1967 Mercury Cougar

[Huzer]

Got a few good pictures of the car this weekend. I hope someday it looks as good in person.

[Shadowden]

Nice lighting. Compliments the car well.

[chickenwafer]

Looks great!

[Huzer]

Installed the rear Konis in the Cougar yesterday. I went one full turn from full soft, just to see how it would feel. Unsurprisingly, the shocks made a huge difference. I had installed a metal divider panel between the rear seat and trunk area, so that had to come off to access the tops of the shocks. Overall, a really simple job. These will be easy to adjust as well. Just unbolt the bottom, and collapse to hit the adjustment point. The fronts aren't as easy, since the coils are in the way. I'd like to firm up the front a bit. I did find a bit of rust through in the trunk/wheel well area. I'm not terribly thrilled about that, but it is what it is. It rusted through at the seam.

Looking forward to a drive or two before winter sets in.

[Huzer]

Wheel rust through:

[Huzer]

Rear shocks are a little firm. I need to back them off a little bit and make them softer. Went for a decent ride today to enjoy the fall weather.

[Huzer]

Leaned out the carb a bit this morning. Runs much better, stinks less, too. Im looking forward to diving into some work on it this winter. The warm dry weather has extended its driving season. I've been driving it around, mostly on weekend errands. Even it's I don't redo the entire interior, I need seats, bad.

[Shadowden]

Thanks for the update. Were you planning to redo the stock seats?

[Huzer]

I'll hopefully replace them. Even refinished, they aren't the most comfortable things in the word. I've been looking at a few different buckets. The difficulty will be staying with the parchment colored interior if I go aftermarket.

[Huzer]

Just putting this here. Found a cool cutaway drawing for The Cougar to put in the garage.

[Shadowden]

When do you think you will start doing the patches?

[Huzer]

That I'm not sure. The starter just went out, so I have a starter on order. I picked up a non-OEM style that will be transferable to a new T5/302 setup, when I go that route in the future.

I also just picked up an electric headlight conversion for the hideaway doors. It'll eliminate having to deal with vacuum for the covers. I should be able to recoup about half of my cost for what I can sell the vacuum actuator setup for, even though they'll need to be rebuilt.

I've been researching interior options lately, too. I want to stay with parchment (off white), but it'll be difficult to do and not spend a ton of money. It's not as bad if I stay with original low-bucket seats, etc, but I wouldn't mind a more comfortable throne. Research continues. I have some vinyl samples coming and I'll most likely recover my rear interior panels myself, as I have replacement panels that are solid, just in different colors.

[Huzer]

I received my fabric samples today. The exact match vinyl is $65/yd. That would recover the rear panels. The middle of the seats is Comfort Weave, a perforated vinyl, which is quite pricey at $159/yd. That would easily do both seats. I don't know how to sew, so I'd have to find an upholstery shop. I'm pretty excited about the samples I received though. The person that pointed me to them works for a Cougar parts supply company, and the fabric place is also in Oregon. I'd guess that they would work together, so I may try that and see what the cost would be. I still need to figure out if I'd use stock style seats or aftermarket. Aftermarket, I'd have to bring everything to a local shop, I'm sure.

[Huzer]

More fun with old car. I drove the other day, and after parking, a single click trying to restart. I jumped it and got it in the garage. After poking around, the starter to solenoid cable rotted through (how I didn't notice this when I replaced the starter, I don't know), and the clamp on the postiive battery cable had snapped. Judging from the crack in the lead, it had been broken for a while and finally just fully fell apart.

Replaced the cables, and the old battery for good measure. Other than the starter solenoid on the firewall, everything in the charging system has now been replaced, and all of it is transferable to a new engine. With that accomplished, it's on to the front end.

[Huzer]

Starting the front end rebuild. Ordered a bunch of Moog steering components from Rock Auto. I decided against ordering a generic "kit" as so many that I found have a combination of cheap items combined with decent items. By getting what I want, I'll spend maybe $100 or so above what I could find in a preassembled kit.

I'll be going with some roller spring perches and UCAs/LCAs from OpenTracker, some 420lb springs (will end up being about the same height as it is now). Stock springs are 295lb, and I want it firmer, but not quite as firm as the Miata was, ha.

I'll also be adding shock tower reinforcement panels and welding those in. For further stiffening, I'll add the export shock tower brace, which is simply a triangulated brace. The stock setup is two separate pieces of metal that run to the firewall. I've inspected my towers now and they're solid, no cracks, and no holes drilled in them, which was common for greasing the control arm bushings.

Everything I'm putting in has rubber bushings. Once again, I'm not going for a track rat with the Cougar, so no poly for me.

My end goal is comfy cruiser that has a little more feel than a boat.