Tex-cat restoration by XR7-Gry

7 minute(s) of a 28 minute read

It's a long time since my last update on this car. That does not mean that nothing has been done since December 
So where do I start.... I guess with engine. The cylinder heads had to be put on of course. Then We had bought a set of new rocker arms from Rock Auto, but of course I got wrong parts so I had to wait for the correct parts to arrive. (shipping take time when you live in Norway). 

While I was waiting for the rocker arms to arrive I decided to install electrical wiring system and dash, put on the doors and top bows. The passenger door came on fine, but for the driver side we bought a reproduction door hinge and it did not fit very well. I had to do a few modifications and then it seemed to work fine. I will come back to that later. I also installed the door glass and power window regulators. After adding some weight to the doors I readjusted them to fit right but I really struggled with the driver side door as it just for some reason just did not seem to fit right. 

A week or so later I got the correct engine parts and could go on with the engine compartment. the wiring system needed a lot of repair so I decided to make a new one from scratch. 



Then it was time for the exhaust. I decided to install the exhaust manifolds that came with the new cylinder heads and a complete dual exhaust system from Mustangs Unlimited including a new H pipe to fit the original 2V exhaust. But then I realized that the H pipe and the left manifold did not fit together. It turned out I had a manifolds from a 71, not a 70. Luckily I had a good LH 70 manifold here so a quick change made things better. After that all went fine and all in all I am impressed by how well these exhaust systems fit. 

Here I got the restored wheels on and also the fenders are back on the car. Before I put on the left fender I once again had to readjust the left door as it for some reason was out of position, but with the fender on I was not at all happy and opened and closed the door a number of time to find out what was happening. Well, I am not sure, but to me it seemed like the metal in the reproduction door hinge were so soft that it was unable to hold the weight of the door. Can you believe they are selling this kind of junk and can get away with it? Oh well, I ordered an original hinge from WCCC and replaced the new hinge with a rebuilt old one and after that all the problems were gone. Maybe these hinges are good for the lighter Mustang doors, but for a heavy Cougar door with power windows they are just not usable. 



The hood in place. 



Reproduction grille is really nice. 

Then it was time to take the steering apart and get things done right. It had only been temporarily hooked together before to be able to steer the car in and out of the garage so now thankgs were put together right and hoses for the power steering connected. As you see this is not a show restoration, this is going to be a nice driver car. 

This car had been exposed to a lot of hot Texas sun, and the instrument lenses were so gray that you could not see through them. Also the woodgrain on the dash were terrible faded and lost all its color. Once again I had a set of nice lenses over from another car and I also had a number of really nice woodgrain panels, but they were from a 69 so they needed some modifications to fit. 



According to the Marti report this car did not come with a console when new. Luckily someone had installed a console in it, but the person had not realized that before you put a console into a non console car you have to remove the ash tray under the dash. So they managed to squeeze the console under the ash tray which again cased the console to crack pretty bad. To fix it I made several brackets and glued them on the back side supporting the plastic and it turned out pretty nice. I also managed to find a correct console insert for the car and replaced the rear lid with a correct reproduction one. The gear know is the one that used to be in my XR7-G that I restored. It turned out to be from a 70 Eliminator since it had a silver Cougar insert so I think it was a perfect knob fro this cat.  

Here I am installing a new convertible top. At first we planned to put on a white top, but made a last minute change and went for a black canvas top instead. WCCC has a video on Youtube showing how to install a top. I would not recommend to follow those instructions without also reading the instruction for bow placement in your shop manual and following the top manufacturer information as setting the rear bow hight correct is essential for the result.




Here is the top finished and you can also see that a lot of the exterior details are back on the car. 

The car is out in the sun for the first time as I needed to put it in my other garage until I get the new leather upholstery from Johns Classic Cougar and some other parts needed to complete the restoration.