1967 Mercury Cougar

[Huzer]

Traced the vacuum lines for the headlight doors this morning. Guy used vacuum for the crappy aftermarket gauges he added. I need to pull the gauges, get lines connected and see if my actuators for the doors work.

[RX-7 Chris]

About all that crappy aftermarket gauges do is screw things up and give you a false sense of security.

[Huzer]

Picked up a couple of things from Craigslist tonight. New rear interior panels to replace the ones with speaker holes in them, the chrome trim for the front of the hood, and a new passenger side headlight/grill assembly. Nice guy, lots of other parts and a decent '68 drag Cougar with a 351. That sucker is loud.

I'll work on the headlight to get it restored. It's straight, just needs to be cleaned up. I need to polish up the hood lip chrome, it's a little pitted, but not too bad. It'll definitely make the front end look more finished. The interior pieces aren't the right color. I'll either vinyl paint them or figure something else out. The plastic is in good shape.

[RX-7 Chris]

With the right prep you can make that paint look great. I'm sure your are companies that sell a paint to match the interior color you have. You could always replace them with the right color at a later date.

[Huzer]

The Cougar was trouble free on the longest drive I've took it on since I've had it, a whopping 22 miles each way. I was pretty happy with the drive, and event with my rough old beast, still garnered waves and thumbs up. Glad it fired right up in the parking lot when I was leaving the meet today, that would have been a little embarrassing had it not, but at least there would've been plenty of seasoned folks around to help me out.

Overall a good day. As we were leaving the house today to take my sister in law to the airport, she looked over at the Cougar and said "wow, that's such a pretty car". Now, time to get to work on the poor thing!

[Huzer]

So I doubled the longest drive in the Cougar. I drove it down to Shadow's place on Saturday, so a 100 mile round trip in mid 90 degree weather. No issues. It definitely helps bring into focus what I want out of the car. Comfort, a/c, modern seats, modern brakes, 5 speed swap, fuel injection, modern gauges, sound system. It won't happen overnight, but that's the ultimate goal, regardless of what cosmetic decisions I make. In other words, restomod. I want it to be comfortable enough that we can take it out as a family on a hot summer night and we can enjoy it. Oh, and power.

I've driven it a fair bit lately, so it really has helped solidify the direction I want to go. Call it a 10 year plan, ha!

[Shadowden]

Excellent! Get that interior comfortable and get the family out. The rest will happen quickly then!

It does have a great sound and is going to be a great base to work from.

[Huzer]

I'm getting closer to a final plan on what I want the Cougar to "be". I've decided to stick to the original color scheme, which is Jamaican yellow and Light parchment interior. While my car isn't anything special, and of course any combination of options can make your car 1 of 1, those too options alone make it one of 116 (of 150k Cougars made that year). Since I've been leaning towards a stock appearing Cougar, that helped solidify that decision. Bodywork is still a ways out, but I can pick up my wheels knowing what I'm moving towards. That means either stock Styled steel wheels (I like the '69 version with the dark grey painted spokes), or Magnum 500s, 15x7 all the way around.

A new time frame for most of the mechanical (most likely not the bodywork) is 3 years. We go back to NY every 2 years. We aren't going this summer, and next summer will be too soon. So in 3 years time, I'd like to consider it reliable and comfortable enough to go across country. That doesn't mean I will drive to NY, but I want it to be a potential option. It also gives me a date to shoot for.

Mechanically, nothing exotic. Mostly stock all the way around, except for some modern upgrades as mentioned in my prior post.

[Shadowden]

Good deal! That will be a lot of fun. Now that you have a general plan, you need to schedule the work out so you can make it happen and not hurry or worry about a project car "just sitting".

Let me know how I can help. I'm most adept at letting others do the work and handing them mostly correct tools.

[RX-7 Chris]

Sounds like a good plan.

[Huzer]

I'm getting closer to making even more decisions. I have decided that the engine will come from a '90s 302, transmission a T5. From what I've read online, the current 289 with the .060 overbore is basically "it" for what can be done to that engine. 30 over is the recommendation from Ford, so whatever rebuild was done, and when, is beyond what Ford recommends. I haven't tested compression or anything at this point, but knowing I plan on keeping the car a while, and that EFI is a goal, seems like the inexpensive route to go is find the more current engine and get that built.

Whatever I find, I'll keep the current car driveable, get the other bits rebuilt and prettied up before swapping them in. Given what the engine choice is, and costs are reasonable, I expect I may be able to get this piece done over the course of the winter.

[Huzer]

Did some rust inspection tonight. It's more solid than I thought. No rust in the cowl, it's really solid. Rockers are solid. The only bad rust is the floor pan (most likely a windshield leak, is my thought), and the spot welds on the inner fender. A lot of the bolts and nuts look like they'll need liberal use of PB Blaster.

[Dwduc]

I think a Boss 302 with a Hillborn mechanical injection setup is your best option, because ITBs just look so cool! And 8 intake bells sticking up through the hood would turn some heads!!

[Shadowden]

I too like ITBs. When we going to clean up them welds and patch the floor pan?

[Huzer]

I'll need to yank the carpet and sound deadening out so I can see just how much floor I need. Patch panels are quite cheap, i just haven't gotten up the nerve to pull the carpet yet.