I have a solid '68 I bought recently, and now I’m working on some cleanup and little restoration to make it a better car and keep it solid for years to come. I am not doing a full restoration but improving areas where it makes sense.
One weakness on the Cougar, and cars in the 60s in general, is not having wheelwell liners. I took one of my fenders off today and did a bunch of cleaning and my goodness, I must have removed ten pounds of dirt and crud from the nooks and crannies around the fender and suspension. It is wide open in there and the tires shoot road junk everywhere. Has anyone looked into mocking up a sent of wheelwell liners to cut down on dirt and sand accumulation?
I have another couple questions: There is a large gap between two panels in the firewall area, that I chiseled loose tar out of. Anyone have suggestions on cleaning the gap area, and what sort of substance to fill it in with? What about something like the gray glaze looking material found in some areas on the car?
Lastly, there was a pretty thick strip of gray glaze between the fender and fender liner in the area along the hood. I stripped it off, but am wondering what I should use to fill back in there when I put the fender back on.
Some wheel well liners would be a great idea if you could get them made. I had my fender off recently and when I put it back on I used some plumbers putty to close the seam between the fender and top of aprons. Seems like it worked fine and if I need to get fender off it won’t be too difficult. Use seam sealer for areas That you would want to permanently seal up. It is spreadable and dries really hard. I don’t remember the brand but AutoZone had a grey colored seam sealer that worked well for me. Auto parts store will carry seam sealer in large tubes for caulk gun. They also have spray cans of undercoating to spray on all exposed areas under fender
The stuff you removed included the factory sound deadener / rust preventative. There was probably 6 - 8 pounds in each of the front wheel well areas. It is a tar / asphalt type substance. It does a good job.
Here’s a good example of how it was done originally at all the plants, for all Mustang / Cougars of the era:
I recently went thru the same thing. I used a large flat screw driver a cleared off any thing that was still weakly bonding to find the rusted metal spots below it. Then used Ospho to treat the rust, some black rust protection spray paint and I used the black sticky strips WCCC sells for adding your replacement fuel tank to fill those cracks and crevices. It seemed closest thing to what was originally in there. Many of those gaps still had good clean metal under all that old crap. But some just hid the rust. I left as much original under coating that was still very well adhered to the underside. I cleaned it really good then gave that a fresh coating of the store bought spray for under coating to freshen it up. Turned out looking great for another 20+ years I hope!
Looking good czechmate. I’ve been plugging away at mine. I removed the splash guard, vacuum reservoir and brackets. I am done with the entire inner wheelwell area, going to leave it as shown in this photo.
Got the inside of the fender done too, the undercoating was so loose on it much of it scraped right off, along with a lot of paint that flaked off easily. I just applied the rust converter coating, in the areas that needed it, then will hit it with rust proof paint. That will be it for this side. Attached some before and after pics.
