Hello all; the TMH Chicago Cat project

Cougar Community The Project Forum
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When the hoses are tightened down beyond the specification, the hoses dig a groove in the seats. This causes them to leaks. Most rebuild kits you will find will not include them.

The part you are talking about is called the ball stud. The control valve should not have side to side movement when the system has pressure in it. You can’t judge how much slop is in the steering system when the car is not running. Rebuilding the control valve is easy provided your ball stud sleeve is not bent or out of round. If it is, Randy can take care of it for you. He’s really good. If you decide to rebuild it yourself, just take lots of pictures and make sure everything is really clean when you put it back together. Check out his site for all the information you could ever want on Ford power steering systems. If it looks intimidating, his rebuild fees are very reasonable. Also, he is really good at responding to questions by email.

http://www.stangerssite.com/CVrebuilding.html

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So I checked for the first time today, finally brought my tire gauge (digital) with me… They were at… 18!!! The min spec is 25 from what I’ve read. That’s not good! So I threw just a little air in there, jumped up to 35 very quickly. Tail end lifted up just a little. I left it at that.

After all the horror stories I’ve read about highjackers causing the top shock mounts to snap off, I kinda want to get some good normal shocks on there. But I don’t wanna mess with the ride height, I like it fine where it was. Anybody have any suggestions there?

Oh and Bill, I have to apologize, you already mentioned the seats on the control valve all the way back on page 1. I remember reading it, I just re-read the thread to get everything fresh in my mind again (need to do it another time or two as well, I tend to lose track of things a little too quickly, the 60’s were rough on me or something like that), but I do remember reading that the first time around. So, sorry for not having that still in my brain and me being all surprised by the just-suggested rebuild kit that includes them.

Also, I still don’t know how to fix my PRNDL to line up right! I do have the long center console. What’s the trick?

Oh and DD, thanks for the details on spooning the rear brakes. That’s pretty much the same thing the guys told me yesterday, but much more detailed and with pics. So thanks! One of them mentioned that the reason it wasn’t tough to get the drum off was probably because the brakes needed to be tweaked like that so they’d be a tighter fit. I’ll see about doing that sooner rather than later.

I did the brake booster test where car off, you pump the brakes to empty the vac (it took like 3 pumps) and then while holding the brake pedal, fire it up and see if the pedal drops. The pedal did indeed drop as the vac assist kicked in. So between the 3 pumps to drain the vac, and the pedal falling away after I turned the car on, does that suggest my brake boost is actually in proper working order?

I haven’t been able to drive around without people giving me thumbs ups and yelling “damn!” and stuff. Yesterday while I was giving her a bath, a guy in the passenger seat of a passing car gave a thumbs up and yelled “nice Cougar!!” as they passed. Today I drove past Superdawg and a guy was pointing the car out to his buddy. Dude on the street did the same. I feel like a movie star! In sure I’ll get used to it eventually. Nobody ever did that for my 2000 4runner, I can’t figure out why…

Oh! And I dunno how the hell I got it mixed up, but my dad’s buddy’s Chevelle isn’t a '70, it’s a '65. Just thought I’d clarify that, in the interest of being wrong about one fewer thing.

Cheers!

Scott

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Bump, for the gentleman who asked about pics of my car, and also to remind myself to stop making 1000 different threads and just keep it all here in one place. :slight_smile:

I have a bunch more pics I’ve taken since I last updated this thread, but there scattered all over. I should probably put in links to the other threads I started since then.

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Oooo, nice! :buck:

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Badass car I like the wheels.

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Is that black or dark green? I like it, looks great! I would be one of the one’s with a thumbs up as well.

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Thanks guys! Black. Used to be lime frost with black vinyl top before PO had his way with it. I’m so glad he did!

So, here’s today’s issue. Horns. About 10 days ago or so, after I started the car up the horn began honking intermittently. At first just a couple little meeps, so i kept driving. Well then it got a little more intense, and it got pretty embarrassing-- it seemed to be the most vocal when I was sitting at stop lights. Ugh.

Anyway, when I bought the car one of the horns was disconnected. Driver’s side, which I suspect is the Low horn. I ended up disconnecting the passenger side horn when it got all goofy on me like that.

Today I took out the horn button, which seems totally fine. Checked it for resistance when pressed and not pressed, totally right on. Put it back in and then measured the DC voltage at each of the horn connectors.

With both horns disconnected, I see 12.2v on either wire (my battery is currently showing 12.6, not sure where the other 0.4v is going in this circuit. Wire resistance?). With either one of the horns hooked up, the wire for the other disconnected horn shows half that, just over 6v.

Both horns are making the same sound-- just a little sort of tick, not anything resembling a honk.

This is all with the car turned off.

With the car running, with both horns hooked up I get no honk, can’t tell if that little tick sound is there cause of engine noise. If I disconnect the driver’s side horn, the one that was disconnected when I bought it, the passenger side horn does indeed honk. So far it hasn’t honked intermittently yet. Hoping that replacing the voltage regulator somehow cured that, which really doesn’t make much sense to me but who knows.

So!! All that being said, does it sound like the voltages are what you’d expect, and I just have a blown driver’s side horn? Any way to test it aside from what I’ve done so far?

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First, bench test the horns with battery voltage and make sure they’re working.

I’ve run into this a few times with my Cougar as well as similar Mustangs, Falcons, etc.
There is just too much resistance in the 44 year old circuit to carry the power to operate the horns, however there is enough current to actuate a Bosch style relay. Wire the relay straight to the battery (fused) with a large 12-14ga. wire.

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Right on, Art. I too had this problem and after installing a relay, horns work great.

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Ok, relay it is then. I guess I’ll just trace the wires coming from the horn button, figure out how the exit the steering column, use those to trigger the relay, then wire up the two horns in parallel?

First oil change today, both for the Cougar since I bought it and also for me, I watched my dad do it once on the '79 Monte Carlo I had back in highschool 20 years ago.

Other than dripping some oil onto the valve cover, which dropped down onto the exhaust manifold and made for some fun, it was pretty uneventful. Actually, it made me feel pretty guilty about the past few times I took her out, jeez was that oil dirty.

Started up easier, idled much smoother.

So I figured once the oil was warmed up and moved around a bit I should make sure it was covering all those important bits in the engine real good, and tested how she responds when I stomp on the gas. Did it a few times, actually scared myself once with how quick she got from like 1500 to 4500 rpm. I’m dying to know how much further than 4500 she’ll go, or what happens if I keep er at 4500 for more than the 1 to 2 seconds I did tonight. But I don’t really have a good place to do it, so…

Ok so who’s a member at the Joliet Autobahn and can get me out there. :slight_smile:

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Not knowing anything about what you have under the hood, your pretty much safe at shifting at 5000. Is this automatic or manual shifting? What cam do you have and size of motor? What gears out back do you have? When you were at 4500, how fast were you going or was this just a shift point?
In reality, keeping it at 4500 isn’t realistic unless you are on a race track with a good suspension and the right speed rated tires.

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AT, 302 4V, 3.0 open rear end, stock cam as far as I know. This is a 40 mph road, and me stomping the gas at 15 mph and the car running at 4500 rpm for two seconds as it gets up to 40 and I then take my foot off the gas so I don’t get ticket or anything. My tires are rated for over 100mph I think, I forget the exact speed rating but it’s faster than I’ve ever driven a car. I want to get out on the track and change that. :slight_smile:

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If you wanna skip the narrative and get right to my problem, skip the next paragraph.

So! Problem today. Crummy one. I think it’ll end up being an easy fix. But it meant pushing the car a half mile home to my driveway, which had left me feeling like craaaaaaap. Luckily it stalled right outside the house of a guy who was a Ford mechanic for years, so he was able to help me with the obvious stuff which I was already thinking, and more importantly, his son just up and volunteered to help push it home which was a life saver-- zero chance I would’ve made it without help. I barely made it with help.

Driving fine, no problems, then out of the blue just total stall, no sputtering, straight from driving along to coasting at 0rpm.

Trying to restart went like this… Turn key, starter motor turning it over, it starts firing on its own so I move the key to run position and it dies immediately, no sputtering, just total shutdown.

Holding down the gas pedal while going to start it results in a startup that sounds awesome cause the engine really gets riled up with all that fuel. but then dies instantly.

So there is fuel and there is spark.

My thoughts are that it might be the ignition switch, the electrical contact for the run position is messed up maybe?

Here’s something I noticed when looking around the rear of the ignition switch for the first time today… There’s a wire hanging loose that has that same push-on connector at the end like the two wires at the starter solenoid have. Is that my problem, that wire, or is that something else?

Help would be appreciated. The cat is sitting in my driveway right now and I’ll try and get it into the garage before the end of the night if my legs loosen up and my lungs stop being destroyed. :-/

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What color is the wire that is hanging loose? Please also note the color of the stripe if it has one.

BTW, do you have a shop manual?

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Can’t remember if you’re an XR7 or not, Scott…if so…tach go bad?? IIRC, from what I’ve read, if the tach goes, so does iggy…???

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Oh yeah, keep pushing that car. You’ll be ready in no time. Link

T3, it’s an XR-7.

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What about a jumper wire straight from the battery to the coil? That should get it fired up and into the garage until you can troubleshoot.

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There is a red wire w/green stripe between the ignition switch and the tach, I think it may have went kapoot ,…It sure sounds like a tach wiring problem.

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I’m giving up on tonight. For the first time since I owned her, this car will spend a night outdoors. I’m thinking of it as a punishment for making me destroy myself pushing her a half mile.

I tried to get a photo of the wire that’s hanging loose at the back of the ignition switch. Didn’t come out well. Looks like maybe a blue with a stripe, but I won’t know for sure until tomorrow. Are there multiple wires running to the back of the ignition switch that all use that same push-on connector like at the coil, starter solenoid, etc? It’s kinda hard to tell what all is going on back there.

I like the idea of a temporary jumper from battery to coil. The voltage will be wrong, cause not using resistor wire, but it will be something.

As far as the tach being shot, if I were to disconnect the wire that feeds the tach from the coil, would that temporarily solve the problem if the problem is a shot tach?

If the problem is a wire going from the ignition to the tach, is that just as simple as replacing a wire?

And about the whole resistor wire thing, I don’t get it. Is it just a wire with extra resistance to it? If so, that sounds ridiculous and I’d want to replace it with a normal wire and a nice excellent quality ceramic resistor with a 1% tolerance, which I would have to assume to be 500,000 times better.

If disconnecting the tach will get it running, lemme know. That would be my first choice. It’s an AT car. The only thing I use the tach for is to see how many rpms she gets up to when I mash my foot down. And I’m not even gonna do that until this is squared away, so…

And yes Adam I do have a shop manual. I also have the wiring diagram for the ignition system open in safari on my phone for like a week now, since before I replaced the voltage regulator recently. Still have it open and have looked at it a ton of times. Still need help. :-/

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If you leave it set up like this for thousands of miles, you may burn out your points. Along with getting your car into the garage, you’ll also know whether there’s something wrong with the ‘resistive wire’ circuit.