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3.0 Liter V6 Vulcan engine, automatic transmission. My parents bought it used in 2002, and gave it to me in August 2008. The wheels in the pictures are my summer wheels off a third generation Taurus (96-99). Over the past few years I've been doing my own body work in the driveway trying to keep the rust away. I think I'm getting pretty good at it. I've actually gotten some compliments from mechanics saying the body was in suprisingly good shape considering Nova Scotia uses a lot of salt on the roads. Gotta love undercoating =3


As you can already see, I planned to get a little fancy and used green painters tape to help me paint a straight line across the door bottoms, fender bottoms, and rocker panels. I used a wire wheel attachment on a power drill to grind away the rust anywhere on the car I was going to work on. Then on the rocker panels I used Bondo to help fill in a few factory holes. I sanded down the rocker panels and door bottoms so it was nice and smooth before I sprayed the coats of primer on. Then I sprayed the silver Tremclad and clearcoat Tremclad on before I took the tape off. With each coat of anything I sprayed, I raised the tape line a tiny bit so that every paint edge would be covered by the next layer. After a while I decided to spray over the clearcoat with rubberized rocker guard. It was black anyway, but it kinda defeated the purpose of using the clearcoat on the rocker panels, but at least it's more durable for winter xD.


This fender was hit and run a couple times. I took off the plastic molding and grinded away all the rust before applying coat after coat of primer, silver Tremclad, rubberized rocker guard, more silver Tremclad, and clearcoat Tremclad. After all that was done, I used some double-sided automotive tape to glue the molding back on.


You can probably tell where I had to do a little work at the top of the fender next to the hood. When I pushed the dents back out again, there was some chipped paint. I grinded the chips back a little, and used some glazing putty again to smooth it out again before I went over it with primer, paint, and clearcoat.


The NASCAR licence plate adds about 200 horsepower xD




Underneath the fender lips are where rust likes to collect. I used glazing putty to smooth out the edges of the factory paint where it stopped at the point where I grinded away the rust. If I didn't do that, it would have left a very noticible seem and the paint probably wouldn't have stuck well. Hopefully I've done a good enough job on it that it lasts more than one winter unlike last year.






If you look into the back seat, you can see probably half a dozen coffee cups. I used to collect them and leave them in the car just to make people's faces twist out of shape when they saw em. When I got rid of them, I had 275 of them xD

My Girlfriend had this exact same car before her new one. Except her's was dark red.

3.8 the car hauled a** though, it had only 70,000 on it, was driven through wall and still drove without problems for months. The only reason she sold it was because she wanted a newer car.

How the hell did that car get ploughed through a wall?! A greater question is how on earth did it survive? xD

I've been laying underneath my Sable for the past few days doing work to it. I'm pretty happy with the work I did last fall. The main rust spots were around the factory holes in the rocker panels. It started to rust around the edges and chip away the rockerguard and paint. No biggie though. The real problem for getting it through another safety inspection in a year and a half is the back of the left rocker panel. Where it meets the front of the left rear wheel well, it's started to rot through, and there's a couple of dime sized holes in the bottom of the rocker panel around the same area...so now I'm waiting for the insulating foam to dry before I spray it with a ton of rocker guard and stuff so it looks like metal, and maybe I can squeeze one more safety out of it =P

I just parked my Sable for probably the last time when I got home yesterday morning (July 25th). After I got it back from my mechanic a week or two ago, they gave me a nice big long list of front end parts that it needs which came to about 800 dollars in parts, and another 700 in labor...not worth it. So now I'm lookin' for a new car and getting my dad to drive me to and from the base every few days if I need to leave. Not getting rid of my Sable though. I filled the tank on my way home to protect the top of the gas tank from rotting from the inside out (full tanks helps keep moisture out of the gas tank) and I'm gonna look into getting the parts I need to do the work myself.

We've got a radiator from a 1993 Taurus wagon that we used to have that we'd replaced at some point. Sure enough though in 1994 Ford in their infinite wisdom decided to modify the radiator just enough that the radiator mounts are in a different position, but we're gonna try to adapt it anyway. Shouldn't be that hard. Might save about 300 bucks if I keep tinkering with it. Most of the other work involves front ball joints, tie-rods, wheel barrings, rotors, and brake pads.

I found a video or two on youtube of guys replacing wheel barrings and decided that if I replace the wheel barring, I may as well do pads and rotors too. Ball joints and tie-rod might be a bit of a job though...

Mostly I wanna keep it to tinker and learn on, but might like to put it back on the road again in a few years if I can get most of the work done myself. And what can I say. It's my first car. I love it.