Robs Stupid '68 Mercury Cougar Land Page

 

This is Robs Stupid Cougar Page documenting my progress in the year 2002. It is Stupid.

Feb 15, 2002. Once again, it is time to start thinking about Cougar stuff. The motor I put into my Cougar came out of a 34 year old car, with who knows how many miles. It runs really good and is as reliable as a vehicle can be that is that old. It puffs smoke every once in a while, and uses alot of oil when driving on the freeway. It is time the motor had some attention.

I took the motor out and stripped it down to the short block, and found a nice ridge at the top of the cylinder walls, which means that the bores are worn and probably tapered. when i took the cam out, the retainer broke into 3 pieces in my hand! When I removed the cam, It had some damage from when the distributor siezed and some grinding on the rear of one of the lobes where it was trying to walk out of the block.

I took the motor to the engine hospital to get rebuilt. I had it bored, new forged pistons, crank turned and balanced with all new bearings, and rods resized, whatever that is. While it was in there, I had them put in a new cam, lifters, rocker arms, shafts and pushrods.

March 1, 2002. The motor is done, Even with the new valvetrain parts, it was less than $2000, which made my wife very happy. I went to bolt all the covers on, and it looked icky. I will have to spend the next couple days cleaning and painting the oil pan, timing cover, and valve covers.

I got the oil pump, filter adapter, spark plugs, and flywheel installed.

You will notice from the picture that I got it back from the shop with the pushrods installed, but no intake. This is because they dry run all the motors to check them before they leave the shop. I will have to remove the pushrods to install the intake.

March 5, 2002. Working like crazy cleaning and painting all the parts before putting them back on the motor is taking a long time. All that is left is the oil cap and the intake bypass tubing. Then I can install this monster back in my car.

It is almost all painted and assembled.

Got the motor in, and it looks really pretty.

March 20, 2002. It has been in for awhile, about 50 miles on it, and it runs about the same as before. It has a slightly wilder cam now, so it has a little more power in the upper rpms, but it missing some of the low end torque.

Now that it runs better, it needs to stop better. The front brakes are dragging a little. The left front tire is very hard to spin by hand. The passenger side is not as bad, but still not right. New master cylinder, calipers, and wheel bearings, and it rolls much better now. Pedal feels alot more solid also.

March 23, 2002. It has been awhile since I posted a pic of the whole car. Since the last pics, the back of the car has gotten a new valence, bumper, lift bars, springs, and reverse light holders.

A view of its rear.

Since the last pics, the front has gotten a new valence as well, new marker lights, turn signal indicators, brake calipers, and wheel bearings. If you strain really hard you cant see the calipers or wheel bearings. You can see a black mark on the driveway in front of the rear tire where I got carried away as I was pulling in the other day. Of course there is one like it on the other side.

A view of its front.

April 2, 2002. After I my distributor siezed last year, I got another, but I forgot to get the advance parts out of the old old when I gave them the old one in return. The last 2 distributors I have bought have had the newer 18/21 degree advance mechanisms, which are useless on an older car. Now that the motor is back in, it is time to do something about the problem.

A whole page showing what I did to solve my distributor problem.

May 3,2002. I got a Compaq K6-2-366 Laptop for cheap. I decided to install it in my car

Jun 14, 2002. I was driving my favorite car around and the steering got loose all of a sudden. No noise, no indication of why, just all of a sudden, I had very little control of my car, it had nearly half a turn of slack in the steering, which was very scary. I managed to limp the car home, going about 25mph all the way.

My steering box is whacked.

Dec 12, 2002. Looking through some of my old pics, I realized how awesome this one is. This one is when the back tires still had some of the stickers on them, and still had some tread :)

Isnt that awesome.

Next (2003)

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