Thanks Bob, I do need some luck here, been waiting for this body and paint work for a bit now and I miss DRIVING this car. I envy you
Well today I started out the morning trying to remove the trim on the rear wheel well lip mouldings, drive side got all of them off except one and passenger side could only get 2 off, and all the other screw heads are stripped. So off to the hardware store for an extractor kit and I wasnāt able to get a couple of them to budge so it was time to move on. These screw heads are to hard to even drill them out, any suggestions/what am I doing wrong?
Moved onto to removing the rear taillights and fuel door from the car. Got all these pieces off and taken apart. Next I tried out my bench buffer on the red plastic fuel door lens to start since I plan to replace this since there are chipped pieces missing on the corners and give this a test run. After a minute or so she turned out like thisā¦
Anyone knows who sell these reproduction fuel door lenses besides AutoKrafters? I emailed them and this part is on back order for another 45 days. Iām looking to order one of these asap.
I decided to try out my Mothers power cone to polish the taillight lenses instead of the bench buffer. I figured my bench buffer would be a little heavy duty and aggressive and I donāt have the confidence in polishing these with a guarantee they will not get damaged. So I went at them with my cordless drill which is variable speed and seems like a harmless alternative. I started with cleaning the grease and grime areas with lacquer thinner, next washed them with a bucket of soapy water, hit them with cut polish first, then plastic polish and finally a quick coat of car wax.
I only spent about 15 minutes with the polish process, mainly to test the waters to see if this method would work and it seems like it does without harming the plastic. This is how it turned outā¦
Tomorrow I will start the polishing process on the piece at stage 1 again and spend a bit more time and effort this time than I did today in an attempt to get a bit more of a shine out of them.
Well spent 2 hours today and finished on the taillight lens I started briefly yesterday. I think it turned out okay, there are still a couple little imperfections in the lens but then again these are the original taillight lenses to the car and are good shape for being over 40 years old. I spent about 70% of my time using cut polish, 20% with the lens polish and 10% for a thin coat of wax.
Time to move onto taking the front grille and headlight assembley apart. Havent touched these parts in 4 years when I first took the car apart .
Rear side of the car is mostly stripped of trim parts. Iāll hold off on taking the bumper off as shelve space is limited these days with all the car parts that are torn apart right now. The original chrome is in great shape but Iām thinking of still having the bumper re-chromed to freshen it up.
Also tore down the front headlight assembly. I took about 50 pictures during this process so I should be okay during re-assembly lol. Doesnāt hurt to take a lot of photos.
Overall my original front grilles are in decent shape thatās speaking for the front exposed vertical chrome strips. Has anyone had these pieces re-chromed before to make them perfect? And if so, how much? Iām thinking itās best to strip the black paint off, polish the chrome and finally hit them with SEM trim black and do the thumb on a rag dipped in lacquer thinner trick to expose the chrome edge like others have done to restore their grilles. They wonāt turn out perfect but Iām thinking it would be at least $500 to have re-chromed and I could spend that money on other parts. Any thoughts?
Some questions. Are the grille mounting brackets and headlight adjusting rings painted underhood black? What color is the centre shaft rod and headlight cover hinge spring supposed to be painted? Does anyone reproduce the headlamp anchor spring?
Pulled out my reproduction 15 inch chrome style steel wheels tonight from storage. Havenāt looked at these in 4 years when I first purchased them but I dusted them off and placed my lug nuts and cougar centre caps on top to check them out.
Going to wrap these rims in reproduction good year polyglass tires. Where is the best place to purchase these tires from online?
Also sandblasting exterior parts and picking up new parts and hardware this week. Looks like this weekend is going to be a busy one. So much on the go right now.
I sandblasted a bunch of parts at my buddies shop today. They turned out nice and nothing is rusted out which is great. Now its time to hit them quickly with fine grit sand paper and smooth them out before paint. Got lots of stuff to sand and paint this weekend.
I was surprised at how nice sand blasting the rubber pieces turned out. Cleaned them up nicely and it didnāt hurt the rubber at all. I plan to carefully mask this rubber off prior to painting but these pieces should turn out really nicely after paint.
K thanks for the heads up. I will paint the back side detail grey and paint the inside of the turn signal housings gloss white for better reflectivity.
Should these pieces shown below for the side marker lights be painted detail grey as well? For some reason I have two āRF TOPā pieces with identical part numbers, not sure if thatās correct or not???
Ahhh, I will have to track down a used left hand one.
Started painting a bunch of misc parts related to the exterior trim over the weekend. Doesnāt sound like a lot of work to just paint a part but each part takes time and thereās a lot of trim and exterior related parts on the go right now so it kept me pretty busy painting over the weekend.
Painted the backside of the taillight housing semi-gloss back and decided to paint front side gloss white instead of the factory silver color in order to achieve a brighter shine than factory when the taillights light up. There was a thread on MC.net that had pictures of the different combinations of taillight housings painted silver, gloss white and reflective film tape.
My reproduction 1970 Mercury Cougar taillights from WCCC arrived and I went and picked them up after work tonight. Gave them a quick dust off and they look really nice. Canāt wait until my shipment of new hardware from AMK arrives to assemble these units together.
Also my NOS drive side front sport lamp lens arrived as well. Itās in excellent shape, justs needs a good cleaning and I will hit it with plastic lens polish this weekend to sparkle it up a bit. Iām hoping to find a NOS passenger side one!
Tried cleaning up an extra sport lamp lens today to see how this method would work out before trying it on my original passenger side lens which I will ultimately use on the car if I canāt track down another NOS lens. This is how it looked after a quick bathā¦
Had some paint overspray on it. Next, wet sanded the lens with 1500 grit for 10 minutes by hand and it turned out like thisā¦
Next, used my cordless drill and a mothers powerball and hit it with fine cut polish for 10 minutes then with lens polish for 5 minutes and it turned out like thisā¦
Looks a lot better with minimum effort but itās not sparkling. Might repeat the process later down the road again but spending more time with the cut polish and Iāll see how it turns out. I compared it to the NOS piece and the NOS piece definitely sparkles more than the freshly polished pieced. NOS is on the left and my original is on the rightā¦
Also decided to freshen up the silver paint area so I masked it off and hit it with some Ford Argent. It turned out great even though you will never see this but what the hey.
Next, I moved onto cleaning up the wiring that attaches to the front headlights. They had a bunch of paint and grime all over them. I used a rag and lacquer thinner for the heavy areas of paint and fast orange hand cleaner for the remainder. This took about two hours to detail both of these.
Final project for the day was polishing the front wiper arms and wiper blades. I purchased a set of original stainless Trico wiper blade assembly through a club member locally (thanks a lot Kim!).
I decided I wanted the wiper arms and blades to shine as much as possible so I started to sand and polish them to a sparkle. Started sanding process first (1000, 1200 and 1500 grits), then onto the buffer and hit it with stainless compound and then ended the process with a white rouge compound for a final polish. Hereās how one of the wiper blades turned outā¦
Next I removed my original wiper arm from the car. I used this little tool I got from NPD. Never done this before (did watch a couple videos on YouTube) but each side came off in about 10 seconds. The little tool sure did the trick and made it simple.
I repeated the same sanding and buffing process and this is how she turned out with new replacement rubber wiper blades installed. I donāt think they were as shiney as this when the cars left the factory but they sure do sparkle.
I ordered the new replacement rubber wiper blades from WCCC that work with the original style wiper blade assembly and they were very simple to install. http://www2.cougarpartscatalog.com/100022725.html
Thanks! Wiper arms did turn out minty. I had to take another picture of them today in the sunlight. Thereās a couple little hard to reach areas that the big buffer couldnāt get into so I still have to hit those areas with some dremel buffing bits. Iām going to see if I can pick up a kit of just dremel buffing pieces and compounds tomorrow and finish off these wiper arms so I can wrap them up in newspaper and put them away in storage until final assembly.
Also brought outside a taillight bezel. Dahm does she shine nicely out in direct sunlight.
Also detailed my license plate light assembly. It supposed to be cadmium plated but I decided to paint it ford argent instead. Also detailed the wiring pigtail to clean it up.
Next worked on applying the black painted sections (SEM Trim Black) to the fuel door top and bottom chrome trim pieces. I first carefully masked off the trim right at the interface between finished chrome and the painted black section and let this sit for an hour. When I came back and peeled the masking tape off, a bit of the paint went with the tape. So I wiped the entire part down with lacquer thinner and started this process over again but this time moved the masking tape back a quarter inch from where I want the interface to be, re-painted the part again, let it sit out for an hour, then peeled the tape. This is how that turned outā¦
Next I used the old rag with a bit of lacquer thinner and the tip of my finger to carefully wipe away the excess black paint back to where I want the interface of black paint and chrome to be. This is how it turned out, its not laser straight, best I could get it but Iām sure when these cars left the factory they werenāt laser straight anyways. Hopefully this is the correct interface of black to chrome?
Finally spent the reminder of the day sanding and polishing 2 of the 4 stainless headlight trim pieces. Followed the same process as the wiper arms. Iāll finish up the other two tomorrow (gotta love 3 day long weekend) as its getting dark out earlier these days and Iām doing this restoration completely outdoors, not recommended btwā¦
Okay, I have a junior car restoration question for the driver side sports mirror. I have the mirror and the base screws removed, straight forward but how does one take the rest of the sports mirror apart without hurting anything? I canāt seem to figure this out and I donāt want to wreck anything so I gotta ask. Thanks.
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