Seasons Greetings

Hard to believe another year has come and gone.

The Cougar has been wrapped up for the move to the body shop, sort of an early Christmas present.

Now the hard work begins, Tyler will have his work cut out for him , but he is almost as excited as I am to get the fabrication started so we can see the end result.

Below is a couple of pics to end off the year. The next pics I post will be of the fabrication rebuild.

Thanks again to all of you for reading, have a safe and family filled holiday.

Please don't drink and drive.

Cougar moved back to my shop.

The move on the flat bed truck was successful.

Nothing shifted or moved the welds and the bracing look good, of course the flat bed took the rough back roads to get to my shop so it was a good first test of things holding up.

So now with the car at my shop I should be able to finish all the interior sheet metalling and welding.

Once that is complete I will start to replace the cars interior. I don't recall noting what I was planning on doing with the interior so my plan is to use both interiors, part of the Shelby and Cougar dash. I will need to use the electronic portion of the Shelby dash, and the rest will be from the Cougar. The front seats will be from the Shelby the rear seats from the Cougar. The head liner, door liner and inner panels will be from the Cougar. Most of the electronics will just plug in, I was checking this out the other day by plugging in the rear lights, they are a match and work, once I have attached all the components I will order the sequential system for this model, so it will work like the original Cougar system. Getting to the front lights will be a long time from now as all the body work will need to be completed before I can tackle that, but my plan will be to detach the vacuume system and go with the electric hideaway lights.

One last note I very excited to see last year that there were over 800 followers well since that time it has more than doubled to over 1600, thanks to all who read this and a bigger thanks to everyone for the help!

Cougar body in place

Once the windshield was removed the front end dropped right into place.

Most of the welding has been done to mount the bodies together. The car is now ready to move to my heated shop where I can weld the rest of the body and start to put the interior back together.

Thanks again to Alex for the great welding job. No doubt having a professional welder do the main parts was a big relief. Gord and I put the doors back on yesterday this was a huge test to see if anything had twisted or bent, the doors went on with no problems they still need some final adjustments but they line up and look great. I only took a couple of pics but will add more once we wheel it out of the garage. 

Some good news

Thanks to Ken I have some good news.

The next part of the fabrication will be the hardest and most complicated for me.

I will need to get the windshield removed and cut out the dash.

This should allow the front end to drop into place, the windshield will have to be cut before being replaced. I spoke to a couple of glass companies and they say this should be no problem.

I also made sure that the hood fit and it did. The fenders are still going to have to be fabricated so no change there. I will be getting the glass company to remove the windshield next week, if all goes well rebuilding could start this month. 

First big delay

We'll I knew it would happen but I was not sure what it would be that would have me scratching my head and delay the project. The big dilemma is that I cannot get the front end to drop far enough down  to match up with the floor boards. It looks like I need the front end to drop another three inches and it's the longest three inches ever. On the plus side it looks like the rear end is a perfect match and drops in place with no problems. Once I knew I was out of options the first call I made was to Ken my body man, I emailed a few pics for him to look at as he is on a large hail stone removal project out of the city.

After looking at the pics there was no good news but no bad either, Ken advised he needs to see the in person however his current project will leave him out of town until some time in September.

So for now the project will be on hold. Thanks for all your questions and concerns on not seeing any updates, time has been flying by and I still have several summer projects to complete time is running out ,life in the fast lane. Hopefully my next post will be full of good news. Thanks for reading.

Fitting the Cougar body.

Time has been limited to work on the car as summer yard projects have taken over.

I have however placed the Cougar body on the Mustang three times, without a great fit. I know we are getting closer to that perfect fit but I am still not certain the body is going to fit the way I planned.

With work and other projects taking up time to move forward on the project. I will need to have some patients and try not to rush with the time I have right now. Here is a picture of one placing of the body on the Mustang. I am thinking that with a couple more fittings I will have the body in place for good.

Still crossing my fingers.

Productive day cutting Up the Cougar

Big thanks to Gord for his help yesterday.

Everything we did yesterday went according to plan, the rear end was removed nothing was seized or rusted it just rolled out the back. We then cut off the front end,again with no problems or surprises.

Then we tackled removal of the fire wall, driveshaft tunnel and the rear seat. This resulted in only one tense moment when the weight of the car shifted and slid off the rear jack stands lucky no injuries or damage.

So now comes the hard part, placing the Cougar on the Mustang.

I thought once everything was cut and removed four able bodies myself included could just lift the shell. No way! This car is all steel and very heavy. Plan B? Well I never thought I have a problem lifting it so back to the drawing board. After cleaning up the mess in the garage Gord had the idea, all we need is an engine hoist placed over the rear of the car along with a strap it should lift with no problem. Then all we need are two able bodies to balance the front end and we are off to the races. So we now have plan B!  One other shout out to Dan my son in law who stuck his head in the garage yesterday at the right time and ended up with some grunt work for over an hour, nice to be young and full of energy. He is also that ever popular guy with the truck, guess who is picking up the engine hoist today. Thanks Dan. 

Cougar stripped and ready to move.

I have stripped down the Cougar and now it's ready for cutting.

Thanks to Joe for stopping by and suggesting that I move the car to where the Mustang is before cutting off the body this way transporting it on our pot hole filled roads should not be a problem.

No real issues taking the car apart, I did however find some rust on the floor behind the drivers seat which is no problem, but i will have to repair it before moving forward.

Thanks to Greg for the lift, moving the Cougar went smooth now the hard work begins.

My to do list is getting shorter however it is still a couple of pages long.

If all things go well I am hoping to have the body stripped and placed on the Mustang by June 1.

Mustang complete

All cutting has been done on the Mustang.

I am sure to have some touch ups and tweaks as I move forward but for now the Mustang is done.

No more wiring was torched on the drivers side like I did on the passenger side lesson learned.

I even had time this weekend to test the measurements on the front end on the Mustang.

After taking what seemed to be hundreds of measurements on the body of the car I really payed little attention to the front end thinking that once I finished the Mustang I could just place the three parts from the Cougar  and make sure they fit this would confirm My measurements were correct.. I removed the front tires as I will have to fabricate the front fenders the Cougar front end is four inches longer than the Mustang.

So after using snap ties and pieces of wood I could find in the garage the next thing I know the Cougar front end is on the Mustang and it looked and fit great. One other fabrication i might have to make is the opening of the hood, there is no where to put the hood hinges so the hood might have to open in reverse like the Corvette hood but I will get a second opinion on that before I make the final decision.  

I hope things go as smooth with the Cougar, time will tell.

Cold snap continues to hang in there.

We have set winter records all season and this is the longest cold snap I have ever witnessed.

To make matters worse I came across an article that featured a 1968 Cougar which was completely rebuilt from the ground up. This article is in Modified Mustangs & Fords February edition.

Looking at how awesome this Cougar turned out made me even more excited  to get going again once the weather changes. I always had a vision of what my car would look like once completed, but without a drawing it was only something that I could see, now looking at the pictures of this Cougar this is exactly what I had envisioned. After reading the article I needed to know more about the car, so I contacted the chassis company in P.A and they emailed the owner C.J. Sabol next thing you know we are on the phone for a hour trading our Cougar stories. One of the first questions I had was about the tires and how much if any modifications were done to the wheel wells, as it turns out there were no modifications required as the wells are already flared enough to house the wheel. That was great news.

I will give you some of the car specs as for the rest I encourage you to get a copy of the magazine and check out the whole build story, it is quite amazing.

Engine 351 Windsor, 600 plus horse power.

Tremec T-56 Magnum six speed

Total control products front coil over suspension.

Front P245/35ZR18 tires. Rear P335/30ZR18 tires.

Thank you to C.J. Sabol for taking the time to call me and to Doug at Precsion Chassis for sending the email. I look forward to getting started again when warm weather comes.