Without further ado
It's project time again! It's been too long. I'd been trawling adverts for unhealthy amounts of time every day for months and not finding much of interest locally. In the middle of December I spotted this advertised on Gumtree for £295. No MOT as it's been off the road since 2013, the rear subframe is rotten (common it seems), and low miles.
The Cougar never really took off, even though it should be decent to drive being based on the older Mondeo platform. I admit I poo-poo'd them back in the day as Ford producing a coupe that wasn't RWD and called Capri just wasn't right. But today : a decent coupe with N/A V6 and manual gearbox, yeah, that's a bit cool and I like having cars you don't see often.
Contacting the owner they'd had a low-ball offer but as the car was still there they were still willing to talk. Unseen I offered £250 and could take it that day. It's not like me to be so decisive but at that money it would break, so where was the risk?
When I got there, they had the car running and it was running lovely. It drove itself onto the trailer. The slightly dark pics are on getting it home in the evening.
Over Christmas I jacked it up and removed wheels, arch liners, lights and bumpers for a closer inspection. Yeah, the four corners of the sills were rusty, not holed but it didn't take much pressure to make some. The rot has invaded into the rear of the front footwells. Muck down the rear of the front arch liners and sodden foam insulation ahead of the rear arches brought on the rot. The rest of the car is solid underneath, all original. Clearly somebody at Ford forgot to specify the standard rusty arches of all older Fords. They're very, very straight.
The bodywork is good. There are a few small dings that should push out. The paint is unbroken and it should buff up even where it looks like a child tried to write in the rear wing with a brillo pad. The bumpers need attention but they can be dealt with off the car.
The interior is really good with few signs of wear. It's an X-Pack so has the nice leather seats. Aside from the neglected car smell the interior is rather pleasant and everything seems to work. The speedo shows 68132 miles. The interior shows little sign of it. Even though the car's been idle for 8 years it does seem to have been well cared for through its life. All the original Ford manuals and service log (to 42,000 miles) are present. All this for £250?
I threw a new battery in, the engine started and runs sweetly. A brief test drive on perished tyres seems to show the mechanicals are in decent shape. It passed my tests so it got upgraded into the garage for resuscitation.
First off is seeing if the sills can be repaired. Well anything can be repaired but I needed to see if my skills and patience could stand fixing a rusty tin car. Previous projects have been kitcars and such where any welding was of decent gauge steel. However, I've been intrigued by threads here and elsewhere of rusty monocoque repairs. I confess I held off starting the thread to see how good a start I got off to.
From this :
to this first repair at the base of the A-pillar is satisfying for me
and gives me confidence to continue. There's still a lot of orange in the pic, but I'm enjoying the origami and metal forming so far. Next up is to form that outer sill section to keep a good sill seam, then look at the rot to the inner side.
It's project time again! It's been too long. I'd been trawling adverts for unhealthy amounts of time every day for months and not finding much of interest locally. In the middle of December I spotted this advertised on Gumtree for £295. No MOT as it's been off the road since 2013, the rear subframe is rotten (common it seems), and low miles.
The Cougar never really took off, even though it should be decent to drive being based on the older Mondeo platform. I admit I poo-poo'd them back in the day as Ford producing a coupe that wasn't RWD and called Capri just wasn't right. But today : a decent coupe with N/A V6 and manual gearbox, yeah, that's a bit cool and I like having cars you don't see often.
Contacting the owner they'd had a low-ball offer but as the car was still there they were still willing to talk. Unseen I offered £250 and could take it that day. It's not like me to be so decisive but at that money it would break, so where was the risk?
When I got there, they had the car running and it was running lovely. It drove itself onto the trailer. The slightly dark pics are on getting it home in the evening.
Over Christmas I jacked it up and removed wheels, arch liners, lights and bumpers for a closer inspection. Yeah, the four corners of the sills were rusty, not holed but it didn't take much pressure to make some. The rot has invaded into the rear of the front footwells. Muck down the rear of the front arch liners and sodden foam insulation ahead of the rear arches brought on the rot. The rest of the car is solid underneath, all original. Clearly somebody at Ford forgot to specify the standard rusty arches of all older Fords. They're very, very straight.
The bodywork is good. There are a few small dings that should push out. The paint is unbroken and it should buff up even where it looks like a child tried to write in the rear wing with a brillo pad. The bumpers need attention but they can be dealt with off the car.
The interior is really good with few signs of wear. It's an X-Pack so has the nice leather seats. Aside from the neglected car smell the interior is rather pleasant and everything seems to work. The speedo shows 68132 miles. The interior shows little sign of it. Even though the car's been idle for 8 years it does seem to have been well cared for through its life. All the original Ford manuals and service log (to 42,000 miles) are present. All this for £250?
I threw a new battery in, the engine started and runs sweetly. A brief test drive on perished tyres seems to show the mechanicals are in decent shape. It passed my tests so it got upgraded into the garage for resuscitation.
First off is seeing if the sills can be repaired. Well anything can be repaired but I needed to see if my skills and patience could stand fixing a rusty tin car. Previous projects have been kitcars and such where any welding was of decent gauge steel. However, I've been intrigued by threads here and elsewhere of rusty monocoque repairs. I confess I held off starting the thread to see how good a start I got off to.
From this :
to this first repair at the base of the A-pillar is satisfying for me
and gives me confidence to continue. There's still a lot of orange in the pic, but I'm enjoying the origami and metal forming so far. Next up is to form that outer sill section to keep a good sill seam, then look at the rot to the inner side.
