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TITANIUM Motorsports "POS" Mustang Cobra Restoration Journal
#27: September 3rd, 2010 - Working on the Trunk Lid and Hinges...
I spent some time cleaning up the trunk lid and hinges. To begin with, I picked up a couple of body stands from Harbor Freight. The can hold up to 200LBS and cost just $20. When I placed the trunk lid on the stand, I could see the seam sealer on the inside of the lid was dry and cracking. I could flake it off with my finger nail. I took the time to remove it all and will replace it with new seam sealer later.
I disassembled all the electrical and mechanical system on the trunk lid. The electrical was in good shape except one license plate light lens was broken. On the mechanical side, the trunk lock cylinder was held in place with the wrong bolt.
Next I removed the rear spoiler. It is a real 'Cobra' spoiler, with special LED brake lights mounted in the spoiler, rather than a 'regular' light mounted in the trunk lid.
A little scuff pad and paint thinner removed the dirt under the spoiler mount. One of the mounting studs was stripped out of the spoiler. I mixed up some two-part epoxy to put it back in place.
My final job on the trunk lid was removing the emblems. It is obvious that the person who painted the car last did not remove the emblems first.



Before I could reinstall the trunk lid, I needed to clean up the hinges. They had several coats of paint on them and the base was coated in a special sealer, called 'ditch sealer'.
It is a special flowable sealer used to make a water-tight seal around the trunk opening and prevent water from getting in the hinge bolt holes and into the trunk.
There was about a quarter inch of sealer on the hinge base. I scraped off as much as possible then put the hinge and related hardware in the blasting cabinet for a thorough cleaning. After that, they got a coat of primer and were ready to be reinstalled on the car.
When installing the hinges, the trunk lid must also be installed. Once the ditch sealer gets applied to the hinges, no further adjustments can be made to the fitments of the trunk lid, so all the gaps around the lid must be set now. While these gaps may look pretty bad by today's standards, this is how they were back in 1994.



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Last Modified: April 1st, 2011.