Check out the one picture that has what I pulled out of the housing when I got it home! The car ran 15.0's at the track, but would stop the speed clocks in the 95-98 mph range. It had the power to run quicker ET's, if I would have upgraded the rear. 

Here's two pictures right before the car was ready for paint. This was the first paint job I did where I didn't use acrylic lacquer. I decided to move with the times and use the then relatively new Dupont Base Coat Clear Coat acrylic urethane. The car really held it's shine even after a couple more years of Arizona sun.

Here's two pictures after she was all put back together.

Oh yeah, and the results of popping that clutch a little too aggressively! Shims, spacers, spider gears.......