Catch up ...

This post is to catch everyone up with what I have done so far, prior to starting this blog, but I guess I should probably say a little something about this car first.

This is a 1967 Mercury Commuter Wagon. It was purchased late in the Summer of 2011 for a guy in Texas off of eBay. He is a jerk and tried to rip me off. With a lot research on my part, and a lot of help from a couple of members of The Fairlane Club of America, long story short, I got the car, but with a number of issues. The motor wasn't what was claimed. The oil pan was cut up and pouring out oil as was the power steering, and trans pan. The shocks were shot. The electrical was messed up.

LOTS to do!

So I jumped right in. I started by pulling the dash. At some point (probably when they swapped the engine) they kinked the heater control cable, then tried to force the controls snapping the adjustment lever off. I picked up a used dash assembly for parts and replaced it. Had to get one with factory air to match.

Next issue, the electrical. When you turned the key on, the dash lights came on as did the driving lights. Sounded like a short and after hand inspecting the dash harness while still in the vehicle, I found the harness had dropped off a mount, and three wires were cut after rubbing against a sharp edge. Fixed those and the problems went away.

The fuel pump was wired hot all of the time and controlled by a toggle switch the previous owner added. I reran the circuit tying it in to the fuse panel and so it would be hot only when the ignition was in the on position. I opted to maintain the toggle switch as a secondary control / emergency kill switch.

The radio was missing, and the factory speaker was shot. I had a refurbished AM/FM factory Ford radio from the 1970s that I had purchased previously, intending to use it in the Cougar, but opted to add it to the wagon since I had it opened up. I picked up a set of front and rear speakers. One front speaker mounted in the stock location. For the second, my friend Paul and I fabbed a bracket up off the underside of the dash and mounted the speaker pointing down. Rear speakers were installed into the rear interior quarter panels. I didn't want a raised, surface mounted speaker grill, so I took a slightly different approach. I will try to get some pics of that install posted later. Works, and looks great, by the way!

Next I added a set of opposing third row seats from a 1968 Ford Ranch Wagon. I ended up having to add a bunch of the decking trim as well, but the installation looks great. Still need to add the seat belts. In fact, I just purchased the last thing I need to add the seat belts ... anchor reinforcements that keep the bolt from tearing through the sheet metal.Should get those in a few days. I will need to remove the sheet metal that is still attached to them (rough cut), clean them up, and get them installed.

I'm still in the process of fixing the suspension up. I picked up load-assist shocks for all 4 corners to handle the extra weight of the 460 engine that was swapped in (now going to be a 429 ... more on that in a future post), for the third row seats that I added, and for anything that might be towed behind the vehicle in the future since I will be adding a trailer hitch.

Plenty left to do to make the car safe to drive like replace the vinyl gas line (yes, vinyl), replace both the front and rear coil springs (rears are shot, and the fronts are a bit soft), and complete the power disc brakes swap among others. Once I have that work settled, I can start thinking about making this pretty again. I have pretty much everything I need. Just need to dig in to the body work. The car is very clean and very solid, so the work that needs to be done is mostly to deal with the scrapes down the sides of the car on either side. Need to replace the DS fender too, but I actually found an affordable NOS fender.

The color will be going back to the factory 2-tone bright green metallic with white roof. Very cool!