1969 Mercury Cougar XR7

Okay so, firstly I am extremely sorry for my lack of participation in my own blog. University and engineering has been getting the better of me and I have not laid a hand on my car for the last few months. However soon I will be able to catch up on some lost time and hopefully get my baby running by the end of the year. For now I just want to get started on my blog again and carry on from where I left off.. The Grill.

My last post on the grill months ago showed everything restored but nothing assembled. Since then I have assembled the grill and it is busy waiting in the bedroom (out of harms way) to be put on the car. Personally this grill has turned out to be one of my favorite parts on the car, it looks brand new and I am so happy with the outcome. Instead of boring everyone with more on the grill, I will leave it here with these final pictures until the grill in actually on the car.

Once again I’m sorry for those of you who were keeping up to date with this blog.

Assembly of the newly restored grill

Okay so now that everything had been either taken down to bare metal or sanded appropriately, it was time to paint. I bought myself a spray gun and used an old compressor. The pressure of this compressor proved to be problematic at times, I kept running out of air which stopped the even flow of paint. I made some changes with a regulator and an extra gauge so that the pressure of the tank would go up to about 7 bar but the air pumped out would be at about 2 bar. It’s not ideal but I was making do with what I had. It took e a couple of attempts on easier parts before I even attempted to spray the grill, I only had one chance to get it right, I did not want to sit an sand it again. I made a small spray booth with a desk on top of another desk and a fan in the back. It helped for dust and ventilation. The grill is very difficult to sand with 2000 sand paper and then polish, so doing it right the first time was the only option. I managed to do a job that I am faily happy with. So once everything was painted I started to assemble everything. The stainless steel trim that holds the bulbs in place were in a terrible state. I put a polishing brush on my wall grinder and polished all these stainless rings, they came out looking brand new. I still have not fully assembled the whole grill but this is a good idea of what it’s going to look like. You wouldn’t think that the grill is 42 years old.

Broken Pewter

The one side of the grill was broken. I think the car was in a small bumper bashing at some stage on its life.

Due to it being pewter this proved to be problematic. One can’t just bend pewter as they please or weld it easily, it either breaks or melts. I called a few places to see if I could have it welded as there are people who can weld pewter but no one could guarantee that it would not melt away. Obviously the re-builder had the same problem. The first photo shows what it was like in the beginning, there was one break and the whole side of the grill was badly bent. In the second photo, if you look closely, there are 3 breaks and it is slightly straighter, the re-builder had tried to straighten it but didn’t do such a great job. Now the third photo is from after I fixed it and painted it. It was very difficult to straighten this grill, I was worried about breaking it in more places or even worse breaking the grill completely. I used pliers, a vice grip and a cloth to prevent damaging it. I did small movements fighting to get the edges lined up and everything straight. Each time thinking, ‘It’s going to break, it’s going to break.’ Eventually I was fairly happy with the job, it wasn’t completely straight but I quit while I was ahead not pushing it and breaking it. I then sanded it down to bare metal in that general area ensuring it was completely clean. Using JB weld i glued the grill back together, this took a few times to mix it and let it dry, after that I sanded it down and smoothed off all the edges to look like it never was broken at all. A coat of 1k edge primer and 2k black paint and the grill looked as good as new. Personally I was very happy with the fix.

The cups that hold the light bulbs had not been painted, so it really looked terrible. Sanding everything is a daunting task so I tried to find better options. Due to these cups being mild steel, I sent them in for sand blasting, a photo shows these cups sandblasted, as well as the eyelid covers for the grill that roll up to expose the lights. With the grill being pewter it could not be sandblasted to remove the paint that the rebuilder sprayed on. To remove his paint which had been chipped in places and to smooth it off removing the pit marks totally I had to sand the grill. (Sorry I was robbed and my computer was stolen so I lost a range of photos including where I had sanded the grill down.) It took hours and hours to sand in-between all the cross members of the grill. A small section of the grill is showed after it was sanded. Also all the small parts that open and close the grill for the lights were in a terrible condition, I used a wire brush on a grinder to get majority of the paint off these steel parts and then sanded them to make sure they were good for paint.

I would just like to make a tribute to my gardener who so willingly helped me sand all the parts that needed sanding, between us there were weeks spent in sanding everything. He had been working for us for about 5 years and sadly died in a car accident about a month ago.

Restoration of the Grill

The photo’s are of the grill before I started. The problem with these grills are that they are pewter and after 40 years the grill has eroded in places causing pit marks. I decided with this particular orange colour that a black grill would look the best. Painting it would also help fill the pit marks. Another way is to send it for copper plating putting micro layers of copper on and sanding it down between layers, thus slowly filling the pit marks.

When the re-builder painted it, he put spot putty on filling these pit marks before painting. Although there were still pit marks visible. In order to restore this grill to the appropriate standards, it required a lot of man hours.

In the next few posts I will go into more detail.

Okay so the car is painted and well into assembly. I’d just like to make a note that by this time I was 19. The build had already been going on very long.. So I decided to have a look and see what rims I’d like to put on the car, after much debate I could not resist these Legend Chrome Chip Foose rims. I went onto www.mercurycougar.net which is the best Cougar Forum out there. If any help is required, there are always helpful people who are willing to share some knowledge. I was advised that 18inch X 9 inch would be the best size for the rims on the Cougar, not sure about the backspacing, I need to check it and I will update this. We imported these rims and they were a perfect fit.

The rear end started taking shape with the rear lights only half restored and the center piece which is for the fuel door was not touched at all. The grill looked good and definitely was and improvement, however it was still broken on the side where the badge is and pieces were put back on in a 40 year old condition. All of these details will be covered in my detailed restoration.