Here are some pics of my 68 daily driver grille. These homemade stops work great for keeping a grille in alignment.
If you plan on dumping the vacuum actuators I’d just work the ends. I also put stops in place of the lower trim ring screws on each headlight door. That way the load is distributed equally very much like Don showed in his post.
Steven
Don and/or Steven, (or anyone else)
What did you guys make your stops out of, and appr. how long do they need to be? Thought I remember seeing another thread at one time on site about someone making some kind of adjustable one. I want to go this route as one of my headlight mounts has some stress cracks starting in it. Replacing it will have to come at another time, but don’t want it getting any worse.
David
David my stops are adjustable. I forget the total length. I’ll try to get a measurement and post it.
Steven
Thanks Steven. Where’s the thread again (what’s it under) I want to review how you made your stops.
David
I used a 1/4”- 20 sleeve anchor bolt. I removed the bottom two Philips screws on each bucket and replaced them with the sleeve anchor bolts minus the nuts and sleeve parts. I used 1/4 copper tubing to hide the threads that would be exposed. Everything was painted black. Here are some pictures of what I used and a link to the thread with a picture of everything in place.
I hope this helps you.
Steven
Instead of adding bumper stops to the front or replacing the original adjustment bolt with the longer replacement, I simply removed the rubber stop attached to the bolt and glued and additional 1/4" thick hard rubber cut to the same diameter. Problem solved and it still allowed for the original bolt to be adjusted and from the top and looking down nothing appears to have changed.
There are multiple solutions to this problem. Your method will work. The two bolt bumper stop idea distributes the force from the vacuum actuators evenly. Here is a picture of my stops in place. I think someone would have to be a diehard Cougar nut to point out the stops. 
Steven
“diehard Cougar nut” describes everyone on this forum. LOL. Personally I love seeing or hearing how “us nuts” solve all the little problems we have with these cars.
We finally made a video and we now have the eyelid alignment kit available for purchase. Of the many WCCC calendar contest submissions we got this year we noticed about 2/3 of the 67-8’s submitted had noticeable to grossly misaligned grilles. If some of the submissions were redone exactly the same with the addition of this quick fix they would for sure be in the running for next years contest.
I posted a way to install headlight door stops years ago on The Curb - can’t find the file now.
Not wise to use a propane or butane torch to apply heat to the pot metal components of the grille. Propane combusts at a temperature of approx. 3600 °F and Butane at 2400 °F. The melting point of pot metal ( an amalgam of zinc, lead, copper, tin, magnesium, aluminium, cadmium and trace iron ) is approx. 700 - 800 °F. Too easy to melt the casting of your Cougar grille. Use of a heat gun ( like the type used to strip paint ) is a safer source of the heat required to ‘massage’ the grille back into alignment.