I recently purchased my first Cougar! I found a 1968 XR7 that belonged to an older gentleman that had recently passed. It was an all original car with no mods or anything touched or changed which is what I wanted. The car was in descent shape with no major body damage except as small dent in the very front passenger fender, just behind where the fender extension joins. Chrome bumpers were fine with no dents and the interior was in great shape as the seats looked almost new. The main issue I knew I was going to have to face was the roof which is completely toast under the old vinyl cover.
The car originally belonged to his wife’s cousin who bought it in high school and her dad wouldn’t let her drive it and was parked for that last 25+ years. That would normally be a problem for any car but this one was not allowed in the garage and relegated to behind the barn/shop, outside!
Here in the Northwest were I live, about an hour and half north from WCCC, we get at least 50+ inches of rain a year. So I figure the car has had to endure over a hundred feet of rain fall on it! That’s a lot of water. So I knew it was going to have some rust issues to deal with but fell hard for the car when I saw it and decided to take on the challenge to bring it some life back. The owner’s wife also gave me her cousin’s contact info as she was excited to know someone got it that would restore it. So I plan to share pics with her over the course of things and stay in touch.
I have not ordered a Marti report but here is the VIN info.
The other fun part of the challenge is that I have never restored a car nor do I know that much about cars but got my feet wet helping fix up my son’s 81 Toyota pickup. That have my enough initial experience and courage to finally do a project I wanted, and fell in love with the Cougar and had to get one. I do not have a lot of room or big budget with two kids in college. This will all be taking place in my small packed home garage with the small amount of tools and space I have. I have found that YouTube is my friend when it comes to learning and have leveraged that resource as well as many others and plan to do so here as well. My wife and kids think I am crazy and don’t understand what is going on! Oh, well, I am enjoying every minute of it and just wanted to start sharing a little of my journey with some other people that are as crazy as me!
So, have started hard and fast to that end.
I began with the engine bay and engine. The car ran, just barely enough to load it on the trailer to get it home. So figure I need to know what I got and that it will work. I cleaned, removed and cleaned, changed all plug wires, plugs, distributor cap, rotar, had the carb rebuilt, cleaned & repainted the original valve covers and air filter holder etc. Replaced bad vaccum lines, water hoses, thermostat & housing new battery cable lines and I am sure more than I can remember at this point. Trying to keep it all original, 302, 2V. Here is what it looked like the day I got it home.
And after many weeks of work I have it spruced up nicely. Just finished with the new master cylinder and all new break lines, front to back as it could barley stop before.
Next I tackled removing the front fenders and getting at the whole wheel well area to redo the breaks, shocks, spruce up the undercoating etc.
With each wheel hub cap I removed, i found a mess of spiders webs and graveyards.
I spent some time cleaning and treating any rust and refreshing the undercoating and a little painting (black) and they are ready to go back on.
All the breaks were also finally completed front & back with new lines and master cylinder.
I have also done some paint work on the inside of the fenders so they are ready to go except my front passenger side fender i have to do some body work on.
Looks so much better with the new shocks and fasteners on top the shock towers!
I have lots more going on still and will be posting more updates as it moves along but I am very excited about where I am at this point!
Brian
