Busy winter ahead

Summer has come and gone work on the project has been moving forward with no real issues.

Some of the things completed over the summer were adding an additional frame support, wet blasting most of the car, removal of the power train, loads of cutting and trimming, and adding more support until all welding has been done. After seeing the car yesterday for the first time in a month I cannot believe how ridged the frame and suspension are I can't wait to test drive. Knock on wood we have no other issues we do not know how to fix at this time and that is good news as winter and the busy push begins. Not a lot of new pics but I did snap one of the new floor which looks great. I should be updating monthly again as time for the finish line is not that far away, busy winter ahead hope it is a mild one. Thanks again for reading.

Very busy spring

I know a lot of you have been calling and emailing wondering why no update.

Tyler at Zombie Bodyshop has been very busy since the show at world of wheels with his new wet blasting and regular customers. Time has flown by and summer is almost here, we did run into some major problems with the driveshaft tunnel but we came up with a solution and are back on track. We are trying to keep most of the build and fabrication a secret until we are finished and ready for the big reveal. I should have some pictures I could reveal in the fall but until then, I will have to keep you guessing and calling. It will be spectacular!

For now have a great summer, I will try to update a least monthly to let you know if we are still on track.

Thanks for reading.

Drive safe.

World of wheels

This past weekend world of wheels was in Winnipeg a great chance to check out some nice hotrods.

Tyler from Zombie Bodyshop had a booth at the show and he was busy promoting his new machine wet blasting. This technology takes less time to remove paint and rust, it also reduces prep time for painting and won't damage the metal. 

No new news on the project, but no new problems and that's the good news.

After see the cars it got me excited to think about how mine would look once finished I can hardly contain myself, but like my grandfather used to say good things come to he who waits. I know he was right and the wait has been worth every minute. 

As it turns out my car made it to the world of wheels and I did not even know it, Tyler had a video of some projects he had and is currently working on and well the Cougar was one of them. So when I saw my car at the show even though it was on tv it was pretty special. I took a picture of the video for the blog check it out below. No other pics right now as nothing major to see from a picture standpoint.

I did however take a pic of my grandson who also loved the cars but this was his favourite. I wonder if he will be tying to catch me one day?

Fabrication Plan in place

LAfter two months of measuring and debating we have come up with a starting point.

First off I am not sure if I mentioned in my previous post that my original bodyman Ken at Magic Dent was unable to work on the project due an overload of current business. So thanks to Ken for all his help up to this point, I will be keeping him in the loop on the build.

Now to introduce Tyler owner of Zombie Bodyshop. You can check out Tyler's work and sense of humour on Instagram Zombiebodyshop all one word.

Now to the build.

First thing we need to do is repair the passenger side fom the original accident. We need to stretch out the car aprox an inch and a half. 

Once done we need to raise the car, when I lined it up originally I thought it was level and high enough but that is not the case, no problem for Tyler.

Then we need to focus on the front end, we are unable to use the Cougar hood, however we are going  to modify the Mustang hood to look like the Cougar design.

The fenders have to be modified but we knew that from the start. We are still not sure what to do with the head lights and the grill, but we are little ways away so still some time to come up with a plan.

Here is a couple of pictures one with the hood in place, it looks mean.

Thanks again for all of you who are following along. 

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.