There’s a New Golden Wrench

FordMuscle is happy to announce the second official FordMuscle Tech Exchange “Golden Wrench”. Day Scovel (aka dazecars) of Kalispell, Montana submitted 6 Tech Exchange articles in less than 10 days to earn $100 and some FordMuscle swag. Many of you may know Day from his helpful posts in the FordMuscle Galaxie forums. Day deserves a high five from all FordMuscle members and staff for his contributions to the Tech Exchange program. Day also wins honorable mention for having the most aggressive tread on a ’62 Galaxie… we can tell his Ford muscle is well suited for his environment! There’s no hiding that his cars get driven.

The FordMuscle staff emphasizes that any member that takes the time to document and submit valuable step-by-step techincal photos is someone to be appreciated. Thanks Day for your Tech Exchange efforts.

Here’s a list of dazecar’s contributions:

Out With the Old Clock and in With the Non-Stock
Non-Damaging Ball Joint Removal Tool
Homemade Sub-frame Connectors
How to Change a Bolt Pattern
Improving Caster While Rebuilding UCAs
Dropping Upper Control Arms

We asked Day to share a bit about himself and his passion for classic Fords.

I fell in love with classic cars when I was just a kid. Every time I saw one, I knew that I had to own one especially the cars from the 60’s. My first car of choice was a 1963 Corvette with the split tail window and a 427 under the hood. Upon further investigation, $20,000 for a non-running shell of a Corvette that still needed a complete drivetrain and a full restoration, was not quite in my budget. I turned my focus to a car with similar lines, just as much class, and one tenth of the price, the Ford Mustang. I bought my first Mustang, a 1964-1/2, in April of 2000. I acquired my second Mustang, a 1966 coupe, when I married my wife in June of 2001. She came with the car; I mean the car came with her. Both mustangs were our daily drivers and just after we got married, my wife and I decided to start a family. In August of 2001, I bought a 1962 4-door Galaxie 500 to provide us with a much-needed family car.

When I bought my first Mustang my automotive knowledge was just the basics. I could change the oil, fuel pump, water pump, spark plugs, and other such routine maintenance. My automotive knowledge rapidly increased as I jumped in and started working on my 64.5. I was lucky and had the benefit of a mentor, Scott Meyers. He had been working on cars his whole life and he helped me rebuild a 289 for the car and get the Mustang drivable. From there I made it my goal to learn everything I could about classic fords. I have spent the last 8 years attaining that goal. My knowledge has come from reading and doing. I have a huge bookshelf full of automotive books, I have spent countless hours online reading articles and forums, and as much time as I could find in the garage trying new things. I taught myself to weld, use a metal lathe, and do rebuilds on more complicated things like the T5 current in my Galaxie. The way I see it, it takes two things to work on a classic car, experience and guidance. Experience a person can get by getting their hands dirty and trying to do it themselves, guidance is what is needed when the experience is not adequate for the task. As my knowledge base has grown my projects have become more ambitious with current things in the works being a home built coil-over front suspension and retrofitting a Jaguar IRS unit in to my 64.5 Mustang.

Living in MT, which has lots of mountain roads, I have developed a love for driving fast on ever changing pavement. This has fueled a desire to understand all the complexities of suspension. If there was one area that others may consider me an “expert” in it would be suspension. Especially on the Mustang and the vast majority of my web pages is dedicated to suspension.

I believe in the “pay it forward” concept and in an attempt to do just that I have mentored a local high school kid as I was once mentored. Also I started my web page www.dazecars.com in October of 2004. Early pages were simple basic tips and info on my projects with later pages tackling such topics as roller spring perches, adjustable strut rods, and the process of my Jaguar IRS install just to name a few of the many articles on the site. All are about DIY (doing it yourself). My how to pages have also transformed in to a part time business. My full time job is to be a stay at home dad, but when my daughter is in school I have time to work in the garage and I make and sell some of the product shown on my web pages. This is done primarily as a continuation of my desire to help others with this hobby. Most of my customers are those that do not have the tools, skills, or simply the time to make some of these things them selves. It has also given me the benefit of being able to more easily fund my projects.

If there is one thing I would like to see in this hobby is more people helping each other. Restoring a classic Ford is something where guidance is needed and each of us have been helped by some one else in the past: parent, friend, or some one we have only met through the Internet. If we would all remember that and dedicate some of our time to helping those just getting in the hobby than more people will be ably to enjoy what the car restoration world has to offer.

Some pictures of Day’s Fords and current projects.