Taillights

	The gaskets on my taillights were no good anymore and the bezels shot, so I decided to work on them a bit.
	With new lenses, bezel and gaskets, the only parts I did not get new were the housings.
	Should have....
	No way to get the housing to shine, but I figured with some aluminum foil it might work better. I made some templates to cut the pieces and glued them into place with a little bit of spray glue.
	I wanted to know if this helps reflecting the light better, so I waited until it was dark and took this picture. One side had a housing with the aluminum foil and the other without. The bezels are not mounted here. If you guessed the left taillight to be modded, then the fix seems to work.
	Here is the same shot with the brightness overall cranked up a notch. I think the result is worth the hour I spent fudging with aluminum foil.
	Check.

Gas cap

	My gas cap showed some signs of wear, so I polished it and touched up the lettering and the logo.
	Her is the outcome.
	I painted the letters generously (after I polished everything) and then wiped excess paint off with a paper towel. Worked like a charm. The ring is tough, you have to wipe away from the center, otherwise all the paint gets picked up.
	The stripes were relatively easy.

Rear suspension

	The first 'bigger one' this year. I got lots of new toys. For the suspension mainly: 4.5 mid-eye leaf springs with PU bushings, new shocks all around and 620 lb coil spring with a 1" drop. Here is the car jacked up with the axle supported.
	In addition to the rear suspension, I also had the front suspension and a discbrake conversion on my agenda. I started with the rear. This job seemed the easiest and it also gave me some time to scout my a local junkyards for a Granada as my disc brake donor.
	I just started on the leaf springs. Generally not a tough job, but the bolts are a pain to get out. The same goes for the rubber bushings that were mounted to the springs I got. I ordered seperate PU bushings, so the rubber ones had to come out.
	Searching the Internet, I learned about the trick to wedge a screwdriver into the gap where the leafspring-eye wraps around. This made it a piece of cake to take the old bushings out and to insert the new ones.
	If you are lucky, your leafsprings' mounting bolt will not be rusted to the (hardened) inner steel sleeve of the bushings. In this case they come out easily. With my Mustang, noy so much. There are different schools of thought as to how to remove the leafsprings in those cases. Some people used a torch, some a sawzall, some even a hacksaw. I did not try any of those approaches, but opted for a cutting wheel instead - it worked great. Two things to remember: I tried first with a cordless angle grinder and this job is a bit too much for battery power. Secondly, you need a cutting wheel larger than 4" diameter in order to get into the mounting bracket and to reach the bolt completely. With a line power angle grinder and a 7" cutting wheel, the job takes no more than 25 minutes per leaf.