Journal
 

February 2007
Brought the car home and got most of the crap that had been collecting on top of the car washed off... now to tear into this thing and see what damage I can do to the bank account.....

March 2007

Got the front end taken off the car including the suspension and brakes.  Yanked the motor and tranny and anything else left in the engine bay to prep for cleaning and repaint...
Made a trip down to MustangsPlus and picked up a Grab-A-Trak suspension kit for the coug.......
Gutted the interior of the car and primed the floor pans and any exposed metal inside the car..........
Cleaned out the trunk and removed the gas tank..   stripped the old crap out and primed the trunk... replaced the gas tank with a new one with some undercoating on the bottom of the tank...

April 2007
Torn the originial 302 down to a bare block in prep for the machine shop.. project 347............

June 2007

Getting hot outside....  cleaned up the engine bay a bit and treated any rusty areas... engine bay should be ready for paint soon......

March 14, 2008

It's been a busy year at work and I haven't had much time to do anything to the Cougar.  I'm back at it full force and have acquired quite a bit to add to the car.  I recently purchased a Ford Mustang donor car to swap a 5.0 EFI setup and AOD transmission into the Cougar. I now have 90% of my suspension parts to put on and will be ordering my brakes any day now. I hope to have a rolling chassis by the end of the month and the driveline complete by the end of April.....  We'll see how that goes.... Stay tuned.................

March 29, 2008

My brakes were delivered on March 25th, so it was time to get busy on the front end.  The drivers side front brakes and suspension went on today.  Hit a few snags, but overall I'm happy

March 30, 2008

Wow what a busy day.....  Got the passenger side front brakes and suspension on in no time after doing the drivers side... I decided to drop the motor and trans in the car at this point.. what a mess that was..  everything was going smooth.. Oil pickup, Oil pan swapped easily... Well all was well until the motor mounts didn't line up.. The old saying, "you get what you paid for" comes to mind with these set of motor mounts.. Off to the parts store to pick up a different set...

March 31, 2008

The new motor mounts did the trick and the motor and tranny are in the car now..............

April 4, 2008
Took the day off of work to button up a few things...  got the Ron Morris AOD crossmember in the car and cleaned up the valve covers and lower intake manifold... Ripped the main harness out of the EFI donor car and then cleaned up shop.. man did I have a mess to clean up......

April 5, 2008
The day of cleaning up somebody else's mess....  today was eventful, including breaking a harmonic balancer puller and having to go buy a new one...  also had to drill out and tap a broken timing cover bolt...  all in all a frustrating day. the motor is almost done now.. next up - wiring and some fabrication to finish up the EFI swap and accessories....

April 13, 2008
Kinda slow weekend...  Cleaned, retaped and installed the engine and main EFI harness today...  Wow.. used three rolls of tape..... 

April 19, 2008
Spent the day searching junk yards for a MAF housing and MAF sensor.. Finally found one at a local Pick-N-Pull...  while I was at it, I snagged a 3G alternator....

April 20, 2008
Finished cleaning up the timing cover and front of the block... mounted and painted the timing cover and water pump...  also slightly modified and mounted the alternator bracket and 3G.  Almost done with my serpentine system.. just gotta order my new Balancer and tensioner bracket =O)

August 30, 2008
On our first day of a long awaited vacation, we took a drive down to MustangsPlus for some strut rod bolts and to see what was new in the store.

September 1, 2008
Its been a while since I actually did anything... No better way to spend Labor day than to work on the Cougar... Started off by mocking up the headers that I have already. Well that didn't quite work out as well as I had hoped. Looks like I will be buying a different set of headers.  So I moved on to the the strut rods, which is the last thing that I need to do to the front suspension. Let me tell you, getting 40 year old strut rods off a car is a pain the butt, but the new ones are on and look great.

September 9, 2008
Worked a little bit on the car today.. replaced the oil pan gasket on the 5.0 for good measure and cleaned up the crossmember. I put the last castle nut that I needed on my manual steering system.  Just about ready to put the front wheels on and drop it down... (wait..  =O(  I don't have any wheels yet...)