A car with no name.

Cougar Community The Project Forum
61

I can’t take credit for the metal work. I had my metal guy do it. Durling Mechanical in Fairfield, CA (Plug) He welded in the bolts and then grinded them smooth you can’t even see the weld. He also shaved my lower valance to remove the license plate dip and shaved the two parking lights off. This came out sweet. I always thought that if car designers had their way, they would not have to accommodate a license plate up front. It really cleans up the front end.

I did consider chopping it to narrow it too but I decided to leave it factory.

I am going to use one of these to comply with the law requiring two.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyeBRYG3qaE

Here is the valance and bumper.

Here is the concept

I am using the parking lamps/turn signals from a 69 mach one in the corners of the valance.

62

I will ask him how he did it but it looks like a little finesse grinder work. No to the second question, I am going to use the bolts to fasted to the brackets. I had the brackets powder coated black so they would disappear under the car. I had the rock shield and grille powder coated black and there will be no aluminum trim, some additional sculpting required. It should look like the bumper is just floating on a field of black.

I am still debating the lower bolts. You can’t shave both sets of bolts without welding them to the brackets. I am hoping it will be solid enough to roll without the lower bolts. If it is, I will shave the tabs before chrome. In the back, I am going to shave all 4 bolts and have the brackets welded to the bumper.

63

Cool Idea on the license plate, but I don’t know if you have enough space for it to fold up, may be down?

64

It won’t come out of the space between the valance and bumper. It actually looks like it will be just below the lower bumper line. It will come over the valance from under the front frame rail. So it will be mounted on the lowest flat surface between the two stabilizer bars.

65

When it’s all back together and finished, 98% of the people who see the car will never even notice that anything was ever done…

…which is the goal of mods like these: making them look like they were always there. :thumbup:

I tried the Mach turn signals in the corners of the valance and couldn’t get them to look right. Hopefully you’ll have better success.

66

Thanks Mark,

That is exactly what I am going for. I want there to be things that would take a guy with a Cougar a couple of seconds to figure out.

The whole light will sit below the highest part of the front valance. I will have to black out part of the lens that goes behind the valance and anywhere I don’t want light escaping like from the top of the lens. This will make a very slim turn signal. Maybe 2 inches tall at the widest point.

67

I have been quiet for a while. Time is short, but I wanted to post a update. Take a look at the rear valance. It is on the bench and will still need a little body work but you get the idea.

Again I cant take credit for the metal fabrication. This was done by Bob Durling at Durling Mechanical in Fairfield, CA. He also shaved the rear bumper bolts to match the front. I was going for the look that a 69 mustang has around the exhaust tips.

68

Thanks for the update, looking pretty shnazzy!

69

The work on the rear valance looks great. I like the mod. Well done.
Steven

70

I’m curious, what does this mean? Are the bolts now studs that are welded onto the bumper and the hole filled or something? That’s the only way I could come up with thinking about it.

Everything looks great Dan, great job thus far!

71

Yeah, it matches the front only in the sense that it is shaved from the outside. The rear bumper has the bracket welded to it. So instead of removing the bumper from the bracket, he welded the two together and then dealt with removing the head of the bolt. So the bolts will still go through from the inside of the trunk out into the bracket. The bumper was adjusted right before it was removed, so it should go back on and be cool. Fingers crossed.

Thanks for the boost guys. I am really glad I found a talented metal worker/machinist who is helping me get the ideas turned into a reality.

72

I like the shaved bumper bolts. Neat mod :thumbup:

73

Thanks for the pics, looks even my sturdy than a single bolt.

74

This is what it looks like back on the car.

I will have to do a little fine tuning to get the tips to center up with a consistent gap but I will do that after paint.

75

Thats looking great! Was the flange made and welded on after?

76

Yes it was a piece of flat 3/16" steel cut to the shape of the cut out and then contoured to match the curve of the valance and welded onto it. That white valance on the ground is the first pass at it. It fit the exhaust perfect but it had some bondo at the opening that wouldn’t allow for the trim to be added. So I started with a second straight bondo free valance.

77

It has been a while…I dropped my car off at the body shop in June of 2014! It is still there. However, I have been taking progress pictures and getting some side projects done. I thought it was about time I posted an update.

The car is coming out great. The body man is meticulous. He even painted the car once just to check the body work, fine tuned it and painted it again. All of the mods are coming out great and I am pleased with the results.

The shaved drip rails look great. Here it is in primer, which I think shows the effect better than some of the color pics

Here are the front and rear extensions in primer:

The hood needed some special fitting to deal with the fact that I am not using any trim on it. Here are the results.

Here is the shaved hockey stick. This was kind of tricky because without the drip rail, the hockey stick has nothing to attach to so it had to be shaved too. This complicated the door fitment because the door rides about 3/16th higher than the quarter under the window.

You can see it caused a contouring issue:

However, it disappears in the color coat because it is so dark.

The area behind the rear quarter window was also smoothed. As was the full run over the windows.

Shaved doors…

I had the custom rear valance shaved/welded in. It came out great. There is probably a reason not to do this, but I couldn’t think of one that would be worse than cutting a couple of spring bolts…so I decided to do it.

Custom rear exhaust valance “flanges” (is that the right word?)

Get a load of the shaved cowl vents. I am very happy with this mod. I am left with some figuring to do in order to get air into the heater box. However, since it is fiberglass, I figured I could rework it easily enough to draw air from the front vs the top. More to come on this snowball.

Oh and as you can see the hole for the antenna was shaved to.

Had the fenders rolled for the big wheels

In clear still wet.




In the sun. It takes full sunlight to see the blue. Otherwise it looks black.

Here is how the shaved front plate is coming out. The center medallion was shaved and the hood was contoured to fit without trim. The center sheet metal is still in need of body work as is the rock shield. Both will be body color. As you can see the bumper needs to be lifted a bit in the middle. That was what this fitting was for. I have since removed it and returned it to the bumper/chromer for last tweaks.

Oh and as you can see the license plate depression was also shaved from the front valance as well as the parking lamps/turn signals. I like the way it came out.

I got another coat of black powdercoating done. Including the engine braces and another set of headlamp doors and parts. I They came out great this time. Last time I broke a piece and another piece had bubbling. One of the plates that goes over the lights had a new dent from softening up in the oven. Not bad considering people advise against powdercoating pot metal parts. I will be assembling it all soon. But first I need to finish cleaning bolts and doing an oil and phosphate.

Oh yeah, I had all front and rear window trim and the over the door trim powder coated black too. I will have to do the window stainless and quarter window trim done too.

78

This looks fantastic, Your almost there, Great work!

79

I really like the mods you’ve made. Everything looks good. What’s the plan for front turn signals?
Steven

80

Oh my, love that blue!

For the shaved cowl/air intake for the heater…go with Vintage Air, no outside air access needed.