Just made an account today after hearing of this place, and thought you can never have enough cougar forums to visit! I frequent MC.net every so often but it seems a little slow at times and I can always use more insight opinions or help that mc.net may not be able to provide all the time!
A lot of this is copy and pasted from my other thread on mc.net but it still should be interesting nonetheless…
My name is Josh and I’m 18. (I know pretty young.)
So I acquired a 1968 Cougar XR7, which has been passed down through my family, I’m the third. My grandfather bought it originally in 1968 in NJ, then while working on it about 10 years later, he was working on the carburetor and forgot to hook up the fuel line. Let’s just say a fire happened and the car was instantly passed down to my dad!
My dad rebuilt and installed a 302 while in high school and painted the car red from the factory dark green. He drove the car all the way up to 96’ when he couldn’t afford to drive it anymore, so it was stored in my grandpa’s garage and later in his drive way, exposed to the elements, where it began to rust and things looked pretty bad. It was then moved to a garage we had built in our back yard.
This past summer I’ve began taking on the project of trying to get it back running, and get it as restored as I can get (and afford). So enough of the story and on to some pics!
Old pic before it went into our garage:
Going in the new garage (about 2 years ago):
And this Is some pics of the engine work I’ve done over the summer:
had to hone out the cylinders and clean everything up to get the motor unseized and then I started to put everything back together.
painted the cylinder heads:
And my dad helped polish the valve covers with his buffer:
Some of the parts a friend of mine sandblasted for me, hood hinges, exhaust manifolds, air cleaner cover:
painted my intake manifold with some vht header paint and same with my exhaust manifolds and cured them in the kitchen stove (stinked)
put some stuff back together:
And this is how the engine looks currently:
Before the car wasn’t even cranking when I would turn the key, It ended up being the starter solenoid being stuck, so a couple taps and the car started cranking. I’m trying to getting it started soon, it has not been started since 96’.
A couple weeks ago I began work on the carburetor rebuild from a kit I got off ebay. Here’s some of the pics, I’m still not done yet but hopefully soon after my finals week is over next week.
After I get the carb rebuilt, I’m gonna try and see if I can get it fired up and then I begin it’s journey of bodywork and paint!
oh and here’s a photoshop of what I plan to have it sit like suspension wise
So that’s that for now, I’ll be sure to update my progress along the way and look forward to getting to know people around this forum 
), and the owner’s manual.
