Hi,
I`m from Poland and I became owner of Cougar XR7 X Code which I bought last year from Don. I imported this car from USA to Poland where it is sitting now. I always dreamt of American Muscle Car and when I was looking over internet for some Challenger or Camaro I found Cougar - I have never before seen that car even on the picture. I immediately fall in love with it. I wanted to purchase project car and I found one that Don was selling and I bought it.
Anyway, I started restoration of it 2 weeks ago. I would like to share this process with you and if any one is interested in it please feel free to comment and give advices as this is my first encounter with Cougar.
Yesterday car went for paint removing - it should be back on Friday. Now I`m only wondering what paint color to choose for the car, because I do not like the original combination - lime frost + black vinyl top. Maybe someone have some recommendation?
Yeah, old tired worn out lime frost is not a pretty color. I never cared for the color until I saw a freshly restored 67 that had an excellent paint job. After that I thought differently about lime frost. It is still not my favorite color but one that I could live with as long as it was a good paint job. My advice when it comes to paint color is this, if you are fixing the car to resell then you would be best to stay original. If you are fixing the car for yourself with no intention of selling then pick whatever color you really like. It looks like the car has a black interior so the sky is the limit with the exterior paint color. It also looke like you have plenty of work space, nice shop.
The doors on the hood appear to be striped shells so that is not quite so bad. Removing the glass and all the hardware probably cuts their weight in half. Hopefully they were carefully laid there and not thrown on the hood.
Ok, don`t worry about doors - they are quite light and were put carefully on the hood only to not forget it when the guy from paint stripping operations came for the car.
About color - Im doing this car for me - not to resell. So Im going to change few things anyway. I have not seen any Cougar in real world, so I can only take examples from pictures. At this moment I`m considering three colors: Augusta green, Onyx, Calypso Red - all of them without vinyl top - just fully painted. What do you think?
Hello to the forum perszing alias rocket?!
If I could, I would paint it original, otherwise black or dark green. black is beautiful looking good on old cars with chrome on it. My friend has one in dark green, and its looking realy nice. My car is gray, but it has the vinyl top. just let me know, if you want to see? regards from germany.
He is refering to the marks that the factory marked on the car as it was being built. As an example we can see a P/S on the front of the front crossmember in your photo showing the car on your lift. There are probably more marks on the firewall and on individual parts.
There does seem to be quite a following of Cougars in Germany. In fact the most recent CCOA newsletter has an article on the German Cougar Club gatherings. At the one event they had about 30 Cougars attend the show.
Thanks, now I need to look on the other parts for such marks, but I think it will be impossible to repair them without destroying these marks. Maybe we can recreate it later. Is it really that important to keep them during restoration or just preference of some people?
To some people the marks are very important and to others they mean nothing. It is your car so you must decide if they are important to you. Since you are looking to change the exterior paint color we know that building a 100 point show car is not your objective. Personally even though you are changing the color I would put as many of the markings back that you can. If you want to see some ways others have done this check out some of the other threads in this section of the forum. One that quickly comes to mind would be Royce’s R Code thread. He shows a lot of details in it.
Piotr, welcome! I too just got my first 68 XR7 3 months ago. I also fell for the Cougar after looking for a Mustang. Mine is the Grecian Gold color but I too am changing that too i think to Madras Blue. That is one benefit building it for yourself! Happy to help if you ever need anything.I
I use Don at WCCC for all my parts and they have been great. I only live a few hours away so that is nice.
Ok, my Cougar is in the next phase of works. We have disassembled the engine and all other parts. Car came back today from paint stripping, but I do not have any pictures yet. I will upload it when I take them.
Please let me know if anyone is interested in my project at all. Is anyone reading this? If not I will stop making effort, but if there is someone interested then I can share some more pictures and information.
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