Calicat, the PB blaster is a spray I usually use when bolts are rusted so bad you never would think they will loosen again. You can get it at Walmart or your auto store. I can not praise it enough. The citric acid is a powder I mix with water and is in fact the same stuff they use for food and is usually named E330 on the food label. I buy it from the local farmer store.
Today I finally started to put parts back on the car and it sure felt good after only taking apart, cleaning and painting for a long time
The steering box on my Cougar had a huge slack so I needed to do something to make the car steer better. Since I am super cheap these days a new steering box was out of the question and shipping my old one to someone to have it rebuilt was not really an option either. Since I have a few used steering boxes on my shelf I figured at least one of them had good rebuild-able internals so I ordered the rebuild kit and went on doing the job myself.
It is a pretty greasy job, but not super complicated as long as you have a good hydraulic press. In fact I found the job to be rather interesting and when done the result is second to none of the professionally rebuilt units I have bought through the years.
The guts are out.
New needle bearing are pressed in.
Ready for assembly with new bearings.
Finished and I am happy. Tomorrow it will get some new paint and then be installed in the car.
Some more pictures showing the progress. Pretty much everything is back in place for suspension and steering. I am installing KYB shocks, but they need to be painted a better color before installation so they will go on later. Brake calipers were no good so they have been disassembled, cleaned, painted and reassembled with new gaskets and pistons. Wheel bearings have also been replaced, so this car will hopefully give years of joy without problems. I have reused the original inner and outer tie rods as they were nice and tight. The rubber boot on the tie rods were on the other hand in bad shape and were replaced. Some years ago I bought the concourse correct dust boots for some other cars that had the all correct metal ring. That was a waste of money as the rubber in those are super low quality and had open cracks after 2 years. This time I went for some good aftermarket dust boots from Rock Auto. Super nice driver quality.
Finally I have also modified the fuel filler door. Since the original emblem was heavily pitted I bought a front grille Cougar and painted the back ground black. I like the look of this better than the original. The chrome cougar and the new lens are both from WCCC and excellent quality.
Another dirty job completed. I know it seems kind of strange to do parts of this restoration in the order I do them on this car, but everything is a result of what I planned to be an quick and easy paint job turning into almost a full restoration. So with the heater/AC and dash out of the car I also realized that the inside of the cowl had a lot of surface rust, and that is not how I would leave it for the future. So I had to grind all the rust off and give it some paint. It was another dirty job and I can’t say I enjoyed it much. But the result is far better than what it was. The only sad thing is that no one will ever notice when the car is done.
There was a magazine ad from 1969 showing how Ford dipped grounded car bodies in a river of electrically charged red primer. But I have been amazed at how many places my car had very minimal if any overspray on bare metal. Maybe only the Lincolns got a full dip? Seems like a very good idea to remove rust and get some paint on those places like you have done.
Exactly, in fact I have rarely seen a car with all the spots with untreated sheet metal as on this one. Maybe it was dipped but that there was big air pockets inside the body because pretty much all areas facing up inside of the body on this car had never been treated and had a heavy thick layer of surface rust that I have removed. That means inside of the quarters, underside of the panel between trunk and top and now the underside of the cowl area.
One of my first stops when my time machine is finished is the Finance department at Ford in 1966. I’m going to throw a $100 bill at the CFO and tell him to please spray some slop grey on all the bare metal surfaces in all future Cougars that are not getting body color. That should about cover the cost for the entire production run.
Started to do one of the last dirty jobs on the car for a while today. Cleaning up the engine really takes some patience. It did not look to bad except for the fact that the fuel pump bolts were lose and oil had come out of the gap and soaked most of the engine. It turned out to be far worse as someone had partly repainted the engine once on top of old rust and dirt. After a couple of hours with a wire brush on my drill and sanding down old paint and rust it looked far better and hopefully it will be ready for paint tomorrow.
Finally got the engine clean from old dirt and rust. Before I sprayed it ford blue I also had the timing chain and sprockets replaced as it had a slack in the chain that was a little more than I liked. I also removed the oil pan and inspected the internals of the engine and all looked good. As you may notice I haven’t done anything to the valve covers yet. The reason is that I haven’t decided what to do with them yet, they will either be repainted or replaced with aluminum valve covers. Another strange thing that really bother me is the uneven colors lately in the Duplicolor engine paint cans I am using. It turned out that I have spray cans with 3 different batch numbers and they are all very different shade of Ford Blue.
Working just an hour or two everyday pays off even if I don’t have the progress as I am used to. Before I dropped in the engine I had the exhaust manifolds painted and new pin bolts for the exhaust installed. Distributor has been detailed so it looks like new again and I installed a new set of Autolite spark plugs while I had better access to them. The old transmission cooling lines had been cut so I bought a new set, which of course turned out to be wrong and for a Windsor and not the Cleveland. Not my fault, and luckily the shop where I bought them had the correct set in stock so they were just a couple of hours drive away. While I was under the car I checked the transmission mount, and it was junk as well. Luckily I had a new one for spare so that was an easy fix.
I also had a pretty scary experience when I installed the new thermostat and housing. Unfortunately I managed to drop one of the bolts and the washer into the engine through the distributor hole. After turning the engine around in the stand 2 times the washer fell into the oil pan, but the bolt was hiding somewhere inside engine. I finally found it stuck behind the timing gear and managed to get it out with a magnet the same way it went in. The washer came out through the fuel pump hole with the same telescope magnet. Guess if I was happy I didn’t have to pull the oil pan and timing cover to get them out
It feels good to have the engine back into the car and not on the stand as it gives me a little more working space in the garage. I can’t wait to get going with the detailing of the engine compartment which is one of the best parts of a restoration in my opinion.
Time flies, and it is getting pretty obvious that I will never be able to reach my goal to have my Cougar ready for the road for this season. It should have been possible if the car had been anywhere what I thought it was when I started, but as you all can see it turned out to become a big job where almost nothing can be left undone. Also the fact that my Doberman got puppies made it impossible for me to spend the time I planned in the shop, but that’s fine. This week the puppies are leaving home except for one that I will keep. Hopefully that will free up some time but on the other hand since the car is not getting ready for spring anyway I have decided to take the time it takes to get it to the level I want.
OK so here is what had been going on for the last few weeks. All small parts for the engine bay are now restored and painted. Transmission mount has been replaced with one that has rubber in it and I have installed a 24 inch radiator and also bought a CJ fan and a shroud to make sure the air flows through the radiator. New hoses with correct markings are here too. Some parts gave me a lot more work than expected. The PO had painted the air cleaner, valve covers, brackets and pulley when he replaced the water pump, and the paint he used gave me grey hair as it could not be sanded or painted over, it ended up as a clay like goop no matter what I did. The solution was to use a heat gun and a wire brush on my drill. It took hours and hours, but I finally got the strange paint removed. Then I got the rust that was under the paint removed and small dents sorted out before I gave them a layer of etch primer and a good sanding filler to make surface even and nice. I finished them off with the same Duplicolor as I used on the engine.
[CCCGallery][/CCCGallery]
New transmission mount being installed.
All the pulleys, brackets and whatever I had laying around that should become semi gloss black got a couple of days in the acid before sanding, etch primer and paint.
When I removed the rusty but fully functional brake booster from the car I was a little surprised to find that it was half way filled up with brake fluid. I tried to drain the fluid from it, but had no success without taking it apart. Taking these apart is not something I wanted to get involved with so I had to think out a smart solution. What I ended up doing was to drill a small hole in both ends of the booster and let it sit with the holes down for hours, then turn it around many times to let the fluid find its way out and after several days all the brake fluid was gone. Then I just welded the holes, got all the nasty surface rust removed and painted it. It will be interesting to see if it will work as it should again, but I’m optimistic.
The master cylinder looked rusty but had been replaced not long ago and just got surface rust from sitting there unprotected. I wire brushed it and gave it a cast iron grey paint that is supposed to resist brake fluid. I know the master cylinder likely was black from factory, but I like it this way.
Power steering pump has been painted and reassembled. Color is a little off compared to original but not bad enough to redo it.
Here is the new fan and radiator. I can’t remember what this radiator actually come out off as it is an older replacement and no factory numbers are present. It’s been on my loft for years so I am happy it finally found a car to sit in.
The original washer jar turned out to be in nice condition after a clean up, but motor was junk so it was replaced. Last I found that I have a few missing parts. One is the connector for the washer pump wiring. A previous owner installed a replacement jar and pump and just cut off the pig tail for the original pump. If someone has a defective wiring with this connector I would love to buy it. The other part I am missing is the connector on left of the air cleaner for the oil damp hose from the valve cover. Would love to find one of those too.
Wiring system for the front of the car is otherwise in pretty good condition. It took me a little time to remove old gold paint on some of the headlight wiring but otherwise they are not dried out or cracked like they often are on California cars.
The front shocks are KYB, and I hate the white color so I decided to repaint them blue. Probably not correct color, but looks nicer than white.
Details are important and the transmission dip stick tube was painted the correct color too. Of course I had to lower the transmission again to get it in place
Your work on the brake booster is certainly interesting and I look forward to reading about how it works on the road.
One question for the group - DeadNutsOn seems to indicate that the master cylinder and cap were painted black along with the booster from the factory for Mustangs and Shelbys. Is that correct for Cougars as well? I went ahead and painted mine black but you rarely see them that way in Cougars.
I assume the master cylinders were done the exact same way as on the Mustang as these cars were assembled on the same assembly line with many parts from the same parts bin.
I have been told that if there is brake fluid in the booster it means the master cylinder is bad and should be replaced/rebuilt. If you reinstall the same one I suspect your booster will end up in the same condition you found it.
Yes, once brake fluid has leaked into the booster, the rubber inside won’t last long. It happened on my car too. Might as well replace the booster and master cylinder now while they are out (easy for us to spend more of your money). WCCC just got some rebuilt 70 Bendix boosters in and I snagged one. I think the factory black paint on master cylinders got washed off by brake fluid pretty quickly. So we aren’t used to seeing them in anything besides natural metal.
PacificaXR7GT, The master cylinder had been replaced short time before I bought the car so the brake fluid comes from the old leaky master cylinder that is long gone. PO was obviously not aware of that the fluid would go into the booster when it leaked. When it comes to brake boosters, my experience is that the rubber parts inside it resist brake fluid very well. I have drained other brake boosters several times that still are working fine many years later. That is also the reason why I take the chance on this one, and if it goes wrong it doesn’t take too much time to have it replace. I could of course have it restored, but shipping is getting extremely expensive and it can take forever to both ship to the US and back to Norway.
and I have installed a 24 inch radiator and also bought a CJ fan and a shroud to make sure the air flows through the radiator. New hoses with correct markings are here too. Some parts gave me a lot more work than expected. The PO had painted the air cleaner, valve covers, brackets and pulley when he replaced the water pump, and the paint he used gave me grey hair as it could not be sanded or painted over, it ended up as a clay like goop no matter what I did. The solution was to use a heat gun and a wire brush on my drill. It took hours and hours, but I finally got the strange paint removed. Then I got the rust that was under the paint removed and small dents sorted out before I gave them a layer of etch primer and a good sanding filler to make surface even and nice. I finished them off with the same Duplicolor as I used on the engine.
