That looks to be a very clean Cougar and in good condition. I hope you enjoy your new Cat.
The car will definitely be noticeable when you are out and about cruising. Enjoy!!!
Electric Wizard, In my case it coasted me 2160usd, final price with insurance.
I know someone who ship a car some years ago for less than 1700 usd, but now day’s its a crappy period. With post covid and actual petrol explosing prices
My friend purchased a 1970 Chrysler Newport Convertible and it cost him $3,300 to ship from Canada to Denver, Colorado. I was looking to possibly purchase it from him until I came across the XR-7 I found last summer.
After 4 months waiting she’s finally home. I was so excited the day she comes… and it was such a deception …
So, starting from the good news,
Exterior is not bad, just needing some love and care.
Interior is in quite good shape.
I don’t really look under chassis yet.
Really good news, the car was sold to me as a 1st hand, 1 owner only, and paper I received confirms that. Its kind crazy to imagine more than 50 years in the same hands…
When we wanted to take her out of the trailer she doesn’t want to start. The guy told me than she’s probably out of fuel. So I put it some fuel…
An then she finally does a quite shinny start and stop again…
Guy tries again and she starts, he keeps her on high throttle for a bit trying to stabilise the engine, but she starts making more smoke, a lot of blue smoke and I saw oil dropping under engine, a lot…
We stop her and push it down.
I open the hood and there was oil all over the place, even over the engine.
Open the air filter housing and it was fill of oil.
Take housing out and start the engine again, it still smokes, but less than before an I saw oil coming out of the dipstick hole and from the oil cap (I think it’s that way that oil makes is way into the air filter housing).
So I’m thinking on a very bad scenário, like piston compression rings falling out (or break) and putting pression on oil…
For now I just clean up a little bit the engine and I will try to measure the compression.
The cranking speed doesn’t sound even, like you have at least one cylinder low on compression. Start with a basic compression test. All plugs out, throttle wide open, and five pulses of the needle.
Judging by the original condition it might still have the original nylon tooth timing gear set. Those fail typically when you are starting the engine. Check to verify timing at top dead center.
Another thing that happens when old cars get shipped is that fuel sloshing in the tank dissolves the dried up layer of shellac inside the tank and loosens up all of the sediment in the tank. That gets into the carburetor and messes things up.
Depending on how long it was sitting, and what the conditions were on the boat, it could just be a couple stuck rings that are giving you the excessive blow by. You can pour a couple ml of ATF down any cylinders that show low compression and let it sit for a night or two to see if that frees them up. ATF has a lot of detergents in it that make it a pretty good cleaner/penetrant.
After preparing everything to test compression, take the spark plugs out and all, I put the battery in (I had taken it off to clean the engine) and then, when I put the cables on, lots of sparkle and a lot of smoke, and cables melting…
So finally, compression not tested. I was so irritated that I just take batt out and close the hood.
I decided to let it stand by for now, I’m quite busy for the moment and to emotional with it. I won’t touch it until my vacations. Then I’ll decide au to proceed. But probably the engine will come out…
Yeah, that would piss me off too. But you’ve got a really nice original California car there and it’s all fixable. In contrast, mine started right up and ran great off the delivery trailer. Problem was, that masked a whole host of problems from sitting for 5 years. Bad gas, rusty cooling system, rusty brake system, sticky valves, etc. i drove it for a few years overheating (no temp gauge) before realizing the scope of needed repairs. In retrospect, I should have just pulled the engine and fixed it right from the start. Would have saved me a whole lot of unsafe and frustrating trips where it vapor locked and left me stranded. And I nearly destroyed a nice original low mile 351C.
What bad luck. That must have been one heck of a trip across the ocean. I’m curious what caused your wires to fry? I have found that owning an older classic car is great mind therapy. You can think about your car instead of other things going on in your life.
