Several years ago I traded for a partially built 68 Cougar. I was wanting to get into drag racing at the time and started building it for street/strip. Since then I have moved three times and had a kid. So progress came to a halt. I am just getting started on it again and am looking for advice on what else I should do to make it a decent strip car while I am still in the building phase.
Here is what I have so far.
Engine:
Stock bottom end 69 351W
Edelbrock E-Street aluminum heads with roller rockers
Edelbrock Performer RPM Air Gap intake
Holley 750 double pumper carb
Stock points style distributor with flame thrower coil
Rear End:
Narrowed 9"
Strange Axles
Detroit locker
3.73 Gears
Suspension:
Stock springs in front
Tower braces welded in
Export brace
Bilsteen shocks in front
Rear has 4 link
NO SHOCKS YET for rear
Subframe connectors
Other:
6pt roll cage with swing out door bars that is not tied to sub frame. 6x6 plate welded to floor that cage is welded to. Just too help keep me alive.
16 gallon fuel cell in trunk
battery in aluminum box in trunk
firewall between trunk and cabin
interior aside from two lightweight buckets
bare minimum of wiring and gauges
i am not running the grill or headlight assembly to save on weight. I have also removed the door glass (for paint) and I am thinking about leaving it and the rear side windows out.
Converted to manual steering
Converted to manual front disc brakes
Weld Drag-lites front and rear. Skinnys up front with 12" DOT legal slicks on back.
I am looking to keep the car street legal and run as quick as I can without going completely broke. I am looking to bracket race it but I would still like it to be respectable. Any of you guys that have your cougars set up for the strip, I would love to hear what else you would do or change to get the most from it. Right now the car is blown apart for paint and I want to make as many changes as I can before it is on the road for next summer.
Weigh the car, decide if you want to go 1/4 mile, or 1/8 mile. Use that data (w/the rear tire size) to back into the proper rear gear, then choose a cam given the foregoing + the trans/converter specs + your motor’s specs.
The motor as spec’d above will not impress you - stock cam, stock compression, way too much carb. This was a ~200 hp motor to begin with & you’d be lucky to make that with the addition of those parts. You need compression & cubic inches if you want to go fast in a 3,800 lb car. Think a stroker short block that will combine w/your heads (got those specs handy?) to give you 11:1 compression (at least).
I’d switch to tubular or reinforced (budget friendly) upper/lower control arms, and use drag shocks in front (uplock). I’d also find a chassis guy to do the front end work & bless the rear 4 link (I’m assuming you bought the car this way). Don’t need any surprises on the 1st (or 10th) hard launch.
Half the fun of this will be driving to the tracks with my father and a couple buddies (73 Challenger 340, 63 Nova with a nice 350, 98 Ranger with a 5.0 and 5 speed swap) Street use will be minimal. Not driving to work everyday, but it needs to be able to make the hour drive to the track and back as legally and trouble free as possible.
I don’t remember the specs of the cam off the top of my head (I will dig through my file later, I bought it 4 years ago) but it is a comp cams grind. I think from their extreme energy line. I talked to a tech for several hours and that was the cam that we settled on. That is the reason for the particular stall that I have.
I tore the engine apart with the thoughts of doing a stroker kit in it, but it was in too good of shape for me to justify. So then I thought about building a 347 for it instead but ultimately I decided to leave the bottom end stock (the cylinder walls and bearings all look brand new) and get a good set of heads, cam, intake, and carb for it. All stuff I could swap to another motor if I can’t keep up with the fun with this one. It also has full length headers on it with purple hornies glass packs. Not that it really matters that much, but it isn’t trying to breathe through stock manifolds at least.
The heads are the cheapest good quality aftermarket heads that I could afford right now. Here are the generic specs copied from jegs
Specifications:
Chamber Volume: 60cc
Deck Thickness: 5/8"
Valve Spring Diameter: 1.46"
Max Lift: .550"
Rocker Studs: 3/8" with Guide Plate
Pushrod Diameter: 5/16"
Intake Port Volume: 170cc
Intake Valve Diameter: 2.02"
Exhaust Port Volume: 60cc
Exhaust Valve Diameter: 1.60"
The carb is one that I had sitting around from a 460 I used to have. Previous owner had a demon carb on the stock manifold and it ran like crap. I probably could have tuned it but I sold the demon to my buddy for his car early on. I could get a smaller cfm carb if I needed to.
I did buy the car with the half the work completed and the other half parts in boxes that needed put on. I know that none of this is optimized for anything. I really don’t even know what the previous owner had planed for it. But his pile of receipts and parts added up to more than ten times what the worn out diesel truck I was trying to sell at the time was worth. He wanted a diesel truck pretty bad and was tired of working on the car. I was tired of working on an old diesel truck and was looking to have some fun. I definitely came out way ahead.
Sounds like a cool project. At least you’ve got the 60cc chamber version to preserve as much compression as possible. A HiPo 289 for instance had chambers that were smaller yet, maybe 53-54 cc? Consider refitting the grille/headlights if you are planning to drive it on the roads.
I am planning on just mounting some headlights in buckets in the opening and then making a screen to keep the radiator from getting hit with trash going down the road. The original grill is in half way decent shape, but I personally don’t like the looks of it with bent bars and misaligned headlight doors. Especially not enough to justify the weight of it. Cougars are very sophisticated European styled muscle cars. When they are fixed up nice, they are beautiful. One of the cleanest cars of their era. But when they are hacked like mine is, they look kind of trashy I think. I’m going to settle for a rowdy mad max vibe and just let it be what it is. Thanks for the advise. I am going to look into the control arms and see what I come up with. When I welded in the shock tower plates I thought the lower especially looked flimsy.
Good call. I need to check into that. I know one track requires either a window net or arm restraints if you have a coupe or similar open type cabin. Heck i have a cousin who used to have a 96 convertible vet and he would take it to the strip and run it with the top down. I doubt I am going to be able to go fast enough with the money I have available to put too many restrictions on the car, but you never know. I put the cage in my car, but I don’t foresee ever going fast enough to have to have one for tech.
You can weld in a little bit of plate steel here and there & reinforce the stock control arms. '70 spindles would be worth doing as well: built beefier vs. the earlier years. You’d have to switch to '70 tie rod ends too, but again, worth it to withstand the hard use you have planned.
One other thing I’d suggest is doing something different with your ignition. I’d do an electronic setup of some sort, whether it’s a Duraspark conversion (cheapest way to go), a Pertronix or an MSD type system. It’ll be way more consistent if you have an electronic ignition rather than points. I made a progression on mine. I started with points then converted to a Duraspark setup. After I could afford it I added an aftermarket ignition box (in my case, a Crane HI-6). The distributor itself is still the stock one, I just changed out some of the internals for the conversion. The Crane box (along with everyone else’s box) can use the same magnetic pickup in the distributor as the Duraspark setup. A lot of people will also suggest recurving the distributor, too. There are lots of other setups out there that are potentially better, but they’re also more expensive and probably overkill for your engine until you’re making quite a bit more power.
Most any track will require you to have windows rolled up these days. The only places that let you run with windows down are slacking on their rules enforcement.
CFM isn’t the problem. 750 should be about right. But mechanical secondary carbs generally don’t work well with automatics. Should be okay on the strip, but driveability and mileage will likely suffer on the street in comparison to a vacuum secondary carb.
Are the front Bilsteens actual drag shocks? If not, replace them with some 90/10s, or even a set of worn-out stockers. The idea is to have minimal resistance to front end rise, in order to promote weight transfer to the rear tires.
I concur with the recommendation of electronic ignition. Duraspark is good budget option, but I suggest a Pertronix III set-up. Easy installation and the big advantage is that it includes a built in rev-limiter function. Good protection of your investment.
The shocks were from the previous owner. Still new in the box. I threw them in when I had the front apart welding in shock tower braces and converting it to front discs and back to manual steering. They say they are “drag race series” on the box but to be honest they don’t really seem like they are any different from standard shocks. I would think that front drag should be relatively easy to pull out but they seemed like normal shocks. Would 6 cylinder springs help with weight transfer any better?
I have used the pertronix style of electronic ignition that replaces points on other projects. I had problems with one that I put in a 65 Ford truck that caused the spark plugs to burn out every 30 miles or so. Literally melted the grounding strap off of the plugs. I have one on a chevy 235 that works perfect though. So i’m still on the fence about the pertronix. I have also used a duraspark module when I put a 460 into a 64 F600. I was not a fan of it either.
I appreciate the advice so far. My engine is going to the machine shop this week to have the pistons cut for valve clearance for the over sized valves in the new heads. I also need a different length of hardened pushrods, so I am going to have them measure that up while they have it there. I will see what else they say while it is there.
I’ve been using a Pertonics in my green GT-E since 1994. It triggers an MSD6AL that is hidden in the console. Very reliable system, plugs last forever, even when I was running 2 four barrels.
I had a Pertronics in my daily driver 1965 Ranchero with 289 - 2V. I owned the car from 1989 - 94, then sold it to a friend of mine who has used it for his lawn service (yes he does) every week since. Same Pertronics, same engine all this time. He’s racked up 100,000 miles on the car since he bought it from me. He’s changed plugs a few times, about as often as he has to replace worn out suspension parts.
The Bilstein drag shocks are good parts. I didn’t know they made them for early Cougar/Mustang applications, but if they fit, I wouldn’t hesitate to use them.
Speaking of shocks, don’t use Mustang shocks on the rear. Even though practically every application chart you’ll see indicates they’re interchangeable, Mustang shocks are too short and won’t allow full suspension travel on a Cougar. For drag racing, you want the rear of the body to be able to raise during launch, pushing down the rear tires. Too-short shocks inhibit that movement. Shocks listed for the rear of an AMC Gremlin or Ford Courier pickup are the correct length and fit our Cougars.
Hate to hear you’ve had such trouble with Pertronix ignitions. I’ve been running Pertronix in my '69 for twenty years without a single hick-up.
The rear suspension has been heavily modified. The current location of the rear shocks will have them binding against the axle tubes. I will have to change them up and do something custom with the rear anyway. I am going to try to get some pictures before too long to help explain some of this stuff.
My experience with the pertronix may not be common at all. Like I said, the one I put in my Chevy with the 235 I haven’t had to touch. My 65 f100 had a 240 in it that I had built with an rv cam, ported head, offenhauser 4bbl intake running a holley 390, split cast efi manifolds and originally i had an HEI distributor in it. The motor was pretty peppy for a small 6. The voltage regulator died and took the HEI out with it so I threw the original distributor back in with a pertronix points eliminator in it and it proceeded to melt the spark plugs and score up my cylinder walls with chucks of metal from the plugs. I ended up swapping the good parts from the motor to a 300 and installing an HEI in that motor and haven’t had any problems with it again. Only thing different was the pertronix.
The problem you had was not the Pertronix. You had the coil polarity backwards. The center electrode sits in the middle of a high temp ceramic insulator. It is hard to picture but the spark should jump from the hot center to the cold side electrode. Reverse the polarity and you move the heat to the side electrode. This is a problem seen often with older British cars that started out as positive ground systems.
I have done stupid things before, so I’m definitely not saying you are wrong and that didn’t happen, but I really doubt that was the problem. I didn’t elaborate more on my Pertronix issue other than to say that it melted the spark plugs and I swapped it out, but the reality was that I swapped it out after several sets of plugs, three new coils, a set of good plug wires, at least one distributor cap, and several rotors. It was a six month battle of changing parts to find the problem. Like I said, I have done dumb things many times before, but I don’t think I could have hooked 4 coils up backwards. Besides, I had a tach on the truck taking signal from the coil and it was working correctly, so I was at least checking for polarity when I was hooking that up. I honestly think I just ended up with a bad unit. I still have it somewhere. Maybe I will pull it and see if I can play with it and see if it has a problem.
I am a genuine novice at drag racing ( and on the cougar/mustang) but I am not new to older cars. In fact I actually teach automotive at a high school. My personal collection of vehicles is currently at 18 (plus a couple bikes and some tractors). They range from a 1948 to 1991 with most of them being between 1960 and 1970. I am far from a master at any area, but I would like to think that I know a little more than the average home-brewed mechanic.
On another note, come to find out that no machine shop around me has the ability to fly cut valve relief in my pistons to clear the larger valves. I considered buying a cheap set of flat top stock style pistons and putting them on my mill and doing it myself, but I would have no way to indicate valve center and the clearance angle without an elaborate jig. And even then I don’t know that the ancient Rockwell mill is tight enough in the spindle to do an acceptable job of it.
I have ordered a set of Keith Black hypereutectic pistons that will clear. With my low deck 69 block, and 60cc heads, I should have right at 11:1 compression according to the specs provided from Keith Black.
You need the piston jig in order to fly cut them accurate in a mill. Most machine shops don’t have one because they’re expensive and don’t get enough use to pay for it. Try to find a racing shop they would most likely have the setup. Where are you located? I have a local sprint car racing shop that does it. Had to fly cut the pistons on my 408 stroker motor.
The Pertronix is basically just a solid state relay, an on off switch. It doesn’t boost voltage or anything like that. Since we don’t have the car to play with there is no way to tell what exactly went wrong. Here is an article that explains it pretty well FWIW. https://mgaguru.com/mgtech/ignition/ig104.htm
One of the machine shops I called was called " XXXXXXX Motor Sports" I don’t want to name them, as they have a good reputation in the area, but the machinist I talked to was the head guy and he was not very helpful. They build a lot of dirt track motors for UMP Modifieds and Late Models as well as boat engines, but he said that he had never encountered a problem with valves hitting pistons due to the valve diameter being larger. His opinion was that I would have to step up much higher in my duration and valve lift as well as have domed pistons before that would be an issue. (Edelbrock disagrees) When he asked me about my cylinder heads he half joking half serious told me that those were cheap heads and I would probably be money ahead to just bolt them on and let them self clearance if there was a problem… Needless to say I called another shop. I am in Southern Illinois. I am sure there is a shop in St. Louis that could do it, but I avoid crossing the river and going to the city at all cost. Unless its to the drag strip at Gateway.