The result was that everything works again. Might try that drive again tomorrow.
The blurry picture is of me tightening the ground to the engine block. It’s a lot easier now that I have my own lift.
Very cool! I like your solution to the screw interfering with the window works. Alternator gut swap seems like a great option as well!
The brush trick is a cool one.
Did you have the AZ guys test the rebuilt alternator before you took it home?
Well it turned out that Auto Zone didn’t have one. So I bought the reman from O’Reilly. I didn’t think about having it tested while I was there. That would have been a good idea. In any case it works in the car.
With the bad alternator issue taken care of today was another gorgeous day here. I filled the gas tank with “No Ethanol” 91 octane and headed to Charlie’s house which is about 20 miles on surface streets with a little highway in the middle. The highway was bad as a line of just filled gravel trucks blasted by me at maybe 80 MPH spilling water and gravel as they flew by. I was going the speed limit which is 65.
No fluids leaking and the engine stayed cool. The starter is getting noisy again. Might have to install an NOS starter Bendix to fix it.
I really hope after that ‘experience’ on the highway, complete with gravel and water hazards, that the Cougar is unscathed.
I would have been seething. There are 1440 minutes in a day, and the one minute that those trucks and you would happen to coincide on that same stretch of highway is a 0.069 % chance occurrence. God must be a GM man.
Looks nice Royce! Sorry to hear about that encounter with the gravel trucks - hopefully no damage.
The stuff from the gravel trucks was scary but looks like it just got the car dirty with all that water mixed with sand.
Today I started masking the car off to paint the pin stripes. The factory used a template with a power paint roller, I am not that good so I use a special pin striper’s tape with 3/8" tape over each panel joint.
I would have thought you’d freehand those Royce.
Cool! I was looking in to those stencils and considering DIY as well. But in the end, there was a well known “guy” in the area who did it by hand and it came out great. Not a skill set you can find everywhere. I’m curious to see how this works, I’m sure it’ll be spot on.
The factory used a similar tape stencil. My goal is to replicate what they did. It’s repeatable and relatively easy although time consuming.
These pics are from Wednesday night. Didn’t have time to post them due to holiday plans.
For paint we are deviating from what the factory used. Originally Augusta Green cars had white pin stripes. We are using the Sheffield Silver color from the lower body so everything matches. Product is Akzo Nobel mixed 2:1 (paint to reducer) and with a teaspoon of hardener added. I could have used a small touch up gun but I like the convenience of using the throwaway Preval sprayers.
I masked off the entire car and also the other cars in the garage. The area to get pin stripes was wiped down with wax and grease remover. Then it was shot.
I let it dry through the holidays. Yesterday I peeled the tape and then had to use clay bar and polishing compound to remove a couple of stray paint areas. Then had to mask an area and spray a touch up on one stripe. It turned out pretty good.
The reproduction kick panels don’t have any speaker holes. Because this car has the optional AM 8 Track stereo it had to have them if you are going to hear the stereo. With that in mind I clamped an original on the back side of the passenger panel and proceeded to drill 1000 holes.
Then clamped it on the driver side and drilled 1000 more holes. I drilled the missing one on the top row after seeing this photo.
Wow those holes are Really straight!!!
Nice!
The hard part is maintaining your attention when drilling this many holes in one sitting. I drilled 1/2 the holes on the passenger side a couple months ago with a cordless drill. Yesterday I thought about using the ARO drill because it is so much lighter. Big improvement.