Hertz XR7-G So Far

OK guys, I have had the Hertz xr7-g for about 3 weeks now and I am pretty happy with it. There have been some surprises, but al in all, it seems to be a solid car with a lot of potential.

Here are the things that I have noticed;

  1. It has undergone at least 1 complete repaint and one partial repaint in the past. There was bad enough accident damage to replace the drivers side door and possibly the front fender. The damage wasn’t bad enough to replace any inner fenders or shock towers, but there is a small wrinkle in the top of the drivers side inner fender.

  2. It has had the carpet replaced because most of the original carpet is still in the car under the replacement. The seats have been recovered in vinyl. Most of the wiring is unmolested. Some things are disconnected, but hardly any of the wiring is cut and spliced - I like that. I have only found one ground that has been cut and repaired so far.

  3. The passenger side floor has one pinhole right over the frame rail so I couldn’t see it from underneath. It is still very solid so I am not sure what I will do about it. It came from a leaking heater core which I still need to replace. It is disconnected for now. The floor on the driver side looks like it came from the factory - the paint is still there and looks great.

  4. The unoriginal carb was leaking and running rough. It also had a manual choke that wasn’t hooked up. I decided to get a temporary Holley 4150 with electric choke that will work until I decide to get serious about a restoration.

  5. I got some better looking tires and XR7-G centers.

  6. The sunroof has been an adventure. It wasn’t running right, so I took it apart. It is surprisingly simple. The passenger side cable was completely broken and the driver side looks good. Just by luck, I found 2 passenger side and 1 drivers side NOS Ford replacements for $45 apiece so I bought all 3. Now I have a new set of cables in the sunroof and an extra set if anything goes wrong. I still need to go through everything and get it sparkling clean and greased well, but it works a lot better than it did.

  7. I am also studying up on vinyl top/headliner installation. I just want to make sure when I decide to do it, the vinyl top ends in the right spot and the headliner gets wrapped where it needs to be. I am also leery of relying on glue to fasten the weather stripping to the top. That seems to be how it was done from the factory.

  8. I chased my tail on the sequential tail lights, but they are working now. I think I gave Don Rush more money than I should have on that issue - :wall:

The next things on the agenda are a brake light switch I think might have been replaced with a manual brake switch. Also the original cooling fan will be going back on. Apparently the clutch went out and the PO replaced it with a direct drive setup. It looks like crap and the car tends to get warm in stop and go traffic and cool back down at highway speed. This leads me to believe the fan isn’t moving enough air. I have the original fan and have ordered a clutch and associated bolts from WCCC.

That’s it for now.

Gosg dang, that is an inspiring update. You paint good word pictures of what you found, too!

2 layers of carpet should make for a quiet ride.

You’re certainly not wasting any time. You seem to be having fun with it. It’s great when you can inspect/find/correct things and it doesn’t seem like work. It sounds to me like a got a very good car without a lot of hack jobs. That always makes it easier on the mind/body.

The fan clutch is on the truck for delivery today. I should be working on it tonight!

OK, the fan clutch is on. I ran it, but I can’t drive it until Wednesday when the rain is supposed to stop. It seemed to run well and keep cool while idling which is where I was having problems with the aftermarket fan.