This is how she looked when I first bought her.
This is how she looked after the shipper wrecked her in transport. He didn’t chain her down good enough and the chains came loose so she rolled forward and smashed into the trailer every time he hit the brakes and rolled back and smashed into the trailer every time he accelerated.
How she looks now.
I didn’t get out of Michigan on the road to Texas before the snow came.
I’d like mine to be that clean 
Love it!
It’s so gratifying to see a worn out Cougar brought back - great job.
- Phillip
Thank You guys. I wish I could say I had more hands on doing the work, but it was mostly emptying my wallet to the shops. It still has a number of mechanical and electrical issues that I am going to be able to get my hands dirty on though. Allenrya000 how is yours coming along? I checked out your thread on yours and it looked like you were making a lot of progress for a while, but haven’t seen an update to the thread in over a year now.
Nice looking Cougar.
What caused the damage in the rear.
In 2009 I thought I was going to be moving back to Michigan so I shipped my cars and all my belongings to my house up there. I told the shipping service not to send anything bigger than one of those 3 car trailers that is pulled by a duelly because anything bigger couldn’t get into my yard to get the car and it needed to have a winch because the car didn’t run and didn’t have working brakes. They sent an 8 car hauler pulled by a semi. I should have sent him away, but didn’t have time to schedule another shipper so he parked on the road across the street from my house and we pushed the car over there. He used chains and ratchets to work the car up to the well it was going to sit down in on the trailer. He then only put two chains on it before loading my other two vehicles onto the truck and never went back and secured the Cougar better. At some point the two chains came loose and every time he hit the brakes it rolled forward and smashed into the front of the well and when he accelerated it rolled back and smashed into the back of the well. When he left Austin he went to San Antonio and then to Houston before heading up to Michigan. Somewhere between San Antonio and Houston he figured out what happened, but by then the damage was done. It was damaged in the front and the rear. So it went straight into the shop when it got there so the shippers insurance could take care of repairing the damages. Since it was already in the shop for the insurance work I decided to go ahead and get the restoration going. It has been in the shops up there ever since 8 years and 4 months. When they knew I was coming up they would quickly do something so they could show progress and after I left it got parked out of the way until the next time I came up, so took forever. It cost me a fortune replacing the parts they lost and damaged over the years. My AM/8-track still doesn’t work after they knocked it off their bench and broke two of the station select knobs off. I have a 1973 Mustang convertible that needs restoration, but after the nightmare experience with the Cougar I don’t know if I want to got through that again.
Sure turned out nice, too bad it took so long.
How did they repair the rear damage.
New rear quarters and extensions, new trunk lid, not sure what else. Made me sick because prior to that it didn’t have any collision damage or rust in that area. I had them remove any metal that had rust so there is no rust or bondo on the car now.
Well Leroy R I really haven’t messed with mine much in the past year. I drive it about once a week. Once it gets back in the budget next job is more frame work.
I figured maybe your budget had been redirected. You’ll get there eventually. Too bad about the hood.
She’s a beauty!
Thank You
Pulled the dash apart today to deal with the speedometer, tachometer and convertible top switch and anything else I find in there.
I was able to take the button out of my courtesy light switch and put it in the convertible top switch housing and that worked to get the convertible top switch working. So that experiment worked. Now I have to replace the courtesy light switch.
When I pulled the cluster out I noticed I didn’t have to disconnect the main white connector that plugs into the back of the cluster. Upon further investigation I found the retaining clip on one side of the connector had broken off at some point. If I can find another harness with a good connector, is it possible to extract the pins from the original connector and insert them into the new connector so I don’t have to replace the whole harness or rig something up to keep my cluster connector plugged in?
I have plenty of those connectors. NPD also now sells them: part 14489-10A
Thanks I’m curious why NPDs list of applications for that part say 1969-1973 Cougar w/o tach.
Select the 18 pin version over the 12 pin version: the 12 pin are only valid for 71-73 cars with tach dashes.