First let me say very sorry for your loss Gry. I know exactly how you feel.
The car looks fantastic. I hope you’ll continue to keep us up to date.
Gry, Im sorry to hear that about your father, Cancer is a horrible thing and took my father as well. My heart goes out to you. In regards to your car, It sure looks fantastic, well done!
Just read the whole thread, fantastic car and attention to detail. The bar has been raised indeed. Sorry to hear about your dad, may he rest in peace.
First of all, thank you my friends for the comforting words regarding my dad. It means a lot to me.
This weekend I had some time to play with my Cougar again and got a few things done. First of all, I got the restored G-mirror back on the car. It feels good to put back on parts that makes the car look like a XR7-G again. I have also installed the door seals and door bumpers. Now I need to readjust the doors because of the added weight since I installed them and also because the seals adds a little pressure outwards so they don’t line up as nice as they did before. When that is done the front fender can be put on, which will make a huge difference on how the car looks. 
The original roof console from my car was in no good condition so I bought another one that is as good as they get without paying too much money for it. Since it was originally white I decided to dye it dark red. One thing I have noticed with the vinyl dye I have been using for the dark red is that the paint is a bit too glossy. To make it look more like it was supposed to I sprayed a thin coat of the dark red metallic interior paint on the top, and that made a huge difference.
Then I decided to get the new seals for the front splash shields installed. I bought a set of rubber seals from WCCC http://www2.cougarpartscatalog.com/67splashseals.html and according to the description the rear seals should be spot on while the front seals would only somewhat fit with modification. Well, after working with the mustang/ cougar seal kit I have to say that I totally disagree with WCCC on their description as the rear seal does not fit good at all and it is not a spot on to the original Cougar seal. In fact I disliked it so much that I decided to make my own seals. Luckily I had a little left over correct material similar to the original from an earlier restoration that I could use, as I kind of disliked the rubber they use for the new reproduction seals. Rubber is thin, and it smells Made In China!
Here is a picture showing Mustang vs Cougar rear seals. Installing the Mustang seal upside down does not help much as the profile will not match the Cougar seal no matter what you do. Someone needs to make correct seals for our cars, and until that is done these reproductions should not be described as much else than useless.
After a little work this is how they turned out with my home made seals.
Last week when I was done with the vinyl roof I pre-installed the sun roof mechanism to see if everything was OK, and if not to find out if there was something I needed. When I bought the car the sun roof did not work because the flexible drive cable was missing. Back then I was unable to find one so to make the lid functional I put in a newer motor and drive that comes from a 70’s BMW or something. Today WCCC have those in stock so I ordered one from then to get my original system back in the car. Sunroof Flexible Drive Cable - Repro ~ 1967 - 1968 Mercury Cougar ( 1967 Mercury Cougar, 1968 Mercury Cougar ) at West Coast Classic Cougar :: The Definitive 1967 - 1973 Mercury Cougar Parts Source When I installed the original gear system I instantly noticed that the gear that drives the sun roof cables was missing. Somehow the gear fell off and it is lost and nowhere to be found. No problem I thought, and removed the gear from the newer system, tried it on the original drive and it did not fit. That’s when I knew I was in serious trouble 
as I assumed these would be next to impossible to find. So I tried to search WCCC web site, but had no luck. Then I searched eBay, and wow, John Bennoit has a NOS gear there for sale for $100. Unfortunately money is a little tight at the moment (and I am also a little cheap 
) so I decided to figure out something else. That’s when I remembered that I actually had a spare sun roof buried in my mothers garden. Back in 1981 I had a Opel Coupe with a factory sun roof. The car was extremely rusty, but the sun roof option was rare so we saved the sun roof. Years went by and the place where the sun roof rested ended up as a place where my parents put their garden waste, of course with the roof laying under everything. Today I decided to go there and dig out that old roof if there was anything left, and if so if the gear was there if it could be the same. It was a dirty job and it took me about an hour to dig that roof out of the dirt pile with good help from my nephew. 
As expected the roof was incredibly rusty after 31 years in the nature. The sun roof lid had to be removed using a crow bar, but believe it or not all the screws I had to loosen to open the tracks and sun roof drive came off easily and inside there I found the gear I was looking for. It did look like it might be correct, but I could not say for sure before I had it installed. 20 minutes later I was just a big smile, the gear was 100% correct.
That for sure made my day and experiences like this makes the hobby so much more fun. 
Gry, all I can say is that the gods are doing more than smiling on you. I think they might actually be trying to hit on you!
Thanks for sharing the progress Gry, and I’m sorry to hear about your Dad. No doubt he’d be proud of the way you are tackling this project.
Gry very sorry to hear about your Dad.
Great to see you back to work on the G. Fantastic find on the sunroof gear too!! Those are the reasons I never throw any old car parts away. I know I might need them someday. As always excellent work!! 
Gry awesome story on remembering about the old sunroof and being able to use the gear for you Cougar. Your car is a “work of art”! 
Sorry to hear about you father.
Steven
Gry, I echo everyone elses thoughts…thoughts with you along with a LOT of admiration! Excellent work documentation!!
cheers,
Thank you everyone for the nice words. This week has been kind of busy, but I managed to make some progress anyway by working late evenings. One of the things I needed to do was to restore the console. It looked fairly good when I bought the car, but like the rest of the interior it had been redone in incorrect red-brownish vinyl. Unfortunately the upholstery guy that did the upholstery work back then probably had a great deal on contact glue and used a lot of it, and it turned out to be next to impossible to separate the vinyl from the console padding. I had to cut it off with a sharp knife blade, and even if I did my best, the padding ended up getting damaged and in bad shape after I had the vinyl and the glue removed.
When I finally had everything apart I discovered that the upper console plastic part had lots of cracks and the only good way I know to fix this is to use epoxy glue and to put thin aluminum pieces to support the broken areas.
After a couple evenings the upper console plastic was solid again and I could go on withe the padding. The padding on the G console is very dense and I decided to try to fill some of the imperfections with sikaflex, whcih is a rubber like polyurethane sealant. Then on the top of the old padding I put a 3 mm foam to make the surface as even as possible. I knew this would not look exactly like the original when finished, but I just could not come up with a better way to do it.
The upholstery shop that did the seats for my car also made the leather cover for the console, so now it was time to fit it and to scratch my head and find out how to proceed.
I ended up spraying the console and the leather with DAP Weldwood landau top and trim spray grade contact cement and waited for 5 minutes or so before I started to put the leather on. After stretching, cutting forming and pulling it looks like this. Not bad I think, but as I assumed, it has a little more stuffed look than the original. I also made some minor repair work on the console base and gave it a couple coats of new paint. The rear lens has been replaced, and as you can see I also redid the lid for the console compartment and the pull straps for the doors in the same nice leather. Oh, and I also put new burl wood decals into the trim and the switch on the console.
Now I have one problem left to solve. The console well liner or glove box insert is missing. I thought that would be a small problem as it looked like these were reproduced, http://www2.cougarpartscatalog.com/gwell.html Unfortunately the person that made these are old and ill, and from what I have heard it is not likely that he will make any more of these. So if you know where I can find one I would for sure appreciate your help. Even one that is damaged would be useful as a pattern to have one made.
Very nice work, exceptional quality.
All I can say right now is “WOW!” What a beautiful job you are doing on this car! I did start to realize though as I scrolled through the text and pictures that we Cougar owners / restorers are a different breed no matter where we live! I was thinking we might be a bunch of freaks, but…well…OK…we might be!!!
BEAUTIFUL G CAR GRY!!!
Gry, great work as always. I got mine from Mustang Unlimited some years ago and I see they don’t have any left ether. In the next year, I will be reproducing the “G” console, and since this part is not being made anymore, it is a possibility to make this as well. I hope you find one soon, if not, maybe I could whip one up for you in the next year, if you can wait that long.
Here is a question for those who have “G” cars, What color was the well liner for the console? I have only seen these parts in grey.
I believe they all were gray. It is unlikely they spent time and money to do more than one version of those hidden parts? Btw, if you are going to make reproduction G consoles, why not start with making the well liner It is unlikely that I will be able to find this part elsewhere so write me up on your list of takers for the repro well liner.
No problem Gry, I will probably start on these in the spring of 2013. The same one was used on the Shelby Mustang as well. In regards to the console.
Just wanted to say hi and nice work! I’m just about to start the process of restoring a G myself. I spent a crap load of money for an almost prefect G console since mine was gone. The price we pay for our toys I guess. Keep us up to date on your progress when you can. Cheers, Chris.
Now that the console had been restored it was time to pay some attention to the shifter handle. The one that was in my car when I bought it was worn and also the chrome had small pits. I sanded it down and painted it once, but I was not happy with the result and sanded it down again. Then I also became aware of that the Cougar emblem insert should have been gold, not silver like mine. I assume the original handle had been replaced with one from a 70 Eliminator so I did not want to spend more time on it, as it would never be correct for my car anyway. Then I just had to look at the WCCC parts catalog once again and I ended up buying one of their reproduction handles.
Javier at WCCC warned me that the wood on the reproduction handle was a little lighter in color that the original, but I figured I could do something to change that.
A couple of days ago I got my box with parts from the WCCC Black Friday sale, and I picked up the XR7-G handle and unfortunately I did not like what I saw. 
The color was the least problem with this one. It looks like it is made of a different wood, maybe oak? It does not look like walnut to me. (I might be wrong on this one) What I found to be more of a problem was that it was poorly made, the holes in the wood had been drilled out of center so they did not align with the chrome and were mounted a little slanted, the shape of the wood is not correct and finally because the wood is not centered and drilled right the black plastic knob that goes in the handle does not move freely and get stuck in the inner position. The last can be fixed, but the rest is not fixable. On more thing that I noticed is that the chrome part on the reproduction handle has been grind and polished so hard that it is rounded where it should have sharp edges. I might be picky and this might sound worse than it is, it is still a nice handle for someone, but it is not something I would like to use on an original G. 
Many years ago I bought a NOS wood shifter handle at a swap meet that I planned to use on my 1967 Mercury S-55 convertible. Fortunately I ended up using the original chrome handle for that car and I had almost forgotten that I had the extra wood handle here. I pulled it out of my closet and inspected it. It was a perfect walnut wood handle and totally identical to the one that were original for my car except for that there was no Cougar emblem. So I decided to turn this handle into a G-handle. First step on my plan was to find a good way to remove the emblem from the new handle. I assumed it was glued in there, and usually glue gets softer with heat. So I heated up the reproduction handle and the emblem fell out by itself. This gave me mixed feelings, it scared me a little that it came out that easy, but on the other hand I was happy too 
Here is a picture showing the 3 different handles. The light wood color on the reproduction does not show as good on the picture as it does in real life
I decided to use a sharp hobby knife to carve out the wood hole for the emblem in the NOS handle. To do this I needed a sharp knife, a steady hand and lots of patience, but the result is pretty good.
Finally I glued in the Cougar emblem(using a good quality glue) and there it was. In my opinion this is a much nicer handle that the reproduction. The only thing that makes me feel a little bad about the result is the price I ended up paying for that little gold cougar emblem. 
Nice work! I agree, and though I realize the parts we are talking about here are for a one off car and year, the fact they charge so much the quality should really be a lot better. Probably farming out to off shore suppliers. I deal with overseas suppliers all the time and would like to know where this stuff is coming from as I could probably get it all shipped to port for like 50cents. The markup on this stuff is ridiculous.
Well, this certainly saved me some money, as I was on the fence about getting one. That’s a lot of cash for the lack of quality